Methyl Ethel/Aesoteric/Songs to Experience

Perth Festival

 
Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn

 

Growing up in Austria in the 1970s I was a fan of progressive rock alongside my burgeoning interest in classical music, and even played the electrified flugelhorn in Austrian prog-rock/jazz-fusion outfit Die Flammende Eichhörnchen (The Flaming Squirrels), which burned briefly but brightly on the Viennese live music scene, before leaving the band to focus my attentions on my para-phenomenological research and non-conceptual art practice. So it was with great enthusiasm that I headed out on my folding bicycle into the wilds of central Perth last week to see three Perth Festival contemporary music events in non-traditional venues: local art-rock band Methyl Ethel (playing at the European Foods Warehouse in Northbridge); a line-up of local electronic and jazz musicians in Aesoteric at the WA Museum Boola Bardup; and local multidisciplinary artist Ta-ku’s Songs to Experience at the Lawson Apartments, an iconic art deco building on Riverside Drive at the edge of the CBD.

 

Methyl Ethel is the brainchild of Perth songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jake Webb, whose eclectic musical style, edgy tenor/falsetto and anxious intellectual urban young man lyrics and persona recall the likes of David Byrne and Talking Heads, Thom Yorke and Radiohead or Win Butler and Arcade Fire (to name a few post-prog precursors). Methyl (like Aesoteric and Ta-ku) is also a shining example of Perth’s small but vibrant alternative music, art and performance scene: a supportive community of artists collaborating across disciplines in various guises on each other’s projects and pushing the boundaries of generic, artistic and personal identity. 

 

The European Foods Warehouse is a cavernous industrial space activated as an arts venue earlier this year by Co3 Contemporary Dance for Mitch Harvey’s dystopian solo work MindCon. Methyl’s first local gig in two years featured the entirety of their latest album Are You Haunted plus songs from their back catalogue, performed by the new line-up of six local musicians including Webb on vocals, samples, loops and effects; Talia Valenti and Ezra Padmanabham on drums; Julia Wallace and Ezekiel Padmanabham on keyboards (the latter also doubling on guitar); and Lyndon Blue on bass – all dressed in paint-stained white overalls (which took me back to the days of Devo in their yellow jumpsuits). The show was staged in the round on a raised platform with Webb at the centre surrounded by the other band members facing inwards towards him, while a horizontal structure of intersecting LED bars flowed and changed colours above their heads. 

 

I loved the songs and the show and am now a firm fan of Webb and Ethel. However, because of new restrictions in response to Omicron, what was to have been a one-night event was repeated over two nights with reduced crowds; and this, together with the cavernous space and mandatory mask-wearing on the part of the audience, led to a somewhat subdued ambience for a live gig. On the other hand, the sense of anxiety and even melancholy that underlies Webb’s persona and much of Ethel’s output despite their faux-jaunty surface seemed to find its counterpoint in the masked faces and empty spaces amongst the crowd, not to mention the aura of uncertainty hovering outside the venue doors and in the wider world.

 

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The following night because of other artistic commitments I arrived late for the final hour of Aesoteric, a four-hour program of electronic music, lighting and projections repeated over two nights with a slightly different line-up each night (and now with reduced audiences and some interstate artists unable to appear and replaced by locals). Entering the eerily lit museum complex (one of my favourite buildings in Perth, and reminiscent of Norman Foster’s glass-topped renovations to the British Museum and the Reichstag in Berlin) I made my way up in the elevator to the second floor and emerged into the neo-Romanesque glory of Hackett Hall (the former State Library Reading Room) with its shelves and display cases, tiered mezzanine levels, arches and pillars, all dominated by the immense skeleton of Otto the blue whale suspended from the ceiling and spanning almost the entire length of the hall. 

 

I arrived just in time for the closing minutes of an improvisation by pianist Michael Terren on the stage set up at one end of the hall. After the closing notes and rapt silence had given way to applause, I took advantage of the short intermission to buy myself a beer and make my way past the rows of beanbags to a raised area with tables and chairs at the other end of the hall, from which I could take in the entire space (including Otto in all his glory). 

