It is dark. Basses thump. An intoxicatingly sweet female perfume hangs in the air, a child cries. AquaSonic has just started, and I already want to leave.
What possesses a musician to go head-to-head? Our Danish correspondent went to find out.
AquaSonic is an ode to water, played by Between Music, a collective of five Danish musicians. They make underwater music. Literally: they perform in five aquariums with their own instruments. AquaSonic's premiere was in the Netherlands last year, during the Operadagen in Rotterdam. Now they are playing a home game: in Aarhus, in art complex Godsbanen, around the corner from the Jysk Konservatorium.
One by one, the lights go on in and around the aquariums. A man plays the violin. A man and a woman each play their own collection of gongs, gamelans and singing bowls. The percussionist's hair waves back and forth in the water like seaweed. Another woman plays the rotacorda, a kind of hurdy-gurdy, and finally a singer in a flamboyant, red singer's dress steps into the fifth aquarium - and starts singing. Underwater. There is no contact with each other or with the audience. It alienates, and that repels me.
Gasping for breath
Nothing is self-evident underwater. Breathing is necessary, but tubes or aqualung are out of the question here. Too clumsy or too noisy, because of the air bubbles. So the players regularly surface to gasp for breath. Usually they do so as inconspicuously as possible, sometimes as part of the 'soundscape' or music.
That music is reminiscent of dreamy film scores, complete with bubbling and dripping water. The latter intensifies when the players set aside all instruments and blow into hoses connected to transparent cylinders filled with water. A comical piece of music follows: competition for five glasses of lemonade with a straw. It's not called that but that's what it sounds like. And at such moments, the thought also arises that this is more playing in the bathtub than music. The 'that-can-my-little-brother-also' effect.
Music nerds on the edge of the possible
But so most of Between Music's music is slow, dreamy and wistful. For those who don't like their music (and I don't, I've discovered), the ensemble offers something else: nerdiness. The underwater sound world has many challenges and possibilities, and Between Music wants to try them all. From vocal technique to sound reinforcement, from inventing new instruments to adapting 'old' ones for use underwater.
For instance, in collaboration with violin maker Mezzo-Forte from Germany, they have developed a violin made of carbon fibre, so that the instrument does not fall apart after only three days - like a wooden violin. But the crystallophone, rotacorda and hydraulophone have also been developed with the help of Between Music players.
Other techniques are less engineer-like, but arise in practice. For instance, you can often see percussionists waving their hand to and from a gong. They hold a microphone that picks up the difference in sound vibrations. In this way, a kind of wah-wah sound is created.
Underwater singer Laila Skovmand has gradually developed a singing technique that allows water to flow into her oral cavity up to the vocal cords. And then she sings, underwater - without producing air bubbles. Because those drown out and otherwise drown out the pure, thin underwater sound.
The invisible hand of the sound engineer
Between Music has five players, but the sound engineer plays an equally important role. Firstly, because the underwater sounds do not reach that far and amplification is therefore necessary. And secondly, because the players cannot hear each other and the final result of their playing together. Via underwater speakers in their ears, they can.
And the players honour that: with more emphasis than at other concerts, they include the sound engineer in their applause. Dripping wet and beaming, they stand before their audience and enthusiastically point upwards. The applause increases. Contact at last!
If you want to hear AquaSonic live, you should fly to Perm, or wait until November. Then they can be heard again in Denmark, this time in Grenaa. Close to Aarhus. Almost home.
Keep their website keep an eye out for new gigs.
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