Determined to play the creepiest and most irreverent keyboard music there is to hand, b-l duo’s Bertram Wee and Lynette Yeo maintain a diverse repertoire spanning works by genre-defining stalwarts of contemporary concert music to that of recent musical innovators. The keyboardists have been performing together through this project since 2013, and their appearance at hcmf// 2022 featured all the psychedelic, resonant transgressions they’ve become known for.
Originally composed for keyboard and drums to reflects his freewheeling attitude towards aesthetic and genre, Alex Paxton’s Sometimes Voices brings the manic rhythmic excess of Nancarrow’s player piano studies to mind, as well as heavy metal blast beats and EDM synth sweeps. In the hands of b-l duo, it became a strictly keyboards affair as the pair took it into a territory of digital hyperreality. The duo presented this in a programme alongside a new piece in Bertram Wee’s own vessel series: standalone studies in avant-garde talkboxing. Here, the corporeal form of the performer is transformed into an acoustic space to be exploited, recalling the striking vocal noise work of acts such as the Gerogerigegege and Masonna.