Author: Spirit of Gravity

White crusty muffins

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

December 2023
The Rossi Bar

Starting with Llaabb wwoorrkk, white coated boffins surrounded by an array of identifiable and unidentifiable objects, things to rattle, buttons to push, things to bash and things to gong. An array of percussion, from the tiniest up to a meter wide gong and an East European clone of a Putney VCS. What’s not to love, it’s the first outing for Dolly’s new project with an old friend Simon, and it marvellous, short vignettes of synth business and percussion and whistling, starting with what sounds worryingly like feedback to the sound engineer, but is in fact deliberate, that gives way to a lovely pulsing, with the mentioned whistling. The next piece is chimes and enveloping swoops of synthy-ness. Some lovely modulations unfolding. I’m going to concentrate inevitably on the showy synth, but it’s all really well framed by Dolly’s subtle percussive accompaniment. It’s all marvellously radiophonic as can’t be helped given the sound source, filmic and science fiction-y at times, wailing and droning buzzes in the wind. A set for closing the eyes and waiting for the pictures.

Second up was Secret Nuclear; and it’s not just me that thinks this was a cracking Secret Nuclear set, it’s now available via Bandcamp if you get the urge to listen to it in full. Dorking’s finest. Outflanking us at the start with a white noise/ blasting wind sound (field recording? Noise set?) before settling into a bug buzzing bass and ticking drum machine. The melodic sounds are John Carpenter-ish, OMINOUS. And slowly developing. It’s nearly halfway into his set before we hear a bass drum, and that provides rhythmic punctuation rather than an obvious beat. Even the arpeggios are unnerving, the audio samples murky and confusing sounding like they’ve been ripped from VHS.  The second song breaks into an orgy of glitchy bitcrushing before hitting a fat drone. About 20 minutes into the set a full rhythm track gets in under the heavy drones to push us along with the melody line. Then everything really comes together for the last song, the beats are suitably propulsive, the melodic lines hooky, the bass monstrous, it’s all just creepy enough, it even has a little dub version of itself in the middle. It’s another set with film score undertones.

And finally we have The Yorkshire Modular Society, he has inevitably a racked up modular, in a case that slopes up away from the table with a DR-9 drum machine underneath it, that’s sole function as far as I can tell is to have its light on so it looks nice reflected off the shiny brushed aluminium bottom of the Rack case…. and what he plays is a slowly unfolding generative drone set, ish. Is it constant enough to be drones? I’m not sure, it has high levels of almost repetition, the sound is enveloping and at a volume that it’s almost physical and warm; something to wallow in. At points Dom, ex of Brighton, gets up from his kit and wanders around to ensure the sound is right out in the room. There are sounds that come and go, a whistling wind, a washing swooshing synth, a thrum, a bass that sneaks in rattles everything and then slowly fades away again. Mind rinsing. It’s constant and constantly shifting, a drone, not a drone.



Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Sunday 26th November – 8.00 to 10.00pm

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 26th November 2023 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

This month’s show include 3 long pieces by our friends with short interludes by interesting strangers, plus an hour of tracks by Yeongrak.

First hour: Think Twice & AR Goddy Presents Yeongrak – everything should be easy (r) / Volunteers 5 (commotions) / yeyawng (waste gardeng) / fm vent (big time broken spine) / i dont fuck with, vocal cords speech patterns linguistics tongues language families s (nervegate nerveatgutogglegate) / swollen target (everyone that sauces yauces) / ground experiments (everyone that sauces yauces) / ape rottin’ (mouth mouth) / eye212121 (e) w/ cueenmask (e) / a event comes once a adfhj (big time broken spine) / rotten mound (commotions) / genes (animal protein) / cork your own creations (different weak friend every day) / radio & laptop computer & video phone is hidden in marsh1 & marsh2 near the ATP (cold brain black pineapple) / beesting (about the deepest I travelled in bed)
Second Hour: Spaghetti Blacc – Serac Collapsing Capital / Paul Khimasia Morgan – Negative Impacts / Yosuke Tokunaga – FL OORS / ascsoms – Machine Spores / Spaghetti Blacc – Decoy / Left Hand Cuts off the Right – Rotator Starts

