Review: Kim Gordon @ Dom Polski Centre
Headlined by Sonic Youth co-founder Kim Gordon, the second night of Unsound Adelaide delivered everything from reconstructed slave rhythms and art hardcore to mutated ballroom waltzes and trap-infused punk. It was quite a ride.
Words by David Knight
Image by Danielle Neu
It’s fitting that Unsound has found its Australian home at the Dom Polski Centre as part of Illuminate Adelaide. Aside from being one of the city’s best music rooms, the ‘Polish home’ on Angas Street is a natural fit for an experimental contemporary music festival founded in Krakow by Aussie expat Mat Shultz in 2003.
The Australian version of Unsound first landed via David Sefton’s Adelaide Festival in 2013 where experimental music was a key part of the programming. Unsound and Tectonics, two mini-festivals under the Adelaide Festival banner, featured contemporary artists of the calibre of John Zorn, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Laurie Anderson, and Sunn O))).
Some 11 years later, Sefton might be gone but Unsound still flashes brightly in Adelaide as the hip strobe light of the winter festival of illumination.
Headlined by the eternally cool Kim Gordon, who at 71 has epitomised New York cool longer than anyone (Jim Jarmusch might be her only challenger), the second night got off to a warm and welcoming start with Brisbane duo Yirinda hitting the stage at the incredibly early time of 6.20pm.
Fronted by Butchulla man Fred Leone and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Pankhurst, their fusion of Aboriginal song, new classical, subtle rave sirens, and experimental jazz was a captivating mix of old and new.
Peruvian-Berlin duo Ale Hop & Laura Robles followed, blending ancient music traditions with modern technology in their deconstruction of Peruvian slave rhythms.
Robles’ intricate and complex live hand drumming rivalled drum patterns on a Warp Records release and was even more powerful due to the fact she was reconstructing Afro-Peruvian rhythms of enslaved ancestors who invented the cajón to defy the restrictions on music imposed by their Spanish colonisers.
Robles' intense cajón drumming, accompanied by Hop's textured guitar and electronic effects, was a profoundly cathartic experience. Not many live performances could convey the power of art and music better.
For something more performance art than performance, The Caretaker (Leyland Kirby) bemused in his first and last Australian appearance under his Jack Torrance-inspired pseudonym; a weird and wonderful experience that would have felt right at home as a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic.
With long curly hair more suited to leading rock dinosaurs The Who and Led Zeppelin than delivering experimental ambient and drone soundscapes, The Caretaker jumped on stage to belt out a high-pitched version of ABBA’s ‘The Winner Takes It All’. Hilarious.
He juxtaposed this intro by lounging on a couch in the middle of the stage with a whiskey in hand to nod off like he was Donald Trump forced to listen to one of his sons make a speech at the Republican National Convention.
The Caretaker's blend of ambient drone, delving into dementia, memory and twisted ballroom – inspired by Kubrick's The Shining as his pseudonym suggests – created an anti-performance that occasionally felt akin to being trapped at an eternal New Year's Eve party with Jack Torrance in The Overlook Hotel.
But, similar to watching a Kubrick film, you couldn’t take your eyes off what was happening in front of you. No matter what you thought of his performance, it was unforgettable.
From the weird and wonderful to the downright intense. Yamataka Eye energetically delivered a DJ set/live performance under his eYe pseudonym that was relentless and uncompromising. Like happy hardcore gone to art school heaven (with matched visuals by C.O.L.O), eYe supercharged the BPMs to give the audience barely a moment’s rest. No breakdowns here, as eYe’s mix of hardcore, drill, bass and IDM on speed made your most intense rave memory seem like a relaxed wine bar Sunday afternoon beats session.
Eye, who has collaborated with Sonic Youth in the past, did not present a sign of things to come with the next act: Kim Gordon.
Fresh off two albums collaborating with Justin Raise, Gordon is best known as a vocalist thanks to her detached drawl on iconic singles ‘Kool Thing’ and ‘Bull in the Heather’ out the front of Sonic Youth.
With her latest album The Collective more beat orientated than her previous work, Gordon hasn’t gone full electro-punk like Chicks on Speed, Le Tigre, or Peaches – she’s still Kim Gordon, but Kim Gordon with trap beats.
With her three-piece backing band led by Adelaide’s own Camilla Charlesworth (who also plays with Lenny Kravitz and Ziggy Marley) on bass and effects, Gordon basically ripped through her entire new record song by song, with opener ‘BYE BYE’ and ‘I’m a Man’ early highlights.
More punk poet than singer, Gordon had a commanding live presence as she switched between grabbing the mic and her guitar. Her material has an art punk edge thanks to her backing band. To reinforce Gordon’s eternal coolness, she nonchalantly tripped over a chord before stepping up to the mic to whisper “oops” some 20 seconds later like it was all part of her act.
Returning for an encore to present songs off her 2019 album No Home Record and other releases, the feedback kicked in for ‘Cookie Butter’, ‘Hungry Baby’ and closer ‘Grass Jeans’. The latter featured a poignant preamble from Gordon, who barely uttered a word beforehand, about women’s rights and women’s bodies, creating a powerful closing suite to conclude a night that was by turn awe-inspiring and perplexing, but always engrossing.
