Photo courtesy of karbido.com
The winner of the PerthNow Best Performance Award at the Fringe World Festival continues to grace Australia's summer festival circuit with a thoroughly unique musical performance
Karbido's Table has proven to be an international sensation, using a seemingly ordinary table to shift the bounds of the musical imagination, with The Times calling it an "extraordinary musical spectacle with four instrumentalists playing a table using sticks, bows, knives, hands and a mixing desk". The virtuosic experimental band from Wrocław is made up of Paweł Czepułkowski, Igor Gawlikowski, Michał Litwiniec and Marek Otwinowski along with Jacek Fedorowicz (sound editor) and Tomasz Sikora (light effects).
The group's eponymous instrument is an electro-acoustic wooden table with built-in converters and microphones having outstanding and unusual acoustic properties; by tapping it, blowing through the drilled holes or nudging its strings, using coins, wine glasses or their fists the four musicians perform covers of various classics like Krzysztof Komeda’s Rosemary's Baby or I Wanna Be Your Dog by the Stooges. It is difficult to define Karbido’s musical preference however they can play everything from improvised jazz through Belarussian folk to percussive trance. In addition the whole musical sensation is amplified by the quadraphonic surround sound system arranged so that the audience near the stage is encompassed by the 'wandering' sound.
Australia's artshub.com.au has given the show 4.5 out of 5 stars, comparing the group's sound to that of British band Art of Noise - the difference being the unique way in which Karbido uses their member's distinctive voices. As for the instrumentals:
Their eight hands move up and down this magical maple table, sluicing through the echoes whilst disturbing your senses with this piece of furniture’s functionality contradicting what your eyes are seeing. Their fingers pick and scratch and fret across the edges of the table. They play with tapping, sticks and gliding bows. The layers of music start with tonal chanting, glass tapping, bell chimes out around the courtyard and a melodious tenor voice – I counted at least eight layers of sound at this point. Or, more to the point, a series of evolving sounds from the human mouth and imagination that reference musical structure but by their added layering reconfigure your imaginative world.
Karbido began its Australian tour in early February at the first edition of the Fringe World Festival in Perth, which kicked off on Australia Day (26th of January) and featured hundreds of shows from around the world. On the 19th of February, Karbido was awarded the festival's Best PerformanceAward. The group is continuing its tour through the 18th of March, stopping at Adelaide's Garden of Unearthly Delights and The Spiegeltent in Melbourne.
Karbido’s Table had its original premiere at the Stage Song - Off Festival in Wrocław in 2006, and winning the Grand Prix – Tukan OFF. Over the next five years it has performed at festivals across Poland and the world, including Malta, Kontakt, Hong-Kong Arts Festival, Fadjr Teheran, Edinburgh Fringe, Dublin Fringe, Canterbury Arts Festival, Milton Keynes International Festival, Strasbourg Musica Festival and GogolFest Kijev. In 2010 the alternative record label Hermetyczny Garaż released a DVD entitled Karbido`s The Tabledirected by Bartosz Blaschke, which debuted at the Midem Cannes Festival. The whole project hovers between a show, concert and audio-performance made up of four parts corresponding to the four cardinal points of the world. Each one has a different quality: the exoticism, praire-windy etno and minimalism referring to the culture of Zen meets in the East with traditional Polish folk music. The dynamic rhythms of the South refer to the culture of the black land, South America and Antipodes. The West is an energetic collage of industrial motility, film and pop music, while the North dissolves the acoustics in ambient music closely affined with nature.
Joanna Ruszczyk of the Polish edition of Newseek described the performance as
an hour long of great music. A wide range of styles and atmospheres. Rock music, African drums or even club music. The whole thing accompanied by vocals: chants straight from Mongolia, Eskimo-like rhythms created by gasping. It turns out that there are other ways of performing ‘Hey Joe’.
Karbido Tour Programme in Australia:
State Theatre Centre Courtyard, Perth
7 February–19 February 2012
www.fringeworld.com.au
The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide
22 February–10 March 2012
www.gardenofunearthlydelights.com.au
The Spiegeltent, Arts Centre Melbourne
13 March–18 March, 2012
spiegel.artscentremelbourne.com.au
The tour is supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Source: www.karbido.com