“yeah the hider

yongrak activeates that dark breath in my ‘chest wall’
oozing (weezing) out like speaking the leaking spout

the gammar is taken off
gamma takeoff
grammes
the darkness of game

decomposition and clay retrieval

smuggling clairty in rotoscopic lava

“atrocios”

”-itis’ (disease idea)

so heavy you cuold never lift it and then it rushes your blending (flenders II) (HURLY IFLENDS)

did i give you rotten mound permissions

Bask in this knowledge bath
Basking like shark
“bath” (graey water)

talk about ‘beaks’ ‘mouth’ ‘melt’ ‘weak’

head carve
and each slice reveals hendred four new old worlds

Martin relegation hile filve

VORE spacial Em rotery

every word is subject to change, every word is subject to chance, every word is under the scent, every word is under the weight of it and under the bed, under the hill running under us like deep savage sewer
every word is in “quotations” every word is in vocalic choke hold, vocalic colic, vocalised rize and local rice

“nerve gaga”
harry ‘Plotts’
Yerng Woosh

It sounds like waste with an attention to science
It sounds like haste with slowness alliance
It sounds like taste of ceffalize nevermine

garstly expediency
running through lanes hooting
moola lanes

There is a sense of biology a nervous biologeme a biology of language
might sound silly might sound defunct but I’m rolling around
I’m rolling around in the callous victim of cartoon idea
the fallus whip
little metal script
high tide my life scrolls past
tiddle war happy leggo tiddle war
flipping to them

the body of the name and the name of the body
and so much can happyen in twenny secons
fortey naine seconds hellish remainder plain stark fish flinger

tcker tape acknowlegesys the remidner that truth remains in the length
up and down, left and right, through and through
long through my team of loose screw tighten and rubbish them the men the you
I’m led by a string of socking sound that extends beyond my many men like 50 cent
Hundred bags forteen bags the ninestyle rags the hyper ‘sags’
the usage of quotation the talking the station I’m generation I’m generating elocquation
electriquaytion

and is junking through the pile even really necessary
thats i what find mytself asking to myself
hard back dust sack must

all emerging from the darkness
nothing in the light
the dark is the hot light
this is language disbanded from the mouth mouth
language got hunted down lang dspreay

and now i want to tell everyone “shitu p” if they tell me the AI, the after space the last city in the world and The alien is getting me, i tant to tell them ‘lose you’ if you tell tme this is technology at the end, this is the game, this is ‘Japan’ i tell tehm ‘goodbye’ take the piss mate. this is not the thought from that place this is more than you could ever imagine. its within the crux and the plex, hunting from the beginning and never finding. Indle spiralling into the thicket stash. Hilling the running the lung got caught on the brush.”

End of blub

The October edition of the Spirit of Gravity Radio show is available on the ResonanceFM Mixcloud page:
www.mixcloud.com/resonanceextra/gravity-waves-and-the-spirit-world-mohammad-adam-remember-glaciers-22nd-october-2023/
This month’s show features a dark mix from Mohammad Adam, as invited by new guest editor Think Twice, plus an hour’s worth of live, generative ambience by Remember Glaciers.

Final re-release on the Spirit of Gravity BandCamp label: Green Door

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In the last of our re-releases following our 20th Anniversary in 2021, the Green Door compilation is available today. Released to mark the start of our tenure at the Green Door Store in Brighton in February 2012, it features tracks from Gravity members inspired by the popular hit tune of that name.

