Spirit of Gravity – Page 20 – Spirit of Gravity

Author: Spirit of Gravity

Thursday 4th May at the Rossi Bar: Tullis Rennie / Johanna Bramli / While we were sleeping

Posted on May 4, 2023May 5, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

Tullis Rennie: Trombone and electronic improvisation
Johanna Bramli: Haunted voices from within the machine
While we were sleeping: Experimental silence through pop-disco to earth-shattering noise

Tullis Rennie is a composer, improvising trombonist, electronic musician, and field recordist. His work encompasses sound installation, community-engaged participative projects, multi-channel concert works, video, mixed media and live/improvised performances -presented at concerts and festivals across 20 countries, alongside broadcasts on NTS live, BBC Radio 3 and ResonanceFM.
Tullis Rennie’s most recent release is Fixed Freedoms on Accidental Jnr’s Room 2 – a new series for Matthew Herbert’s label dedicated to electronic music outside the main thoroughfare of club tracks. On Fixed Freedoms, Rennie presents a highly personal work created in response to changing life circumstances as well as the universal upheaval of the pandemic. Across seven diverse pieces the accomplished producer, trombonist and composer pivots between diaristic field recordings and analogue synth experiments: li.sten.to/fixedfreedoms

Rennie’s varied career to date has touched upon many different conceptual approaches, examining the impact of listening with jazz musicians Matthew Bourne and Graham South on 2018’s Muscle Memory and investigating the hidden process of performance preparation with Vonnegut Collective on 2021’s 48 Hours. He’s also a founder member of Barcelona-based AV collective Insectotròpics and co-director of community-oriented arts organisation Walls On Walls.
“Rennie foregrounds the act of listening as an active component in the creation of musical experience” The Wire Magazine
“…touches on Vladislav Delay, Lorenzo Senni and DJ Sprinkles … a mutated set of electronic experiments that bends recognizable formulae (trance, dub techno, electro) into abstract landscapes” Boomkat
“With his unique combination of experimental electronics, improvisation and field recording, Rennie’s music seems to reach towards a hyper-realist kind of ambient. His pieces are sensitive to the importance of noticing sound” The Cusp Magazine

Johanna Bramli is a sound artist, one half of motorik electronic pop band Fröst, co-founder of the all-female noise/feedback choir The Larsens and composes for contemporary dance. She blends granular synthesis, found sounds and vocal manipulation to create sensitive yet sonically assaulting textures.
www.johannabramli.com
www.instagram.com/johannabramli
www.facebook.com/johannabramli

While We Were Sleeping: Anything from experimental silence through pop-disco to earth-shattering noise and no idea what he will play on the day.

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 4th May 2023 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5 (cash only)
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

New re-release on the Spirit of Gravity BandCamp label: Roots and Culture

Posted on April 24, 2023July 26, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

The Spirit of Gravity presents another release from our capacious vaults. This is ‘Roots and Culture’, originally released in 2010 – a compilation featuring various projects of members of the Spirit of Gravity collective and their associates, including I’m Dr Buoyant, Noteherder & McCloud, minimal impact and Hot Roddy.

A recurring theme – hinted at in the title – is homage to influences and lodestars, who include Alvin Lucier, Raymond Scott, Anna Mendelssohn and the MC of BBC TV’s The Good Old Days.

Stream or download here: spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/roots-and-culture

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

Posted on April 23, 2023April 26, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

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

Details to follow

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-march-2023-26th-march-2023/
For the first hour this month, we are celebrating the latest release on the Spirit of Gravity net label. ‘Night‘ is the new album by Noteherder and I’m Dr Buoyant. It follows their previous release, ‘Day‘. See what they did there. The 2nd hour is the usual mix of good good stuff from within the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity collective.

