March 2025
The Rossi Bar

A balmy evening, unexpectedly give us Emma Papper and Jason Smart on a return from their Daytrip to Europa set last time, for the night bus to Bognor. To be fair I think we got a lot more space music this time round, but let’s investigate. Starting with a kicking bass drum and abstract electronics and glitches, Jason introduces the set with the title track, there’s a nice counter-play between the straightforward drums and speech and the total abstraction of the clicks, whirrs and bells of Emma’s electronics, I can’t quite work out what she’s triggering from the Electric Wind Instrument. The next song has something about dentists, an acoustic guitar loop from the laptop, shaker rhythm, and total space wibbles, shooting stars etc. from Emma. The next track starts off with a much fiercer rhythm, double kicks, and plenty of percussion, “It is what it is” Mr C style, delayed swoops, gated pings, little swirls. The next one starts with strummed acoustic again from the laptop, “Humdrum” vocals and space swirls from Emma, the second half takes off, losing the guitar and whirling off into swooshing spirals and Casio drones. The next starts off with a nice plucked 12 string riff and synth parts, something of Lazy Sunday Afternoon’s about it. Back to beats for the penultimate track – 4 to the floor, shimmering synth pads and a bassline, “I’m losing you” The EWI seems to be summoning up feedback guitar screech alongside the familiar space-noise and offbeat synth propulsion. A nice little bit of reverse drums to end. There’s a very short custard song. The last one is back into the interaction of poo-psyche acoustic guitar strum and space music.

An unwell Evey occupies the middle ground this evening, his bifurcated set heading veering into both noisy techno and melancholy coldwave. Although… it starts with a slowed bell and wind, and hard plucked zither sample all Get Carter style, into melancholic piano, and the first sub bass of the evening drops. It’s a slow motion crawl into the set decaying out in a mush of delays and harpsichord. The second track is a pounder though fierce fast bass, the zither back harder, they shift about changing focus while a hissing snare heralds the rhythm track. Counter lines on a percussive synth storm in. Delay enhances the melodic qualities of the zither while everything else just gets more intense. The next track starts with bowed cymbal and feedback and an old fashioned bassline on the 16ths, with skittering kicks, Chloe sings: it’s a counterpoint. James reinforces on the chorus. The synth hooks layer up, and it feels very mid 80s Germany in the best possible way. Feedback out and into a monster arpeggiating bass. The lopsided beats completed by slow motion melodic synth, then some fiercely competitive percussion pushes it along into a weird drop, that doesn’t so much build as just get louder and more intense before dropping again to the arpeggio. We get another slow build into a more chaotic end section. The next son starts with a syncopated woodblock and James singing, an abstract synth melody, a slower bassline. Insistent without becoming fast or dense, a bit of a breather…. And then back into the fierce basslines again. Ringing, gently rattling hi hat and Chloe singing again. A breakdown, then back with a more relaxed bassline, and a snare, all nostalgic white noise. The final song starts with a bass guitar line James voice lost in a spring reverb, a shifting pad provides propulsion before a Dr Rhythm superfast hi-hat starts in. There’s some call and response between various synth lines and they’re done.

And finally, it’s someone new to us, part of the Ceremonial Laptop crew. Cederick Knox are performing an AV set, cut ups of video with Theremin and synth, the collages collated for more than disjointed disruption, it feels really carefully put together. Layers of church organ speech, looping and overlapping. Drums, chirruping bird song, children’s choir, this is going to be hard to describe, just a list of things a proper kaleidoscope of sight and sound. Hooky and rhythmical. At times beautifully melancholic, and then a hooter adds some daftness, before you realise it’s part of some cleverly designed beat, made of machines and speech and splashing puddles. A breakdown and a slow build from loops of ticking, violin stabs, voices, flutes, dancing feet, claps, eventually into bass and synth & squawking and clanking, and then a veer sideways into something confusingly psychedelic reminiscent of The United States Of America. The set is split into sections, the third (?) starts with a string quartet from hell, violins, bass, Theremin, big string stabs, dropping to swinging jazz basslines interspersed with applause and then it drops again, this time to a solo piano, bringing in cello with a slowly unfolding line that gets lost eventually in layers of teenage voices. The final section begins with a loop of a voice or breathy sax, layered against vibes, bass, bursts of a trebly drum solo, a chorus line from an opera (?), more of that applause, its mesmeric, then drops to a Japanese guitarist being interviewed on young musician of the year, while he plays in the background, looped for a couple of minutes, its gorgeous and melancholy. Apparently 5 months before he badly damaged his left hand. Which is sad as it was amazing playing. Literally cries of “Bravo!” at the end, that’s a first. First it was people dancing now “Bravo”.