November 2014
The Scope
Stuart turned up early and cracked jokes and kept everyone (well me at least) entertained before we opened. The evening was a performance of a few of Bobby’s scores from his new book “Music in Text”. Which will help explain some of the things that happen.
As people were coming in I was getting them to do some lemon sucking while listening to the pinging tines of a fork.
Dan Powell and Paul Khimasia Morgan
The evening started with a new duo of Paul Khimasia Morgan and Dan Powell. Dan had his laptop and a scattering of percussion and Paul had a tape player, zither and some jumble of things. Quiet and elliptical, rattling and humming.
Bobby Barry
Robert Barry / Bobby Barry / Monster Bobby introduced his book, explained some pieces and what the book was about. He performed three pieces which were more loosely based on his scores than following them. Lots of processing and electronics.
Nil
nil set up an impromptu kitchen for Culinary Music, mic’d up the boiling pan and shopping board. Chris Parfitt is so wonderfully deadpan, a career in silent movies was sadly avoided. Dan has a lot more ham. But not literally.
Tony Rimbaud has some of the more prepared pieces worked out, and a rather lovely vocal piece compiled out of previously recorded parts.
For the next piece musicians are scattered around the room hidden in corners arpeggiating away, Chris in one corner, little Kev in another, me under the screen, Tony and Steve over by the door…
We have an attempt at conducting a new language, splitting the room by vowels and consonants. but it all ends up as swearing.
It might not help with understanding what went on, but there are some rather lovely photos at Agata Urbaniak’s flickr page:
www.flickr.com/photos/agataurbaniak/sets/72157648968324729
Tony Rimbaud has also uploaded his full pieces on his SoundCloud page:
http://soundcloud.com/im-dr-buoyant
Anthony from [beep], playing as Arboria Auralist, turns up late and line checks and seems to be enjoying himself so much he just plays on, lots of toys with indeterminate function. Some look quite expensive and are impressively tactile, some look home-made and make superbly scrungy noises. His set is suitably freeform and, as the lights get dimmed to accommodate the eventness of his playing, a general air of blissing out takes over from the “what is that thing-ness” although the Tenori-on has a delightful pinball kind of visualisation going on for a rhythm part near the end that I find quite engaging.
Ampism is Paul from Bolide’s solo project, tapes and small synth and effects, its very clean, surprisingly given the source materials, with a nicely constructed sound collage feel. With some proper bass.
Stereocilia is John Scott and plays a lengthy psychedelic set that starts with synth drones and loops before he switches back to his guitar and arpeggios quite nicely over the top, still keeping the loops and drones going in the background, there is a nice point where the background layers fall away leaving only his guitar picking and he adds in a couple of bass string scrapes that sound like Humpback Whale song and another one where the rain against the window makes the sound of a snare resonating against the skin of a non-existent drum.
Then Anthony plays his closing set, a more loose affair than the first, even allowing for the way that had started, with people gathered around looking at what he’s up to, but he does get the hydrophone into his glass of beer, which is good, even if it makes me worry about him spilling sticky drops over everything else as he bangs it about on the table. Good. This is what it’s all about.
