Saved is available via online via ZOOTV.LIVE.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
This show is set in a shabby, cluttered living room – shades of beige and brown – matching Graeme Leak, looking perfectly ‘at home’ in this setting.
Building layers of sound on loop systems via two rather large electric organs, Leak adds some percussive sounds using everyday objects, such as a jar being rolled on a tray, until he is apparently satisfied with the sound to add his own voice as the final layer. His voice is surprising in that it has a quality that is unexpected and at odds with the appearance of this bespectacled rather domestic gent. A tone that varies between Bowie and Elton John is a pleasant surprise.
The lyrics are nakedly ‘everyday’, yet with repetition are somehow altered to seem to carry more weight and meaning that increases with each repetition.
Moving between the musical pieces, Leak seems to almost forget that he is “on” as he becomes so engrossed in building new looped sounds, using sticks to hold keys down on the electric organs; back to his audience, he tweaks every detail of sound until he seems satisfied. If the objective is to encourage the audience to listen acutely, it is met as nothing distracts from recognising changes in the sounds being played.
There is a saying in theatre when a show is all but complete: “it needs an audience. Saved is probably best watched in a group, as if in a theatre, as it is comical watching this character try and achieve the sound he’s looking for. One section in particular where he experiments with rhythmic beats, varying what is used to create the sound he’s looking for, would play very well ‘live’.
As is displayed on one of the later vignettes, these electric organs boast an impressive range of built-in effects – instant chords; speed variation; pitch variation and so forth. The fun here is in finding what sounds can be produced without the built-in technology. When the recipe works well enough, it ought to be recorded and ‘saved’.
Inventive fun with a sprinkling of charm.
Fiona Orr
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