They’re redeveloping my waste ground

Posted on April 6, 2023April 18, 2024 by Spirit of Gravity

April 2023
The Rossi Bar

Starting with Andrew Greaves & Dan Powell onstage set up facing each other for a run through of the new piece they composed while on residency at The Rose Hill. Dan with his tray of small objects, his laptop and a new tray pf glasses from the location, Andrew with his usual mix of serious synths and trusty Casio. They start with Dan’s glass armonica warblings played against synthesiser drones from Andrew, some gentle clatter and bell chime mutated by MaxMSP and proper bass rumblings. Emergent is a slow haunting, detuning melody first on a synth, then the Casio organ, the clinking falls away and a bassline is revealed, Dan filtering in some subtle scraping of bow on glass. As the melody ebbs away we get some radiophonic beeps and arpeggios blending in, if the first piece felt like Dan, and the second Andrew, this is a nice meld of the two. Andrews repeated organ figures with Dan’s sinuous drones piercing snakelike in between, until overwhelming with a fat bass-y wash, phased in with wind FX and Andrew providing the drone. Plane, car or sea recordings, glass pub clatter, rattle and chime ruler thrum on table. Spacious churn of a bit of a rummage through what’s on the table, roll of saucer, shortwave whistle. Some speech, sounds like my friend Ursula. The organ riffs are back wedded with odd noises and washes again.

Next it was You&th, Maria and violin, field recordings, LoopStation and effects. Starting with a looped bass violin figure playing off against seagulls, Maria winds a melancholic line over it, something about it takes me back to my youth and the sound of the one legged violin player every Saturday playing under the railway bridge at Earlsfield station. Next up is a song called rainbow, I think, a drone underpinning this one, the lead line sliding between notes, I can hear the traffic along the main road behind the man’s back. The melodic line changes slightly; sawing, insistent. The traffic thrumming as it passes. Weird delays spiral off. The third song starts with an aching melodic line, solo, I think this is one of the songs Maria learnt from her Neapolitan father, at the end of the verse a little pizzicato phrase and we can hear the streets again. Maria sings, birds chirrup, she has some odd double tracking on her voice. There is rain, loud on sheet metal, wind provides bass. It’s beautiful. The violin is back. I can feel the trains riding overhead as I hold my mother’s hand and can vividly see the man’s empty left trouser leg neatly pinned up, the arm holding the violin jammed firmly against the crutch holding him up. It’s amazing the unexpected images great music can conjure. That’s something I haven’t recalled in a very long time. Beautiful set. I wanted to write more but every time I try I’m lost in time.

Finally, it’s a newcomer to The Spirit of Gravity, Pylon&on&on coming to us via our friends at Electronic Music Open Mic. He’s launching a CD. He starts with a continuation of the melancholic lines from Maria’s set, slowly lifting them with some shimmering, shifting pads, everything seems to ebb and flow. An enormous, massive bass block swings slowly in, the pads fade to birdsong. Boom its back slower than plodding, birdsong; BOOM; harmonium; BOOM, occasionally something like a snare. Rattling, a bassline, slow – but double speed of that boom – and an organ part comes in. It’s as if he’s channelling the evening to date into the first few minutes of his set. We get what seems like a breakdown to a detuned synth phrase, bass tomes and mutating buzzing synths swarm around it. We get a distorted bass drum salvo, it almost has the sense of a pattern that’s constantly just beyond comprehension. Some voice then its back again almost breakcore in intensity, then something that’s definitely a drum pattern boots its way in boom clack rattle, some repetition – I can tell, then developing quickly into stop start distraction. There’s a voice, like clipping. rhythmic then nothing, a wash of gentle white noise, a hint of siren, filters, a slow half a bar of recurring beat. The other half filled with typing, the bass drum slowly consuming the whole bar with its insistence then four to the floor in it comes, bosh, siren flailing. There is some shuffling (the horror) amongst the audience. Arpeggio, breakdown, filtered noise. Clanking and we’re into the next track, half a vocal phrase rhythm against a double beat bass drum in another building and untuned synths. A bubbling line slinks up under everything, then to end it veers off into some grime bass fatness that suddenly shoots off into breakcore crazed beats for the finale.

Thursday 6th April at the Rossi Bar: You&th / Pylon&on&on / Dan Powell & Andrew Greaves

Posted on March 5, 2023April 9, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

You&th: Maria Marzaioli with field recordings, improvised violin, poetry & Neapolitan song
Pylon&on&on: Experimental techno, hip-hop & distorted soundscapes
Dan Powell & Andrew Greaves: “Inside Journeys” album preview show: sound art, improvisation & electronica

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

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

Thursday 2nd March at the Rossi Bar: Ascsoms / Jo Thomas / Simon James

Posted on March 2, 2023March 5, 2023 by Spirit of Gravity

Ascsoms: Sound materials balancing atop a foundation of musique concrete
Jo Thomas: Voice, glitch, field recordings & synthesis
Simon James: Phantom Sounds from South of Shoreham Port

