Faster than Sound
Bentwaters Airbase, Aldeburgh, Sussex

In its third year, Faster Than Sound – the Aldeburgh Festival’s electronic music offshoot – has both expanded and contracted. Instead of occupying one evening at Bentwaters Airbase, a disused cold war facility in the Suffolk countryside, last weekend’s programme spread itself over two days to include a performance of Stockhausen’s Stimmung at Snape Maltings Concert Hall and a sequence of music films called Faster Than Light. The Bentwaters event, however, was greatly reduced from previous years to only one stage.

But it was still a refreshing context in which to hear such experimental electronic music – provided by some 20 artists – and the organisers had made the most of the setting. A huge hangar – an acoustically sealed chamber with a giant wind tunnel at its centre, called the Hush House – had been converted into an immersive acoustic space. A stage was positioned in front of the wind tunnel, which was strikingly lit, and the “auditorium” was surrounded by a sonic Stonehenge of speaker stacks.