Gig Review: Don’t Just Snare - We’re Gong Have A Real Good Time Together! Solo Percussion Explorations at the Pyramid Club
Once there was the gig review. Then there was no gig review. Now, there is gig review - again!
Ryosuke Kiyasu / Jin Sik Yun
Pyramid Club, Wellington
Thursday, February 1
I’ve been watching the solo snare drum performances of Ryosuke Kiyasu on my phone, via short Instagram clips, for a couple of years. And at the end of each joyous, absurd outburst of snare drum-meets-performance art I have hoped for the day that he would bring his single drum and a table to my town. Well, then it happened. And I was there!
Wellington’s Pyramid Club is home to the experimental, noise, drone, free-jazz, improvisation - that’s the sort of umbrella-term that covers the performances that happen there, very much happenings as much as concerts.
For this, it was sold out, a couple of dozen people curious on their seats, in anticipation.
We were treated to a short opening set by Jin Sik Yun, who had travelled from Korea with his small flat gong. The roughly 10-12” drum/cymbal looked like a cast-iron frying pan without its handle. And Yuen played it with a single mallet, muting the inside of the instrument as one might a Bodhran or other such drum. He was able to issue long, strong notes, or quieter, sharp ‘chinks’ and ‘dings’. He then further manipulated the length and strength of the notes with a pedal that issued distortion and sonic delay. Over two separate pieces, Yun created stirring, resonant passages of sound-installation that allowed the listener to close eyes and drift with the music; a music that sat somewhere between rhythm and melody, whilst never quite being either. It was hypnotic and entrancing - and the perfect start to the programme.
Ryosuke Kiyasu was next. Again, two pieces from him - a short concert perhaps, but to have any more would have been repetition; would have been too much. Instead, in his lengthy opening demonstration we saw and felt the full breadth of his extraordinary talent as well as the sly humour and subversion of his approach.
What might just seem silly in a 90-second clip to social media, is actually a far more thoughtful, involved improvisational composition when enjoyed in the correct context. The discipline in his playing and a phenomenal technique is obvious straight away. Kiyasu started the set using brushes, before adding the contact mic to pick up atmospheric noise and to allow his stomps and deviations (playing the actual table) to enter into the mix.
He moved to sticks, and then to pressing his face directly into the skin of the drum, at one point almost going “full Saltburn” on it, as he climbed on top of the drum, on top of the table and all but pelvic-thrusted it into submission.
The improv scene is wondrous - and hilarious - but a big issue I’ve had with it in the 25 years of my casual tourism, has been the fact that the ‘clowns’ are never good enough, and those that are very good most often take themselves too seriously. Kiyasu perfectly displays the skill of a brilliant musician and the knowing absurdity of performance art. And what a show he has created, touring the world with a single snare drum makes him the envy of almost any long-term gigging drummer.
As with Jin Sik Yun’s perfectly paired opening set, there was chance to be taken away by this music, to hear melodies or moments almost approaching it from an instrument that is essentially a pure rhythmic tool. The snare drum isn’t just Ryosuke Kiyasu’s instrument, it’s his canvas. And yes, his style of aural art is more in the splatter-paint tradition, but there was also a military precision to the rudimentary approach underlying it all. Collages of sound transported us, as we felt and heard and saw the very soul of the musician merging with the tool of his trade. For 20-30 minutes they were one. And we lucky few were there to experience it.
