A Journey Through Big Ears Festival 2025

The Wonders and Eclecticism of Big Ears Festival 2025

by John Diliberto 4/4/2025

My journey to Big Ears Festival was unlike any of the other five I’ve attended in the last decade. It was the most Echoes-centric festival ever with Steve Roach, SUSS and Immersion, Explosions in the Sky, Laraaji, Flore Laurentiene, William Tyler, Mary Lattimore, Anoushka Shankar, Julia Holter and more performing.

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY

Let’s begin at the end. The last performance of the festival was the one that left me wanting more. Explosions in the Sky took the stage of the Mill and Mine to the roar of “Greet Death” from the 2001 album, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever… Twenty-four years later, it still drops with a vicious crunch. But the vicious crunch always alternates space with meditative beauty in the music of EITS.

This is heroic music, charging the ramparts with all guitars blazing, atop a furious rhythmic assault from drummer Chris Hrasky. Explosions’ sound is deceptively complex. Although they often have three guitars going, no one is really playing lead, instead, they negotiate carefully interlocked lines that are more prominent due to the different timbral shadings each musician has on their instrument. Even at heavy metal/punk intensity and levels of distortion, the individual melodies are clearly, if not neatly, delineated, making their music shift like a metal mandala. Only guitarist Munaf Rayani stepped out front a bit with long shimmering lines and e-bow sustains, occasionally raising his guitar, literally, toward the ceiling.

They played music from across their career including their latest, The End. Hearing tracks like “Loved Ones,” you know The End is more spiritual than existential and I definitely felt that in “Your Hand in Mine” from the album, Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, as it moved from the folk-like, fingerpicked guitar riff from Michael James, alternating with the “Apache” drum march of Hrasky, slowly rising into a storm. The beauty of this set left me crying and not just for more.

STEVE ROACH

At the opposite energy and visual end of the spectrum was Steve Roach. The electronic and ambient pioneer was ensconced for three days in the Church Street United Methodist Church, doing a set each night. I saw his Friday night set and it was exhilarating in a different way than Explosions in the Sky.  A Steve Roach concert is a ritual presentation and this space certainly lent itself to that, as he set up at the crossing in front of the altar and between the choir stalls, standing in a cockpit of multiple synthesizers and modules.

The digeridoo set the tribal side of things as its drone merged into synthesizer drones.  Deep and long bass chords were the ground for ghostly synth sustains and slowly, the sequencers came in and it was a jaunt the skies as interlocking patterns chirped into infinity. A deep, thudding bass hit seemed to open the gates of Doom while sequencers circled in nervous patterns, supplanted slowly by drones as Roach moved through the night, playing the aboriginal digeridoo as well as the Slovakian fujara, altering their tones through reverbs and harmonization. He performed non-stop, one motif moving through the next, tweaking sequences once moment and sending stones, actual stones, into reverb space.  He ended by walking to a small synthesizer to the church crossing and launched into “Structures from Silence”, just Steve Roach, one synth, recreating the work just as he originally composed it in real time. .

As Roach played, the entire space around him was transformed by Reflections, a company specializing in 3-D mapped projections.  They completely transformed the architecture of the altar, sometimes making the space disappear in its abstract projections, sometimes bringing it forward and making it part of the visual effects, including the stained glass windows behind the altar that seemed to pulse at times. It was completely mesmerizing and void of cliché. Between the imagery and Roach’s music it was breathtaking.

MICHAEL ROTHER

Roach is a disciple of German electronic music and one of its pioneers gave an exhilarating recreation of those 70s sounds, at least, the more rockin’, motoric end of it. Michael Rother is the guitarist who powered the melodic side of Neu!, Harmonia and his own string of brilliant solo albums. With an ensemble that included Vittoria Maccabruni on synthesizers and vocals, Hans Lampe on drums and Franz Bargmann playing second guitar, Rother played music from across his career, but definitely centered on the 70’s music of Neu! and Harmonia and his first two solo albums from that era. It was transporting, as Lampe laid down a relentless groove of 4/4 rhythms, always accenting the three, propelling these tracks through space. Rother laid down his searing sustained guitar leads and melodies that seemed to scrape the sky. If you think of German music as a brooding kind of thing, you haven’t seen or felt the joy that Michael Rother brings to his performance.

IMMERSION & SUSS

And since we’re in something of a krautrock mode, let’s go to the three-way set of Immersion, then SUSS and then Immersion & SUSS together. I was locked out of that session until about 2/3rd into Immersion’s set. They are Malka Spigel from Minimal Compact and Colin Newman of Wire. Malka stood behind her ancient Korg MS10 synthesizer, wearing large sunglasses beneath her shock of curly red hair. Newman stood next to her, his painter’s hat covering a shock of long scraggly equally red hair with his aqua blue guitar slung around his neck. Their set was decidedly retro with a post-techno sound based in drum machine grooves, synth snarls and Newman’s chicken-scratch rhythm guitar, occasionally punctuated by sloganeering vocals. They are more beat oriented live than on any of their albums.

