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Thursday 3rd August at the Rossi Bar: Far Rainbow / Screaming Alice / Frixon Klatt

Posted on August 3, 2023August 5, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

Far Rainbow: Ghost machines and tangible percussion.
Screaming Alice: More direct/less polite/than you/might expect/and not a screen/to be seen.
Frixon Klatt: Ominous atmospheric beats

Far Rainbow is the London-based duo of Emily Mary Barnett and Bobby Barry. Their new album The Blue Hugeness begins with bubbling sounds which Barnett’s cymbals splash through, taking on a gait somewhere between Jack DeJohnette and a leaky pipe. Later, flickering drones emerge that seem more electrical than instrumental – which might be true as previous releases have seen Barry credited with playing electric toothbrush and various small motors. Submerged in it all are eerie field recordings, the most beguiling sounding like a baby cooing in the distance. It’s seldom clear where any sound comes from on this tape. Even where the drums begin and end gets a little hazy, while the lush reverb that glistens off everything is a source of intrigue in itself. It’s a spooky and hypnotic zone, one where machines seem to live in ghostly spaces. Every sound on ‘The Blue Hugeness’ is a riddle, slipping along the boundary between familiar and unfamiliar to find an alluring place in the in-between.

Screaming Alice: improvised organic pieces around skeletal structures. Motorik grooves, major keys, misbehaving analogue synths and perhaps some animal noises from Spirit of Gravity collective members Andrew Greaves (Broken Star, as himself and in various collaborations) and Howard Spencer (Birds of Death Valley, Hazandaz, Sold, Celled).

Frixon Klatt is a solo electronic act from Southampton now exploring his interest in old IDM, jungle and breakbeat with a atmospheric ominous twist. Check him out on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com/frixonklatt

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

“The Spirit of Gravity: making experimental music a threat again – since 2001”

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

New release on the Spirit of Gravity BandCamp label: A poem in six parts

Posted on July 28, 2023February 26, 2024 by Spirit of Gravity

Available now, the Spirit of Gravity presents “A poem in six parts”, a new release as a lathe-cut LP – a brave attempt to epitomise our first 21 years as a Brighton-based platform for out-there music and sound.

The album kicks off with Alien Alarms‘ spasming sequencer grid trying to overcome the bird nature of Ieva Dubova‘s free and defiant piano, moving into the hypnotic cycles of Ensemble 1, with side one being rounded out by Spirit of Gravity host and overlord McCloud with his Banksy sampling, drone and Casio soup.
Side 2 moves from the introspective minimalism of Andrew Greaves, to Spirit of Gravity founders This Sound Bureaucracy reminiscing on the psychohistory of the ‘Gravity, and ending up with Gun Boiler’s maths-as-mayhem banger.

Representing the range of what we do at SoG, from lurching breakbeats to free noise and many points in between, this album is a slice of our musical life.
Available as a lathe cut 12″ LP, priced £25, or as a pay-as-you-will download from spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/a-poem-in-six-parts

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

Posted on July 23, 2023July 24, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 23rd July 2023 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

This month’s show includes a special mix by Chris ‘midi_error’ of tracks from the forthcoming compilation LP “A poem in six parts” from The Spirit of Gravity collective (details soon). It also features selections from the new Rashamon release and the whole of the recently re-released Spirit of Gravity Roots and Culture compilation. Also, if you listen to the end of the show, there is a bonus very special secret bootleg mash-up that mysteriously appeared on a test pressing of our lathe-cut….

1^st hour: Chris SoG mix – featuring Andrew Greaves, Alien Alarms, Gunboiler, Ensemble 1, McCloud and This Sound Bureaucracy / Rashamon – Additional Correspondence 963 redacted / Rashamon – Signature Mix / Rashamon – Subjective Interlude 615 / Rashamon – Wählen Sie diese Verachtung

2^nd hour:Geoff Cheesemaster – I am sitting in a radio / I’m Dr Buoyant – Nivea cream piece / Not by Radium – Vexations (edit) / Noteherder & McCloud – Raymond Scott / minimal impact – tjmM3 (Steves Boutique Vishnu remix) / Dan Powell – For Anna Mendelssohn / Broken Star – Nocturnal We Duirnal You (live at SoG) / Electrocreche – Sore Throat (live at SoG 2010) / Slash’s Wormhole – Pot Hole / Hot Roddy – Down at the Old Bull and Bush / Tomas Hiltz – Sinai (live at SoG Jan 2010) / Strangers from Birth – Juno Brookes

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-june-2023-25th-june-2023/
This month’s show features a long piece by Polish artist Raman Marozau plus tracks from around the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity, including Barelife, Ugly Animal, Secret Nuclear, Jilk, and Dhangsha.

