October 2022
The Rossi Bar
Gus Garside returns to the Rossi Bar for this wintery evening show, he stands at the front of the stage with his double bass an array of pedals at his feet. He feeds some long drawn notes from the bass, some rattles into the pedal chain, puts down the bass and gets down on the floor noisician style to get to grips with his effects chain for a hypnotic opener. The second piece starts with some low key notes thrummed from the bass with the beater into the effects chain, It ends early with an unexpected bit of kit behaviour and a quip that draws a laugh from the audience. The second piece is a return to something he played the week before at an impromptu set at the Green Door Store, all low level subsonics and extended technique creaks. Its abstract and speaker destroying, washes around the room quite nicely. By the end of the piece the sub bass is booming quite ominously.
Then also returning to the Rossi Bar and The Spirit of Gravity we have MelJoann, she’s just about to release a new single from her deep dive into wellness cults (sorry lifestyle brand) and The Mustics™ corporation. We start with an advert for Mustics that ends in a nasty sonic noise and switches directly into the first song the old favourite, “Assfuck the boss” from her last album “HR”, there are some problems with feedback whistles due to monitor problems, but the occasional whistles are mostly in tune. This sing is all massive bass whooshes detuned synths and breathy sarcasm (a feature of her set). The second song “Rainbow language” has a more martial feel, the bass has a monster buzz to it, The third song switches back to the “HR” album for ravey stomp that seems to touch on every decade since the 1970s for synth touches. Then it’s the second Ad. The next song has a more contemporary feel, with rattling trap-ish hi-hats and multiple basslines that tip over into drum and bass frenzy at times. The next comes on like a Kate Bush having been forced to work in a call centre rather than live in Surrey. The last song “Business Card” is crushing bass, strident mid tempo synths and Missy Elliot drum parts.
The whole thing comes on like a head on collision between top rate song writing abilities, Biting satiric anger at the way the modern world tries to consume us all, extreme sonic sensibilities and an incredible sense of world building. I didn’t mention the keytar.
I am Fya (Fire, if you were wondering), hasn’t played for us before, played a set for us based around field recordings made in Barbados while exiled there during lockdown.
The first piece starts with exotic birdsong, into which she passes sporadic percussion and vocals for heavy processing. Bells. Buzzing synth swoops. Glitching. An aeroplane passes. Ominous drones creep in as the vocals circle each other. A bass line shows itself and disappears. Conversation, an old lady talks to us just beyond the comprehension threshold. The bassline turns into extended thrumming notes. A rhythm track is just discernible, the bass starts popping. Tempo goes up to frenetic as the vocal is pitched out of control. The second track “Second Home” starts with what sounds like a factory noise forced into bassline shape, coarse metallic but tonal, again heavily processed wordless vox. Lots of space, a creepy pad that sounds like wind blowing through a UFO wreck, bells. A staccato hammer mid-range bash where a bassline should be, the bass being long tones and timbres. By the time it finishes it’s a song. There’s a funny conversation about Radiohead. Which I think has something to do with the third song, but that passes me by. This one is built around a loop of something I can almost pinpoint, its rhythmic, has bass and midrange elements that fit quite nicely as a song base. She layers conversation and vocals over this, then a drum loop from about 1990 drops in. She rides this groove with a lengthy vocal section and then it drops away to a fairly abstract half tempo section. The next track features vocals from a young family member, a song she made up. Over a slow rhythm informed by a flapping sound overlaid with a dancehall bass drum and detuned spooky synth. Anthea really gets to work on the Rossi Bars sub bass units on this one with a nice sparse bassline. Tasty. She finishes up with her new single on Rose Hill records “Consciousness” starting with fat bass winds and a ticking rocking chair, then a vocal section (lyrical rather than the previous wordless vocals) some bass structure and a breakdown that brings in a box rattling break, the vocals layer up. Submarine pings. A vocal breakdown and then the bass distorted returns proud and evil, getting slower and slower, more and more ominous while Anthea pushes her voice, it’s an unexpected end, powerful rather than the beat frenzy I felt was coming. Nicely done.