x-mas family dinner
driving home from shopping
stofzuiger
crash by river
oh you silly tiger
small sorrow
lovers and place
dishes
a fist full
barbecued
trash (vs ylt)

Sonic Youth: noise, noise and more noise. Not bad noise, just exhausting. That’s why it was a bit of a not-very well chosen place for Rudy to debut his new, very quiet project.
I’m not sure it even was a ‘project’, it was more of a combo of musicians who played a range of quiet versions of Rudy’s oeuvre.
Eitherway, as soon as the gig was finished, my friends and I rushed to the AB Club, because even a fraction of the filled main hall would fill up the entire AB Club. Fortunately we did so, because ten minutes later, the AB club was absolutely loaded. Rudy Trouvé came on stage, warned the audience it would be a very quiet and ‘intimistic’ set. Four people joined him on stage; Elko Blijweert (Kiss My Jazz, Dead Man Ray,…), Bram Van Looveren (Lionell Horrowitz and his combo, Golf,…), Tomas Noppe (Gore Slut), and a 14-15 year old musician, Arno Lievens (from “Luc en Sonia”, his parents. Sonia is Rudy's sister, which makes Arno Rudy's nephew.)
The set turned out to be very quiet and intimistic indeed. Unfortunately, the crowd (including myself) wasn’t in a mood for quiet music, so half of them spoiled it for the rest by endless whining and making lots of noise, in stead of leaving. Sigh.
The set they played were practically all very quiet songs, most of them from Rudy’s share in the Subsonic 6 album. Other songs they played were ‘Lovers and Place’ and ‘Trash Vs. YLT’ from Kiss My Jazz, ‘Crash by River’ by Gore Slut, ‘Dishes’, a song from the 110m² performance, and previously unknown song. The five of them sat on chairs, in half a circle, all playing pretty concentrated, but still technically limited. (seeing this was the first time they performed together)
In front of the stage, they had placed a ‘carpet of grass’, the entire length of the stage. Somewhere near the end, Rudy announced they had prepared a ‘gimmick’; his girlfriend Sigrid Van Rosendael came on stage, mowing the grass carpet, making a quiet noise which accompanied the song Rudy & co. were playing.
By the end of the gig, more than half of the venue had already left- after the very noisy and loud performance of Sonic Youth, few felt like attending such a quiet and visually un-attractive set.
Overall, while a nice performance in my book, most of the audience were definitely hoping for something more ‘spectacular’, but then again no one knew what to expect at forehand.
I liked it; in a way I thought Rudy and ‘his band’ made more subtle, and perhaps even more diverse sounds from their guitars than Sonic Youth did an hour before.
I wouldn’t really expect to see this combo perform together a lot in the future- it seemed more like a one-off thing, much like the Tramjeanetten.
A true ‘replacement’ for Kiss My Jazz hasn’t arrived yet then. Alas!

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