Above The Tree

Above The Tree is a solo project of Marco Bernacchia. He plays guitar augmented by odd noises and loops. There's a bluesy, lo-fi folk vibe to this.


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Master Musicians of Bukkake / Ignatz, Scheld'apen, 17/07/09

I like the concert venue Scheld'Apen for different reasons. First, concerts start late, gives you time enough to get there on time without stress while you still can order a few drinks and have a talk before the shows start. It's a nice evening and we order some fine beers and enjoy the evening outside. A bit later, seated on the floor, Ignatz kicks off with his very personal 'broken' folk blues. His guitar & vocal work that is sometimes melancholic/nostalgic and often drenched in delay gets from the quiet & introspective to the rawer, distorted edge and back. A nice and ideal support act. After the break smoke fills the nicely filled concert place and 6 people, each dressed in a long red robe and with some sort of a bee-keeper's hood on enter the stage. Master Musicians of Bukkake open the set with a drone/atmospherical instrumental. After that, a hairy thing crawls up the stage. It looks like a Yeti or Bigfoot or perhaps it's the sort of monster that lives in swamps most of the time, feeding itself with water plants, frogs and toads. But look, it learned how to pick up a microphone and it actually knows how to sing (which can't be said of Madonna and Britney Spears, according to their very recent 'concert ' performances - thousands of people pay fortunes to see them playback, find the logic in that). Meanwhile the band gets in a rhythmic mood and with two drummers, two guitar players, a bass/guitar player, one guy on synths and that singing creature, Master Musicians Of Bukkake know how to build long multilayered psychedelic/krautrock-ish jams. The music strongly refers to the psychedelic & kraut stuff from the seventies, but they produce it in some sort of upgraded 21st century form. Perhabs they don't make anything really new or revolutionary but they sure recycle interesting music from the past and they don't confine themselves to simply reproducing the stuff. Combine that with their excellent craftmanship (some of the band members play in Asva, Earth or do production work), a good sound and a sense of putting things in the right perspective and you get a great show! I buy an Ignatz-cd (I already have the two MMOB-cd's, good ones btw) and have to convince the drunk guy from the merch that it actually costs 12 euro in stead of 5.

We drive home and get lost in Hoboken. While we try to find our way out of there Harappian Night Recordings is on. The fascinating, weird south-asian music influenced experimental pieces mix well with the night images of nearly empty streets. We conclude the evening at the bar and try out a Boskeun beer, quite a strong beer (with a ridiculous label on the bottle) but our verdict was unanimously that it didn't appeal to us very much. The La Chouffe (that's the one with the stupid gnome on the label - is it supposed to attract children or what?) afterwards tasted much much better.

Enjoyed the show with different sorts of beer, which is obviously the best sort of booze for this kind of music.

Jaki Liebeziet & Burnt Friedman, A Hawk & A Hacksaw, Nijdrop 15/05/09

A Hawk & A Hacksaw is a band from New Mexico. The poor dudes must have been confused arriving here in the middle of nowhere (of Flanders in fact) playing in an nearly empty old warehouse. Nevertheless, they have the right attitude and can't be bothered. 'We're here now anyway, so we play what we've got' is the attitude for this sort of occasions. With accordion, mandolin (or is that a bouzouki?), accordion (this guy also sings and has a sort of floor tom at his foot), violin, trumpet and tuba they play the sort of folk music that's heavily influenced by Balkan music with perhaps some hints of mariachi here and there. They manage to create a good atmosphere, automatically I think of some Kusturica movie scenes: weddings, drunk funerals, family parties etc... throw in a dog with three legs, cats eating from the table, a lost goat and you know what I mean. All in all, I liked the set and it made me thirsty. One advantage of a low turn-out at concerts is that you seem to own the place: no waiting at the bar, no endless trying to get the bartender/bastard's attention, no pushing your way through the audience and spilling beer etc...

Fortunately a bit more people have arrived when Jaki Liebezeit & Burnt Friedman kick of their set but the turn-out is still very disappointing. Where is everybody? Seeing Liebezeit drumming is some experience. Seated before (and a bit higher than) his four toms and three cymbals (and some well placed mics) - no footwork - he starts without hesitation hitting rhythms that he changes slowly, but never is there one hit out of place or out of rhythm. If you follow his hands and sticks it becomes mesmerising, he's like a human beat box. Sometimes in the beginning of each track you think that it mustn't be that difficult to follow him but his timing, attack and volume is perfect and damn, he subtly adds quite some variation. Liebezeit is in the music business since the middle of the sixties, starting in the German free jazz scene (see Manfred Schoof and even Brotzmann) before he played with Can and now, forty years later he's still going strong. Respect! Burnt Friedman is very complementary to what Liebezeit does. He contributes to the rhythms with lots of nice bleeping sounds (lots of lovely steel drum-like sounds) while at the same time weaving very beautiful sound blankets through the rhythmic patterns. Sometimes hints of melodies shine through, some dubby bas feelings show up and at one time he even used some acid house sounds in the mix. The duo works nicely towards some impressive climaxes to which the audience reacts very enthusiastic. They even come back to do an encore. I already saw them a couple of years ago (with a guitar player who wasn't that good) but this time I experienced it as much better. I must admit that at that time the beer flow had been going goddamn fast for a while, so maybe that element had something to do with it.

When experiencing the duo's high quality & highly recommendable chill out studio Cd's at home (first two Secret Rhythms volumes are wonderful, haven't heard third installment yet) I wouldn't recommend beer in plastic cups like I digested that night but I would suggest some nice dry white wine. And before the thousands of readers of this blog start to regard me as some sort of wine snob: I don't mean sipping on a glass like some sort of upper class idiot, while you most probably don't know anything about it but just swallow the stuff like a big boy and at least empty the goddamn bottle would ya?