Stream or download here: spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/green-door

Thursday 2nd November at the Rossi Bar: Karl M V Waugh / Rashamon / Cour’en

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Karl M V Waugh: Hypnodrone osmosis + video meditations
Rashamon: Soul diving temperamental pre-apocalyptic mannerisms
Cour’en: Feminist noise EBN fusion

Karl M V Waugh presents a new Audio Visual project especially for The Spirit of Gravity.
Music | disillusiondotdotdot (bandcamp.com)
Following his album of social anxiety skewed Acid Pop (the cheekily titled ‘A Return to Form) and his whopping great mix album shortly after (‘A Form to Return’), Rashamon has been busy burrowing away at a more refined sound for his next project.
Trying to stay one step ahead of himself and beginning with ‘Cringe’ releasing on 31st October, the direction spins towards more legitimate songs in the dancehall.  Having dabbled with vocals on previous tracks ‘Sudden Moves’ and ‘Honey Monster’, Rashamon has retreated behind the flourishing beats and bobs in order to conduct AI to express his thoughts on the weight of a generation in this pre-apocalyptic world.
For his live sets, however, he will be veering more into the experimental on the go remixing and introducing the world to embryonic tracks from the next album alongside updated old favourites.  Expect breakbeats and bedlam, bleeps and whistles and scintillating dives into retro Futurism as Rashamon continues to plough forward with the seeds of what came before.

Cour’en (the apostrophe is a London “t” or glottal stop) is an act 35 years in the making, born of a mutual love for noisy pop and raucous electronic music. Cour’en mix raw vintage synthesisers with words & extreme guitar strangling to sum up their lives so far. The result is a blend of spartan Electronic Body Music, Noise Rock & feminism.

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 2nd November 2023 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

Monotron bridges

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

November 2023
The Rossi Bar

Cour’en start with laughter, and then whistling, slowly out of nothing a two note bassline starts to form,  drum machine follows, a fizzing distorted organ and Louise’s voice through loads of delay. Thoughts Collide, shouting “Broken!”, an organ solo. Brief. Back to words again and pitch bent organ and end. Some banter. The second song starts on an altogether more buzzing tip, they turned it up and the volume gives an energy to the bass. The organ this time is used for slicing punctuation. An evil guitar solo, feedback and screwdriver fuzz. Back again to words. Then everything stops into delay and guitar feedback “Wot-ot-ot-ot?”. Next one starts on bass drum, then a moodier bassline, less buzz. A spooky organ riff as it’s just after Halloween, the guitar played with an electric toothbrush this time. It drops down to drums and voice for the final voice and stop. The next one starts with an indistinct bass and strident rhythm. The bass suddenly bursts into a pinging acidy burble. The guitar on this one a filthy deep churn. Filtering synth, another one burbling. An exchange of heckling and a proper full throttle bouncing bassline, the vocals come in before the drums, “Who the fuck are you?”, a nice B52s fuzz organ riff. A guitar burst channelling Andy Gill then down to a bassline stomp to end. The last song starts with a rubber band bassline, and a weird CZ101 backwards detuned riff that warps into a modulating drone during the verses. The weird riff to end into reverb and noise and laughter.

Karl M V Waugh next up. A very different type of set, sound-tracking an op art video he’d made. “Watch this, don’t watch me”. A buzzing drone murks up out of the silence, modulating deep layers building up under it. A higher buzz sneaks in, slowly the sound develops, thickens. Still builds nothing lost, more layers; more, more layers. Nothing lost, the top layer warps out into a top buzz. Constantly shifting. A delayed keyboard clanging riff. Still building. A big Tardis modulation enfolds everything as it sweeps into existence. There’s a sound like someone struggling to shut down a feeding back 500w Marshall stack in the dark warehouse next door. It floats along like this for a while, then continues to build as a sea-swell roar swoops in. A synthetic pterodactyl can be heard over this as everything reaches the peak. I can’t see the visuals properly from where I’m sitting, God knows what’s going on there. The storm breaks into fierce acoustic winds that batter the room. Eventually it the wind dies and the bass drone slopes back in, the sea recedes and a nasty buzz envelopes everything. A distant choir, the bass splits into a thrumming bass and circular saw. There’s a lost swirl of synth and slowly everything mushes up into white noise then back down to the buzz to wind out as a single drone from a long lost set of pipes.

