Crash Ensemble

Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin

Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

– Ekstase III.

Gráinne Mulvey

– Swirling Sea and Frightened Fish.

Scott McLaughlin

– Marionettes.

Ed Bennett

– Stop-Motion Music.

Ann Cleare

– Dorchadas.

David Fennessy

– The Room is the Resonator.

Enda Bates

– String Quartet No 1

There were interesting parallels between pairs of pieces at the fifth annual Crash Ensemble, Irish-focused Free State concert.

Benedict Schlepper-Connolly’s

Extase III

and David Fennessy’s

The Room is the Resonator

call on instrumentalists to sing as well as play. Gráinne Mulvey’s

Swirling Sea and Frightened Fish

, Scott McLaughlin’s

Marionettes

, and Enda Bates’s

String Quartet No 1

all surround live instruments with electronic accompaniments that have a life of their own. Ed Bennett’s Crash-commissioned

Stop-Motion Music

and Ann Cleare’s

Dorchadas

both dip into the shock-and-awe repositories of new music effects. In general, however, the differences were a lot greater than any similarities.

The Schlepper-Connolly and Fennessy both seemed concerned about stirring up memories, the former through overlapping drones for viola, cello and double bass, the latter by juxtaposing a recording of an old harmonium, with its range of attendant noises, with an on-stage cellist.

The high level of amplification applied to Schlepper-Connolly’s piece made the instruments sound like raspy, mass-produced, hollow-toned, factory jobs. And the nostalgia of Fennessy’s quietly effective ruminations was diminished by going on a little too long.

Gráinne Mulvey called on a barrage of clichés, and made good use of them in the morphing, gibbering vocalisations of the tape part but not in her writing for solo piccolo and flute, although she brought the two elements together effectively at the end.

Scott McLaughlin used a Moog PianoBar on a conventional piano to create the illusion of some kind of super-sustaining pedal. But his halos of sustained sound didn’t fade, as you might have expected, they drifted away from the original sound and took on a life of their own.

Enda Bates’s quartet opened with one of those Crash Ensemble specials, a jarring mismatch between the musicians on stage and the source of the sound of their amplified instruments. Spatialisation was the order of the day, and Bates seemed transfixed with effects of what you might call pixellation and blurring, with tremolos providing much of the basic material.

Of the two larger-scale pieces that called for a conductor (Alan Pierson), the grinding, grating, thumping and thudding of Cleare’s

Dorchadas

interestingly created unorthodox acoustic effects that at times worked like a kind of electronic overlay.

Bennett’s

Stop-Motion Music

was more primevally violent, with wailing riffs for trombone and electric guitar giving way to those kick-drum effects that I often wish Crash would retire for a couple of years due to over-use.