Diamanda La Berge Dramm: Chimp Live

As if she’s sitting next to you on the couch – Diamanda La Berge Dramm’s voice on Chimp is intimate and immediate. The album was received in 2022 by the international press with superlatives: ‘Surprisingly fresh’, ‘a pursuit of true artistry’, ‘a fascinating concept album’, ‘adventurous’, ‘a dreamlike album that has no precedents.’ The simplicity in Dramm’s speaking, singing and violin playing takes the listener into her fantasy world. Magical and simultaneously crystal clear. With simple tools – two violins, a small table, a studio lamp, a few pedals – she aims to create the same intensity and intimacy on stage. The audience is witness of the slow evolution of Chimp’s sound world: the acoustic violin as first source, the voice as transportation, the electric violin facilitating it all. Not more than that – completely minimal. But the result is maximal, with Dramm drawing from her rich musical baggage that resonates in all she does. Trained as a classical violinist, she is at home in the American avant-garde, knows the new music world inside out and deeply loves alternative pop. All these influences can be found in her music; not necessarily referenced, but filtered into a highly personal idiom: direct and natural. Dramm is an intriguing appearance on stage and a great musical talent. Compositionally, Chimp is a personal milestone in size: ten numbers that last a total of 40 minutes. A new challenge is to translate this material into a liveshow, that conserves her so characteristic combination of sublime and spontaneous. The songs are based on texts by British avant-garde poet Steven J Fowler, with whom Dramm has a longstanding collaboration. They are specifically drawn from I Will Show You the Life of the Mind (on Perscription Drugs) and The Great Apes. Dramm brings these two works together through a suggested image: the world of waiting rooms enfolds the world of the apes. The themes are concrete, but their implementation is highly poetic which gives Dramm’s music all the more space. The listener is guided, through text and sound, into the jungle universe of the apes and its various characters. Eventually we are ejected back out into the real world, hearing a similar music with which we started. But this time, with the monkeys in hindsight, it is a slightly tilted reality. Playing the whole of Chimp takes 40 minutes. After that, Diamanda will pick up her acoustic – which has only been played table top until now – finishing with 20 minutes of varying repertoire. John Cage, a folk song, a movement of Bach, etc; this set will depend on the context of the presentation/space. Think of it as an extended encore. At the heart of the Chimp project live all these sounds. Now we end by gathering them, a real-time reflection.