KlangHaus

The List / Claire Sawers


KlangHaus, the House of Sound, smells of antiseptic, is dimly lit, and echoes with the sounds of dark lounge music and clattering snare drums. Part gig, part promenade sound installation, KlangHaus is presented by The Neutrinos, ‘a female fronted alt-rock band’, with help from visual artist Sal Pittman.

It’s by turns disorientating and soothing, a sleepy swirl of anaesthesis and gentle confusion, scented with hospital corridors and close-up skin. Summerhall’s former small animal hospital is the perfect underground backdrop for their black lullabies; the bars of what look like animal prison cells are draped with naked lightbulbs and invented bike-part instruments, and tools are dragged and clanked across the metal as beats drift in from next door.

It’s an industrial gig, with sugary cabaret solos and baritone lyrics about butchers and milk, cross-bred with an a cappella ghost tour round an amazing space, where whiteboards from the 1970s still wait for the animal’s breed and surgeon to be inked in, and stainless steel operating tables carry battering drum solos. They wanted to create ‘a 360-degree immersive experience’, exploring ‘the extremes of performance’. It may never get particularly extreme, but there’s something special about a gig that ends with singers disappearing up a ceiling hatch, and listeners being released, blinking, out a back door next to a gin still.