Barbican, LondonThe duo’s vast sonic canvases, here expanded with a 16-piece ensemble, are ambitious and cinematic but need focus
Restless souls with voracious creative appetites, These New Puritans’ previous appearances at the Barbican saw their ranks bolstered by children’s choirs, Japanese drummers and venerated chamber orchestra the Britten Sinfonia – whose conductor, André de Ridder, is one of their biggest fans. For this latest presentation, dubbed The Blue Door, brothers Jack and George Barnett have penned new pieces and commissioned accompanying short films and visuals, along with rescoring their back catalogue to accommodate a 16-piece ensemble, including brass, orchestral percussion and sopranos.
This is definitely big
music, then. But while the visceral tribal rhythms that drive such pieces as Inside the Rose shake the walls, the group rarely blunder into bombast, Jack Barnett arranging this expanded unit with subtlety and great effect. Fragment Two reimagines goth as scored by David Axelrod, with sopranos singing eerie choral harmonies and four vibraphonists playing off each other with mathematical precision, each element in perfect orbit with the others. The heroic yearning of the brass septet – especially on the poetic Into the Fire – suggests that if there’s an industrial influence upon These New Puritans’ music, it’s as much Grimethorpe Colliery Band as Nine Inch Nails.