Wader

When is a wader not a wader? (Bird joke, apologies if it flies over your head.)

Quite a long, but productive day in work as I stayed on late so that I could go straight to a gig in Leeds. Unfortunately the gig proved to be possibly my most uncomfortable listening experience ever. 

Laura Jurd (trumpeter, support, with accordionist Martin Green) and Elliot Galvin (piano and electronics, performing with his band The Ruin) were both part of the Mercury nominated jazz band Dinosaur, and having listened to some of their various works in advance I’d found it reasonably accessible, so I was quite looking forward to their gig at Howard Assembly Room.

Jurd’s opening set was fine, although not really my thing, but with Galvin and The Ruin I found that the combination of sounds, textures and frequencies that they were using activated all of my autistic audio-processing difficulties. This is not a volume thing, it’s just that certain sounds (in every day life, typically, the humming of a machine, the dripping of a tap, the tapping of a pen) intrude so much into my consciousness that nothing else can be focussed on while I manage what is almost like a physical pain. For the gig, this kicked in almost straight away, I recognised it for what it was, and I really should have walked out. However, I’d paid my money, thought it wouldn’t last the whole set (it did), didn’t want to appear a philistine in walking out of a ‘challenging’ jazz gig, etc. So I sat there with my eyes closed, hunched over, trying to break down these noises into something more acceptable and or comprehensible. And then it was finally over. I did not stop at the merch stand. 

Writing the morning after I’m trying to process the experience a bit. I’m someone that is quite prepared to engage with challenging music, so I’m trying to separate out my physical and emotional, quite distressing reaction to what I heard, to an appreciation of the artistry of the group and the players. Was their music truly awful, or was it just my brains wiring that made the experience of listening to it truly awful to me? Whichever, I feel like I may be avoiding the more experimental jazz end of the gig listings for some time. You can always listen to Galvin’s ‘The Ruin’ album yourself and reach your own conclusion.