Grégory Dargent / Soleil d’Hiver & MUŠHUŠŠU - live @ Punctum, Prague - 07.11.25

MUŠHUŠŠU features a double bass with pickups on each individual string, which are plugged into a series of boxes stage left.  The double bassist begins by hitting the instrument body with a stick.  His partner - who is manning the boxes - samples this and begins to loop the textures on top of one another. 

During the whole 40 minute performance, no actual notes are played.  There is frequent silence.  Sometimes there are almost painfully long periods of near-silence, with only the echoes of the last sample disappearing into speaker hiss, or a jangling, harmonic gurgle coming from the E string on the bass.  The music is performed with a studious, solemn air.  

After about fifteen minutes I closed my eyes and was transported somewhere else:  I thought of past lovers at university, the polymer fleece I wore at the time, watching myself go about my daily business with a surreal detachment... all while the sonic tapestry accumulated around us.  

*****

Gregory comes on and fires up his Arabic Lute Oud, sticking to traditional playing for a grand total of about two minutes, before deploying a brutal glitch guitar pedal that scrambles the woody tones into a Nine Inch Nails digital blast... and we're off:  into a fusion of modern and ancient, with a tape player recording live loops onto quarter-inch tape that is spooling around a mic stand set several feet away from the rest of the equipment.  

Everything is made right in front of us, like watching a cook farm the ingredients in real time before throwing them at his antiquated hi-fi - with tape heads exposed - before letting the sounds from the guitar and his pedals stew into brief, strange blips and snippets.  

Dargent does this virtuosity with a casual demeanor, as if it's no trouble.  Behind him, his monochrome, expressionistic documentary of his visit to Algeria - retracing the footsteps of his father - plays.  It is only after the first few songs that I realise he is somehow triggering the scenes of the film by waving his hand in front of an infra-red beam, to keep it in time with the music.

After the show, during an impromptu lecture to a curious audience, Dargent explains that he made the technology himself during an artist residency.  We all stand around him listening to this charming Frenchman, as he jokes about being deported from Algeria while on a filming expedition, and how his father suspected that he might be a spy (rather than an artist) on account of his frequent travel abroad.  The mysteries of his musical process are described in an unaffected manner:  equipment settings are detailed and techniques broken down into understandable instructions should we wish to try for ourselves.

****

Event info:  https://punctum.cz/event/gregory-dargent-soleil-dhiver-mushussu-alternativa-f

Bootlegs:

MUŠHUŠŠU

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IUrcOkgz6Iw2Tum9F-oZ3EcDytFwvTlB/view?usp=sharing

Grégory Dargent : Soleil d’Hiver

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WuOQy39uuy880wTECU1wnYK9lnrUBOZS/view?usp=sharing