Tallinn Music Week embraces improvisation, electronics and spiky surfaces, pulled in from Estonia, Latvia and Switzerland

Von Krahl is just over three decades old, and is a theatre in the Old Town of Tallinn. Usually, it’s the home of Tallinn Music Week’s metal night, but this year those high-volume crazies found a new venue on the outskirts of town. For 2023, Von Krahl was host to an evening assembled by two of the most adventurous music festivals in the Baltics: Skaņu Mežs (Latvia) and Üle Heli (Estonia). The evening’s opening assault was devoted to abstract improvisation, mostly at high volume, and with consistent density.

Nicolas Stocker is a Swiss drummer and percussionist mostly known for his work with pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch, in his Mobile band. Stocker’s solo set began with great subtlety, as he made his presence known amidst a talkative bar crowd. Soon, concentration for all was found. Stocker’s delicately repetitive patterns couldn’t avoid evoking the spirit of Steve Reich, and that composer’s own fascination with Indonesian gamelan sounds. Stocker controlled a very steady build-up, with an enlarged bass-drum presence. It sounded like he had his set well-calibrated from the outset, initiating a form of organic mathematics. Looping pulses made very gradual shifts, from faint cymbal touches to full-kit awareness. Bass drums and small gongs were in unity. This slow ritual was around half way in when Stocker launched a steppin’ beat, eventually leading up to a dwarfish iron foundry climax, ending with a bout of glorious housequake monotony.

Flowerpower are an electronics duo from Latvia, who released their debut album in 2021. Their tools are quite old school, with analogue and modular synthesisers, field recording manipulations and improvised sonic processing. Agita Reke and Sofia Zaiceva don’t look doomy or threatening, but their music possesses both of these qualities. Extreme ice-breaking crunches (seemingly literally) relive tectonic distress, as if breaking glaciers have been close-miked. Flowerpower’s sound is immense, brooding and potent. Abstraction develops into bangin’ beats, with radical bass distortions, contrasting with high-end woodpecker-isms. Before long, the rhythms dissipate, and formlessness reigns, as the pair introduce some glue-stretching voice matter, until a return to hard drumsounds makes their climax possible.

Tencu and eleOnora are an Estonian duo, blending vocals and modular synthesiser. They sound like totally hardcore improvisers. Tencu unleashed his scar tissue textures, eleOnora made panting, desperate pleas, as aggressive sonic freedom ran rampant. Her chirps were made over a rumbling bedrock, and eleOnora didn’t seem to clearly arrive from any set background, either rock, jazz, or too-trained new music, but clearly attempting to forge a style which exists purely within the sphere of free improvisation and/or the noise freak-out zone. Despite an abundance of heavy action, a sensitive exchange was in place between these two, with swift reactions within their dialogue, remaining open to minimalist passages.