Gig review: A Winged Victory For The Sullen, Oran Mor

PLAYED amid the kind of respectful ambience that made me frightened to go to the bar for fear of disturbing the perfectly-wrought atmosphere,

A Winged Victory For the Sullen’s show was a different kind of religious experience for a Sunday. Played before a seated audience, it might be described as a post-classical experience for a crowd whose tastes plumb the outer reaches of alternative esoterica.

Against a faintly visible backdrop of flickering monochrome footage and rolling mountains, the band’s two key players – Adam Wiltzie of Texan minimal outfit Stars of the Lid and Dustin O’Halloran, one-time member of delicate Californian indie-rock band Devics – stood off to either side, switching between keyboard and a bank of electric guitars.

Between them, framed in a crossfire of spotlights, two violinists and a cellist sat in an inward-facing triangle. There was no vocalist and some rather wilfully esoteric song titles, such as We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, For the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year.

This was music with a wonderfully expressive quality, a minimalist journey with all the assured fluency of Brian Eno’s ambient works but little of the futurist austerity.

The rich creak of violins butted against the artificiality of an electric keyboard, some lazy piano notes were dripped over a warm bed of droning sustained chords and there was nothing too jarring or frightening, only the occasional dip into the bitter waters of a minor key.

In a little over an hour, though, the cumulative effect of such startlingly gentle music was pronounced, the moment the house lights were flicked on offering a rude and unwelcome awakening from the dream-like cocoon.

Rating: *****