There’s nothing quite like Ex-Easter Island Head. Everyone says this and they’re usually wrong, but this Liverpool trio does require a bit of explanation for the uninitiated.
There are some references to be made, mostly from modern classical sources. There’s a pinch of John Cage in the way they use ‘prepared’ instruments - in this case guitars - and their unconventional approach to playing them in which they are laid flat and struck to create tuned resonances. They’re a little bit Terry Riley, building their music up from little repeated modules of sound and rhythm. There’s even a touch of 60s psychedelia in tonight’s rousing finale.
Nobody that I know of, though, incorporates physical performance into what they do in quite the same way. Their playing incorporates stylised hand gestures that almost have the flavour of ritual. It’s subtle in places - it was only when I saw one of the trio in his ‘civilian’ clothes that I twigged their unfussy black outfits as an aesthetic rather than a functional choice.
Lee Riley provided natural support - also using a modified guitar, hooked up to a bank of equipment to create a shifting landscape of drones that swelled and ebbed very prettily without ever quite seeming to cohere into a unified whole.
Like him, Ex-Easter Island Head were presenting a single piece ‘22 Strings’, although theirs had a little more structure - indeed, it was almost conventionally ‘symphonic’ - a first movement that developed a melodic theme, a slow and contemplative central palate cleanser and an intense, frantic climax.
That second movement provided the most compelling physical theatre of the evening. The two non-drumming members of the group stooped intently over their instruments, their hands rising and drifting over the strings to create twangy breaths of sound that called to mind a kind of eerie Americana.
But it was the finale that stuck with everyone - after a slightly unfocussed opening, the guitar tuning resolved itself into a powerful three-chord freakout that had even the more earnest, chinstroking audience contingency of the regrettably small audience bobbing up and down.
For all its definite roots in the often arid world of contemporary competition, this is delightful, and entirely accessible, entertainment. My companion, whose tastes are generally more conventional, was as delighted as he was surprised and one can only hope that more people discover this genuinely unique and thrilling act.