Author: Spirit of Gravity

Thursday 1st May at the Rossi Bar: Soborgnost / Thee Boxx Menn / Em-

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Soborgnost: Lofi dubwave, dance-punk mutations
Thee Boxx Menn: Analogue Lofi tracks from alternative dimensions
Em-: Hardware and software modified for a better world

Soborgnost is sci-fi dance punk at the intersection of vaporwave, minimal wave, disco dub, industrial, EBM, proto-house, drone and noise.
Using a hardware sampler to emulate dub mixing, looping post-punk style basslines with chuggy, lo-fi beats. Warped analogue textures are added with cassette tape manipulation, electro magnetic frequency transmitters, shortwave radio, harsh noise generator and dub sirens.
soundcloud.com/spirit-data

In the shadowy corner of Brighton’s underground music scene, a pair of eccentric synth wizards emerged under the enigmatic moniker, Thee Boxx Menn. They were two renegades of rhythm and noise, rebels armed with synthesizers and the wild spirit of lo-fi experimentation.
Thee Boxx Menn were more than an electronic act. They were architects of sound, dream weavers, and the harbingers of a new sonic era a legacy unfolding between the lines of melody and harmony, waiting to resonate in the hearts and minds of those who dared to listen.
Crafting lo-fi tracks that felt like transmissions from alternate dimensions. Their live shows became legendary. They’d cloak the stage in mist, their silhouettes obscured as the pulsing synths and eerie melodies carried audiences on otherworldly journeys. Each performance felt like a ritual, a communion between human creativity and the forgotten whispers of technology.
Music held powers far beyond their understanding. Thee Boxx Menn didn’t just make music; they became the medium through which otherworldly energies found their voice.
www.instagram.com/theeboxxmenn
www.theeboxxmenn.bandcamp.com

Em― presents a live electronic music performance that revels in the whimsy and ferocity of continuously evolving ideas, consisting of dense synthetic textures, playful glitchy grooves and moments of accelerating chaos.  Behind the wheel is musician and electronic music producer June Kiff, utilising her live music ecosystem, “emsys”, composed of drum machines and various custom devices, in service of the transformation of nonsense.
emdash.bandcamp.com/
www.junes.website/music/live

Live visuals by Meljoann

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 1st May 2025 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Sunday 27th April – 8.00 to 10.00pm

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 27th April 2025 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM, DAB radio or online at extra.resonance.fm/

Along with the regular selection of sonics from within the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity collective, this month features special contributions from Gagarin‘s live set at the Stanmer Park Ecomusicology project, and the first of 6 transmissions from the Omnistitional Culture Research Unit (OCRU).

1st hour: Gagarin live at The Ecomusicology Project, Brighton April 2024 / Hannya White – Holding it down in Mexico / Ugly Animal – Headfirst (Crowbar) / Lee Ashcroft – Waypoint (with Gemma Oakley)
2nd hour: Antivoid Alliance – Omnistitions: Transmissions from the OCRU Ep.1

The March 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-communiqu%C3%A9-12-broadcasts-from-the-subterranean-23-march-202/
This month’s Gravity Waves segment involves music from around the orbit of the Spirit Of Gravity including a couple of tracks from collective member Meljoann‘s new album and a long piece from local label Difficult Art And Music. The Spirit World consists of the final communication from Spectral Transmissions, Communiqué 12: Broadcasts from the Subterranean

Thursday 3rd April at the Rossi Bar: RDyer / Andrew Greaves & Dan Powell / Lee Ashcroft

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RDyer: New songs! Sadder! Seventh chords!
Andrew Greaves and Dan Powell: Gravity stalwarts up to some new tricks
Lee Ashcroft: Mournful bass, lethargic rhythm: a journey through the haze of physical & mental exhaustion

RDyer has: New songs! Sadder! Darker! Seventh chords! Inversions!
Polyrhythms on harp, more drones, electric guitar,  more plaintive singing, stripped back maybe but not guaranteed. More feedback, distortion and weird noises. But also still songs. And probably the Canary song.
The possibility of a big harp with machines on it.
rdyermusic.bandcamp.com/album/little-victories

Depending on who you ask, Lee Ashcroft is either a musician, writer, social care worker, artist, theremin player, autistic man, internet radio host, 2-time loser of BBC’s Pointless, or 1-time member of The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu. He lives with his partner in North Essex, UK.
Among other pseudonyms too numerous and irrelevant to mention, Lee has previously recorded and performed as 00’s bootleg/mashup provocateur/nuisance Mixomatosis, recording for egalitarian netlabel Digital Vomit, Austrian experimental label Hirntrust Grind Media, and Stockport’s legendary V/Vm Test Records, while lip-syncing aggressively to audiences across the East and South East of England throughout the decade. He also recorded and performed as The Nearly, releasing 2011’s ‘Cathode Rave’ for El Perro Rojo Records, a 9-minute album which, depending on which zines you read, either represents “the future of pop music” or makes you “feel physically sick.” ‘Persons Underground’ is the first album he has recorded under his birth name.
As well as performing music, Lee currently writes for American online publication In Spite Magazine and hosts a 4-weekly radio show for French internet station CAMP Radio, both under the name One Man Underground.
www.onemanunderground.co.uk
www.facebook.com/onemanunderground
www.instagram.com/1manunderground

Andrew Greaves and Dan Powell are both Brighton based musicians with a background in experimental music and sound art. Their first collaboration was Inside Journeys, a residency which explored the physical and historical spaces occupied by The Rose Hill as an arts space, a pub, and a building.
You can find out more about the residency and listen to the album here: www.therosehill.co.uk/artists/1822-171122-dan-powell-amp-andrew-greaves-inside-journeys
Improvisation takes centre stage in Andrew and Dan’s new work, a follow-up to their collaboration on Inside Journeys.  The duo’s partially improvised piece is framed by pre-recorded conversations exploring their musical thinking, creating a dynamic interplay between planned and spontaneous elements from the very start.

