Anthony Braxton’s 'Ghost Trance' explored by Kobe Van Cauwenberghe’s Septet

Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music is an aspect of the mighty Chicagoan saxophonist and composer’s oeuvre that seeks to gather all of his writing strands together. Prepared between 1995 and 2006, these works (around 150 of them) utilise graphic instructions, featuring a primary melody, combined with the opportunity for organised symbol subsections prompted by the selection of numbered outcomes. Braxton has expressed enthusiasm from one of his recent interpreters, the Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, who leads his own Ghost Trance Septet. This group played a gig as part of the regular programme at the SMAK (Municipal Museum Of Contemporary Art) in Gent, organised by Rogé Verstraete, who also runs the Citadelic festival and El Negocito. That label has recently released a double LP of the Septet’s interpretations.

The concert opened with Van Cauwenberghe playing solo guitar, reflecting the Ghost Trance repertoire of his first album dedicated to Braxton’s method. He played work #264, beginning tentatively, but using effects pedals to amass complicated cross-pollinations of sound, delayed, doctored, and benefiting from possibly accidental harmonic collisions, as the sonics became thickened by textures that steadily sounded less and less guitar-grown. Van Cauwenberghe began at a strolling pace, notes staggered with spaces, making contrasting phrase-clusters, and gradually looping a matrix of echo that was hard to unpick. This guitar soup was clear, boasting a variety of sonic aftertastes, forming a spatial array, suspended in fluid.

The second set brought out the full seven-piece ensemble, with an instrumentation of reeds (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), violin, euphonium, piano, bass and drums, flanking the leader’s electric guitar. They played GTM #255, like a jaunty march, swaying as if meant to be communally whistled on a summer promenade. A groove solidified out of abstraction, almost getting close to a New Orleans trot, led by Niels Van Heertum’s euphonium. The leader supplied a fuzz guitar solo, incongruously, as drummer João Lobo initiated some rattling rim-activity. Increasing amounts of sheet music littered the floor, some of which appeared to feature ‘traditional’ notation, and #255 made a crab-like needle-walk, with guitar, drums and euphonium being notably to the fore. Observing the performers created some degree of tension, as numbers were held up and directions changed, prompting swift riflings through sheet music stacks. Listening without watching could have been advised but would seem somewhat negative during an actual gig. The effect would probably have been to experience the music with greater freedom, as each minute recalibration arrived via the ears rather than the peepers, shorn of any self-consciousness of actually seeing the performers acting quickly, and with focused precision.