В Фениксе прошел уникальный концерт электронной перкуссии от артистки ilex

On the 1st of September, we converged upon Phoenix Central Park to see ilex, unsure of what to expect. The venue called ilex’s music ‘percussion-meets-electronic’, which is descriptive enough to be evocative, but mysterious enough to contain hundreds of sonic possibilities. Following a short opening set by Peter Hollo, which was unassuming yet funky in all the right ways, ilex began. She sat at the elaborate drumkit, head down, and frenetic emotionality began to pour from her arms into the room, using the drums as a conduit. The robotic lights swerved and undulated across the floor as rhythm filled the space. It was exhilarating, then meditative, then it started up again, rising upward with excitement and anticipation of the unknown. When ilex is drumming, there is so much movement localised in her wrists and hands, and so much stillness everywhere else in the room, that at times it felt we were all living within a motion blur photograph. The room felt breathless and captured in time. The performance lasted an hour, but if you’d asked, we would have said it went for ten minutes. ilex is at once frenzied and precise, her technical ability astounding, her compositions unprecedented. ilex, alias of Holly Conner (clever, the Latin genus of Holly is Ilex), created a rich, elemental concert. Hybrid electronic elements, distorted guitar, vocals, and percussion appeared to breathe as one in the act of creation. ilex’s drumming was textural and varied: a danceable sound, sometimes heavy and syncopated, other times hitting an athletic BPM belonging to raves or doofs, still other times a delicate thrumming subtly suggesting rhythm to your mind. ilex’s beats took us to many landscapes. From hordes hurtling through arid desert, to the top of a mountain on a sunny, clear day, to the tropics populated with heaving seed pods and insects’ clicking abdomens (brought alive by accompanist Hilary Geddes on guitar). ilex’s sonic biomes bloomed into the architectural and acoustic grandiosity of Phoenix’s ‘Nest’, enclosing us, the audience. The set being almost entirely instrumental inspired an embodied response rather than an intellectual or linguistic one. In a track that began with electronic accompaniment of what seemed like pitched-up droplets, the projection on the floor looked like water reflections on the bottom of the swimming pool. It’s clear that the team at Phoenix are attentive to both the sound and audience they host. The attention to detail in light and sound, the enormous futuristic egg-shaped space, even the carefully counted curating of audience seating for near-exact body-distribution, all prime the audience to listen well and sensitively. Hypnotised by ilex’s drumming, we only wish we could’ve actually gotten up to dance. It was hard not to. Phoenix curates a refined evening of listening, one that feels especially synchronous to win in a free lottery. It feels special, luxurious even, to feel like a degustator of sound on plush red seats or standing. It is nice, too, to know that there is at least one place in Sydney that does not demand money from you; a concert where people have equal chance at entrance regardless of how much money is in their bank account. Uni students en masse should try their luck. You might just experience something fucking awesome.