DEVIL MUSIC

Unholy shit at the BCA
Michael Brodeur

The last time I hit the symphony, I entertained myself during a lull in a sprawling Sibelius work by counting heads nodding off across the auditorium; little grayed domes gently lowering, and suddenly snapping upright with an audible suck of air. Our seats hurt my back and ass; everybody in my row smelled like my aunt; our tickets were bonkers expensive; and the music was distant and easily forgotten. These truly are dazzling times for high culture.

“What if all BSO shows were $7 all the time?” Devil Music guitarist Brendon Wood asks on the phone. “I’d go every night. That’s a sure-shot reason the symphony is dying right there; just make these shows affordable for people!” A statement like this would be easy for a guitarist in a rock band to say, except that Devil Music’s last few shows have employed a slowly swelling “neighborhood orchestra” that has included up to 40 players—so figuring out how to mend the schism between orchestras and audiences is of special interest to these folks.

Adding to the trickiness of Devil Music’s endeavor is their penchant for modern classical—a genre that is often name-dropped, seldom performed and tacitly suppressed by mainstream classical outlets as too esoteric for, say, the 103.3FM crowd. While Devil Music’s aesthetic is largely footed in improvisation, the trio at the ensemble’s core is fully capable of rocking out—and often, it’s the familiarity of rock sounds embedded in their compositions that allows unlikely listeners to feel at home.

The devilish aspect of their music is the ease with which it assumes different forms. The Devil Music moniker originated in 2000 with a release of Wood’s solo material; kraut-tinted improvisatory compositions that melded electronic bits with sprawling tonal textures and rock guitars—it could have been a cache of undiscovered Can 4-tracks. The record was later released as a full-length by dynamic JP label, Mister Records. By 2003, the band was steadily operating as the trio of Wood, Jonah Rapino and drummer Tim Nylander, releasing a record of frenetic rock titled Mastul (Mister Records). In between these recordings, they began pursuing their modernist leanings and implementing improvisational techniques from which the music they admired so much was made.

Their first group performance was a live soundtrack performed for Jean Cocteau’s silent film Le sang d’un poete in 2001. This was the first in a string of these live scores for silent films, as they spent months touring and performing music for films by Chaplin, the Lumiere Brothers and Man Ray, among others—and each time they let the film influence the musical approach.

“With the silent Western film that we did, it was very composed,” Wood says. “We wrote country songs with some classic improvisations of bluegrass or country, but we weren’t using chance-games. Then we did The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where we had an eerie soundtrack where we could do things differently each night, use more 20th Century improvisational techniques. We’re not doing the same thing with every piece.”

Nor is it the same thing with every show. In 2001 at O’Brien’s in Allston, they performed and recorded a 40-minute rendition of Terry Riley’s 1964 minimalist hit-single In C as a five-piece rock ensemble with horns. Sure enough, it sounds like Terry Riley meets O’Brien’s. David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet once called In C “an idea about life,” noting that “it always sounds right and it always sounds different.” Accordingly, in the hands of Devil Music, Riley’s 53 short figures slam against each other in bristling noise and interlock through vast sheets of distortion, all over a relentless kick-drum pulse.

Over the years, the group has slowly and casually recruited dozens of local players into their fold. “The first concert was at the Berwick,” Rapino says. “We got together 17 people just by word of mouth … we’d meet people at bars and it would turn out they play trombone or something and we’d be like ‘Hey! You should be in the group!’ The next concert we got 20, the next we got 25.”

This week at the Mills Gallery, Devil Music will perform with a 20-piece orchestra as part of the Berwick’s AIR (Artists in Research) retrospective (they were the AIR program’s first participants). The plan this time out is for the orchestra to improvise based on structures by the core rock trio—“rock informing the classical,” as they put it. True to form, the performance will be completely different from their past outings, but will be steeped in the same adventurous spirit—a balance the group seems quite cozy with.

“Each show is a different thing each time,” Rapino says, “It just presents us a new batch of challenges; it makes it more interesting, more fun. We want people to come thinking ‘What the hell are they gonna do next? What is this shit?’”

DEVIL MUSIC PERFORMS AS PART OF THE BRI:AIR EXHIBITION AT THE MILLS GALLERY AT THE BCA ON MARCH 18. 539 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. 617.426.7700. 8PM/FREE. WWW.BCAONLINE.ORG

DEVIL MUSIC

Unholy shit at the BCA Michael Brodeur

Unholy shit at the BCA
Michael Brodeur