Author: Spirit of Gravity

Thursday 5th March at the Rossi Bar: Bela Emerson & Hervé Perez duo / Meljoann / Ascsoms

Bela Emerson & Hervé Perez duo
Cello, alto saxophone, laptop, electronics.

Bela and Hervé met at Buddhafield Festival in the summer of 2019. After a very brief musical encounter in the middle of a field amidst sun and wind, the duo realised that they had to play again, and involve their passion for improvisation with acoustic instruments and electronics.
Both experienced improvisers have performed for many years across the UK and Europe. As a duo, they are able to merge fluidly gestural, textural and melodic phrases, with great ease and near telepathic communication
https://soundcloud.com/nexttimeproduction/20190721buddfieldberv

Bela Emerson is an innovative cellist who uses electronic processing to compose in the moment. She has toured worldwide and performed collaborative residencies at Sydney Opera House and Royal Festival Hall, as well as being commissioned by BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction as a solo performer, playing four John Peel sessions for BBC Radio 1, and releasing four solo albums to date.
Her artist CV includes a wide range of collaborations: with artists such as acrobats Mimbre, filmmaker Tereza Buskova, musicians Sarah Angliss and Stephen Hiscock, and comedians Tamsin Greig and Rory Bremner (commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and the BFI).
Bela also works extensively as a community music facilitator with Open Strings Music and in healthcare settings with Wishing Well, using music as a tool for connection, creativity, and wellbeing, as well as training people at Goldsmiths in using relational music-making for dementia.
www.belaemerson.com
www.openstrings.co.uk
www.wishingwellmusic.org.uk

Hervé Perez: Artist, composer and improvising musician from France who now lives in England. He plays saxophones, shakuhachi and laptop in various groups and produces music inspired by jazz, contemporary and electroacoustic music, experimental, sound art and sound therapy.
He has released three albums with Inclusion Principle (Discus label), many recordings in collaboration with artists from around the world, and also solo work on various netlabels. His latest album, Imploding Stars (Focused Silence, 2019) features solo saxophone and live processing.
Hervé has worked as sound recordist and sound designer on a number of short films, and is currently carrying out residencies doing location recordings and concerts with Maja Bugge’s Northern (Full of Noises, Manchester Jazz Festival, Lancaster Jazz Festival).
Live performances incl. Huddersfield Week of Speakers, Mantis festival Manchester, insubordinations microfestival in Switzerland, Sheffield festival of the Mind, mopomoso at the Vortex London, megapolis and dumbo arts festivals New York, Jazz à Luz, Manchester Marsden and Lancaster Jazz festival, Full of Noises, etc.
www.spacers.lowtech.org/herve
sndsukinspook.wordpress.com

Meljoann
Dystopian pop, disorientating noises, corporate video testimonials

Originally from Dublin, Meljoann produces experimental electronic pop. In her latest single ‘Assfuck the Boss’, she explores the “stockholm syndrome of the employed”. Her sound has been described as “like a long-lost soul-pop album from the mid-1990s as remixed by Aphex Twin” (Eamon de Paor, Metro Herald)

Ascsoms
Field recordings and miscellaneous electronics

Adam Wimbush’s solo project Ascsoms is an evolving sound world formed from a semi-generative system of analogue and lo-fi equipment, tape players, loopers, field recordings, miscellaneous electronics and a rotating cast of effects pedals. His recent experiments explore layering and signal routing. These morphing environments, often dense and full of texture, feed into further productions – creating an ongoing experiment in sonic reproduction and reprocessing.
He is a keen collaborator, a member of  Thee Electric Spotchworms Tape Orchestra and half of sound effects duo Electronic Sound Pictures Visit https://ascsoms.bandcamp.com and https://soundcloud.com/ascsoms for more info and follow at @ascsoms on instagram and facebook

Thursday 5th March 2020 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA

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

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

Sunday 23rd February 2020 from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM. extra.resonance.fm/

The first hour is from the new release on The Spirit of Gravity Label “It just evaporated, so I’m trying to re-conjure it” by McCloud:
McCloud – The long tail (full length version)  / Unwanted Missionaries Unwinding Along Green Lanes

The second hour:
Inwards – Skateboarding / Jae Josephine – 2020 tbc / Kina: Suttsu – Muza / Nil by Nose – Always there

The January 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-january-2020-sunday-the-26th-of-january-2020/

Another selection of tracks from the orbit of the Spirit of Gravity Collective, including a remix of the most popular downloads from the Spirit of Gravity BandCamp label by Dan Powell:
Dan Powell – Sogman’s Hitmix / Othermen – For All Time (Res Extra Version) / Emma Papper – Reflctions02 / Dan Powell – emerging from the valley into a rainshower / Olivia Louvel – Mes Taches de Rousseur / Nil by Nose & Noventa Nada – SANS FAUTE CETTE FOIS / Barker – Models of wellbeing / Fane – The Temple of Unknowing

Last European Home

January 2020
The Rossi Bar

Hardworking Families

So, Hardworking Families starts the evening, Tom sat hands rummaging inside a black box containing Some Things, the lid flaps open towards us, balanced on top is a small PCB with a pot and a couple of other components. By the side of the box is a cassette player. His set starts with stuttering feedback-ish stammer. There’s something of a rumble train-ish, very reverbed coughing.  The rumbling gets grainier and bassier. A pseudo rhythm of gulps hits away in the background and everything falls away around it. A thin tone somewhere between a Casio organ and a reedy metallic whine is conjured from something hidden away. Something happens with the cassette and the reedy whine becomes a thin shard of feedback. There’s some static Morse code. Wind-jammed mic.  Whirr of an oscillator that rolls down into a pretty meaty judder while the Morse flips inside the tone to form a noise barrage. Other oscillators go about similar dirty business and we suddenly get into this toney noise wall that modulates outwards into several frequency strands all winding around each other. Something with some proper bass struggles up from beneath this like a jetliner over a Sicilian beach then it all gets very quiet before one last hurrah of a mechanical woodpecker getting to work in a lumber mill.


