Music
Counterflows, CCA, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
five stars
Expect the unexpected and you will not be disappointed. The Counterflows 2015 programme from AC Projects begins in the Club Room of the CCA and takes us to some sort of kitsch outdoors where a macho backwoodsman's tepee belches smoke rings in the stygian gloom to a pulsing electronic soundtrack. Yong Yong have relocated to Glasgow from Lisbon, but their aesthetic remains distinctly continental for what is as much a performance as an installation, and possibly has its tongue very much in cheek, but masks makes that hard to determine.
Guitarist Marcos Campello also dons a mask - and a snood - to enliven the welcome speeches in the Cafe with some hard-driving classical guitar that takes Latin American rhythms into wild improvising territory by way of enticing those attending the packed reception up to the auditorium half an hour later for a full set from his band, Chinese Cookie Poets. In the classic power trio line-up his Fender electric is joined by Felipe Zenicola's Danelectro bass and Renato Godoy on drums. Virtuosi all, their music is not unlike a more democratic, and more contemporary, version of King Crimson in the classic Red album era line-up. Godoy is a jazzy powerhouse and the fretsmen have effects tricks that are all their own. When they are joined by singer, songwriter and poet Negro Leo, the show takes on a further theatrical dimension as he shimmies and debates with himself across the stage. The trio and Leo are both discoveries from Chico Dub's Novas Frequencias festival in Rio de Janeiro, an exchange which the British Council and Creative Scotland has nurtured, and by which both bodies have justified their existence for another year in my book.
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