Robert Hampson

Last Saturday, Main (formed by Robert Hampson) performed at the Pauluskerk at Incubate. Michael Azerrad was there as well and wrote down his thoughts on the performance and the previous night:

Last night I saw people in a theatre bar dancing like they were worshiping at a church.  This afternoon, I saw people in a church listening to music like they were in a theatre bar.  I will not even begin to try to analyze this phenomenon.

Last night, Tilburg’s own Limewax spun at the Midi theatre bar, and the music was basically rhythmic violence.  It was nothing but loud and overpowering — there was no other way to enjoy it than to completely submit to it. It was either that or leave the room.  And it was so loud that it was tacile, something you really could interact with in a physical way — which might explain why several people stood directly in front of one of the speakers and enacted, shall we say, a vertical expression of a horizontal idea.  It was late and I am easily embarrassed, so I left.

The next day, I went to see the great ambient drone artist Main at Pauluskerk.   It was a rainy grey afternoon, which could not have been a better backdrop for what we were about to experience.

On and off since 1991, Main has been Robert Hampson.  In 2006, he reactivated Main after a four-year break and he’s been collaborating with German artist Stephan Mathieu, who does great electronic music that concentrates on manipulating sounds from acoustic instruments.  Today, they extracted a subtle but formidable power from a small palette of sounds: what sounded like moments of a symphony elongated into swirling swarms of sound, Tibetan bell-like tones, what seemed like the fading echoes of blurry air raid sirens, rain spattering on a wet sidewalk, a singing sawblade.

Like the music last night, this was also an almost tactile experience but also more heady — Main focuses almost entirely on one of music’s more overlooked abilities: to transform a room through sheer sound.  Placed squarely in the middle of four speakers placed around the room, surrounded by a mildly narcotic sound field that was made all the more mystical by the church’s reverberant ambience, I felt both transported and yet imbued with a heightened sense of place.  It was a marvelous experience.