Author: Spirit of Gravity

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

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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

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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

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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….

1st 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

2nd 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

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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.