Playing the Building: at the Roundhouse

Because it takes a Talking Head to make a building sing. Talking Heads founder, David Byrne returns to the round house after 33yrs – this time he’s not playing in the Roundhouse, he’s playing the Roundhouse itself… as a kind of colossal architectural instrument. The legendary performance venue is stripped of all newfangled clutter revealing its original steam-age fittings. The central skylight, opened for the occasion, illuminates a single old church organ at its centre. Here, industrial meets the sublime and slightly gothic. Cords, like lifelines, are strung across the hall, controlling small machines which blow, tap and vibrate on the girders and columns of the building. A touch of the keyboard causes the building to cantillate and belch like a resuscitated Dickensian character. With control left to the audience, you don’t watch it, you play it. It’s an engaging and celebratory experience and a chance for us information-agers to visit a vanishing industrial soundworld.

8-31 August
The Roundhouse