Music / SoundOut 2026. At ANU Drill Hall Gallery, January 30-February 1. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

Once again, the director of Canberra’s SoundOut experimental music festival, Richard Johnson,  has pulled a rabbit out of the hat, delivering three days of daring music making at the Drill Hall Gallery.

With visiting musicians from Switzerland, Denmark, France and the UK joining experimenters from Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, this was never going to be a concord of sweet sounds. Rather, it was a series of concerts and workshops exploring the outer extremes of music, with instruments often pushed to unusual and sometimes uncomfortable limits.

Even festival director Johnson, in his opening address, acknowledged that many people do not like this kind of music. Yet he confidently asserted that if they came and listened, they might feel differently.

In most of the sessions I attended, Australian musicians appeared in various combinations alongside the visitors. On opening night, however, there were three visitor-led performances. Swiss saxophonist Christoph Gallio joined UK  electronics artist Phil Durrant. This was followed by the Samuel Blaser Trio, comprising French guitarist Marc Ducret, Danish drummer Peter Bruun and Swiss trombonist and leader Samuel Blaser. Later in the evening came a solo electronics set by French artist Jean Philippe Gross.

A defining feature of SoundOut is the opportunity for musicians to work together live, and the fruits of this evident by the final day. By then, the overseas visitors had fully integrated with Australian instrumentalists. They often separated into smaller groupings that allowed individual improvisational skills and exhilarating interplay.

One Sunday session, for example, saw Canberra trumpeter Miroslav Bukovsky, bold and sharp, leading an improvisation with Samuel Blaser on trombone, Canberra saxophonist Tom Fell and the surprise standout of the festival, Melbourne trumpeter Niran Dasika. The players blended, challenged and provoked one another in equal measure.

A shift in venue and tempo introduced a mixed ensemble of electronics, violin, drums and voice. Sydney vocaliser Nikki Hayward produced semi audible sounds ranging from whispers to fiercely angry. Danish drummer Peter Bruun, almost an entertainment in himself, brought hyper dramatic physicality to the set.

Later, it was Ducret’s turn to be hyper dramatic. He changed the mood by introducing spoken word poetry, or something close to it, reflecting on change and shape shifting. This underscored a key principle of the festival, that musicians need not be confined to a single instrument, seen also when Bukovsky took  to the keyboard.

Another set featured Gallio on tenor sax, supported by director Johnson and the electronics of Gross and Yichen Wang, in a ferocious display of musical aggression. Equally compelling, though quieter, was Jamie Lambert’s intense concentration as he extracted new sounds from his enhanced hybrid string instrument, accommodating guitar, violin and cello.

None of this was comfortable listening. It is the polar opposite of easy listening. Yet it should not be forgotten that from such interactive experiments comes new music, for new generation ears.