Xylitol: Post kosmishche jungle techno
Expedient Self: Looping dissonance
Plurals: The return of Brighton’s premier drone artists
Brighton based producer Cat Backhouse, aka Xylitol. Jungle Techno, with elements of Bedsit Krautrock, & Minimal Electronics. Xylitol’s music channels the fiery brutalism of early grime, minimal-wave and the potting shed electronics of unsung tape-music pioneers such as FC Judd. She has soundtracked radio plays and films by Peter Strickland (who also released her second 7″ EP ‘Kunst Ist Tot’ in 2013) and Piaou Xie, collaborated with Sculpture, Belbury Poly (Ghost Box) and industrial music legends Nocturnal Emissions and recorded split releases with Gloria Gloucestershire and Libbe Matz Gang.
xylitol.bandcamp.com/
Expedient Self is a solo guitar act who plays a loop-based bastardisation of post-rock, no wave and drone. He has released two EPs and a single to date, with the latest EP – Chairs – receiving a tidy writeup in the Wire, which said that his music shows “a great sense of how to assemble discordant elements into a weirdly coherent whole.”
expedientself.bandcamp.com/
Ex-‘regulars on the UK experimental scene’ group Plurals continue their more recent ‘appearing once or twice a year if that’ path of sonic ambivalence, having recently not really noticed achieving 15 years of existence. This is their third appearance at Spirit of Gravity, yet first in over a decade, highlighting either the determination or naivety of both promoter and band. Nevertheless, Plurals’ long standing reputation for high volume noise drone catharsis remains in place, and will be coaxed into a cerebral and aural reality for all those in attendance.
Plurals have released material on Dead Pilot Records, Oaken Palace, Southern Records (Latitudes Sessions), Tor Press, Dead Sea Liner, Striate Cortex, RHP CDrs, Vacant Fulfilment, Structured Disasters, Panarus Productions and Sheepscar Light Industrial. Belgian label Silken Tofu has released a 2xCD live album, as well as a largely ambient 12″ called Tri Tone. Additionally, Plurals have issued a small number of self-releases. In April 2023 they debuted on Mahorka with the album “Growing the Sea”, released also as digipak CD edition.
Hosted by our very own DJ Cheesemaster
Chris [Symmetrical Forces] creates live visuals for each performance using his own lo-fi footage, dusty VHS tapes and obscure videos from the internet to create futuristic images from the past overlayed with out-of-reach memories and vague fragments of lost visions.
The Rossi Bar is a small grade II building, and they are restricted with how they can improve access for anyone with mobility issues. The live music venue is located in the basement, which can only be accessed by a short spiral staircase. More accessibility information and images of the venue are in this document:
spiritofgravity.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/The-Spirit-of-Gravity-at-The-Rossi-Bar-for-audience-members.pdf
If you can’t make it to the Rossi Bar, you can now live stream all of our gigs on our new Owncast platform at stream.gravitons.org/.
“The Spirit of Gravity: making experimental music a threat again – since 2001”
Thursday 4th January 2024 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA