Tag: The Birds of Death Valley

Buzz and thrum

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

October 2015
Green Door Store

The Birds of Death Valley

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

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

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.

the colours flow through me

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Following from last months show, where we had _minimal vector provide up to the minute processed images, we went back to old school slide projectors and incense for what was billed as an evening of twenty first century psychedelia.
The first shot is what we saw (we had projectors on stage, couldn’t get quite enough smoke up for full effect due to the high level of electric fan action going on).

J’m Black played a set with his new loop setup, which seemed to include some breaks and beats that were quite unexpected. An excellent set of improvised pieces, which included some amazing space guitar and a terrific bit of Jazz/Space call and response guitar, with the response seeming to come from the other side of time.

J’mBlack-TakeTheFifth.mp3

The Birds of Death Valley were a duo, and it’s hard to find fault with an act that start their set with a Theremin, so I won’t. A space electronica dub tribute to Sun Ra with robes and shades, the Theremin I’ve mentioned and cornet. And Planet earth in her glory full screen behind.

The Birds of Death Valley-orbital_point.mp3



And to round the evening off ElMaes, a five piece, played “5” in a long version, sitar (Hot Roddy/Same Actor) and tablas, electronics and voices (more voices in fact than there seemed to be people talking). Incense and swirly lights I’ve also mentioned. Didn’t I?

elmaes300=(5+5over5)x50.mp3