Finally we have a new set from Rashamon; vocals he promised us, but the lack of a mic wasn’t promising. The first track starts with what sounds like a recording of Christmas heard coming from a mall. The bass drum kicks in a marching beat, Monotron delay, staccato synth ping. A high melodic line filters between the beats and the rest of the rhythm kicks in.  Some pads before it finally breaks down for the bassline. A nice heavy filter on that. And to make up for the lack of basslines to this point we get a second and a third. A female vocal comes in, ah, its pre-recorded, its provenance unknown, we’ll find out. Hooky, mind. Some synth spirals and what sounds like the chorus and another breakdown into some squelch. Some nice little flourishes of the Monotron, it’s easy to go overboard with the filter and delay, so it’s nice to see it used in such a restrained fashion.  This is pumping. The next starts with an old style breakbeat, booming away in the largest room. Ratchets down sparse drums and a melodic mid synth line and Monotron squelch swoop. It builds up around that, layers of pads and drones, sirens, bells. No vocals on this one, just layers of dark intensity. The next one starts with a nicely modulating squelching arpeggio. Drums and whistling drones gather around. Pointillist synth lines complement it and a rolling beat gathers momentum, an interlocking track of total dynamics, suddenly it shifts and we get a melodic line over a popping rhythm. Again this one just turns into a driving stomper of interlocked rhythmic parts. The final track starts with a voice from a film, a classic bit of Rashamon, something about Halloween and Christmas, a bit funny a bit dark. The final track starts with a monster beat, not so fast, big, jingle bells like some 1990 hardcore tune from before the race to 180bpm began, the bassline is melodic rather than pulsing, swooping under another female vocal, bells, counterpoint it.  Again its intensity to the max, unsettling.



Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Sunday 22nd October – 8.00 to 10.00pm

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Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 22nd October 2023 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

“October, year 2023. This month marks the handover of the controls from spearmint Caleb Madden to the Think Twice, a fewtime past time guest. Think Twice will be occupying 50% of the 2 hour Slot every time for 6 months. This month, Mohammad Adam has been ushered in with a gentle gesture, bringing a dark cloud of smoky glooming dank from the Morrison’s car park in Leicester, that dark haze in the whip, the silence because nobody’s talking to each other but everyone’s dark brains are so loud. The holiday, the relaxation of it all. the blanket of blankness and the roach inside. Afterwards, a Spirit of Gravity analysand Remember Glaciers cools us down with the sub-zero that’s starting to rise, has bin starting to rise for a while. Darkness. Thinking.”
1st Hour: Mohammad Adam – Morrison’s Car Park
2nd Hour: Remember Glaciers – 2023-10-03 Ice Core (Muir Glacier 1890)

The September edition of the Spirit of Gravity Radio show is available on the ResonanceFM Mixcloud page:
www.mixcloud.com/resonanceextra/gravity-waves-and-the-spirit-world-september-2023_mixdown/
This month’s show features a special audio collage by Geoff Cheesemaster from the recent Sound Art Brighton: Sound Plotting event, new music from I’m Dr Buoyant, and a selection of tracks from the latest release by Warped Love Group on the Spirit of Gravity label.

