I have only just discovered that some more of my older reviews went missing due to snarl-ups on the Plexus site a while back... here's a repeat of my take on the Kim Gordon show at the Barbican last October, 2005 - which has just seen its American debut a couple of weeks back on October 27/28 at Montclair State University. Here's one review of that performance... which wasn't as enthusiastic as mine... offered in the cause of balance...
So... more adventures in the American Sublime... onwards...
I had a seat in the front row of the balcony which offered a panoramic view... appropriate for a performance which attempts such a wide, sweeping mix of image and music. Which is Kim Gordon's film 'Perfect Partner,' made in collaboration with video artist Tony Oursler and filmmaker Phil Morrison. Starring Michael Pitt and Jamie Bochert with a live, improvised soundtrack from a star band comprising Gordon on bass and vocals, Jim O' Rourke, Tim Barnes on percussion, Ikue Mori on laptop, DJ Olive laptop and turntables and tonight only, Thurston Moore. Some pit band... DJ Olive set it rolling with swooshing samples overlaid with muted trumpet and flute, culminating in a cutting up of a recorded voice... I missed the exact beginning when the full band arrived on stage as I had a quick run to the toilets and just squeaked back in as they started (a coupleof hours in the 'Rising Sun' down the road and an ageing bladder...)
The idea for the film takes off from Gordon's love of car ads and the idealised life depicted in them – dreams that feed symbiotically off the dreams of movement and escape that underpin what I see as 'the American Sublime...' filtered back through to this English space I belong to and as I run with it from the encapsulation in the Olson phrase: 'I take SPACE to be the defining factor for man born in America.' Or woman, Charles... (My apologies for dragging this in yet again – but it seems apposite... and everyone has their obsessions...) Kim Gordon glosses her work thus:
“I've always been fascinated by that movement to escape history, westward, towards the setting sun." (Kim Gordon quoted from here...).
'To escape history' – And stasis? By movement in dream cars into the SPACE of America... The story is briefly this: a guy who is apparently searching for his mother goes into a car showroom and a girl tries to sell him a car. They go for a test drive – and keep on going. We are back on the old Lost Highway, encountering a couple of noir-ish characters, (a fat, pimp-like figure whom the girl shoots – some back-story hinted at), another maybe being killed (the Shepard-ish cowboy, topped apparently by two men, who turns up again at the end) until they reach the coast and the ocean, where the film ends on images of rippling water abstracted into shimmering shapes on the screen. So it's a road movie of sorts which bounces lightly off Godard, among others... At the beginning, the man (Michael Pitt) is carrying a book with western imagery prominantly displayed on the cover and there are some intercut shots from old Remington-esque paintings, referencing the Old West... (the book was, I think, 'The West that was,' by John E. Eggen, a collection of old photographs from the frontier). Seems a simple enough and familiar story? I suppose so. But it's in the telling is the fascination... Utilising two screens, one behind the band, the other in front, the perspective shifts continually as the music responds in real time. At various points, band members are visually 'sampled' and appear on screen, meshing the performance deeper into the film narrative. By the end of the journey, I felt that I had witnessed a unique spectacle – a performance that rolls and wraps round itself, incorporating all the elements of moving image, figures on a stage whose music comments upon the filmic action even as it incorporates aspects of the performance in the visual sampling. Seamlessly integrating music, the occasional vocal and visuals in a sure-footed dance. And, it was, I thought, brilliant. At the end, as the images of water rippled on the screen, the band hot-footed it off stage as the audience applauded when they realised that it was over. Not for long: no one seemed sure how to respond. Well, this is England, chaps - but it seemed a slightly desultory note to end on – I suppose that the usual live gig rituals had been subverted - after all, when a movie ends, the actors – or the musicians responsible for the soundtrack, rather - don't usually step out of the screen and take a bow – unless you're watching 'Hellzappoppin' or some such... If Gordon and company had come back on, you could figure that people would start shouting for an encore or something – which would have probably screwed and skewed the mood of the previous hour and more... Maybe this was more fun – not knowing what to do...
The music was great, a level of improvised performance pretty much what you would expect from the stellar line up. Couldn't make out the vocals too well, but it didn't matter... the overall sound was integral to the concept. Very much a group performance. And one with the necessary SPACE inside it to expand and match the imagery and myth in the film. Improvisation in this context seems the true musical response... The Barbican did them proud, I thought, a good venue for Gordon and co's creations. Now, I want to see it again – but it's on at places a long way from where I am at present. Maybe I should go on a road trip to track it down. But we don't do that sort of thing very well here. It can be a nightmare (and not an interesting one, usually) to try to cross the UK east-west or the reverse – but you run out of SPACE pretty quickly and end up in the Irish, North Sea or the Channel. The English Sublime is a different bugger – one that is usually more cramped and crabby. Maybe up in the Lakes – but when I went looking for that variant a couple of years back, via the horrors of post-industrial Lancashire – foot and mouth had closed it off. This night, I ended up in the hotel surrounded by drunks singing along with one of the truly awesomely BAD bar bands of all time, running through a grubby selection of Oirish diddley-dee and bizarrely juxtaposed Sixties hits – 'American Pie' slams into 'I'm a Believer' into 'Mustang Sally' back to a couple of outtakes from St Paddy's night, for God's sake, which all da young folk there seemed not only to know by heart but to take to their hearts. It was either totally shite or some bizarre post-modern joke... funny either/both way – but you had to be there to appreciate it, as they say... A couple of Budweisers loosened me but I wisely in the end declined the gambit that this part of the evening offered... went to bed and dreamed of escaping into the Sublime...
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