Tag: Rashamon

Nocturnal Lee

Febrary 2023
The Rossi Bar

The first act of the evening is Alien Alarms, he’s set up with his launch-pad angled towards us so we can get some idea of what’s going on, and it’s really interesting you can get a much better feel of the way Jim is interacting with the rhythm tracks when you can see what’s going on, beats starting, chopping, and he seems to be really going to town with it for us, stammering the vocal parts and really getting into messing with the beats. The first track is quite slow, tooth rattling sub-sonics and eerie synth, someone deep voiced talking about the wheel of life, the beat almost stalling. The second uses Sun Tzu read by a woman, guitar parts by his son, and singing by Jim. There is an early 2000s nu jazz feel to the top layer undermined by the intricacy of the beat and the dubbing fx. The third is “Less of almost Everything” off the album, again Jim sings, it seems slow, the bass is vast. The fourth track is his track for the upcoming Spirit of Gravity compilation, its starts ponderously, pianos come in, the beat stops and starts becoming more energised each time, the bass turns to a buzzing drone and the beats get almost up to DnB levels underneath. No hi-hats to make it take flight, big piano chords break it up. The vocal samples speed up and it ends on a lovely piano figure. The Aphex Twin cover he dedicates to Lou, it’s even more frenetic than usual as he gets right into the beats and doesn’t have vocals to distract himself with. It ends up with him chopping up the melodic line as well as the rhythm. The final track is the last one he did before getting into his AI work, strings, breaks, bass: a kind of frenzied tribute to Shut Up And Dance, in my mind at least.


Following up closely behind we have Hannya White for her Spirit of Gravity debut, she got in touch with us by sending a track for the radio show, which we loved, so invited her down to play. It starts with breath and a mono-tonal, metronomic bass. She murmurs dogs bark. Bits of the room vibrate. Unexpectedly a flurry of drums breaks in and disappears, this becomes predominant. The dog may now be a piano. I can hear her words more clearly. They layer, the drums are constant. The second track starts with drums. Not what you’d call a rhythm, not at first, a very 80s sounding bass synth, the drums like a double time grime pattern. Something erratic is happening over the solidifying drums. The third starts Star Trek-like, a hammering bass drum confuses us and the filters take away the melody, she talks, pizzicato strings, bowed strings. Fire. The fourth starts with slurred strings and earthquakes. Spaceships, vocal drones. Atonal strings and held breaths. The next starts with an organ sound: bass-y rhythms with stabs laid around them, that falls apart to pin point piano and voice, jazzy cymbal, bits of that organ. The sixth steps everything back up with a fat bass-y pulse, rattle-y drums, kettle whistle, woodblock syncopation and voice. Scary sounds come in from the cars in the woods. The bass falls away and all gets proper creepy and we run away. We finish with possibly “Hauling it down to Mexico” which was our choice. A creaking bassline, screams, Bernard Herriman strings, highway running drums. The whole set is a soundtrack of deranged wonder, shifting, powerful & slightly terrifying.


We finish with the return of Rashamon, for his first set at a regular Spirit of Gravity show for around 10 years. Lee starts with a gated shifting synth, big drones underneath, some of his trademark use of film dialogue intact, then off into song-land a repeated intricate synth figure, some Vangelis string synth, before a big bass kicks in. There are some heart-melting melodic lines before the drums roll in. There’s a classic breakdown and everything returns, a bit darker ; a bit more intense than the first time around. The second breakdown is all bass and weird detuned sounds floating around. When everything comes back the intensity is again ramped up, the melodic line subsumed under the newer tonalities. This segues straight into a lighter arpeggiating line, the weird noises tailing slowly off into piano lines and returning first as radio interference then as rhythm. The third track starts with a skipping bass drum and snare pattern with vocal sample, before a monstrous buzzing hardcore bassline comes in. it drops again, leaving just an echoed stab over the drums before returning in a much more subdued form with a melodic line over it; everything locked together, everything rolling. I stop making notes and just nod my head…. The next starts with a piano vamp under-tracked by Trek bridge noises and a high two note motif that gives it just enough melodic structure. Another piano part comes in and the two notes expand out into a full line. There are reverbed drums, unobtrusive; some dialogue I’m not sure is from the room or the speakers. The final track starts by layering up some heavily indistinct drums over that, it keeps the two notes, a swirl of arpeggios twist away underneath, nagging at the shape of the piece, synth-y drones float in, the drums fade away and we’re left with the sequences and bridge noises. Sublime.



21st Birthday party

June 2022
The Race Hill

Thanks again to everyone who came to the All day birthday party, we had a brilliant day. Thanks to the artists who came down and without exception played a brilliant set.
Thanks to Abraham, Kassia and Jukes from The Rose Hill for their help and support.

McCloud:

 

Bela Emerson and I’m Dr Buoyant:

 

Distant Animals:

 

R. Dyer:

 

Terror Wogan:

 

Screaming Alice:

 

Rashamon:

 

Dan Powell:

 

Fallow:

 

Dhangsha:

 

Meemo Comma:











now, thats a youtube moment

The second gig gets written up first: For Brighton live we took over the window of the clothes Shop juju in the North Laine as part of the Brighton Live promoters festival.

We set up _minimalVector inside the shop with a projector and his laptop for visuals, Tim and Soly kindly cleared the window and a rack of clothes inside.

Hot Roddy took first place and drew quite a crowd. He played a blinding set for about 40 minutes. Lee took a picture:


ANd we recorded an mp3:

hot_roddy-the_generation_game.mp3

Second in the space was Rashamon, hot foot from his show at Concorde2. Lee played a trademark set of hip hop inspired beats, beautiful washes and detailed psychedelia.

Heres the tail end of his set:
rashamon-Kelowna_Radio+Girl_ from_81.mp3

Last of all Terror Wogan let rip with the Atari stomp. crunching lo-fi 8bit ragga and electro.
terror_wogan-alien_mouse_dance.mp3

pleased to say, that a passer by did capture the moment for us and post it up to youtube. Thanks clubberholic. He’s also the source for the photo’s up on flickr – so double thanks.

January Songs and things

Rashamon and the ghost. i suspect its possible to construct a history of the world from the live versions of !Mates to Some Pilgrim”. But I’m not going to help you to do it by posting the great version from this show.
Instead here is Lees remix of The Uneven Dots song “Assembling at Dusk“.
He likes it so much he plays it out even if it is ‘unfinished’.

Komon gets too songs on the blog, mostly cos we loved Antonia’s cover of “Velocity Girl” so much, and it is so short we had to include one of her own songs too – “Take it as a compliment“. And because we loved that one, too.


And as for choosing one of Twocsinak’s songs, very tricky, too. And then there is the problem of what the name of the song actually may be. So we emailed Joe….

‘ (it) is one of a trilogy of songs, going under the umbrella title “Three submissions for Readers Digest”; it is the third section, entitled “Poetry for the elderly” or possibly “The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot)”. If it were to have an individual title, therefore, it would be “Three submissions for Readers Digest – iii) Poetry for the elderly: ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (T.S. Eliot)”. But that’s a bit long; also, I tend to give live recordings different names to the actual recorded version. In which case, could you call it “An anagram of toilets, accidentally started an octave too low (live submission)”? ‘

Um, I don’t think I did call it that in the end, cos I couldn’t be bothered turning the spaces into underscores.
twocsinak-3 submissions for readers digest pt III.

That’s all, next month something very different.