Author: Spirit of Gravity

Thursday 5th October at the Rossi Bar: Nina Kohout / Ron Caines/Andrew Greaves/I’m Dr Buoyant / The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

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Nina Kohout: Dark electronica, classical & eerie Slavic folklore
Ron Caines / Andrew Greaves / I’m Dr Buoyant: Sax, synth and samples in sync
The Organ Grinder’s Monkey: Guitar loops, breakbeats and glitch FX

Nina Kohout is a sonic storyteller who pushes the boundaries of musical obedience, forming a constant conversation between an invasive horror and a fragile purity. In her music, she connects the eerie atmosphere of ancient Slovak folklore, classical music elements, and the freshness of innovative electronica.
In 2020, Slovakia-born, UK-based artist Nina Kohout won the Radio_Head award for the Newcomer of the Year (curated by the Slovak national radio), which she received for her debut single Blue Sunray. Her critically acclaimed debut EP Pandemonium (incl. the song Moonlight featured as the Song of the Day by KEXP Radio) got Nina’s name mentioned in BBC Radio and music magazines such as Under the Radar, Louder than War, and Electronic Sound magazine. Her past shows include playing at the iconic Kino Šiška in Ljubljana, the United Islands of Prague, the Ahoi! Pop Festival in Linz, as well as the biggest Slovak festival Pohoda.
At the beginning of 2023, Nina played at the biggest European showcase festival Eurosonic, where together with a string quintet she introduced her uniquely coloured art pop. Her autumn tour will include playing at the Waves Vienna, BUSH Festival in Budapest, as well as Santeria in Milan.

Ron Caines / Andrew Greaves / I’m Dr Buoyant: East of Eden saxophonist and stalwart of Brighton Safehouse Ron Caines returns with regular collaborator, Spirit of Gravity founder I’m Dr Buoyant, this time as a trio with Spirit of Gravity keyboard magician Andrew Greaves (Broken Star, solo and other collaborations): improvised saxophone, live sampling and swooping synthesiser combine in spontaneous composition.

The Organ Grinder’s Monkey is the brainchild of Brighton-based musician/producer Ben Garnett. Ben provides guitar and vocals while his laptop/best friend Bill handles beats and FX. The resulting sound is an attempt to combine the glitchy stutter and madness of Bill’s favourite electronic artists (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher) with the freewheeling maverick indie-rock of Ben’s youth (Super Furry Animals, The Boo Radleys, Grandaddy). A shared love of 8-bit computer game sounds provides further inspiration.
Having not played live since the pandemic, 2023 finally sees TOGM re-emerge with an entirely new approach to their sound. Two years of experimentation has armed the pair with an array of different techniques, technology and a whole set of fresh semi-improvised material that is now created completely live in the moment, ending the previous reliance on pre-programmed backing tracks. With instrumentation stripped back to just a single breakbeat, two tracks of looped guitar and occasional bass, the focus now shifts to taking these basic building blocks and employing endless banks of effects to remix them into a restless and unpredictable soundscape.
These sounds will be recorded and edited down into an EP set for release by the end of the year.

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

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Sunday 24th September – 8.00 to 10.00pm

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Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 24th September 2023 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

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.

DJ Cheesemaster – Sound Plotting Sound Collage:
I’m Dr Buoyant – A Poem in 6 Parts Mashup / Minatory Dub – All Fields (vocal ambient mix):
Warped Love Group – Ambler / Offski / Recipe 4 sanity / Rubber rubble / Unpopular music / Brown acid /  Unsavioury / White acid:
Spheress – Aufbau / Ptah

The July edition (no show in August) of the Spirit of Gravity Radio show is available on the ResonanceFM Mixcloud page:
www.mixcloud.com/resonanceextra/gravity-waves-and-the-spirit-world-july-2024/
This months’ show includes a special mix by Chris ‘midi_error’ of the forthcoming compilation LP from The Spirit of Gravity collective, A Poem in Six Parts. It also features tracks from the new Rashamon release and more sounds from around the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity.

