Live Review: Nicolás Jaar & Group

Chilean-American electronic artist and composer Nicolás Jaar is probably more well known for his dance beats, but Dark Mofo patrons are an adventurous bunch and so the Federation Concert Hall was full for the mysteriously titled Nicolás Jaar & Group promising "instrumental new music". Perhaps it was billed as that because even the artist would have trouble describing it in words; heaven knows what the score looked like. 

Pianist Johan Lindavall started the piece, plucking at the open cavity of a dismembered upright piano and was soon joined by cellist Milena Punzi tapping the body of her instrument before taking a bow to the strings. Norwegian saxophonist Mette Henriette – who is performing her own sell-out show later in the week – joined the ensemble next, grinding reedy glissando that grew in intensity to a shuddering reverb giving just a hint of what was to come. 

Nicolás Jaar remained hidden, adding to the music presumably with recordings and adding effects from the sound box off stage. About halfway in, musicians Hamlet Nazaretyan and Ivane Mkirtichyan joined on the traditional Armenian duduk, a woodwind instrument the size of a piccolo that added an eastern European flavour. The music gradually became fiercer and more abstract, building to hypnotic intensity with enough reverberation to rattle the fillings in your back molars, before there was a noise that sounded like a UFO had taken off. The audience were left stunned and unsure whether now was the time they were suppose to start the applause, but applaud they did as the composer joined his musicians to take a bow.