Matthew Bourne entered the new year with a new record deal secured with the Leaf label, the first fruits of which is the solo showcase Montauk Variations. The album is predominantly comprised of uncharacteristically pastoral piano, although, this being a Bourne album, one can hear the influence of Keith Jarrett and other modernist touches alongside more classical influences, all leavened with the occasional irruption such as the well-titled “?tude Psychotique (for John Zorn)”, and the occasional percussive foray under the instrument’s lid, as on “One For You Keith”. Bourne also plays cello on two tracks, a talent he’s previously retained as a purely private pleasure.

The Café Oto concert was the album’s official launch night. Support was from laptop artists and one-time Leaf label mates Icarus, whose latest album, Fake Fish Distribution, was representative of the music they played at Oto (it can be bought only as digital download in a limited edition of 1000 unique versions). (You can read my review of Icarus’s set, which was characterized by overlapping skeins of electronic sound and eliding percussive strata, on my Dalston Sound blog.)

In a pre-concert Tweet, Matthew Bourne said he was “looking forward to?playing @Cafeoto’s lovely old grand…”. He came to that lovely grand piano with two stubby glass bottles of water, and proceeded to slam them heavily into, and rub them in bold arcs across the piano’s steel strings. The piano’s ribs were also subject to vigorous blows, producing clouds of complex harmonics. The remarkable thing, putting aside the affront of Bourne’s indelicate treatment of such a venerable and expensive instrument, was the musicality of every gesture.

The next piece came only after an uncommonly chatty Bourne regaled us with tales of identity confusion, which he says he’s no longer inclined to clarify; lately he’s inclined to follow up whatever offers of work may come his way. When he does settle to play his touch is sparing, the music he produces is reflective, and enriched by the dappled silence of decaying notes. The contrast with his introductory gambit couldn’t be more stark. (He later explained that this exercise-like rumination on just two chords resulted from “a place of despair”; an unproductive hour in the studio.)

In a particularly aching silence someone rudely straked a chair on the concrete floor. Bourne responded with a discordant thwack at the keyboard before resuming. After the piece, however, he said: “There’s a lot of squeaks and stuff at this venue. I love it”, before demonstrating just how volubly creaky the piano is, and inviting mass participation in a communal scraping and rasping of chairs.

The restlessness engendered by the audience participation was again redirected inside the piano, this time played with rapid finger taps and palm slaps, sometimes extremely rapid and hair-raisingly resonant. The following piece was characterised by the richness of soft, measured sustains. This polarity, between the bucolic and the percussive, was persisted throughout the evening.

The rapid, scampering note clusters and occasional detonations of Bourne’s next improvisation were interrupted when, having grabbed a towel to wipe away sweat, he playfully rubbed the towel along the keyboard for effect, then turned the lost momentum inward in a coda of crepuscular tranquility.
Next Bourne was attacking the block at the far right of the keyboard, repeatedly and aggressively thwacking it to produce a stack of simple multi-phonic reverberations, the effect as galvanizing as the shower stabs in Psycho. Ultimately the block was wrested from the piano and unsuccessfully used as a ?preparation’ on the piano’s strings.

At one point Bourne commented: “I feel like Jaggers out of Great Expectations; a highfalutin’ literary reference there.” And a cryptic one too. In contrast, the piece dedicated “to a new dad” was so tender, played so straight yet free of cliché, that the truth of the sentiment was evident.

As on Montauk Variations, everything Bourne played before the encore was improvised. And as on the album, that encore was Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”. Bourne mined beneath the tune’s maudlin exterior for its pathos and humanity.

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