Free Impro Session - Kawiarnia Naukowa

As a substitute for the concert in Bydgoszcz, I went to see a free impro session in Kawiarnia Naukowa (not Eszeweria as i believed yesterday).

The line-up, as usual in those kind of situations, was different than announced - with 2 computers, electric guitar, electro-acoustic guitar (played mostly as a bass, or in electro-acoustic way - using the feedback from speakers) and saxophone (alto and soprano).

Free improvised sessions with ad hoc line-up are a risky business. There's no procedure to make this music work, sometimes it does, quite often it doesn't. When it does, it's wonderfully unpredictable, hypnotic, adventurous. When it doesn't the same musical elements seem random, repetitive, flat and even boring.

I'm not a big fan of electronics, or noise elements, so my perception of this performance (and it is as much 'performance art' as 'music concert') could be bit prejudiced.

1st part, with two improvs was pretty much the example of music not working, electronic drones and quirky rhythmic scratches overwhelming the overall sound, not leaving enough space for the 'live' instruments, and not elastic enough to react in real-time to their playing.

2nd part, one long improv, on the other hand was really good, with more spare use of electronics, great playing by Dymny on guitar (using all kind of different objects on the strings), otherwise very zen - with all the sounds creating a cloudy sphere, loosing their characteristics, dense, shapeless, colorless magma or amalgam of shades. This sort of performance when you have a strong feeling that something actually happened, though you're not sure what exactly.

Free improv music kind of looses its (very unclear and unspecific) identity when it's written about so I won't linger on this session anymore, thanks a lot to Kawiarnia Naukowa (stage for young alternative rock, punk, electronica in Krakow) for giving a place to young improvisers to gain their experience in live confrontations. Keep it up!