Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer floorplan
Sent to us in preparation for Robert’s four-day marathon of soundscaping as part of the Now You See It event staged by Cultural Industry at the South Bank Centre in March 1996.
For those unfamiliar with the Brutalist concrete labyrinth that dominates the banks of the River Thames in central London, it is home to several prestigious arts venues including the Royal Festival Hall, The Hayward Gallery, The Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room, and would also become our home for four days as we occupied the foyer to the Queen Elizabeth Hall. This was not a formal performance space, but one of passing people traffic and contained all the peripheral workings of a concert hall with box office, coat check, restrooms, café and bar, and as such it was ideal for Robert’s performance where a static audience was never intended, and even the performer might be found to perambulate to the back of the space to listen while the sound continued to unfold from the digital looping devices.
The main entrance.
We set up in front of a line of windows (marked in red on the plan) and rigged the room for sound with 8 speakers, ready for whoever might show up. There was some seating set out facing the performer, some chose to sit on the floor or occupy whatever corner they could find, this was music for spaces.
Robert occupied a position in front of the windows.
Billed as South Bank Soundscapes, this part of the event was free to access so at times drew a big crowd particularly on the Saturday which ran for 9 hours, quite possibly Robert’s longest ever gig? This extended session provided a very special moment and one that I like to imagine sits alongside King Crimson’s Trio from Starless and Bible Black - on that occasion in 1973 at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, a band exhausted from a gruelling tour, with nothing left to give, unexpectedly found a piece of music waiting in the air to be played, a perfect balance of performer, performance space and an engaged audience, where the music seemed to play the musicians.
Sometimes God Hides was the analogous piece from 1996. As David Singleton put it: “Robert had already played everything from his soundscapes repertoire”, there were hours still to go, the room was packed - this was not the shifting audience of the other days, he had already tried taking suggestions from his hapless crew member, then something happened.
These moments are rare and one I will never forget being witness to. Does that mean the rest of the music was not very good? Not at all, but it was the exploratory long-form that was needed in order to get to that place.
And talking of forgetting, after the first night had successfully concluded, David was to set off in the van back to his wife in Wiltshire, while I delivered Robert to the Sloane Club. Along the way he invited me to join him at his favourite crêperie on the Kings Road. Emerging suitably restored an hour or so later I reached into my pocket for my car key and pulled out the keys to the van!! Oh no. The van which David was supposedly at that moment driving back to Wiltshire in. No phoning or texting in those days. Rushing back to the venue all was locked and dark, and David nowhere to be seen. Convening the next day it transpired David had been looked after by the promoters and found a place to stay, and my blunder was forgiven.
Reminding them of this moment recently neither David nor his wife had any memory of it at all! A weight has been lifted.
Some months later, when compiling the first DGM CD sampler, David immediately knew he had to include the special piece from the QEH soundscapes and Sometimes God Hides became the title track and closing selection on the CD . If you can find a copy it is still a great listen and a snapshot of a small mobile record label operating in the days before all was lost to file sharing.
Of Now You See It we were too busy to attend any of the other events, which included Tod Machover’s MIT Media Lab demonstrating among other things the Sensor Chair, it plays when you sit on it; Brian and Anthea Eno and party coming by to greet Robert on their way to a demonstration of Eno’s Koan generative music system in another part of the foyer. The Hypersymposium was the headline event, chaired by the late Robert Sandall and including Eno, Peter Gabriel and electronic musicians, Howie B, Robin Rimbaud, David Toop and hip-hopper DJ Spooky, discussing the future of music - now 29 years later we should have an idea if they were right; and The Reverse Effect a back to front dance piece in the QEH with the dancers cascading over the auditorium seating with the audience seated upon the stage. Hazardous moments included DJ Spooky approaching to shake Robert's hand as he was tuning his guitar just before doors opened or a hundred plus dancers filing through the audience to get to the auditorium on the Saturday and Sunday.
A sign from the event
My role was to get the coffees in, deal with the enquiries/complaints and sell some CDs. But at other times, an hour or so before opening on the first night springs to mind, I also found myself soldering XLR connectors on to cables as David attempted to get sound to emerge from the speakers, or trying to avoid crunching the rented van into a concrete pillar on the difficult approach along pedestrian walkways to load in from the front doors. We even became performance artists as Robert, David and I convened at a side table with friend Ali Mehmet, to take coffee and cake while the audience looked on and the music played.
Far too active to be described as an installation, and an unexpectedly ideal space for Soundscaping, and I don’t remember there being any complaints.
And some good news: Mr Stormy is in the process of preparing the recordings from the complete run of four days to make them available to download for the first time here on dgmlive.
Can’t wait for that? Sometimes God Hides was released as part of track 4 of The Gates Of Paradise
