St John Sessions: Wolfgang Voigt presents Rückverzauberung

St John Church, Hackney | 22 May

Minimal techno shape-shifter and Kompakt label don Wolfgang Voigt baptises a transition into pure minimalism tonight in Hackney’s St. John Church. This is the latest instalment of the St. John Sessions series that has bent genres and preconceptions with a string of acts whose outputs have acted similarly on the world stage.

It should be noted that the cavernous white dome of St. John’s is a proper, functional church by day and the desk of the DJ in place of the alter of the priest does present an intriguing parallel. Upon walking into the graveyard, sympathy builds for Paul Jabanasam who gets the night going flooded in self-conscious daylight. There are sacrifices of using such a magnificent building: the mysterious gauze of the night is the home of dark ambience and something is surely amiss here that was not amiss during gloomy winter nights. Regardless, St. John’s is an incredible experience. It’s not even dubious to say its beautiful reverberation should be partly credited as auteur of Sessions’ sound.

Blackest Ever Black players Dalhous neutralise the violent, saturated swells and falls of Jabanasam with a steady set of shamelessly synthetic arpeggios and soft riffs. These are stepping stones toward the more fearless and featureless drone of Voigt’s Rückverzauberung project. The chassis of the piece appears to be complete deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of sound, something so far from either organic or synthetic noise. A clunking bass sound loops as if a train of endless carriages is passing overhead. Each episode of the Rückverzauberung is emotionally distinct and the numerous choral rises are reminiscent of Gyrorgy Ligeti’s chilling score 2001: a Space Odyssey. A sine wave rises towards the end and cleanses away the remnants of the desolate sounds – along with the remnants of the less satisfied fans. Two-thirds remain.

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Words: Henry Johns