 

The next (and final) act featured jazz harpist Michelle Smith in collaboration with DJs Mike Midnight and Lovefear providing samples, loops, effects and occasional beats, while an installation of vertical LED columns on the mezzanine levels above and around the audience flowed and changed colours (much like for Methyl Ethel), and a spectacular 3D projection mapping display lit up Otto’s skeleton in abstract moving patterns. The overall effect was one of ambient dreaminess, and I had flashbacks of being in a psychedelic club in Vienna playing my electrified flugelhorn at a Squirrels gig in the late 70s. 

 

Aesoteric has been a regular community music event for over 20 years, and I believe this was its third iteration at the museum. It’s another fine example of what the Perth alternative music, art and performance scene does well: collaborative, accessible, laid-back and quietly ground-breaking work.

 

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Ta-ku is the stage name of another luminary on the Perth hybrid scene: musician and photographer Regan Mathews, who also runs a creative agency and fashion label. Songs to Experience is an immersive audio-visual installation that features tracks from his eponymous forthcoming album and occupies multiple rooms across two floors of the Lawson Apartments. (The show is billed as ‘Ta-ku and Friends’ in the Perth Festival program, and there’s a long list of collaborators in the program credits, including Beamhacker and Steve Berrick who respectively created the LED installation and 3D projections for Aesoteric.)

 

Entering and wandering though the building and the show is a bit like being inside a Wong Kar Wai film or the Radiohead song ‘Fake Plastic Trees’: a world of longing and loss, but also of artifice and irony. The art deco façade of the building suggests a mood of nostalgia, but there’s nothing glamorous (and even something slightly seedy) about the interior with its dark green carpeting, low ceilings in various states of disrepair, narrow corridors and stairways, and glass or varnished wooden doors (some with old name-plaques above them) either locked or leading to various odd-shaped rooms largely cleared of original furnishings and repurposed for the installation. Inside each room, music plays, lights and images flicker, and bizarre theatrical sets, props and trumperies await us. (One of these rooms, labelled ‘Shop’ on the map in the ‘Visitor Guide’ brochure, contained only racks and stacks of merchandise along with a masked but hopeful Perth Festival attendant.)

 

My favourite room is the first one: a simulacrum of an airport lounge labelled ‘Terminal’ on the visitor’s guide map. A luggage conveyor belt carries surreal items like a pile of red mannequin heads leaning on each other inside a glass box; an empty luggage trolley has a plaque on the front inviting me to ‘Escape Reality with Style’. A rental car booth bears the company name ‘HURTZ’; the message ‘CURRENTLY UNATTENDED’ slides endlessly across the screen of the computer terminal on the desk, followed by ‘Call 1800-EVERYBODY-HURTZ’. A flight-list on the wall offers ‘Break-Up Deals’ like ‘BEGINNING TO END’ ($258/day) or ‘DESCENT’ ($256/day) and ‘Make-Up Deals’ like ‘TRUST ME’ ($309/day) or ‘FALL4YOU’ ($428/day). On another wall an ‘Arrivals’ board displays the message ‘DO NOT LEAVE YOUR FEELINGS UNATTENDED’. The letters flip and are replaced by the words ‘THE MOON MAKES SENSE BECAUSE OF YOU, GETTING TIRED IN MY MIND BUT I’M FINE WHEN I’M NEXT TO YOU.’ A lugubrious break-up song (presumably also called ‘Terminal’) plays on a loop. It’s sentimental and highly processed: less Brian Eno’s ambient Music for Airports than a kind of muzak with words.

 

I have a (masked) chat with another attendant (dressed in a fake security guard uniform) who asks me when I was last in an airport. Then I sit for a while on one of the metal lounge chairs and contemplate the last two years of separation from loved ones and the rest of the world. 

I wander down the corridor, passing the ‘Shop’ and a telephone booth with a permanent queue outside it where one person can enter at a time and dial a Ta-ku break-up song. I enter a long room entitled ‘Falling’. Another song plays on a loop accompanied by a video along one wall featuring a series of uncanny computer-simulated faces morphing into each other while singing (or synching) the words: ‘Falling / She said she’ll be coming back / Unless I’ll then I’ll just keep falling through the crack.’ The song is similar in style to the one in the airport lounge, but with more multi-tracking and lusher treatments. 
 
The next room at the end of the corridor, ‘Two of Us’, is more interesting. The floor is covered with fluffy white carpeting and the walls with swirling marbled wallpaper. Garish pink and purple lights illuminate a similarly marbled plastic dining table, chairs, crockery, goblets, serving dishes and candelabra set for two, surmounted by an archway of plastic flower petals. Another smaller marbled plastic table with an old-fashioned gramophone stands in front of a window covered with white voile curtains.  Another mournful looped song plays. I can’t resist peering out onto the dimly lit tree-lined street outside.

