October 2015
Green Door Store
The Birds of Death Valley
To start the evening we had the return of The Birds of Death Valley for their first show in an age. Dom was on pretty good form on a chair centre stage with iPad and bass guitar, stage right had Howard on recorder, venerable Wasp and some other bits and pieces, and flanking the oil drum table Ben on whistle, kettle trumpet, pipe and unused slide cornet. They started with a fairly abstract song of floating buzzes and analogue-y drones, before the kettle and a bassline get into a more rhythmic mode, the recorder tipping us over into more fragile almost Takako Minekawa area.
F.Ampism
Next up was F.Ampism with his electronical cassette collages. On this form he has to be the best person doing this in Brighton at the moment, a stunning set, multi layered and constantly moving, there were some really interesting textures; voices, percussion, and an urgency – no sitting back and letting things wash over the audience, a constant evolution of audio images, evocative and rather mesmerising. Something about the quality of the sound put me in mind of the soundtrack to Black Orpheus, but I can’t quite say what.
Caines & Eldridge
Finally we had Alice Eldridge & Ron Caines celebrating the launch of “Rothko Veil” the latest release on our Spirit of Gravity label (spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/rothko-veil). They recorded the album in 2011, and this may have been the first time they’d played together since and it really felt like something special right from the start. They started with “Sukran” one of the themes off the album, and it was a really good choice . Alice’s thrummed cello almost a bass part circling loop like while Ron’s lyrical playing really set the mood for the rest of their set and gave him a great starting point to work from. They had the themes for the evening on music stands and use another two from the album and two new ones. Alice going through chamber music sonorities and rhythmic parts to drones and over the bridge harshness, while Ron really let fly as the evening progressed.
Anthony from [beep], playing as Arboria Auralist, turns up late and line checks and seems to be enjoying himself so much he just plays on, lots of toys with indeterminate function. Some look quite expensive and are impressively tactile, some look home-made and make superbly scrungy noises. His set is suitably freeform and, as the lights get dimmed to accommodate the eventness of his playing, a general air of blissing out takes over from the “what is that thing-ness” although the Tenori-on has a delightful pinball kind of visualisation going on for a rhythm part near the end that I find quite engaging.
Ampism is Paul from Bolide’s solo project, tapes and small synth and effects, its very clean, surprisingly given the source materials, with a nicely constructed sound collage feel. With some proper bass.
Stereocilia is John Scott and plays a lengthy psychedelic set that starts with synth drones and loops before he switches back to his guitar and arpeggios quite nicely over the top, still keeping the loops and drones going in the background, there is a nice point where the background layers fall away leaving only his guitar picking and he adds in a couple of bass string scrapes that sound like Humpback Whale song and another one where the rain against the window makes the sound of a snare resonating against the skin of a non-existent drum.
Then Anthony plays his closing set, a more loose affair than the first, even allowing for the way that had started, with people gathered around looking at what he’s up to, but he does get the hydrophone into his glass of beer, which is good, even if it makes me worry about him spilling sticky drops over everything else as he bangs it about on the table. Good. This is what it’s all about.