They were followed by SUSS, which presented quite a contrast with Bob Holmes on acoustic guitar, violin and harmonica, Pat Irwin on electric guitar and Jonathan Greg sitting stage center at his pedal steel. They cut an interesting figure with Holmes’s long white hair and receding hairline giving him a godlike presence while Irwin sports a full head of pure white locks. Gregg’s appearance is understated, much like his pedal steel playing which provides the melodic locus of SUSS’s ambient country sound. After the electronic assault of Immersion, they were a calm after the storm.

If I wasn’t intimate with their collaboration on the album Nanocluster Volume 3, I would wonder how these two bands could possibly come together, but they were greater than the sum of their parts. From the first track, “Khamsin,” you could feel the difference as they merged in slow-motion trance textures with a modal drone and a swirling, nasal barber pole synth from Spigel, topped by gentle guitar melody fragments. Then there were the deep ambient meditations of “Luminous.” It mixed synths, meditative guitar and pedal steel strains into a floating world. Malka Spigel sang the two vocal tracks on the album, but her voice didn’t quite find the pitch and sounded more gruff and under-reverbed than the more dreampop album versions.

But the central tracks, live as on the album, were “Cross Pollination” and “State of Motion.” “Cross Pollination” built from an ambient space of mellotron-like strings and fluttering flute lines, along with lonesome plains harmonica from Bob Holmes. The vaguely country guitar and pedal steel amplified the ambient western mood which elevates when the “Apache” drums came in. That circular rhythm drove the track into another level.

They closed with the penultimate track on the album, “State of Motion” and it was a rousing ending as the group launched into the 4/4 groove known as motoric. SUSS dug into this piece with twang guitar and delirious slides while Newman strummed out a mad rhythm guitar attack. It was the perfect way to end this set.

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR

Anoushka Shankar was another highlight. The sitarist played music from her recent trilogy of EPs. She opened with a cool solo of processed sitar, ringing out in long sustains and unusual resonances from the sympathetic strings. It was a meditative opening that set the stage for her band of Tom Farmer playing acoustic bass processed with pedals, drummer Sarathy Korwar and keyboard/clarinetist Arun Ghosh. The music sounded surprisingly free as they moved though the various themes of her recordings, with Anoushka taking solos that would be considered shredding if she was playing an electric guitar. It was music that went well-outside raga terrain, including Ghosh’s clarinet solos which sometimes veered toward Klezmer.

AROOJ AFTAB

In 2023 I had seen Pakistani-American singer Arooj Aftab with pianist Vijay Iyer and bassist Shahzad Ismaily. Their album, Love in Exile, was a deeply meditative and intuitive recording. But Aftab’s 2024 solo release, Night Reign, was quite a bit different. While Love in Exile had a spiritual feel, Night Reign is about the human experience. It turns out that Aftab is as much sultry nightclub singer as spiritual chanteuse. She joked to the audience that people were expecting something more meditative and here she is singing murder ballads. She kidded with the audience a lot between her deeply blues-inflected ballads backed by a virtuoso band of guitar, flute, violin, drums and keyboards. She was enchanting in a completely seductive way, even though she complained she still had bronchitis from earlier in the week, it was hard to tell since her voice is already deep with a little huskiness to it.

RICH RUTH

Rich Ruth opened the festival for me. I wanted to start it with an energetic performance and he delivered with a band that included pedal steel guitar, vibraphone and violin. While they all played great and had moments, they often seemed lost in the modal jazz, fairly free spaces that Rich and his core quartet of electric bass, drums and saxophone generated. There was lots of soloing and some dueling squalls, especially one between saxophonist Sam Que and the violinist Patrick M’Gonigle. Michael Ruth aired out a lot of guitar including a subtly tormented solo on one piece. There were three-note ostinato grooves, pointillistic improvisations and sometimes pure space at which point Ruth asked, “Are you still with us?”

BARRY ALTSCHUL’S AXIOM

A similar free-flowing act was Barry Altschul’s Axiom. He was the go-to drummer in avant-garde jazz of the 60s, 70s and 80s, playing with Paul Bley, Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers and pre-fusion Chick Corea. Nothing has changed as he propelled the quartet of Axiom, comprised of John Irabagon (saxophone), Uri Caine (piano) and Mark Helias (bass.) The pace was fast, furious and unpredictable and although there were compositions, it felt like everyone was shooting at will. Uri Caine in particular took an assaultive approach to his piano.

THOR HARRIS & FRIENDS

The last time I saw Thor Harris live, he literally melted my eardrums playing percussion with Swans at Big Ears in 2016. He does that on his own as well with his group, Water Damage. But Thor and Friends is a different thing. He opened with a long track on keyboard, creating minimalist loops that piled on top of each other reaching a glorious crescendo. Then his band came out including some festival ringers like guitarist Marissa Anderson. With four guitarists, bass, violin and I think somebody doing electronics on the floor, they worked into a deep listening improvisation of sustained tones and gentle fluttering. It was a subtle, delicately poised balance that some ramped up into a staccato groove that led to its climax.

