Month: January 2016

The Baby feast begins

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

January 2016
Green Door Store

Goitt

Goitt Jack starts his set off with some statement making monster bass blasts. They really make full use of the Green Door Store’s extended bass frequencies, they’re slow and powerful and he builds up some other regular noises in there before picking up his saxophone and letting it rip into his effects chain. There’s some pretty heavy distortion in there and his playing pretty quickly builds in intensity, with the bass blasts getting twisted with pitch bends before it falls away and starts building again around a more complex sequence. I think he could barely talk for a while after the end of that, he looked completely blown out.

Komuso

Komuso Komuso (Derek and Cliff) are joined on stage by Der Rompf (Robert and Stephen). Starting slow, grit and warble with e-bowed guitar sliding in. A big metal sheet propped up against one of the GDS oil drum tables and electronic drums rattle in a Martin Denny-esque exotic patter, curling the guitar off into arabesques before fading out into noise and space whorls. Cliff has an interesting approach to the electronic drums, scraping around the edge and beating the limits rather than time. It builds again before sliding down to a quiet keyboard figure before some bassy growling gets them in the mood for proper metal bashing beats and space beeps to out.

Baby

Baby Baby start warble and growl; cornet against cello with vibraphone bell and scrape before it starts to get a bit ominous with some choral decay before will gets onto the acoustic guitar and thinks get into more spacious territory, Alice’s cello dropping to strummed bass figures, odd Vibe tones, stroke of drum and slow cornet or Korg from Al, before Will suddenly stands and switches to flute which picks thing up, Adam beating cymbals, Will circling, the synth toning and Alice harsh jars on the bass strings with a moment of suspension with Al’s effects suspended lighter than air before the cello drones in all scare and we spiral out to nothing. The second piece starts with scrapes and whispers against scurried string plucks, before flute drones in underneath and the Korg does a detuned space warble under vibes and voices and isolated short flute flurries before we do an odd revisit to Denny but in a somewhat more ribald fashion

See Agata’s Flickr collection of photographs of the show at:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/agataurbaniak/albums/72157663258629026

20th January at the Scope: Fernando Perales / Baby / Static Memories / Andrew Greaves

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The Spirit of Gravity presents the Scope XVIII

Fernando Perales
Return of the South American guitar processor

Fernando Perales, musician, performer, cinema critic and boxing trainer, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1971.

Starting in 1995, for almost 10 years, Fernando Perales was part of Reynols, the surrealist and experimental Argentinian cult band. With them he released more than 30 records and tracks on dozens of compilations for experimental and noise albums from USA, Europe and Japan.

Viva La Muerte is Fernando Perales´s solo project, based on free improvisation and on the non-semantic difference between noise and traditional musical sounds, using composition and execution techniques, working without a harmonic and melodic structure, focusing on exploring the timbric and material aspect of sound and noise. Viva La Muerte is a unipersonal orchestra, composed of guitars, tapes, contact mics, pieces of metal, garage tools, metal sheets and industrial matrix fallen into disuse, creating a mix of noise, drone and post-industrial minimalism.

Baby
New album ‘Nomenclature’ out now on Bandcamp:
http://spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/nomenclature

New trio version of Baby. Will Miles on guitar and flute, Adam Bushell on Vibraphone and percussion, Alfie Weedon on double bass. New album on the Spirit of Gravity label, even though the line up is different. (Baby formerly known as Viv and Vole).

Static Memories with Will Miles
Electro-acoustic improv

Gus Garside (double bass/electronics) has worked in a variety of musical settings – jazz, contemporary music, pop, cabaret, dance, theatre and, most importantly, improvised music where he has performed with many leading players. Gus formed arc in 1988 and their third album “the pursuit of happiness” was released on Emanem Records in 2009. He formed In Sand in 2004 and their first album Whatever came out mid 2008.
Gus is part of the Brighton Safehouse collective. He has collaborated with a wide range of improvising and contemporary music players and dancers and frequently works with laptop musicians and also performs solo.
“…where he differs from the average jazz bassist is in the range of sonorities he conjures from his instrument” Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD

Dan Powell, (guitar, electronics, small percussion), began making sound for installation works in London in the mid 90′s and was involved in live arts group OMSK.
Since moving to Brighton in 2000 he has concentrated on experimental and improvised music. He is a member of Brighton based collective The Spirit of Gravity and has performed across the UK. Dan is also a member of free improv duo Nil with Chris Parfitt.

Will Miles is the founder of Baby and a well known local improvisor and musician. He generally plays flute and guitar

Andrew Greaves has an Electrocreche piece

Andrew Greaves is a musician and composer living in Brighton, last year he performed a piece written for Terry Riley’s birthday at the Lost Property event.
For tonight he has written a special piece based on the idea of collaborating with the Electrocreche.

