so the duo version of orfeo 5 finally played its first live gig, on 16th April 2009 at a private party at The Brewery Arts Centre in Kendall, a leaving party for Ann the Poet aka Ann Wilson (who was leaving her job, not the country). we were asked not to play too loud or too aggressively, because we were really there for background music, not as the main event, which was a celebration of Ann’s achievements. because of this, or maybe anyway, this sort of abstract dub set emerged from which the track hunger is taken. while we were playing, people were blowing up, playing with and occasionally bursting balloons, talking, drinking and eating. in some ways, being the background and playing some sort of improvised music gives you huge freedom: only about a quarter of the people in the room were actually listening to us, there was no pressure to perform, and the need to play fairly quietly meant in a way that whatever we did no one would really register it, so it was almost like playing privately, playing for each other, a conversation overheard rather than a performance. this is ok up to a point, but no matter how hard you try to fit into this kind of situation, i think pretty much any musician will eventually get a little impatient and try to make themselves heard, if not by the volume then by the content of what they play, and this is what happened for us, playing the tension between background and foreground, attempting to sneak a message into the subconscious of the listeners.
listening back, with compression added, the music doesn’t sound like background at all, and something about the experience really struck me: no matter what we did, Shaun and i could only play ourselves, and the particular situation of the gig in no way stifled that or made it quiet. if anything it made it louder the way a colour is loud silently, not louder like a shout, and it occurred to me that what we were playing was our hunger, the need we have to make music whatever the circumstances. then it occurred to me that all the musicians i admire express that same hunger, whatever else their music contains. and i thought that there are all kinds of hunger: some kinds are glorious, some kill us, and some inspire others to kill us, some senses of hunger are innocent, and some are not. i thought that musicians have the power to bring that sense of hunger into any room, and that they should, always.