EMMA RUTH RUNDLE
VENUE THE DOME, LONDON
DATE 29/10/2019
SUPPORT JO QUAIL
“This song is a work in progress,” says Jo Quail introducing reya Pavan, although to be fair, such is the organic nature of her music that every track tonight sounds as though it’s evolving in real time. For anyone tuned to the left side of the sonic dial, the cellist and recent Prog award winner is a regular live presence, supporting artists from anna von Hausswolff and Myrkur to shamanic pagan troupe
Heilung and transcendental art metal penitents amenra. it’s a broad recognition of her talent, but she’s also now becoming something of a talisman, her work tapping into a richly resonant continuum that unifies every artist she plays with in a similar understanding of frequencies outside of everyday consciousness.
Quail’s instrument looks like it’s been carved from an alien pelvic bone, and it’s mined for an unearthly degree of wonder. reya Pavan itself is woven slowly from discrete strands, cavernous, industrial beats sampled from impacts against the cello’s neck reverberating against stealthily exploratory strings that veer into jarring excursions. Her loop station is used to even more mesmerising effect on Mandrel Cantus. Fledgling pulses and plucked chords grow ever more intricate around woozy strings until the piece blossoms as if you’re witnessing a process of nature coming to patient yet revelatory fruition. Between songs, she talks about her music as an attempt to express dualities, and her fusion of the experimental and the elemental holds a packed dome in a reverential thrall throughout.
like her support, emma ruth rundle has a knack for zeroing in on the smallest of details and amplifying them into states of humble rapture. Having cut her teeth in post-rock bands Marriages and red Sparowes, the power of her own performances has grown progressively by word of mouth, to the point where she’s can silence a room the moment she walks onstage, everyone here attuned to the fragile power at her command. Backed now by a full band featuring members of former touring partners
Jaye Jayle and wovenhand, the stark nature of her early performances has been traded for a more expansive sheen, the opalescent guitar tones evaporating as they’re wedded to the rolling beat and mantric rhythm of emma’s vocals. and it’s still her voice that takes centre stage: vulnerable, defiant and kneaded to the finest of timbers, it’s the sound of harboured wounds exposed in order to heal. Control’s tale of addiction ignites its lush cadences into a charged cathartic surge, and her signature track, Marked For death offers self-admonishment and absolution in equal measure. a closing, a capella real Big Sky is time-stopping elixir that finds the broadest horizons in the most distilled of emotional expression.