Author: Spirit of Gravity

Graham Dowdall aka Gagarin 01.08.54 – 16.06.24

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We’re sorry to have to let you know that Graham Dowdall, aka Gagarin, died on the 16th June. He had been ill with cancer, and amazingly his last two shows in Brighton were while he was undergoing treatment, including this one for us back in April:
Gagarin Live at The Spirit Of Gravity April 2024 – YouTube

We first met him in January 2008, when he played for us at “The 3 & 10” in Kemptown, during one of our lower points in terms of audience numbers, but something clicked and he returned many times as both a solo artist, as part of Roshi (feat Pars Radio) and in a duo with David Thomas in a special show at The Coach House in Kemptown.

Anyone who chatted to him at one of our shows will know what a lovely man he was, and considering how much cool stuff he’d done, remarkably humble. We’d recommend reading this interview with him:
bassmidstopsandtherest.substack.com/p/no-18-graham-dids-gagarin

Then check out his last album, including a track written up at Stanmer Park during the Sound Plotting event…
Komorebi | Gagarin | Geo Records (bandcamp.com)

It’s really upsetting to lose someone like this who still had a lot to give, he was already working on his next album, and an autobiography that would have been hilarious & endlessly fascinating.

Thursday 4th July at the Rossi Bar: Teashape / Bubble People / Bagombo Snuffbox

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Teashape: Reeds & loops in an evolving narrative
Bubble People: Bioscene music
Bagombo Snuffbox: Jothi meets Ascsoms… synths & tapes & noise

Teashape create live ambient soundscapes using a variety of organic acoustic live instrumentation and electronics. Blending ambient textures with folk-rooted storytelling/ songwriting, It’s like listening to a barely tuned in radio station of sonic deja vu. Building on the sonic explorations of ambient music pioneers such as Eno, William Basinski and Steve Reich, Teshape explore the phasing of loops of varying lengths, textures and harmonies to create an ever evolving narrative that grows and decays in real time.

Bubble People is a neo-psychedelic electronica act from London, UK. Helmed by experimentalist Jasper Sdougos aka Jasper Drifts, they rarely exhibit the same sound twice in their search for euphoric sonics.
@jasper_drifts
www.bubblepeople.co.uk/

Bagombo Snuffbox is a collision of Jothi & Ascsoms, a melding of synths & tapes & noise, Bagombo Snuffbox is ungooglable thanks to Kurt Vonnegut. Bagombo snuffbox have an album due out soon.

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 July 2024 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Sunday 28th July – 8.00 to 10.00pm

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Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 28th July 2024 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

Gravity Waves: Sneak previews and friends – an upcoming guest, an upcoming release, and some local friends including collective members Dan Powell and Andrew Greaves:
Spheress – Fowl (Emergent Mix) / Psanck – East Water / Altamode – Attack / Inside Journeys – Inside Journeys part II / Automouse – Flapjack Octopus / Barelife – Critical Thinking / Altamode – form / Psanck – Girt

The Spirit World: Spectral Transmissions # 04: ABOVE US THE WAVES
“you wont never fynd no beginning its long gone and far pas.”1
‘If we look through the aperture which we have opened up onto the absolute, what we see there is a rather menacing power–something insensible, and capable of destroying both things and worlds, of bringing forth monstrous absurdities, yet also of never doing anything, of realizing every dream, but also every nightmare, of engendering random and frenetic transformations, or conversely, of producing a universe that remains motionless down to its ultimate recesses, like a cloud bearing the fiercest storms, then the eeriest bright spells, if only for an interval of disquieting calm.”2
“To push anything back into the past is equivalent to reducing it to its simplest elements. Traced as far as possible in the direction of their origins, the last fibres of the human aggregate are lost to view and are merged in our eyes with the very stuff of the universe.”3
Singin’ in the Rain: Arthur Freed / Nacio Herb Brown.
1 Hoban, R. Riddley Walker
2 Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
3 Pierre Teilhard De Chardin , THE PHENOMENON OF MAN

The June 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-spectral-transmissions-midsummer-special-a-common-treasury-2/
This show includes the Spectral Transmissions Research Unit Midsummer Special: A Common Treasury, plus an hour-long track by Elizabeth Veldon – ‘this pressure- this texture- this smell- this gesture’

 

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Sunday 23rd June – 8.00 to 10.00pm

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 23rd June 2024 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

This show features tracks from Dan Powell and Andrew Greaves’ recent release Inside Journeys, plus tracks by artists in the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity, and the latest mix from our new guest contributor Spectral Transmissions:

Gravity Waves:

‘This pressure, this texture, this smell, this gesture’ – Elizabeth Veldon

The Spirit World:

The Spectral Transmissions Midsummer Special: A Common Treasury

Amid all our familiar scenes stand memorials of the people who were here before us and as the daylight fades on midsummer night eve we embark on an hallucinatory journey to the weed choked lay-bys, unobserved rites, violence and wild anarchy that haunts Britain’s Spectral pastoral.

Includes elements of:
Battle of the Bean Field 1985 (Operation Solstice) Gareth Morris, Russel Morris and Neil Goodwin
U.K Free Festivals-The 1980s, BBC Documentary
Winstanley, Kevin Brownlow,  1975
Being and Doing, Ken McMullen and Stuart Brisley, 1984
A Celebration of Midsummer ,East Anglia, 1964

The May 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-gagarin-spectral-transmissions-research-unit-26th-may-2024/
This show includes a Gagarin special feature, plus Episode Two: “The Path” this month’s broadcast from the Spectral Transmissions Research Unit.