Dirtmusic is a band/project I really wanted to see on this tour... (more info about them below).
It was the first gig of this tour. I arrived late (been to the venue "Raetsche" in Geislingen many times, but only once it had started early, all other gigs started sometime between 8.30 and 9pm), thus missing at least 20 mins of the gig.
Not very fittingly for this hypnotic, groovy kind of music, seats were set out across the venue floor (ok, it made the room look a bit fuller - sadly not too many people in), I kept standing at the back (where the sound was far from perfect and all in all a bit loud)... later I changed over to the other side, where I had more space.
The music was good (except for one quiet song/soundscape which was going nowhere, to my ears at least), of course any older songs sounded different to the last tour(s), due to the other (guest) musicians. The "groove" of the African years had gone, being replaced by more "oriental" sounds and rhythm. Still very good, but all in all it was the worst Dirtmusic show I've seen so far, partly due to the low attendance (the audience liked them, but due to being seated, only very few were dancing at the back) - something was "missing", even though at times the "spark" flew over.
It seemed a bit like a "public rehearsal" somehow.
Of course, on a Friday, I was on my way home at 10pm! (Had it been Wednesday, it would've been 12 I guess...)
I would go to see them again, but I guess up next are other projects from Hugo Race or Chris Eckman (who I both like).
http://glitterbeat.com/artists/dirtmusic/The striking figure of Murat Ertel is standing at the door of his home studio, a converted mechanic’s garage in a suburb of Istanbul. The Turkish capital is a tense and conflicted place these days, but Baba Zula’s leader and saz man is on fine form. Before him stand those current and former musical nomads, Chris Eckman and Hugo Race, guitars in hand. Dirtmusic are about to take on their latest, and perhaps most thrilling, form.
But let’s rewind a little, for Dirtmusic’s story is worth your time (although it perhaps makes more sense to talk about Dirtmusics plural).
Originally a straight-talking, mainly acoustic trio mining blues and country for 21st century gold, the band’s first happy accident was to stumble upon Tamikrest at the fabled Festival au Désert in Timbuktu in 2008. A musical love story began, running through that joyous first collaboration with Tamikrest in BKO (2010), followed by Troubles (2013) and Lion City (2014), which expanded the roster to include Ben Zabo, Samba Touré and a host of other superb Malian musicians. In the meantime, however, the Islamist takeover of Northern Mali in 2012 had darkened the sound and the songwriting, giving them a tone that continues to resonate through the new record.
Back to that garage. True to form, Eckman and Race look to improvise, for that line to the Bamako years is still strong. They’ve come with a couple of beats and loops – and they’re not even sure whether they will attach any words to this year’s Dirtmusic. But Ertel knows they need to tell a story. The time and the place demand it. This is being recorded in Istanbul after all, and Eckman has flown there from Slovenia, a country that has secured its southern border with razor wire – and Race from Australia, where sea-borne refugees are detained indefinitely on remote islands. And so it goes, a tale of borders and walls, of cold fronts and cold hearts.