Monty Oxymoron

Monty Oxymoron had the second set, he’d played at The Spirit of Gravity previously as part of a trio and a quartet (once famously on copper dog and bird cage) but this was the first time we’d had him play solo, and I think the first time I’ve seen him do a set solely as a musical piece playing the keys on a keyboard (rather than extemporising on the case, lid, stand and anything nearby as well). It’s a piano/synth setup. He starts with some sparkling space jazz that sounds like something of Sun Ra’s from the head, shimmering flourishes and chords that spangle off into a little squelching synth line before zooming off. Some bassy synth crushes bring us back, then its twinkling off again before modulating chords bring back a hint of the original melody and then a little chord riff takes us off again to get lost in fantastical arpeggios. There’s a passage of wah wah stasis that’s rather lovely, that gets eventually overrun with harpsichordian dances of notes that slowly mutate back to piano sounds of the melody again then the electronic drum we can’t see at his feet comes into play. Starting with a jazzy ride with occasional rolls around the virtual kit while his hands keep at work fidgeting away at filtered stabbing chords the feet working away at an insistent rhythm under the table that fades away into an electric piano flourish drowned in a sweeping massive phase. Lovely. Then there’s a bit of an encore, a more orthodox-ish jazz piano ballad, that gets into a Yes Album left hand on a synth chord accompaniment for a bit of a dynamic with a slow wind down.


Kina:Suttsu and E-Da Kazuhisa

Kina:Suttsu and E-Da Kazuhisa finish off the evening. Kina with a midi roll flat piano keyboard starting with backwards piano into a slowly decaying long delay pedal building up a slowly revolving insistent piano part that she wordlessly vocalises over. E-da has a physical ride cymbal that he tings over this. There is birdsong the piano part decays into a churning organic murk, Kina keeps working away at her piano roll pushing notes into the delay chain until it loses all form in an undulating wave of little notes, E-da picks up the tempo on the ride to match this until it all slowly fades away. Kina brings the birdsong back, E-da gets a hand drum to work and Kina starts on the alto saxophone, a stutter skronk alternating with longer lines. E-Da is putting some effects on his drum, the bassy thumps really getting some presence. Kina gets some fire in her playing and E-Da follows her round, the birdsong seems to spiral off tiny electronic tones that glitter in the inner ear.  E-da gets right into it, driving us on under Kinas spiralling lines, then it all falls away underneath her. And she returns to the piano. Single notes: high, low, the memory of the last leaving a notion of melodic drift as it loops, she breathes the sax gently over the top. E-da has some rattling and rainstick washing away. She eventually starts adding extra notes in and the loops build up the effect of delays as E-Da starts with a beater on the cymbal. It all gets a bit psychedelic. Mushing, washing in and out like great waves. The deep layers of piano producing odd accordion-like tonalities amongst the sparkling of the high note hits. It ends like a two chord riff with E-Das cymbals rolling in like great Atlantic rollers, slow and stately and all enveloping, and then Kina beaks it all up with some free form playing on the piano and saxophone and we’re done for the night. subtlety.


https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Yh-ajRtlsM https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Z0-WIC_IUo https://www.youtube.com/embed/QA-1zcpOlWU https://www.youtube.com/embed/SzUGp_phG00 https://www.youtube.com/embed/piI68vNvX54 https://www.youtube.com/embed/AXo28QFrtdM

Thursday 6th February at the Rossi Bar: Leifert / The Organ Grinders Monkey / Paul Morgan and Gus Garside

Leifert
Avant-garde electronic duo

Leifert is an avant-garde electronic duo shaped in Mediterranean Europe, based in the UK. Raised by punk attitude, we are creating shifted wall of sound using variety of tools, exploring and playing with wide range of fields – psychology, mindperception, multiculturality, fashion – through melodies and sound design.

Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij850ZQLURk
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/leifertmusik
Live video: www.facebook.com/leifertmusik/videos/253875528643577/

The Organ Grinders Monkey
Guitar and technology twisted pop

The Organ Grinder’s Monkey is a musical collaboration between man and machine, an unholy alliance whose aim is to combine indie-rocking guitars with glitchy lo-fi electro beats and a dash of retro 8-bit synth.
The duo consists of Ben Garnett: a human who sings and plays guitar, and Bill Murray: the laptop computer who provides the rhythmical backdrop for his organic counterpart.
togm.bandcamp.com/

Paul Khimasia Morgan and Gus Garside
Electroacoustic shifting soundscapes

Paul Khimasia Morgan is an improviser, currently working with acoustic guitar body, objects and electronics. He has a live cinema soundtrack project in partnership with Steve Beresford & Blanca Regina, and performs and releases material in duo with Daniel Spicer. Paul’s latest album, “peoplegrowold” is released by Confront.
Gus Garside plays improvised music, free jazz & contemporary music as a double bass player, sometimes using electronics. He is a member of the Brighton Safehouse collective. Recent albums are “Puddling” with The Static Memories (Linear Obsessional, 2018) and two albums on Discus Music (2018 & 2019) with the Ron Caines/Martin Archer Axis.
Together they create shifting soundscapes.

Thursday 6th February 2020 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5
Downstairs @ The Rossi Bar
8 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3WA