The Electrocreche is something from very early in the history of The Spirit of Gravity, in order to avoid having someone inflict their record collection on the audience between acts, it was decided to bring down a collection of rubbish keyboards and toy instruments and let audience members loose on them. With Hilarious Consequences.

Plus Lissajous figure projections

Wednesday 20th January | 8.00pm – 11.00pm | Feed the piggy donations on the door please
@ The Caroline of Brunswick, 39 Ditchling Rd, Brighton

Obfuscation and misdirection, the close up magic of aleatoric scores

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December 2015
The Scope XVII

We don’t normally run a show this far into December, but we had the opportunity to do something with HardWorking Families and go about realising some of Dann Hignell’s text scores, so it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed.

Duncan Harrison

Duncan Harrison Duncan Harrison was originally slated for the middle slot, but as we had only three acts and were starting late he opted for the first. The score he was performing was this (page 115):
“A short reflection upon the fact
That those on the outside
Have as much right to be here as any of us that
Their voices carry through walls and
If they don’t they should
(I am not sure how you would put this to song but a good start
Might be to ask everyone to open a window)”

We didn’t know that at the time, but the realisation went something like this: Duncan had a portable cassette player on a table with a small stage type lamp next to it. He switched it on and it appeared to be a recording made downstairs in a bar, it was quite trebly and distorted. He started the tape and got up and ran around the room checking the windows and then turned the lights down and cleared off. We could hear noises coming from outside the door, so I was expecting him to come back. he didn’t after about 20 minutes during which we’d kind of worked out it was a recording from downstairs (punk, Saxon and suchlike through the distorted conversation) someone went downstairs for a drink.

“I don’t think he’s around”
Tom went and checked, “I can’t see him anywhere”
So at around 30 minutes we turned the lights back up and started setting up for Tom’ s set, but without the electrocreche, and we started chatting over it then at 45 minutes the tape finished “clunk” and everyone cheered.

It makes a lot more sense knowing which score he was performing, I don’t even think Dann Hignell did at the time – excellent levels of confusion.

Hardworking Families

HardWorking Families Hardworking Families without Nan; unfortunately Nan shipped their Cello off to far-most Africa two days before the show and we couldn’t source a replacement in time. This meant Hardworking Families had to step in to cover the fray on their own. I’m sure there’s some kind of wider metaphor there, but I’m going to move on.

Anyway, it was Tom Bench with his new glittery guitar from the Train of Thought Emporium. And a nicely constructed set of Noises through the effects chain, some playing of cassettes into the pickups and the player rubbed on the strings, some things inserted in the strings and general muckaboutery at a reasonable volume for the most part before he stood up and started trying to get some feedback going.

There was some feeling that the cassette voices at the beginning was almost a continuation or reference back to Duncan’s set, but I’m not sure if that was intentional, or just me.

Dan Hignell Ensemble

Dan Hignell Ensemble

Dan Hignell had his ensemble set up through the middle of the room facing the screen so they could see the scores. From left to right looking at the backs of their heads (i.e. towards the stage, if you like) were Dan Hignell on a lovely old portable organ, all brushed aluminium and slightly bent plastic sliders, Kev Nickells on Violin and sharing a French horn with John Guzek who played violin, too, then on the far side from me Barnabas Yianni on some electronic things.

They ran through about six of Dan’s scores with accompanying cards, the realisations varying from scratchy repeated violin figures, to the feeling of someone wrestling with a French horn on the beach. some pieces felt like the musicians were working against each other some as if everyone was in their own universe. The last piece was a bit special, it was quite a bit longer than all the others, Dan playing space organ drone figures, with very long violin slides from one player with the other providing some over the bridge wrenching and Yianni’s electronics running in the background bringing a repeated pip figures, with the piece ending on a slight crescendo with arpeggiating violin parts.

A good Scope to end the year, really filling out the ideas we had for it when we started doing it.

7th January at the Green Door Store: Baby / Komuso / Goitt

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Artisanal electronics and locally sourced experimental music

Baby
2nd album launch (will, Alice, Alastair, Adam)

The long awaited second album from Baby (aka Viv and Vole) will be available on the Spirit of Gravity label to coincide with this show.

Komuso
Psychedelic electronics (Hoodlum Priest/SPK)

Derek Thompson (SPK, Hoodlum Priest) returns with his first Komuso set for a long time.

Goitt
Slow motion Elephant sax collisions

Jack Cottrell’s reed sourced noises filtered into crones and extreme improv, with the possibility of unrecognised guitar and freefall Elephant slow motion screams.

Thursday 7th January | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5
@ The Green Door Store
Undercroft, Brighton Train Station, BN1 4FQ Brighton