[ATTENDED: March 14, 2018] Liberty / Tashi Dorji Duo
I had never heard of Liberty / Tashi Dorji Duo when I saw they were opening for Godspeed You Black Emperor. I also didn’t know if Liberty was a part of the duo or even if Liberty was a second opening act.
Well, it turns out that Tashi Dorji is a guitarist who often plays by himself. But for this show he was with “the elusive Danish saxophonist LIBERTY (Mette Rasmussen).”
So what did this mean for the show? Well, a brief search on Dorji revealed:
Tashi Dorji was born and raised in Bhutan, on the eastern side of the Himalayas. Residing in Asheville since 2000 and soaking up a vast array of music. Along the way, Dorji developed a playing style unbound by tradition, yet with a direct line to intuitive artistry. All references break loose during his playing, as Dorji keys into his own inner world.
and that
Liberty is a saxophone player whose music is defining a unique balance of uproar and beauty. Her ability to move between the often strict confines of genres and explore the elements makes her presence highly powerful. She has encapsulated her own personal vision of acoustic music, by amplification expanding her range in dynamics and rocketing a more prosaic stem.
So.
What we saw was Tashi Dorji on guitar and Liberty on sax. Back in college I loved skronking noisy saxophone (John Zorn is still a touchstone for me). But I found that I did not enjoy listening to it live for 35 minutes. Liberty is a wild noisy sax player. She switched mouthpieces a few times during the set (to what effect I’m not sure). And was basically playing loud improvised noise–sometimes it was smooth and clean, but more often it was loud and squeaky.
Perhaps it’s because I know guitar, but I just couldn’t get into what she was doing.
And that was kind of a shame because I found Tashi Dorji to be utterly mesmerizing. I was facing him as he played and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He used the entire guitar.
he played the strings underneath the bridge, he put tape on the guitar strings, he used a knitting needle under the strings. He even put a bobby pin on the strings at one point. Mostly he was just making a series of noises–using effects pedals and whatnot. He also made loud jabs at the guitar. But occasionally he would get a pretty melody. And soon enough I was more or less blocking out Liberty’s sax while focusing intently on Dorji.
Their set was about 35 minutes of improvised, non-stop music. It actually seemed like they were insistent on there not being any silence, because even when it grew quiet, Dorji made sure he was always making some kind of sounds–enough to not break the flow of music.
I felt particularly lucky to be standing where I was so I could watch Dorji playing. I didn’t love his music, exactly. I wouldn’t listen to any of his recordings, but it was really mesmerizing seeming him decide what happened next.
I felt bad for my friends who were in the balcony who didn’t get to see how cool Dorji was. Although they said that they really enjoyed what he was doing from yup there as well. Someone recorded their entire set and I can hear that from back there, he sax wasn’t quiet so overpowering.
My friends and I joked that the last time we saw a same show together, the opening band, was pretty awful. Normally we’re lucky, but Twain was just too out there. This opening act has now been dubbed Saxy Twain.
Leave a Reply