MooV live

The annual iF Festival, of which contemporary composer Colin Riley is co-artistic director, is a series of gigs and events that sets out to explore the range of creative possibilities open to contemporary musicians and performance artists. This year it programmed some ten events in March to mark the festival’s tenth anniversary. You may recall Riley from his impressionistic classical/jazz hybrid Homemade Orchestra that recorded a rather lovely CD co-led by saxophonist Tim Whitehead on Basho in 2004. Riley’s newest band Moov, who performed one of the last gigs of the festival here tonight, also tests the boundaries between different genres, and between improvisation and composition, but there are no jazz solos - or anything that could be easily labelled jazz. Yet, performing in one of the last gigs of the festival, the members of Moov respond to and interact with each other in a way that has much in common with collective improvisation. Moov consists of an ensemble of genre-phobic artists who between them usually orbit the worlds of computer-based music, contemporary classical, jazz and film: they are electric bassist Pete Wilson, cellist Zoe Martlew, digital/electronics programmer Ben Jarlett, percussionist/vibraphonist Rob Millett, singer Olivia Chaney, Riley on keyboards and video projectionist Howie Bailey. Riley likes to compose phrases or sequences in his music that rise and fall like waves and then reach a momentary silence. Young hippy-chick singer Olivia Chaney - someone who has worked on the fringes of London’s F-IRE collective - joins the band for a large part of the two sets. Alongside Riley’s ambiguous ghostly synth patches, Millet’s minimal bell-like vibes and percussion, and Aphex Twin-influenced Jarlett’s well-placed subtle electronica the result often recalls the work of singer/songwriter David Sylvian and to a lesser extent Robert Wyatt. Chaney’s excellent, unpredictable vocal lies somewhere between Sandy Denny and Norma Winstone, and she improvises incredibly effectively considering the music’s ambiguous harmonies and shifting textures. Brian Eno has spoken of his approach as being like painting in sound and this will be something Riley will have much empathy with. So it was no accident that Howie Bailey’s watery projected images, which can on other occasions seem an unnecessary diversion, tonight dovetailed naturally with Moov’s music. Although Riley usually operates in the classical oeuvre, Moov comes closer to a kind of post-rock/electronica songs-based music. If the album release on Riley’s label, scheduled for release later this year is anything like tonight’s performance we’re in for a real treat.