FLORE LAURENTIENE

Since this was such an Echoes-centric festival, I didn’t have as much discovery as usual, because I knew so many of the performers. But Steve Roach said I should catch the second set of Flore Laurentienne, a group led by French-Canadian keyboardist and composer Mathieu David Gagnon. Playing in the Church Street United Methodist Church, he was set up crossing in front of the altar with a collection of old keyboards, including a Fender Rhodes Piano and Korg synthesizer. His sound is Ambient Classical with a lean toward the classical side in his writing for his string quartet. Gagnon himself would usually plays spare, unresolving keyboard themes, reminding me a bit of Steve Halpern, but once his strings came in, the dynamic accelerated, sometimes to a pounding crescendo with his keyboardist/percussionist whipping out their avant-garde percussion chops. But no matter how abstract he got, Gagnon’s heavy Bach, contrapuntal influence made this music sound like it wouldn’t be out of place on Bridgerton.

JULIA HOLTER

Julia Holter kept a Tennessee Theater audience enthralled for her set which included songs from across her career, including her latest, Something in the Room She Moves. “Marienbad” was a highlight with its word play and vocal counterpoints with Beth Goodfellow, who is not only a spectacular drummer but has an amazing voice that perfectly complements Holter’s wide vocal range.

Holter commanded the stage, standing behind her Nord keyboard, her luxurious long gray hair cascading over her shoulders. She sang with passion, sometimes shouting, sometimes in a whisper. She dominated the stage except when she was usurped by bassist Devra Hoff, whose bass is essentially the lead instrument in the band, as she cavorted on stage like a rock star, contrasting sharply with everyone else in the group, especially keyboardist Tashi Wada ,who was motionless on the opposite side of the stage. Hoff was also way to high in the mix.

BEYOND THE HORIZON

SUSS were all over the festival with their Beyond the Horizon series, which featured them and various musician configurations. I saw much of their Saturday night set which featured them, the trio Cowboy Sadness, harpist Mary Lattimore, guitarist William Tyler and Immersion. It was a very low-key, slightly shambolic affair with a short, somber set from SUSS, followed by Cowboy Sadness, who, despite their country sensibilities, reminded me more of The Necks in their intuitive improvisations. Mary Lattimore and William Tyler dueted on harp and guitar respectively in a meandering song. Immersion were going to follow but I had to step out to whatever the next event was. I had heard that the previous night had been wild, but this night was underwhelming.

MARY LATTIMORE

The next day at the Bijou Theater on her own, Mary Lattimore gave a much more engaging set, using her now fairly primitive delay and looping unit, she unfolded her gentle harp melodies, playing music from across her career, including the harp side of many of her duet recordings.  Mary is interesting as an artist, falling somewhere between Ambient, New Age and the Avant-Garde.

LARAAJI

Laraaji has performed at many Big Ears Festivals, but I have never seen him there before, so I thought I would finally catch one. Joined by his partner, Arji, playing shakers, bells, Tibetan singing bowl  and other, quiet percussion, his performance had its moments, like when he played piano with a melodic palette that seemed drawn from the 1950s including “O Shenandoah.” That segment really put me in the moment, but once he went into his extended spiritual rap, I was out of there. He did have one of the best quotes of the festival though, when he thought he was finished only halfway-through: “I’ve lost track of Earth time.”

SUN RA ARKESTRA WITH YO LA TENGO

Sun Ra Arkestra with Yo La Tengo was much better than I anticipated. The indie-rock trio integrated nicely with the Arkestra as they came on the stage storming in full avant-garde, free-blowing mode. Sadly that was the end of that aspect as they went through their greatest hits of songs that are actually songs like “Outer Spaceways Incorporated,” “Nuclear War” and “Dreaming.” But they managed to jam them out, and even had a dancer cavorting across the stage. Ira Kaplan, in particular, got some storming distortion-laden guitar in there that fit just right. He also sang some complimentary vocal harmonies with Arkestra singer Tara Middleton, who was in fine voice. Yo La Tengo got a few songs in, the best of which was the modal vamp of “Let’s Be Still.”

So that ends my circuitous recitation of my actual path through Big Ears Festival 2025, which, if you read my pre-Festival article, “My Path Through Big Ears Festival 2025,” you’ll note I went way off course. I was derailed a bit by the two panels that I moderated and some long-time reunions that required me to be present. I couldn’t tell you how many people came up and told me I had missed the greatest show. Among them, Tortoise, Charles Lloyd tribute to Zakir Hussain, William Tyler and the Philip Glass Ensemble. But I had just as many great ones to tell them they’d missed.

Once again, Big Ears Festival remains the best and most exhilarating festival in the country, if not the world.