Binker & Moses bustle to Brussels for Nuits Sonores

The primary Nuits Sonores happens in Lyon, but for the last five years there has been a more compact sibling in Brussels. The Lyon original is a somewhat massive electronic music festival, but the five-day Belgian version still boasts a large number of performances, the bigger gigs happening at Bozar, one of the two prime arts centres in Brussels. Other sets are spread across three clubs of different characters, often late into the night. Electronic music might be the core force, but there are abundant instances of other instruments entering the fray. Also, the definition of electronic music stretches far, from brutal bangin’ to ambient caress.

Even London’s own Binker & Moses were there, playing their usual tenor saxophone and drums, also inviting sample-shaper Max Luthert along, to mirror the elaborated ‘scapes of their recent album, Feeding The Machine. Binker Golding’s fearsome horn didn’t take long to layer the rawness, dominating with hoarsely repeated patterns, developed at length until he finally rested for a solo escapade by Moses Boyd. Luthert appeared to be grasping the sheer sonic matter of the live performance and re-shaping it as a dispersed canopy of atmosphere, echoed, surrounding, but often recognisable as saxophone or drums in origin. It was Golding who achieved the greatest heights throughout, clearly venting a great amount of pent-up energy, most of the set sounding like a ritual blast of anguish.

Jeff Mills is one of the chief architects of Detroit/Chicago techno, but he’s also one of its best proponents on the artistic evolution front, concerned with always taking those sonics on a fresh adventure, particularly in recent years. His trio with Jean-Phi Dary (piano, keyboards) and Prabhu Edouard (tabla, drums) continues the recent repertoire created with the now-departed Tony Allen. The highest quality sonic spread was actually (and unusually) found right up at the back of the circle, where your scribe relocated towards the finish. Here, in Bozar’s main concert hall, the full panorama was spread out in a glistening perfection, although there were other advantages of sitting right down on the third stalls row. Up in the circle, the contributions of Mills himself were more prominent, whereas down at the front, the keyboards and percussion dominated.

Back in the smaller Hall M, where Binker & Moses played, the Catalan oddity Marina Herlop shaped songs that sounded almost like nothing else we’ve ever heard. She sings and plays Nord keyboards, partly choosing an acoustic piano sound, and at other times mimicking marimba on her M-Audio keys. Herlop’s original vocal stack-ups for the Pripyat album are so complicated that she requires two fellow vocalists to construct this elaborate intertwining of syllables, singing in what sounds like an invented language. Herlop’s songs are labyrinthine, but not prissily virtuosic. She sounds like a spacefaring folk troubadour, playing to all beings in a multi-planet nexus. Her drummer sometimes sits at a conventional kit, but mostly triggers ground-grumbling beats on a drum-pad. Herlop herself occasionally detonates similar booms. Despite her alien tics, we could look to Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk and Tanya Tagaq (perhaps) as musical antecedents. Herlop also uses extreme piano reverb, favours bass whooms, sports shoulder pads, bobbles, short skirt, ponytail, and digs large orange fake-fur ankle-encasements. Original artist of the year?

Nearby temporary venue Reset was once a bank and is now destined to be a new police headquarters, in around two years. For now, it’s a concrete shell of opportunity, likely to be used as a home for smaller gigs, when Bozar undergoes lower-level renovations in 2023. The Norwegian keyboardist and electronicist Carmen Villain has collaborated with trumpeter Arve Henriksen, but for her solo set she played a lot of clarinet, which rippled well, levitating above the digital waves. The Maghreban, from London, has worked with saxophonist Idris Rahman, but there was no sign of such variety in his following live set, which began well, with some desert-designed Saharan vibes, but eventually descended into mainstream predictability.