Surprisingly heavy on ordinary instrumentation

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

October 2023
The Rossi Bar

Ron Caines, Andrew Greaves & I’m Dr Buoyant: if you don’t know him, Ron was the saxophone player with the near legendary prog rock band East of Eden, long before half of us in the audience could walk. He’s been playing with both Andrew (and with his band Broken Star) and I’m Dr Buoyant for a number of years, but this was the first time they’ve played as a trio. The set starts with some layering up of synths by the electronicians but when Ron starts they drop away leaving him to lay some plaintive lines before a thin stream of near feedback creeps in and ever so slowly swells to some lovely swirling, echoing space noises. Ron starts to bounce back off this; trilling and parping, Andrew responds with a flurry of notes and then slows it down to another deep space tone. As things progress Tony starts channelling Ron’s saxophone back through the effects chain, which is nice. Andrew gets into some synth runs, then back into the spacey washes and occasional organ scurry. About 20 minute sin Andrew starts a much effected drum pattern, pinging echoes and squelchy reverbs all over. Ron switches to slight, tremulous bursts until everything starts to thicken out and he gets into some harder blowing. And then it all winds out in light arpeggios and looped sax breath.

The Organ Grinder’s Monkey, it’s the first time we’ve had Ben back in a while, and he’s changed things around a bit, the lovely Black and Chrome Jaguar guitar has gone to be replaced by some multifunctional high end (but at least black) modern thing. He’s also changed his set around a bit, gone are the tight punchy songs and he’s loosened up a bit, but there’s still plenty of structure. No singing though. The first song he starts by getting some guitar loops going through Bill the laptop. There is some odd glitching and you can visibly see him deciding on whether to restart or use it as feature, he decides to forge ahead. When the chiming interlocking guitar loops are cycling away, he gets the guitar to show some of its other features, messing with things, triggering midi sounds, the wayward glitches mostly fall away leaving on the deliberate ones. And thankfully for his stress levels the rest of the set seems devoid of issues. Apart from the unexpected triggering of an amen break. The next one starts with one of his pop guitar riffs, there’s some madness noises and the amen break. The whole thing has that clarity and lightness that reminds me of my favourite of Cornelius’ work. He gets really into messing with the beats at the end, building on his work with the games controller the last time we saw him. The next one starts with the messed up beats. Slower and rather chunky, he plays in a bassline and some more nicely interlocking guitar parts and glitchy frills. There are some great guitar controlled breakdowns on here. Theres a really quick switch into the next song, it’s almost completely formed. Guitar and rhythm doing what I can only describe as tripping along with extraordinarily filthy noises over them. Unless its some kind of dub of the previous song. Organ Grinder’s Monkey on the Version. It does go through a quite expected silly breakdown/chop up at the end. But a great example of what can be done with a bit of imagination on how to do things. An interesting experimental approach to playing, with a great ear, combining to make something really out of the ordinary.

Nina Kohout starts with heavily affected multitracked vocal, thick and well layered. We fall silent, piano comes in and she sings on, simply and alone. Electronic bass tones well up, and a fairly brutal waltz beat starts. The sound is surprisingly spacious after that heavy start. The next song is deceptively simple with an electric guitar and voice. Followed by something that starts with some deep electronic pulses, and slow dread-full beat. Some nice use of a what sounds like a scrapingly bowed cello sound. The beats pick up, heavy on the toms, intensity ramps, yowling backing vocals add to that. And it rounds off with a nice drop to a spooky ending. The next song is about consent, pretty dark, angry and as it’s new I guess raw. Intense, something of Kate Bush about the way the vocal lines interleaving. After a light break for a middle eight we get some seriously heavy synth riffing, deep and ponderous. The next song is much lighter, starting with vocals of a high thin drone before a piano line comes in. There’s a really nice string synth interlude before things go off at a bit of a tangent with interplay between pre-recorded and live vocals and back to the piano line. The next song is a song for waking up and in Slovakian. Multi-tracked and affected vocals start with drones, and a bass pulse “hah!”, church organ washes and reedy pipe melodies follow with synthetic bird whistles. The final song starts with a plonking marimba pattern, the vocals come in, everything fades briefly then a deranged Latin rhythm starts, with some proper sonic bass. Its almost channelling a gothy Herb Alpert, only without the trumpet.