The View, Cove Park, Argyll

Arts Editor

Monday 2 April 2012

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Keith Bruce

Ginger Baker, eat your heart out. The Cream drummer's epic solo excursions never enjoyed a context like the one The Phantom Band's Iain Stewart performed in at the end of last week. For his audience it involved a charabanc journey from Glasgow's CCA to the artists' retreat on Cowal where Glasgow School of Art MFA graduate Rory Middleton had been resident. As the sun set, we stroll down into the forest towards Middleton's installation, a construction designed to make you consider the sensory delights of the surroundings, and the marvellous ability of the human machine to pick them up.

A beautifully built frame, like an outsized piece of furniture in a Scandinavian design catalogue, isolates a section of the view through the trees to the loch. Instead of that slowly-dimming natural picture, however, a translucent image of a sun-dappled section of woodland is projected on to the back-cloth. Facing it, Stewart waits, motionless, as a soundtrack builds from loudspeakers. Bird-calls and waterfalls overwhelm the ambience of live nature, eventually giving way to more abstract, man-made sound.In time, Stewart begins to play on his compact kit and extra percussion, building from brushed cymbals to polyrhythmic virtuosity, using every element of the batterie. Crucially, watching from behind, we see every foot-stomp – just as The View asks its audience to think about the ingredients of the natural world, the workings of the drummer's technique are visible in a way they are not in a band context.

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The View, Cove Park, Argyll

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