Music review: Sonica Surge, Tramway, Glasgow

Opening the Sonica Surge festival on Friday, Berlin-based composer and designer Robert Henke revelled in the creative limitations of his retro kit, writes Fiona Shepherd

Sonica Surge, Tramway, Glasgow ****

As the name suggests, Sonica Surge is a concentrated salvo of sound art performances and installations, curated by audio-visual specialists Cryptic over two nights at Tramway. There was a palpable opening night buzz on Friday, in particular for big banner presentation CBM 8032 AV in Tramway 1.

Berlin-based composer and designer Robert Henke has revolutionised electronic music production as one of the developers of Ableton Live software but here he employed old technology, using consoles and circuit boards from 1980 – when hardware was bulkier but the operating manuals were shorter.

Robert Henke PIC: Pieter Kers

Henke revelled in the creative limitations of his retro kit, triggering sound manipulation from three consoles and visuals from another: classic green-on-black pixellation beamed on to a huge screen in hypnotic order or trippy disorientating patterns.

He gradually applied more crunch and clatter, layering on quirky electronic melody and reverberating doomy chords but always having fun with the technology, not least creating a visual collage which looked like a corrupted game of Pong.

Sound artists Lucy Duncombe and Feronia Wennborg presented the more intimate assembling,air, a cut-up composition of spoken word, hums and drones unfolding in soothing yet slightly unsettling style as part of an AV triple bill in Tramway 4. This was followed by composer Sonia Killmann’s Digital Skies, a suite of languorous saxophone and echo-drenched siren vocals which exuded a hymn-like beseeching prettiness, right up to the looping of one last mournful toot.

Samm Anga’s Waxen Figures was the most maximalist of the trio in terms of set-up and results. Though folklore-influenced there was a certain punky aesthetic to the grainy visuals from Veronica Petukhov, creating a sort of CGI aurora borealis, and the martial throb of the music that eventually resolved into a bassy and danceable Friday night soundtrack.