The festival starts on Thursday. That meant we picked up wristbands and did a bit of strolling around before slipping into Café DeRat, where I met a beer snob who berated me for my pedestrian choice (I was drinking an Orval). We also checked out the two DeRat cats, one of whom came over for pets but then complained because I was doing it wrong. Wisely we opted not to stay and lorry strong beers into ourselves and instead went off to catch some music.
And what strange music it was. The Le Guess Who organisers had come up with the crazy idea of having some of the performers play inside an opaque box onto which images were projected, with the programme not telling you who the performers were but hinting that they were probably someone really famous that you would definitely want to catch. There were three performance of this Anonymous Project, all on the Thursday evening. I caught two of them, the first and last, and I broadly enjoyed the experience. The visuals were pretty trippy, and in the latter case the lighting occasionally made the performer inside the cube semi-visible, suggesting to me that he was a black bloke playing keyboards and possibly also singing (if the singing was not by someone else). And they were different to each other, with the first anonymous performer being kind of spacey ambienty while the last lad featured a bit of piano and some non-verbal vocals that annoyed my friend K— so much he had to leave. I was more forward thinking and enjoyed being able to relax in a nice chair and let myself be mesmerised.
But I did not just watch people playing music inside a box. For I journeyed over to the Janskerk, where Brìghde Chaimbeul was playing the small pipes. These are a Scottish pipe instrument but not the big bagpipes the country is famous for, rather a device where the air is pumped by the elbow rather than being blown, so somewhat akin to the Irish uilleann pipes except sounding a bit different. They are quieter and softer than the big bagpipes ("better suited to indoor playing" as Wikipedia puts it). Chaimbeul is a Scots Gaelic speaker from Skye but is not some died in the wool traditionalist. Rather she pushes the envelope while remaining rooted in the tradition, emphasising drone and pushing the music in new directions. The Janskerk is an atmospheric venue with great acoustics and it suited her music very well, making this an exciting first concert of the festival where I was actually able to see the performer. Consider investigating her Carry Them with Us album or her guest appearance on Caroline Polachek's "Blood and Butter".
Beyond the Anonymous Project and Ms Chaimbeul, Thursday was a bit quiet for me. I saw some of African Headcharge, who did a bit of raising people's consciousness. I particularly liked the bit where the singer talked about how happy to be back in Belgium because he just loved Belgium despite everything (that everything probably being a reference to the Belgian Congo, the official most horrendously terrible European colony in Africa); debate ensued as to whether he was actually mixed up as to what country he was in or whether he was taking the piss in some way. Both of these are possible; all those European countries are kind of the same. I also caught a bit of Rəhman Məmmədli, who is from Azerbaijan, where they use the Roman alphabet but with a couple of extra letters thrown in. He plays the guitar in an appealingly liquid way, but part of the fun came from his accompanying musicians (on piano keyboards and a hand drum), who were his sons. The pianist in particular had great chops and kept threatening to overshadow his dad, to the extent that we were imagining him getting a clip round the ear backstage once the concert was over.
Peaking too soon is never a good idea at Le Guess Who, so after that set I made my excuses and repaired to bed.
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