Thursday 7th September at the Rossi Bar: Thon / Missing Music / En Creux

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Thon: Dark drone and night terrors with VHS televisions
Missing Music: AV with vintage Macs and obsolete software
En Creux: Sound creation via analogue and digital feedback systems

THON: DRONENOISE VISUALSDREADAMBIENT Live noise hardware & visuals from South Coast. Power Ambient.

Missing Music: Suren Seneviratne (b. 1986) is a British Sri Lankan, London based producer, DJ and sound artist who is no stranger to the world of electronic music. For over a decade, he has explored the threshold of experimental media through a DIY lens using an arsenal of software, home-made electronics and modified synthesisers to create work that defies the limits of genre classification. His prolific output across various media can be found in record production, remix work, live performance, radio broadcast, film composition, theatre design, Net Art, interactive VR and exhibition. His newest endeavour Missing Music shines a spotlight on the innovative audio, digital signal processing and music software developed for the Macintosh computer system during the ‘90s to ‘00s.

En Creux is a Taiwanese experimental artist based in London. Performs and releases music under the alias ‘en creux’ where the sound creation springs from their fascinations in noise generated via feedback on digital and analogue equipment, and their role as a ‘mediator-performer’ in the multifaceted relationship between the sonic events incurring within the self-regulated system. ‘Fuzz comes alive, moving at odd angles like the sinuous threads are being chased by a series of subatomic bleeps and flashes. Tension rises as the tempo picks up, fueling the disjointed rhythmic quality within each sterile, self-contained unit.’ – Fox Digitalis
encreuxmusic.bandcamp.com
luciahchung.com

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 7th September 2023 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

Here comes summer

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September 2023
The Rossi Bar

Starting the evening off, Thon is set up onstage with his hand made hurdy-gurdy noise box, effects rack and a couple of other devices that were hidden behind the huge monitor he had displaying visuals to complement the visuals he had projected behind him. Bowing the string on the noise box get this monster drone started, which he then complemented with scratches at this or thrums of that, or something untoward on the hidden kit. The drone seems to constantly morph into human/unhuman screams. Occasionally it feels like a whip of feedback folds in, but the deep undertow of the bass is pretty much constant. Some kind of Godzilla footstep bass drum, reverbed and down-pitched to below sub bass thumps along. I had visualisations of a car accident in a desert, some kind of narrative conjured itself up. Everything starts to drift, the footsteps and unrelenting bass both fade away leaving a Star Trek shimmer from two bowed ruler like bits of metal on the noise box. A new drone is built around this, oscillating slowly with much higher frequency sounds, much more feedback driven. Eventually a shaky hi-hat style patter seeps in, and almost a bassline starts to undulate under the drones, sub bass, the drones growl and work with the bass, switching around, shifting the dynamics and it slowly drops down to a far choir, then a low organ buzz. A low organ buzz with a windy, church-ish ambience. He works again at the noise box, giving texture and scrape-y grain to the sounds and then a roar slowly envelopes everything and we’re done.

So Missing Music, a set up with two very old Apple Macintoshes, one plugged into the projector so everyone can follow what’s going on, which leads to a lot of murmuring throughout his set from certain sections of the audience. To be honest the details go over my head, but a great deal of trainspotting pleasure is obviously to be had. It’s a lovely set, very soundscape-y, spacious, expansive. A nice contrast to the density of Thon. Its starts with big tonal sounds, pure, floating and bending with radiophonic overtones. A staccato bass counterpoints what we’ll take as the melody line,  providing a little drive, to propel things along. Little bursts of notes give way to great slowed loud bell tones. I recognise a piano keyboard when it comes up and a flurry of piano notes runs around our heads. The slowly modulating line continues through. We get a half beat, something of drum and bass about it, staggering in the background it throws the top line into bright relief. Something of the cathedral about it until it slows down to proper bass. We get some glitching and sparkling, a rattle of delayed snare. And breathing. Space. The sound of space in my imagination epic and beautiful, the sound of Jupiter looming into view. A stepped note part gives way to a nice little arpeggio, still situated somewhere in the cold reaches of the outer solar system. And it runs for a nice little while before the sounds suddenly mutate and we get some glitch-y stutters, smeared sounds its suddenly all a bit MaxMSP, I’m not sure as it could have been on the other screen, but whatever it is giving it the improv-y edge it’s counterbalanced  by a nice slow LFO sweep working against it. A one note pulse heralds the end as it slowly unravels.