A pendulum clicks

Posted on July 6, 2023July 10, 2024 by Spirit of Gravity

July 2023
The Rossi Bar

A New Question, a chime, mangled voices reversed electronics and strings. Speaking the effected version seems to irrupt before the words leave the lips. The artist wears a Venetian (?) mask and parka. It’s July before the suns come. Twin aerials of a hidden television seem unused. Suddenly a clatter of interruption, an improv cascade of percussion. Then speaking again over juddering bursts of static. Click and scrape and very creepy breathing. The string riff returns to do Tuxedomoon-esque battle with a backwards organ. Is that some machine starting up. Running water, but not in a relaxing way. Stop. Start. There is an incident where the laptop goes flying and everything stops, but a quick recovery to cheers, and it’s a fairly brutal return. Devil voices. Back-masked. Nice. It’s still a somewhat truncated set, ending abruptly not too long after.

Sonaura follows up, starting with a high pitched whistling off his multi cassette deck just about my tinnitus threshold. Some folding in of bass and then clanger burbles writ as drones lead us on into a buzzing landscape of wide vistas. The slow plod of a time dilated clock keeps time, tone-washed murmurs wash In and out and as if of yore a TV voice tells us something then gets looped. Some slow keyboard part lays in. gently recycling itself. The voices die and some big electronics, Greek, old, powerful slide in. there are sum and difference frequencies beating in the weight of the drones, adding texture and even more depth. They wind out to an evolving three note distorted / reverbed chime modulating slowly off into the distance; into a feeling of dread, repetition. Is that a guitar gently strummed? And a finally verrry verry slow fade out to bliss…

Új Bála also starts with voice (his own) an ill-defined bass sequence like a stammering double bass, and growling synth. Synthetic Whale song, scurries of sequenced slurring tones. In the visuals he folds back in on himself. A staccato drum track bursts into life, a monotone bass pulse providing an almost gabber kick for the drums to form around. Over this radiophonic synth sounds and noise jostle with his vocals, a pause and off back into it again. Everything is rhythm. The rhythm degenerates and falls away to another semi random set of noises, bass buzzes, odd wirbles, that eventually build into something rhythmic, at least the phrasing is rhythmic but the tonalities never repeat. You can nod your head but not sing along. The rhythm fades into wobbling bass and squiggling trebles. Driven over by a large diesel motor and malfunctioning church organ. A bass drone pitched up and down (is that not a drone?) makes a bass line, some epic reverb on it and short pitched squeals give some melodic feel, and some LFO action gives it a soaring, whirring feel. Some other bass tones meld in and it gets all John Carpenter on us as the noise levels amp up, then into some kind of pitch distorted gating frenzy and it’s done.

Thursday 6th July at the Rossi Bar: Új Bála / Sonaura / A New Question

Posted on July 6, 2023July 7, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

Új Bála: noise, psychedelia & the fringes of techno
Sonaura: Dreamy drones, crunchy tape loops and found sounds.
A New Question: Twisted sounds; absurdist poetry

Gábor Kovács is a Budapest/Brussels-based musician and visual artist, also an alumni artist of the Shape platform. Active in a number of projects, he works with a wide range of genres and sounds, although his main output is Új Bála. Új Bála merges noise, psychedelia and fringes of techno and summons the rhythmic skeletons of dance music to bring order to his backdrop of mangled synth noises. In the past couple of years Új Bála released on labels such as Plaque, Baba Vanga, Altered States Tapes, Czaszka Rec.,Lost Dogs Entertainment or Dalmata Daniel, performed at festivals like Schiev(Bruxelles), Les Siestes Électroniques(Toulouse), Novas Frequencias(Rio de Janeiro), Rokolectiv(Bucharest), Tauron Nowa Muzyka (Katowice), Pohoda(Trencin), Next Festival(Bratislava), Uh Fest(Budapest) and played in clubs and DIY spaces all across Europe with his live act.

Sonaura – dreamy drones, crunchy tape loops and found sounds from Kent.
www.instagram.com/sonauramusic/
sonaura.bandcamp.com
www.youtube.com/user/sonauratube

A New Question is a solo project that takes organic sounds and twists them electronically, interwoven with absurdist poetry and cut-up monologue to create moments that attempt to communicate something that neither sound design or poetry can quite capture alone
anewquestion.bandcamp.com/music

Hosted by our very own DJ Cheesemaster

“The Spirit of Gravity: making experimental music a threat again – since 2001”

Thursday 6th July 2023 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Sunday 25th June – 8.00 to 10.00pm

Posted on June 25, 2023June 26, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 25th June 2023 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

This month’s show features a long piece by Polish artist Raman Marozau that occupies most of the first hour. The rest of the show, features tracks from around the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity, including Barelife, Ugly Animal, Secret Nuclear, Jilk, and Dhangsha.

