Live report: Petter o Hanna @ Cagibi, Montreal 03/25/08
Petter o Hanna is the project of Petter Vågan, of more that half a dozen projects like Vertex, Eyewaterlillies, Phy, ROOM and Vågan Quartet, and Hanna Gjermundrød, of Schemozzle, Kenyabop and When She Utters.
Before this concert I knew absolutely nothing about any of them apart from the fact that they are Norwegians. Second, I had no idea what these people were doing in Montréal. I mean we have a fairly healthy experimental scene, but but most of it is local; we don't get a lot of touring acts, much less people relatively unknown that didn't seem to have much of a following from the little I had heard before the concert (it was promoted locally by a good friend of mine.) Needless to say I was curious.
The night started with Le Sentier Lumineux, a duo that always brings smiles and head bopping. Le Sentier Lumineux are a couple of experimental music veterans that decided to form a strictly free-jazz duo of wind instruments, most often saxophone and drums. Their approach is simple and rooted in the tradition of mid-sixties free jazz: relentlessness and listening to your partner. As usual they did a pretty great job and the comedy bits by Jacob Chelkowski were more than welcome.
Soon after, Petter o Hanna took the stage. After a few moments of vocal loops and ethereal textures by Hanna, Petter took more space and the interplay of the two started going in overdrive. The first piece was really incredible as Hanna's voice is both powerful and soothing with a hint of sadness and that made all the difference. For the rest of the set, though, Petter took more space and Hanna was more percussive and that did not work out as well.
Full disclosure (gear-head alert): I hate the Korg Kaos Pad. I think it sounds like shit. Petter, running his pedal steel guitar through a Kaos Pad was OK for a long while, and it showed me nearly for the first time ever, a good utilization of the device. However after a while he began using it in the usual irritating way that people use it. Simply enough, the thing makes it possible to do a whole lot of things that are impossible to do without, but also it all makes them sound crappy.
For the third set of the night Petter and Hanna invited a few Montreal luminaries to join them, with two clarinets, one drum, one saxophone and one more on electronics. Strangely enough for the amount of people on stage, and off, this improv was impressively disciplined and a lot of listening was going on. Everybody was attempting to pick their spots to enter. While it wasn't perfect, it was, however, the best set of the night.
Text and photos by Simon Thibaudeau