En Creux has a no input mixing desk setup; feedback loops through effect chains in and out of her onstage mixer, with no initial signal. Her set starts with a low hum which slowly moves to an undulating buzz. There’s some squelching from a delay that disappears quite quickly. Things can move quite quickly the feedback loops are inherently unstable, and we get a staccato of high pitched before a marvellous dotting bass erupts – superfast pulsing that imperceptibly slows, before she gets to interrupt it to get some rhythm, then a subby noisy wash of bass swamps in underneath it. En Creux is very much at the other end of the sonic spectrum to Toshi Nakamuras spectral treble. We do get some blistering mid ranges here though, it feels dangerous, the sub bass is still riding the room, but these switches of deliriously nasty noises wreak havoc with the senses. She can ride the havoc well, letting it rip on, with some really nicely detailed fine control. Eventually she reigns in the noise to a muffled stutter before dropping it altogether. She does some work on the bass for a while shifting it slightly, giving it a wobble, developing it into something raucous, then back again to something more tonal, dropping the buzz and letting it get wafted about by a delay pulse. This runs for a while and then she thickens it up, and allows it to branch off, one strand filtering out into a reverb-y buzz that slowly disappears, and we’re back to a buzzing vibrating pulse again. Then some squeaking, a dog’s toy. No idea where on earth that came from, but it sounds like it brought its dog with it. Then some nice feedback whistles, before its back to the bass and a machine clacking beat, which becomes everything, even crickets. She slows it, brings it back to speed, introduces new elements that add to it, before it winds down to a saw slowly hacking through a giant tree.



New release on the Spirit of Gravity BandCamp label: The sound of electricity flowing through a body

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Monday 4 September sees a fine new release on the Spirit of Gravity label: ‘Sound of electricity flowing through a body’ by Warped Love Group, aka Jake Subtropic. This is an album of improvisations using the soma enner synth over primitive rhythms and rumbling bass. The soma enner synth makes its connections using the hands and body, which effectively become patch cables. The sound of electricity being transformed by the body – or is it the other way round? The result is a gorgeous post-rave electronica with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. It has an organic, hand-made feel – the sound of electronic music decoupling from the grid. Stream and download here from Monday:
spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/sound-of-electricity-flowingthrough-a-body
For notification of this and future releases, click on this link to follow the Spirit of Gravity on BandCamp: spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/follow_me

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

There will be no radio show this August, as ResonanceExtra hands over to Radiophrenia again this year – lots to listen to though, so go to the ResonanceExtra website for details.

The July 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-july-2024/
This months’ show includes a special mix by Chris ‘midi_error’ of the forthcoming compilation LP from The Spirit of Gravity collective, A Poem in Six Parts. It also features tracks from the new Rashamon release and more sounds from around the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity.

Twice in the pit; never on the poster

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August 2023
The Rossi Bar

Far Rainbow start the evening, mostly ‘cos of drums, but also so they can get home with the trains and that. This is one for watching, experiencing. In the first review I wrote for The Spirit of Gravity, I described Brown Sierra as “more electrica than electronica”, and there’s an element of that with Far Rainbow, Bobby has no synthesiser or laptop, but a collection of devices and transducers. His setup a continuation of the composed pieces he did back for us in The Scope days. But it’s not all about Bobby, Emily has her drum kit which is played with an equally diverse array of devices. Sticks, beaters, parcel tape, whisk, seashell… it’s also sent through a fairly hefty delay, and played very quietly. Their set starts with Emily crumpling paper on the snare while Bobby has a rattling can in what looks like a paint pot shaker, cymbal washes, somewhere it sounds like the ghost of a train is coming, the hint of a chimed melody. Bobby goes through his motorised things whirring noisily into the transducers while Emily builds her improve-y scrapings into a crescendo, occasionally a multiply echoed thwack of a stick clatters around the room, or there is a tinging pattern to remind us of the kits more orthodoxly percussive nature. Someone has a bag of stones which they rattle, I’m sure. Ah, it’s Emily. She brings the volume right down. Bobby has a nice modulating warble going on with feedback controlled into something akin to throat singing and a bird song recording. Bobby gets some small metal objects into the shaking can which give us a maraca-ish rhythm to work against before he breaks out the electric hairbrush, which was a particular highlight. A lot of questions right there. Emily builds up the cymbal shimmers behind the whining, then slides the beaters onto the toms, still slowly building, the cymbals seem to have entered the effects chain and continue to shine away. Then we get into the tape ripping into her effects chain. It all wind down with the ghost train, gentle snare scraping and a slow high pitched whirring drone that fades in and out.