Bio information:
Dan Powell is a sound artist who uses field recordings, handmade and proprietary electronics and amplified objects. His main interest is exploring places which have a particular personal resonance. He has released a couple of albums of sound art on Crónica as well as being active in electro-acoustic improvisation in London and Brighton, playing with Gus Garside in The Static Memories, and Chris Parfitt in Nil. Currently he performs as part of Muster with James O’Sullivan.
linktr.ee/dannnad

Andrew Greaves is an active member of both the Spirit of Gravity and the Safehouse improvisation collectives. Andrew’s pieces combine melodic analogue electronic  improvisations within layered settings. Employing minimalist repetition and collages of manipulated found sounds. Andrew’s works explore memory and recollection and the process of subconscious influences arising within spontaneous improvisation. Andrew believes each of us hold an incalculable library of memories, forming a unique fingerprint of influences and perspectives. His work seeks to access this resource via improvisation to create instant compositions.His work has been used in film, both in the form of live soundtrack performances and produced soundtrack scores.

Live visuals by Meljoann

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 April 2025 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

Before you know it, its daylight all the way up

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

April 2025
The Rossi Bar

Wasps, Dan and Andrew from the collective are an interesting setup, covering the Glass Armonica, effects, synths and laptop set up across two tables facing each other. The laptop seems to be running some processing software like MaxMSP, rather than a DAW, but we’ll come back to that. Their set starts about 15 minutes before they get on stage with a cheeky speaker hidden away under the benches playing back field recordings quite quietly. Slowly a bass-y synth drone emerges and some burbling from something electronic, slipping backwards. The drones are joined by others: deep space drones, and warbling shimmering drones. Into this come time travellers travelling backwards past us without stopping, the Glass Armonicas scraped and reversed by the processing. Loads of rather lovely detail. I can hear Andrew playing a little part on his synth. Almost everything drops away leaving long strokes of the glasses and Something mimicking humpback whale song. Musical chimes stutter, decay first. There’s a faint hiss of sea. Andrew plays a little motif again, this time it almost repeats, lengthens and stretches and disappears again. Sounds rumble and slur. Some delayed drums slowly rattle noisily about. There’s the occasional hint of a bassline. Another little motif from Andrew, this time as a sequence, bobbing about. The sequence hides again, the drums roll slowly up and down. Odd noises twitch from the depths. There’s the wind (though it doesn’t feel as cold down in this basement). The drums give way to abstractions again, as though the tide flows from Andrew back to Dan. Slowly the drones weird space noises begin to overwhelm the chatter of static and erroring 1950 devices. And again one of Andrew’s exotically scaled keyboard runs leaks into consciousness. And switches mine off, I’m quite mesmerised.

Lee Ashcroft is an imposing figure standing behind his Theremin and black box setup – I never did get round to investigating it. The last time he was in Brighton was for a Wrong Music event down at The Volks. Which is to say quite some time ago. He starts with some slow melodic parts on the Theremin, a voice talks about bus stops and rain. A bassline starts, the woman’s voice continues, as does Lee on the Theremin. A string counter line joins the bass. A walking bassline. There’s some distortion quietening the Theremin, A slow bass drum and chime come on the backing track and the woman’s voice is replaced by a man’s. A piano part. It all drops, there’s some singings and the backing gently re in, the returns parts layering up. A nicely buzzing bassline. There is some Theremin almost birdsong. “I’ll never fight Mike Tyson….. I’ll never play in The Championship…” and some whistling. Its fog music. Disrupted by a vast shivering TD arpeggio that swoops across our vision out of sight then swooping slowly back and forth. The next track starts with a nice harpsichord line, with more singing and Lee getting some nicely atypical drones out of the Theremin. Then swooping Starfighter laser blasts. Beatless and weirdly epic even before a massive wall of fuzz kicks in. The singer on this is quite exercised about something. Slow heartbeat kicks start the next track, with a swelling bass low. A woman singing again on this one. It all finishes on a quite unexpectedly meaty finish, all beats and  basslines and counter rhythms. But most of the set is oddly melancholic; reminiscent of Low without ever sounding remotely like them. He must have been exhausted after playing the Theremin for the entirety of the performance.

Finally we finished the evening with R. Dyer. The stage abounding with typical R. Dyer devices from the artfully broken harp held together with a big G-Clamp at the top and strung with a variety of piano/guitar/violin strings, soprano sax, saw, synth, effects and a looper. She starts with the harp and voice, the harp rattle-y, loud and creaking. A séance in a log cabin. Arlen plays a plucked harp loop into a lopsided creaky rhythm then plays a looped sax over the top before singing again. The next song is based around polyrhythms played on the harp. (“This song is about …. 7 minutes long”). The harp is looped then the saw provides a tremulous top line, there’s also something that sounds like vibes to provide the backing track, while Arlen sings and provides more punctuation on the harp. Arlen threatens us with an electric guitar for the next track, which is somehow my fault. And no looping… But there is a key change. Oh, I lied, there is some looping to let the sax be played. The next song is little victories, slightly revamped. Starting with a ticking percussion loop, descending synth part and the looping double soprano lines. It’s more Spartan, Arlen listing the little victories of her own “Spring”, “A new one from someone in Bognor – that I didn’t know!”. We then sang happy birthday to Leanne. There was a lot of back and forth between the audience and R. Dyer that I’ve glossed over, but if you’ve never seen them play, it’s a big thing.

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Thanks to Dan for the photos