 

Upstairs things get livelier. A large room called ‘Mood Machine’ has a plinth in the centre with a kind of dial which you can turn to change the soundtrack and video footage projected onto all four walls. Songs alternate with more agitated dance music or chaotic noise; the footage ranges from abstract moving patterns, falling flowers or digital raindrops to what look like home movies of people and places. Visitors linger, play with the dial, take photos, make shadows and dance. Masks notwithstanding, it’s the only room that generates a sense of collectivity or interaction amongst us, as opposed to introspection and solitude.

 

Past this at the end of a corridor is a much smaller room (with another song playing); according to the Visitor Guide, the room (and presumably the song) is called ‘OOOOO’. When I enter, flickering light comes from under a closed door that looks like it might lead to another room or perhaps a wardrobe or cupboard. I open it and reveal a full-length infinity mirror: two rectangular parallel mirrors fitted closely together with an inner outline of LED lights and a pattern of 5 circular LEDs (‘OOOOO’) shifting from red to blue via pink and violet between the mirrors so that the lights seem to replicate and converge into infinite darkness. People take photos of themselves dimly reflected in the glass, or peer into it captivated by the illusion. I’m reminded of the use of LEDs for Aesoteric and Methyl, and wonder if Beamhacker (aka Josh McAuliffe) is responsible for all three installations. 

 
The final room I visit is called ‘Shirinda Residence’ (later investigations reveal it’s the work of London-based 3D designer Joe Mortell). It’s like a minimalist open-plan serviced apartment, shaped like a cave or a womb and decorated in shades of white, cream, beige, and pale grey. There’s a sofa, desk and chair near the entrance and an unmade double bed set into a funnel-shaped annexe at the other end. An attendant tells me only one person at a time is allowed to sit on the bed, which I immediately feel compelled to do. On the far side of the bed, voile curtains (reminiscent of the ‘Two of Us’ room) open onto a shimmering Studio Ghibli-like vista of a lake, mountains and clouds. I feel like I’m in a surrealist painting or possibly a Kubrick film. There’s a comforting but vaguely claustrophobic infolding of outside and inside, reality and artifice. I get up and wander back through the room. On the sofa is a small pile of freshly folded towels and a bowl of green pears; on a clothing rail above them hangs a small selection of pastel-coloured shirts and t-shirts. Beneath the sofa on the white-carpeted floor (again like the ‘Two of Us’ room) is a pair of Converse-style shoes; on a shoe-rack near the entrance is a pair of Birkenstock-style sandals. In front of the desk an elegantly designed clear plastic chair sits askew as if recently vacated (like the bed); the desk lamp is switched on, but the loose pages beside it are blank. A row of books on a shelf above the desk has a sequence of titles on the spines that spell out an incomplete and staccato version of the message on the ‘Arrivals’ board back in the ‘Terminal’ room. ‘THE. MOON. MAKES. SENSE. BECAUSE. OF. YOU. GETTING. TIRED. IN MY. MIND. BUT I’M. FINE. WHEN. I’M.’ They’re like the last words of a terminally exhausted person, or HAL the computer in Kubrick’s 2001. I go back to sit on the bed and stare at the bedside clock. It shows the current time and today’s date in a digital flip-display, like an arrivals or departures board. It’s time to go.

The feeling of being inside a Wong Kar Wai film or Radiohead song persists after I leave the building and wander along Riverside Drive past the Elizabeth Quay/Barrack Street Jetty precinct with its cluster of featureless high-rise hotels, its absence of street-life apart from the occasional family of hapless South or East Asian tourists, and its hideous rocket-shaped Bell Tower, the glass tip internally illuminated by ascending horizontal green neon or LED circles. For a moment they remind me of the receding circles inside the infinity mirror: ‘OOOOO.’ An exclamation of wonderment? Or perhaps just a row of zeroes: '00000.'

 

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Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer, critic and non-conceptual artist based in Perth, Western Australia, and former member of Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels (Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). He was born in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. He is editor of the Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including Unlogische Untersuchungen (Illogical Investigations), Unzeitlich Sein (Not Being On Time) and Wahnsinn und Methode (Madness and Method), all of which have been translated into English by Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language.