Tusk festival review – multisensory showcase of sonic adventures

The Sage, GatesheadTerry Riley, one-note symphonies and bearded men in dresses all find their place in this uncompromising celebration of experimental musicIn darkness illuminated by spooky projections, Cee Haines AKA Chaines fuses guitar, clarinet, keyboard, looped banks of her own singing and at one point screaming to produce a mesmeric collage of ecclesiastical beauty and creeping dread. When a young woman in the crowd performs bizarre, interpretative dance movements in slow motion, it’s difficult to work out whether she is part of the audience or the performance. Now in its third year at the Sage, after intimate beginnings in 2011 at the Star and Shadow cinema, Tusk is a three-day festival of the experimental, weird and wonderful that features artists who rarely play in the UK. Ramones, Blondie and the Fall producer Craig Leon spotlights his lesser-known yet enduring guise of electronic composer. With longtime synth partner Cassell Webb and a string quartet, a superb performance draws from 1981’s pioneering proto-techno work Nommos and his forthcoming Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music vol 2: The Canon, blurring the divide between contemporary classical, synth punk and banging techno. Continue reading…
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