July 2016
Green Door Store
Shirty
Shirty sets up on the stage, a keyboard and laptop, at his feet a light (oddly making his feet a focal point of the show) and slowly leaking smoke machine and to each side of the synth a thin black tower just visible joining these towers in the smoke wisping up are three traces of green light. he runs a techno front track (what’s the opposite of a backing track? everything but the drums?) and supplies the beats shadow boxing the lines to provide the beats. he does three tracks like this in total slowly getting more complex, the last one has a slowly unfolding piano part that he loops his hand played rhythms into. After these three he gets audience members up to play around, some guitar samples are loaded in, or some T99 stabs. I almost rush up for a bash at “Anastasia”. Its a lot of fun.
Before Ian and Nick get started Alex Peckham shows two short films, one by Jo Knell (aka Jojo Gingerhead) and one of his featuring her hands and sewing machine. they segue well, and the soundtrack shifts between them are nice from Jojo’s noises to Alex’s cut up soundtrack, with its almost verse chorus structure.
Nicholas Langley and Ian Murphy
Ian Murphy and Nicholas Langley are set up with their piano guts spilling over the wall from the Green Door Store room area out onto the main floor. Everyone gathers round as they apply their machines, bits of metal and odd devices to the thing, working around the soundboard, swapping sides, back and forth. Endlessly fascinating as theatre and at its best when they work together on a pattern of sounds for a while, not quite rhythmic, repeating, they are listening and playing – improv as it should be – but on a single instrument. Somehow they seem to cover a lot of ground from the first few Pink Floyd albums. Very odd, that. Nice.
Aqua Dentata
And to finish the evening off, in complete contrast to everything we’d had previously was Aqua Dentata, its his first visit to Brighton in two years and the first time ever at The Spirit of Gravity, so we’ were really chuffed as he got to work on the PA, slowly chasing up the ends of the sound spectrum with his constantly developing stasis of highly detailed drones. Without anything obviously changing he keeps us mesmerised with shifts of stereo balance, tonality, timbre. The bass is full and the top end hits several sweet spots I never knew existed in my tinnitus ranges. Gorgeously wafting out with the gentle wash of Eddie bowing a flying saucer..
