William Bennett brought his post-Whitehouse project back to London after several years as part of Grace Jones’ festival following the release of his latest album, ‘Sixteen Ways Out’, last year. In the background he had visual projections of lyrics from tracks such as ‘Inka’ and ‘Mamba Muntu’ with tribal artwork from his earlier catalogue.
His set was formed of tracks from the last album as introductionary spoken word pieces for material taken from his volumed catalogue ‘Afro Noise’ and it’s compilation version, ‘Festival Of The Dead’, which he merged together as one stream. He started on ‘Witness The Spread Of A Dream’ and then played the last and first tracks on ‘Festival Of The Dead’ – ‘Fire Ends The Day’ and ‘The Claw’ – combining Haitian voodoo inspired traditional percussion, heavy industrial drumbeats with whirring background electronics.
Bennett then moved onto ‘Witness The Birth Of A Dream’ with ambient piece ‘Seal Water’ introducing ‘Vaudou Takes Me High’ and ‘Madwoman’, the latter with chainsaw power electronics arriving at a bludgeoning end. Occasionally Bennett would embody the music writhing around to the frenzied rhythms.
11/06/22: Meltdown Festival – Cut Hands @ Purcell Room, London.
Photos © Ayisha Khan.
© Ayisha Khan.