Crank Sturgeon at Bomba (17.09)

If there's a method to madness Crank Sturgeon have found it. I admit I never heard of this artist prior to the yesterday's concert but I'm sure as heck never going to forget him ever since.

You wouldn't believe how loud can a scotch tape be, or how deep a bass sound can a cotton string produce, or the sound marker makes when used to draw faces on the newspaper, or this very newspaper being torn apart.

With a contact mike used as a magnifying glass Crank Sturgeon multiplies all the small, inaudible noises that surround us and turns it into an ongoing feast of ear-piercing cascades of noises and cracks. You know the feeling of a really bad hangover? Or immagine yourself wearing the doctor's stethoscope and being able to listen to what's happening inside the matter of things. 

Yet there's much more to Crank's method than just the will to disassemble things and being able to analyse small parts hidden there. There's an honest inner child's enthusiasm for unknown, the feeling of adventure in looking for new and unexpected. The long lost ability to be surprised by littlest things and rediscovering the worlds' magic. The refreshing feeling of absurd and non-sense and total spontaneity.

And the best part is that this infinitely crazy mixture of noise, body performance, cabaret - a true comedy of sounds and gestures and objects  is completely immune to any theory. Which makes it so much more fun. So just forget all what I've written so far and enjoy abandoning your senses if you get a chance to see this guy live*.

* He's in the middle of a quite extensive european tour. More details to be found here.

Crank Sturgeon - performance, partial costume, voice, contact mics, scotch tape, cotton string, newspaper, marker, walking toy-nose and other metal, plastic, wooden objects and some fx boxes.

Klub Bomba. Kraków. 17.09.2011

ps. There is a question whether Crank's art can be transferred outside the stage and deprived of the visual/space aspect. Many thanks to Crank for letting me have one of his self-released cds for the unfair price of what I had in my pocket. I embark on this adventure right now and I tell you all it's great - a set of absurd miniatures, sketches of immagination that are also more musically focused which makes up for the lack of video. Weird and fascinating.

There are a couple of Crank's performances to be found on YouTube, with different costumes and objects and tricks, while this is little similar to what happened in Kraków (with cotton string and the cellotape) yet it quite different a as the sounds go (which is another great thing about Crank's act - it's organically attached to the space wherein it's performed).