BIG|BRAVE, Kee Avil, Ilun [08.05.2024: Orpheum Extra, Graz]

55

von Oliver
am 10. Mai 2024
in Featured, Reviews

Almost two weeks after her friends from Godspeed You! Black Emperor come BIG|BRAVE to Graz – and fill at least that Orpheum Extra (supported by dark and Kee Avil) relatively neat.

Admitted: Bag Full of Empty Bags has so far slipped under the radar of perception at this point. However, the graceful band does dark with a strong performance as a local opener everything to correct this situation. It sounds a bit like something civilized Unsane their noise rock against the space stoicism of the Secret Machines traded to for Sub Pop to write a post-hardcore album with an openly expansive genre horizon – …or something like that – meanwhile the influence that Steve Albini will leave behind in music history forever, during the entertaining (and actually getting better with every passing minute), great tension arc built up ) half-hour show is tangible.
So let’s see whether the trio’s songwriting preserves even more sophisticated scenes on record than on stage. Either way, it definitely makes you want more!

Spinethe second album by Kee Avil has, on the other hand, through his alone Constellation Recordsbackground can generate a certain amount of attention when it appears – but at least here, this cannot be converted into an appropriate review. What should ideally change in the foreseeable future, although the successor to Crease from 2022 will now face a more difficult situation after Vicky Mettler’s set, which also lasted almost 30 minutes (supported by Kyle Hutchins on stage and Zachary Scholes behind the controls).
Live, the Canadian artist’s experimental noise pop develops an even more intense presence, is more hyperactive and manic. Sometimes you wish that the catchier, more melodic elements would have more room to develop when Hutchins created the sound collages Kee Avil reconstructed in an almost meticulous hectic manner, and at times attacked with electronic drums that felt over-the-top, feeding him sensory overload. But the mortification flanked by electronics also gains an idiosyncratic identity, consistency and ruthlessness beyond the contrasting soft facets of the record.
Mettler then strokes the guitar like a gentle torturer with a tormented look, sometimes creeps across the stage with glassy eyes like a careful horror creature in careful slow motion and, above all, sharpens a profile that leaves a lasting impression, which is impressively reminiscent of colleagues like Pharmacon or makes Scout Niblett think in a nervous, exciting indietronica minefield.

Setlist (without guarantee):
Felt
See, My Shadow
The Iris Dry
Do This Again
Gelatin
Saf
At His Hands
Showed You
Croak

Since BIG|BRAVE When we stopped in Austria for the first time almost eight years ago, a lot has happened – and the impressive evolution of the band in the recently released album A Chaos of Flowers culminates.
This seventh studio album by the trio from Montreal (upgraded to a quartet by Liam Andrews on this tour – or perhaps even beyond? -) presents the set list in chronological order and in its entirety (if the hypnotic trance of the performance has not steamrolled the memory). in the air filled Orpheum Extra, after Duke Ellington and the Coletranes laid out the red carpet in a jazzy mood. And roll on this gentle mood barometer BIG|BRAVE their material monumentally broad.
The volume, the physicality, the atmospheric density – all of this lies more impressively drawn in the curves and patiently develops its majestic pull, conjuring up slowcore doom territories in the spheres of Earth and Healthy O))), Even on stage, it doesn’t take the easiest, direct route to the oppressive climax. The waves of frequency waves make your clothes shake and your stomach vibrate, the tangible waves of strings literally wash over Robin Wattie’s vocals and simply do it More from the songs that, in powerful grandeur, measure the dynamics of soft vulnerability and intoxicating heaviness in an otherworldly beauty.

In a rare piece of communication that breaks out of the seamless stream of music, Wattie apologizes to the audience for not having a funky light show because she has a concussion. But the sparsely lit darkness of the dim stage with its well-accentuated bursts of color actually enhances the ambience ideally anyway, fits perfectly with these drone longings in which Mat Ball is the free spirit and with Andrews, staggering against the amplifiers, summons the feedback, while Tasy Hudson works entirely in the service of the cause, from the tectonic withdrawal to the powerful seance, exchanging mischievous looks with the guitarist and not disturbing Wattie’s concentration in front of the lyrics. BIG|BRAVE are an organism behind the wall of their expansive music.

Wide in massive sound BIG|BRAVE In this way, their own, creeping, melancholic sound cosmos is impressively captivating and fascinating, enhancing much of what the trio is already admired for on the record – and in which the musicians themselves, as shown by many small gestures in their otherwise reserved appearance, are blissfully happy with a lot despite all their inscrutability Enjoy playing.
When Wattie then had to turn down calls for an encore shortly after twelve-fifteen due to a lack of rehearsed songs, but thanked the audience all the more warmly, you even genuinely sensed a certain emotion in her – and that the band felt extremely likeable and approachable after the show The team turns out to only complete this picture.
Being able to experience one of the best albums of the year from this perspective (practically on your own doorstep and at an unbeatable price – kudos to the organizers!) is simply a special experience.

Setlist (without guarantee):
I Felt a Funeral
Not Speaking of the Ways
Song For My Shadow
Canon : In Canon
A Song for Marie Part III
Theft
Quotidian : Solemnity
Moonset

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