REVIEW: Contrafacts @ Reference Point

Saturday 14th of December

If ‘all art is political’, as we’ve grown accustomed to hearing, then what are the politics of bubblegum pop? Of the chirpy sincerity of early Beatles love songs, or of the hyperproduced hot-mess aesthetics of the instant-classic of the summer, Charli XCX’s BRAT?

These are the questions that Nicholas Mroczkowski (Nicko) poses to his audience, slouching in his chair, guitar-in-lap, under a dim red LED glow in a corner of Reference.Point in central London. Behind him, his band – an unconventional ensemble, comprising Daniel Kabanov (keys), Arnold Chukwu (clarinet/voice), EKAS (electronics/voice), Sravudh Tanhai (electric bass), Luke Soden (upright bass), Ben Vince (alto saxophone), Will Reubin (drums), and poets Phoenix Yemi and Arcadia Molinas – listens intently, sometimes expressing their agreement.

The occasion is the inaugural event in his new series entitled ‘Contrafacts’. A contrafact is an original composition that is written over an existing one, like a melodic palimpsest; this obscure concept from classical music theory, which incidentally can be applied to the history of jazz and hip-hop, forms both the musical and conceptual basis for the series.

‘The culture that we take for granted, whether it’s in our music or in the art we make,’ Nicko begins, ‘is shot through with ideologies that have been used to justify the most extreme and heinous violences that we’ve seen in our lifetimes. And that’s just now, to be honest – it’s been hundreds of years…’ He seems to take particular issue with what he calls ‘quietism’ in art: a tendency for popular art, and especially music, to widen its appeal by failing to take a stance on anything specific, and thereby to subtly contribute to the perception that, say, All is Fine in pax Americana. It’s a refreshing take in this worried climate, and he succeeds in articulating a complex politics of aesthetics without losing his audience of casual listeners.

He continues, gesturing towards the band behind him: ‘We believe that something we can do is revisit this canon, to revisit our cultural influences, to reflect on the music that we grew up with, and the art that we are familiar with in our culture; and attempt to retool it, in order to reveal its ellipses, its marginalisations, [and] the sensibilities that it leads to.’ At this point, the audience is curious to hear what this will sound like. A further remark from Nicko suggests the band isn’t sure either – many of them met the day before, and the set is to be entirely improvised, with bandmembers ‘calling’ one of 8 pre-chosen tunes at any moment they feel to be appropriate.

Then the music starts. The opening, at least, appears rehearsed; Nicko and Daniel accompany each other through a chord-melody arrangement of the jazz standard ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’, whose saccharine F-major-brightness, in contrast with the relative solemnity of the spoken introduction, gives an unmistakeable impression of barbed but good-humoured irony. Both keys and guitar perform sophisticated reharmonisations of the material, immediately establishing the technical virtuosity of the players; and as the two abruptly descend into a dissonant space-out, it feels, in retrospect, as if the band intended to first assure us of their familiarity with by-the-book playing. They know the material, their instruments, and the nature of their training; and these are the stakes of their ‘self-critiques’.

But there is never any doubt about their technical abilities. A few among the audience chuckle with recognition as Sravudh, the bassist, begins to play the iconic line from The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’; the rest of the band surrounds the motif with textured, unpredictable, and yet precisely synchronised jazz-rock textures that convincingly recall the improvisational style of the Miles Davis Electric Band. As they lock in, it’s obvious that the musicians are all listening intently to each other and attempting to think as one; there is no showboating, no solos, nor any indication that this is mere experimentation for its own sake.

The ensemble also avoids the predictable rise-fall-rise-fall dynamics typical of open jams; under Nicko’s instruction, the set is satisfyingly asymmetrical – at points, half of the band plays at full intensity while the others remain silent – while also achieving a balance between the textural and melodic. Nicko himself moves between setups to fill out the various spaces left by his collaborators; his dreamy tape-echo lead tone gives way to heavy distortion and the clicks and pops of extended techniques, and later the incessant, siren-like wail of a synth drone.

Towards the end, he performs jarring screeches with a cello bow, which he subsequently snaps in half, wrapping the hairs around the neck of the guitar to produce the vast metallic echoes of an industrial scene. The message is abundantly clear, and the atmosphere is tense and mournful, but never difficult to inhabit. Indeed, framed by drummer Will’s frenetic, stop-start grooves, the performance maintains a driving coherence that experimental endeavours often lack. This is not ambient music – in the final analysis, it’s rock.

The closing is the high point of the evening. Backed up by the band, writer and long-time collaborator Arcadia Molinas performs her own contrafact of this summer’s ‘quietist’ hit, Charli XCX’s 365. Her manipulations of the lyrics reveal, beneath the strung-out-party-girl pop refrains, a monstrous death drive that she couples with the image of self-immolation, chanting, ‘365 kerosene’. The music swells behind her, led by Nicko, who at this point is making the most of his complicated gear setup; the rest of the band follows suit in abandoning tonality in favour of increasingly chaotic and distorted lines. Her voice cracks as she shouts between English and Spanish, and then, in perfect sync, it all stops; we in the audience are stunned by the novelty and intensity, and after a heavy silence, there is roaring applause.

The vitality, novelty, and scope of the project is unlikely to be found anywhere else in the scene – not only due to the skill of the performers, but also on account of its unique coordinates. A researcher in cultural studies and critical theory, Nicko’s reference material is as much musical as philosophical, and the setlist for the evening comprises only one half of the programme; the other, beneath the surface, consists in the thought of radical political thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Amiri Baraka, and Louis Althusser.

A passing remark as he takes the stage indicates his personal relationship to these two canons: ‘The reason I’ve been so engaged with music in the last few years, I think, is because I’ve felt… Disappointed… With language and what it can do in changing people’s ways of seeing things. So we’re going to try music tonight.’ Having seen it for myself, I am inclined to believe Nicko’s proposition that in these troubled times, music can or must be a performance of resistance.

by Maeve de Bordóns Álvarez