Narc. Magazine Online
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Lee Fisher witnesses spellbinding and unifying performances during the first day of the inventive Boundaries Festival
Image: Mohammed Syfkhan by Lee Fisher
This was the fourth installment of Sunderland’s remarkable Boundaries Festival, the singular vision of promoter/artist/musician Graeme Hopper, and judging by the grins on the faces of the punters packed into a rammed Pop Recs on a grim November night, he’s hit another level with his idiosyncratic, inventive programming.
Preceded by some wild Moroccan sounds from the record collection of Willie Stewart, snare botherer and former Woven Skull member, local-ish jazz trio Archipelago were first up and they really brought their A-game. It’s been at least a year since I last saw them and they’ve all been busy with their myriad other projects, but they hit the ground running with old favourite Chemical, tonight sounding particularly fierce. Tunes from their Echoes To The Sky dominated the set but two new tracks impressed, especially Crows Fly (written at Hopper’s request), a fiery, shifting beast that sounded in turns like a kind of Black Sabbath jazz tune and something approximating jazz folk (but in a great way, not a Pentangle way!), with brilliantly arranged interlocking vocals and a general doomy vibe.
Next up was a collaboration between two Mexican artists – noise table/tape manipulator Concepción Huerta and violinist Gibrana Cervantes – who filled the venue with waves of drones and swells, moving from delicate and intricate to doomy and deep across a thrilling set, at times sounding almost like Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Initially, Ireland’s Eomac felt like a slightly odd fit, a comparatively straightforward electronic producer serving up sweet and chunky, almost drug-chug, techno. But there were moments of dissonance and fracture as well as Orbital sparkle and 808 State muscle and by the end there was plenty of deeply engrossed head-nodding breaking out across the room.
Now based in Ireland – in fact, in Willie Stewart’s own Leitrim – Mohammed Syfkhan tore the roof off Pop Recs, the way he did at Supersonic earlier in the year, with a storming set. A refugee from the Syrian conflict and with a heartbreaking backstory, Syfkhan is a compelling and charismatic performer, his trademark beatbox kicking out North African rhythms while he delivers exhilarating bouzouki and alternately joyful and melancholy vocals. You don’t need to understand the words to feel his meaning and it was an uplifting, unifying end to a perfectly programmed first night of another great Boundaries.
