From Scratch Archive .: The Group .: Pacific Plate (2000)

Pacific Plate / Hotwired (2000)

Pacific Plate / Hotwired is From Scratch's latest in low-techtonics - an intermedia mix of new instruments, cinema and sounds - from pure music to pure rhythm and noise. Fish on a dish, or a dish beneath the seas that defies the human appetite, Pacific Plate is a tribute to the generally dormant, largely silent, seldom seen, awesome and often forgotten forces, which over the Millennia continuously shape and change the face of the planet. Taupo - situated at the heart of the volcanic plateau; a tourist mecca in the centre of the north island/NZ , has played an unrivalled role in the geo-thermal theatre of the planet. Reputedly it is the site of the single most violent volcanic eruption to have occurred on earth in the past 5000 years. Plates have moved, continents have reshaped, islands have formed, but nothing has equalled the force of physical disruption and dramatic change involved in the formation of Lake Taupo and the surrounding chaos of thermal hiss plop & spurt. From Scratch pays quirky homage to these natural forces, creative and destructive.PACIFIC PLATE (2000) was devised, performed & premiered by the group for the Taupo Festival, February 2000, and later at Adams Gallery / Wellington. An intermedia mix of film projection and sound performance, new instruments and sound sources include a dozen ‘foley’ trays for rhythmic foot-work, RodBaschet (stroked glass rods -thanks to the Baschets and Lindo Francis) and the Water-Cooler-Drumkit. The work was later performed in Auckland in November 2000 and subsequently toured to Austria and later to Performing Arts Market in Adelaide, where it was profiled as one of three works selected by Creative NZ for promotion. It was re-recorded and mixed for RNZ Concert FM in 2003.

Review: by William Dart (NZ Listner August 11 2001)

Pacific Plate, From Scratch / Scapa / Auckland. The title of From Scratch's new tribute to our country's seismic underbelly is a nudgy pun, but outrageously apt when Shane Currey finally dashes around, spinning a series of whirring dinner plates on the floor. Global Hockets, Philip Dadson's 1998 multimedia collaboration with German computer whizzes Supreme Particles, would have been a hard act to follow And this time round, the man who launched his percussive career with primal drumming ceremonies in Mt Eden's crater has played down the high tech. Dadson opens Pacific Plate clicking stones, not as an accompaniment to the wry monologues that he was spinning a few years back, but to his own throatsinging. There are echoes of past From Scratch projects, but Pacific Plate offers new and intriguing sounds. Although some of the exotic "instruments" are a little distracting visually - Adrian Croucher clambering around with two water-cooler drums on has legs - others, such as the Rodbaschet, a glass-threaded rod coaxing sonics from a metal sheet, seem like a sculptural nod to Len Lye. Dadson's fanciful inventions also pay tribute to international gurus such as Tom Nunni and Bernard and Francois Baschet, along with the great Harry Partch, all brought together in a work that even conscripts a kitchen sink.

First set rumbling at last year's Taupo Festival, Pacific Plate was passing through Auckland en route for Salzburg's Zeitflus Festival. But the venue seemed to suppress the Kiwi DIY magic that always ignited when From Scratch took their PVC pipes to small halls and community centres around the city. The theatre in Auckland University's Scapa was over high in ceiling and decidedly low in spiritual resonance, despite the resonating images of the 1951 waterfront dispute in the foyer. Two nights earlier I had caught Dadson's specially commissioned Finale for the International Society of Music Education conference. Tukutuku was a glorious melee of five Pacific Island cultural groups from different Auckland schools, a small rhythm group comprising Dadson and his colleagues, and 150 conference delegates who entered the Auckland Town Hall conga-fashion, hocketing and clapping for all they were worth. Dadson saw the work as "celebrating the virtuosity of Polynesian youth", and in the often wild, blistering mix that pitched Niuean rap against a battery of Cook Islands drummers it was certainly that. One was also struck by the sense of real occasion and the cultural openness that is so much the hallmark of Dadson's art-making.

Review. by Gilbert Wong, Herald, 16.07.2001

"From Scratch keeps its vow to innovation"

School of Creative and Performing Arts theatre: I have seen a man perform with water coolers strapped to his legs. As comical as this sounds, in the hands of Adrian Croucher, one of the From Scratch trio, the percussive beats boomed across the performing space with great effect.

From Scratch is back, though they have left their racks of PVC pipes behind to be replaced by new instruments. Some have the same comical impact, like the sliding tube drums which work like trombones and sound like didgeridoos but look like plumbers' discards. Others, like the foley trays, beds of river stones and ceramic tiles used for film soundtracks, are the sorts of tools you'd expect the group to exploit in their quest to replicate natural sounds.

Their most recent work, Pacific Plate, is from the latest incarnation of the group. Founder Phil Dadson is now joined by Croucher and Shane Currey, a percussionist with the Auckland Philharmonia.

The group has always walked a tightrope in performance. With only the slightest stumble, their use of common industrial and building objects to make music could easily fall into a Hoffnungesqe cartoon. They are saved by the complexity and novelty of their music.

Dadson began the evening with the simplest of instruments, two stones and his own voice, miked so his guttural intonations brought to mind an ancient firelit ceremony. The piece developed from there, a process of organic evolution that at one point resorted to those objects we never thought we would see - keyboards on adapted melodicas - and the ironic use of 50s tourist footage of their subject, the thermal rumblings of the Taupo region.

There is an increasing emphasis on the use of found and natural sounds - the whirr of dinner plates set spinning by Currey, who also essays a solo with marbles and aluminium mixing bowls - which takes From Scratch further on an innovative path ..."