Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts special reports | Peace, but no quiet
It is hard to write about music, or sound, in a way that really conveys the experience of hearing. I like Neil Perry’s take on Yoko Ono in Norway.
It is an unsettling experience, standing in a corner of a foreign field watching a 73-year-old woman scream. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill yelling, mind, in which many of the bands participating in this year’s Øya festival in Oslo, Norway, have indulged; this is fully amplified heart-and-soul hollering, with sharp overtones of ruptured yak, damaged fan belt and rusty pneumatic drill, and it is making people nervous.