Live at Blank Media Presents... (Fuel, Withington) - 25th July 2009
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Originally the 25th July was a booking for Pesticide Organica, although priorities were shifted at last minute and one member had to elope from the occasion to honour some kind of important family event.
The remaining member decided to draft in a guest performer along with her French Horn. The application of this instrument and the player's infatuation with an oceanic existence led to an ultimately aqueous and sinister improvised collaboration. These reasons also informed the adoption of the slightly altered name, 'Pesticide Aquatica'.
Here's a review of the performance by Phil Craggs:
Up last is one of those eccentric acts that BMP specialises in – acts which seemingly shouldn’t work but do. Pesticide Organica are a duo combining the seemingly opposites of the French horn and a laptop. What’s even odder is the range of sounds the laptop manages to twist from the horn. Firstly, we get the sound of running water, and the horn then produces a more recognisable mournful drone on top. This creates the feeling of being in a submarine which creaks around you as it descends deeper into greater pressure. It’s claustrophobic and unnerving, as though the hull could breach at any moment and drown the entire audience. Perhaps my imagination is running too wild, but as the performance continues the horn plays what sounds like the last rites of sailors lost at sea. Then the playing becomes even more eerie, as though accompanying their souls to the afterlife (the discordance suggesting things did not go well for them on judgement day). There’s even some improvised percussion as pieces of the horn not needed are taken off and tapped together and rubbed down the side of the horn (I’d compare this to pieces of the sunken submarine breaking off and hitting each other but that would definitely be taking the theme too far).
Perhaps it was their performance that brought on the torrential rain of the next week, but it says a lot for the music that I’m sure the audience would consider it a small price to pay.
