Mike Vass:
In the Wake of Neil Gunn
Byre Theatre, St Andrews
Rob Adams
IT'S a tribute to the quality of the beautiful videography that accompanies Mike Vass's musical evocation of author Neil Gunn's 1937 west coast sailing trip that it takes a bar or two of Heave and Roll to realise that nobody onstage is playing anything, not even Vass who elsewhere triggers sounds with unseen pedals.
On the album of this quite beguiling musical odyssey, which Vass composed and recorded after replicating Gunn's voyage, Heave and Roll features the composer playing almost everything and would be too involved to recreate in situ. So the sound engineer played the CD. Simples, as they say.
Over-complication goes completely against the grain with this music. It's a lovely combination of innocence and know-how. A Morse code signal is picked up by oboe and then string quartet and developed with a light touch to superb effect and the music compliments the visuals, and vice versa, to the extent that the filmless sections, although continuing the marine theme and sensation convincingly, might benefit just a shade with visual enhancement.
Gunn's words, read by guitarist Innes Watson, flautist-keyboards player Hamish Napier and Vass himself add to the atmosphere and momentum of the work and a jig for Vass's then-newborn nephew that didn't make the CD slots in effortlessly to a score that just occasionally hints at Mike Oldfield's influence.
Indeed, as Vass and Watson weave acoustic and tenor guitar patterns together, it seems that Viv Stanshall might be about to introduce "slightly distorted guitar" when lo, Watson obliges with cool understatement. There's nothing distorted about the piece overall, though: it's clear sailing all the way.
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