Adam Wimbush’s solo project Ascsoms is an ever evolving sound world formed from semi-improvisatory performance, signal processing systems and experiments with analogue equipment, tape players, loopers, field recordings, miscellaneous electronics, toys and a rotating cast of effects pedals. Sounds emerge and disintegrate, drone blankets shimmer, this is post-ambient music for derelict dreams.
ascsoms.bandcamp.com/music

Jo Thomas will be performing a series of electronic glitch landscapes. Her electronic work is bold, vast and sometimes delicate. Jo Thomas lives and works as a musician and composer in London. She publishes under her own imprint Soft Apple. Her work is available through Entracte , Tapeworm. Naxos, NMC Recordings and Ty Cerdd.
softapplesound.blogspot.com

Simon James: “Over two years of listening and recording around Shoreham Port I’ve had many experiences of what I describe as Phantom Sounds. They are fleeting, carried on the wind, dissipating the moment I turn my attention to them, leaving me to wonder if they were real or imagined. I’ll share extracts from my collection of field recordings and the Buchla Electric Music Box will provide the phantoms. This is a first public sharing of part of an ambitious large scale project focussed on the area around Shoreham Port, which sits just over the road from my house.”

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

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

Endless travelator

Posted on March 2, 2023April 18, 2024 by Spirit of Gravity

March 2023
The Rossi Bar

Will a member of management please go to the security panel.

A boom arm full of loops of quarter inch tape hangs obscuring our view of Ascsoms as he sits at his tape player and effects. He introduces the pieces tonight as being from a work in progress called “A state of emergency”, a homage to klaxons, alarms and such. And it’s full on radiophonics, a lovely cascade of beeps and whirrs spills out of the PA, occasional tonal swirls, that are eventually swallowed up by a quiet repeating rasp. A fuzzy ill-defined drone hovers away in the background as the swirls occasionally continue and a Tuxedomoon shimmer whooshes through. A buzzing fly eventually realises itself as a thinned-out air raid alarm, pocket calculator tones away. Adam occasionally gets up to refresh the tape he’s using as a sound source. The tones vary, there’s a descending run that ends in bassy delay feedback. A circular saw seems to have defined pitch, everything slurs. One tape seems to have oud playing on, that he picks notes of particular frequencies to highlight that give us a rhythmic patter. Car horns unobtrusively provide a honking beat. A laser battle breaks out in the quietest traffic jam in the world. Stereo sonar pings! It’s all surprisingly warm & emotional.

Jo Thomas is sat behind a Chapman stick laid out horizontally on the table in front of her. She plays with by hammering on to the strings, her hand like a piano player’s; reaching for the widest chord, she has some field recordings which come in under her sparse bass lines. Rhythmic leaf crunch, gives way to something ill-definably thumpier. I think of the Chapman stick as being a bass, but she gets some nice high notes out of it, including some nicely sustained feedback, which she distorts into a penetrating grind. Jo is also not immune to a little radiophonic warble here and there. Starting subtly then amping it up to overwhelm the field recordings. All the time making runs & rumblings on the stick. She runs for a while on a really nice abstract loop given rhythm by repetition, its quiet with a few notes, rumbles and whistles. We have walking / raindrops / knocking giving a counter beat, then a sudden rush of sub bass and take off rumble evolving into wind-tunnel roar and improv rattle. Everything drops away leaving the sub-bass to loop away with sparse chords layered over.

Simon James rounds off the evening with his famous Buchla synth, once again the synth set up facing the audience and he sits with his back to us – we can see him working away: patching; adjusting, tweaking. He has programmed up a lot of sounds from his neighbourhood in Shoreham, the harbour, the beach, the wind, the occasional chime. The wind gradually becomes tuned and effected, a drone underpinning it. It drops away to the wind again, lock sirens, the distant warehouses. Distant foghorns boom gently, as we enter a factory, metal is dropped and lifts hum. We enter a world of water, waves against a wall, and Simon in his car talking about the wind of the sea buffeting his car. Lorries running past the bass off their exhaust enhanced by the Rossi bar’s PA. The final section starts with what sounds like a small wind turbine judging by the pitch, tuned up and down and briefly sawtoothed, ghosted with delay and some more proper bass and it suddenly stops to general laughter before recommencing back in the watery pool. Sirens woop and a ship engine throbs and vibrates past