First hour: Raman Marozau – composition.zeta.0.0.2 / Cour’en – My dreams are untethered by location / Ascsoms – Reflecting Machine
Second hour: Secret Nuclear – View across a city / Ugly Animal – Black Ice Manoeuvre / Jilk – Flags / Jilk – The Bewilderment Inside Syrup House / Barelife – Gender Christian / Barelife – Coca Colonialism / Dhangsha – Hostile Environment / Secret Nuclear – One hundred thousand windows / Ugly Animal – Cathode Carcass

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-may-2023-28th-may-2023/
This edition features an edit from Linden Pomeroy’s 5 hour long live improvisation in aid of the Men Walk Talk charity for men’s mental health featuring Spirit of Gravity member, McCloud, along with an airing of Eliane Radigue‘s drone masterpiece Triptych.
For more info and to contribute: www.totalgiving.co.uk/mypage/thepathiknow / menwalktalk.co.uk/learn-more

The hottest show on record

Posted on June 1, 2023May 14, 2024 by Spirit of Gravity

June 2023
The Rossi Bar

We had a bonus guest tonight due to illness with a touring package due to play at The Bees Mouth, so we started off with M G Dysfunction, he was set up in front of the stage in a fine cowboy short and baseball hat, on a high stool. Which he soon abandons. It’s fair to say he splits the audience, and quite quickly. He starts with a nice piano tune, which he quite quickly annihilates with some hideous country style caterwauling. “Fuck the boys in blue”, I thought it was quite funny. That segues into a drone, moving into a grime inflected number. The backing track on the next one has something of Eno’s Discreet Music about it, and he talks over it about the moon & stars. Back into drones and a murky slow bass drum. Very slow. He sings again. Next one up is dedicated to all the Junglists in the audience, he makes some quip about Chocolate Monk that goes over everyone’s head. The tune has nothing to do with Jungle though. Some fat ugly bass drone, circular ranting. The noise rises up within it, ranting continues. This is my favourite part of the backing track. Juddering bassline, noise swirls through various delays, then a modern RnB backing that quickly tips back into the disgusting racket.

So first of the scheduled acts was the welcome return of Dale Frost, minimal drum kit, electronic pads, novelty cymbals (triple decker-ed, dimpled and warped or full of holes) and some other bits I couldn’t see. Starting with a shimmering roll on the synth triggering drum pads interspersed with occasional drums before he fires off a more familiar song set into the pads, is it sequenced, is it played. Both. Neither who knows. But holing down drum parts and synth lines Dale really pushes the idea of the independently controlled multi-limbed drummer to new lengths. It’s great to watch. The next track is more heavily into the beat, the synths more beeping rhythm lines weaving between the drums. Nice steps up when the beat thickens and the synths multiply with delays. The next track is definitely running off a sequencer. An odd whistly line giving way to a steel drum tick, bass drum on the fours. Then I’m not so sure about the sequencer, he seems to be playing the lines. Playing with my mind. Towards the end of this song he gets stuck into the hidden bits of kit, a keyboard and analogue delay, I’m guessing. One song has a nice one note bassline with some chunky stabs before giving way to something jerky that syncopates within a beat. The last song slows it down, with a nice fat bass and some pinging Tom Tom Club synth sounds. It slowly speeds up, the bass getting a bit rawer and groovier, other sounds trailing around it with a melodic synth line emerging in the firing chorus bits of it. And a big organ flourish to end on a high energy finish.

Then the return of f.Ampism, we had him booked in for one of the first shows after lockdown ended, in that spell of Will It Open Or Not. And it didn’t. But here we are now. He advises us to watch the projections rather than himself as he sets up some almost drones. There’s a bit too much going on to be actual drones, swelling, subtly shifting pitches, a hint of growled voice, a smidge of harmonium, a slowly unfolding melodic line that emerges gradually and slinks away. Its the sound of hot sun coming down through unruffled leaves, a hot still day, something stirs indistinctly in the distance. What it is we never mind. I’m drifting; open my eyes and 10 minutes has blissed, passed. Paul is working away, much more active than would be obvious, but the shifts are there, nothing is actually static even if you never noticed it change, it’s all different. At some point he gets me up to muck about with the monitor and we get some extra modulating midrange reedy layers sliding into the mix. It’s now quite a think complex montage of sounds. Still quite precise and separate, everything pulsing and morphing in its own individual way. It reaches a crescendo but I’m too blissed out to really notice and stops.

Rounding off the evening we have Cornish (via London) artist Yiskāh. Carrying on where Paul left off with a somewhat more menacing drone. Under this she feeds in a vibrating thin whirr the drone starts to vibrate and branch off, into sub bass whoomf and airplane hum. A ghost of a wind sends its icy chill to taunt us. The PA is pushed about as Jess plays with the sonics of the room. A creeping sensation spiders its way into the stew. The sounds is solid, it’s not unpleasant enough to be HNW, but it has a similar monolithic indistinctness; a vast incomprehensibility where it just quietly fills your head and erases sense of time and place, gentle rather than roaring but nonetheless abstract and almost formless. There are touches of tone that emerge from the fog, perhaps slippery streams of feedback that evaporate as you start to latch onto them. Occasionally things in the room vibrate, shifting around as the pitches from the stage evolve. As it winds down, we’re left with the more pitched sounds; wind, a swirl of sea. Tyre on gravel. None of these things.