Once again standing in at the last minute for someone unable to make it along, we have Alien Alarms. Making full use of the Rossi Bar’s famous bass cabinets to really work everything in the room that isn’t fixed down…. these days Jim sets his controller sloped away from him so you can see what he’s up to, this works really nicely as 1) he’s not just a bloke sat behind a laptop 2) it’s fascinating trying to match his movements over the buttons with what’s coming out the speakers as he chops up the lines running through the song – not just the drum tracks but vocal parts, bass parts, melodic lines particularly work well taking on new forms as he gets stuck into the meaty bits of the songs. The first song is a version of the first thing he wrote as Alien Alarms, all proper bass and field recordings from lockdown. The next few tracks are part of his AI themed album, the first “We must make more of us” starts with a hit that is almost stunning in its intensity. It also has a slap bass part he played. A big fan of Marcus Miller it seems. Some nice chopping on the vocal line with this one. “The Machine of Death” follows, darker, naturally, very intense with a buzzing dip into the subs again. Almost nothing is happening above the mid-range, but what there is, is disorienting. Even the vocal parts are deep. Then into an excellent version of “The Spirit of Gravity off the new compilation “A Poem in Six Parts”. He gets proper psychedelic chopping this up towards the end. That’s followed with his nicely skewed version of “Avril 14th” the final song starts with a rolling hip hop break, with carillon and squelches that gets quite quickly a teensy bit breakcore, the chopping gets quite frenzied in this one, beats zooming in from all sides.

Rounding off the evening were a Spirit of Gravity super-group, Screaming Alice, Howard our press person and Andrew who designs our posters.  Set up with twin tables of synths including Howard’s infamous original Wasp. Their set started off with some nice swooping synths, bass woooshes and a chattering buzz that all faded out as a funereal kick drum, proper thudding waded in. a double tempo bass line came in, and the wasp returned with some pulsations as the drum switched to the 4/4. Some counter lines building up a rhythmic backing then a drop and these seriously nasty screams slid across. And a messed up voice started talking to us. The drums morph, the bass lines start shifting timbre, the bass becoming a melodic line. Dropping back to drums and voice we get a new gurgling bass come in, that starts all rhythmic then slows down to a warping drone for another drop. We get a radiophonic spirit scream going back and forth across the stage while a bass burbles enigmatically. The scream drops to a drone and a two note percussive synth line starts in to be washed away by a helicopter drone, gull-song and seascape. The helicopter drops to a purely sonic wash about the limits of hearing. The players bouncing ideas back and forth. A rhythmic part comes in being modulated all over the place sonically from bass to mid-range, squelch to stab, and before we notice the drums have snuck back in. Driving counter rhythms lurk up. Splashes of colour, the sounds shift again, and everything seems to shift up a gear, before dropping away again. We’re well into the world of machines for a groove that doesn’t last anywhere near long enough before the drums drop away and they start messing about with the sounds again, then – ooh, its back, slightly new but still with that energy., an offbeat that amazingly sounds more like a skank than a trance pulse, and it’s all on the move again. Figures flitter briefly into view and are gone, odd notes – sheep! The sheep put in quite an appearance, making me think of a banging version of “Chill Out”. The sheep leave but the banging backing stays on. Other odd sounds rattle of squirm across the field of view, then all the rhythm drops away and we’re left with psychedelic sheep, and pulses of energy, delayed organ notes, boops and burps and finally slow LFO sweeps… really quite nicely, a fusion nothing like what either has done on their own.