Author: Spirit of Gravity

7th December at the Green Door Store: Futuro De Hierro / Chemical Bbrench / zillaCAP 20s

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Futuro De Hierro
Raucous improv techno with DIY kit from Barcelona

Chemical Bbrench
Annual show for noisy duo
Chemical Bbrench is a joke, but a very loud and noisy one. They play once a year and regret even that much. Expect Skulls and Guitars.
$@$$@£#€$£#£#!!!!!!!!
disillusiondotdotdot.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-scope-ix

zillaCAP 20s
Madden & The Cheesemaster return with a bass-off

Plus to be confirmed:
Puckridge
Feedback systems: drums->light->noise

Thursday 7th December 2017 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5
@ The Green Door Store
Undercroft, Brighton Train Station, BN1 4FQ Brighton

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Tuesday 5th December 10.00pm to 12.00

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Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

The next edition of the Spirit of Gravity radio show will be broadcast on Tuesday 5th December from 10.00pm to 12.00 on ResonanceExtra FM.
https://extra.resonance.fm/

This month, the whole show will be given over to one piece:

requiem:c40 – A Sound Collage by Carl Slater – In Collaboration with Keith Harrison

On a dark night in September 2017 in a forest, in the midlands, in the rain, visual artist Keith Harrison launched a life size car made of clay, down a 10-metre high ramp to its destruction. The car was a replica of the last Rover 75 to roll off the production line at the Longbridge car plant, Birmingham. This month we are marking that event by dedicating the entire show to requiem:c40 – a sound collage made by Carl Slater in collaboration with Keith Harrison. The piece was first broadcast on Joyride FM, a temporary radio station set up in the forest to soundtrack the launch. Featuring fragments from documentary archives, white noise glitch, cartoon physics and terminal flatlines; the sound collage presents a social-historical framework of automotive manufacture and alternative readings of joyriding, dogging and car culture.

Resonance Extra is available on DAB to listeners in Central Brighton and online to the rest of the world (how to listen). You can also listen online at extra.resonance.fm and directly using this link. Resonance Extra is also available via Radioplayer and TuneIn.

That’s not the sort of thing I normally come here for

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November 2017
Green Door Store

I’m Dr Buoyant

I'm Dr Buoyant

I’m Dr Buoyant kicks off the evening sharpish, set up at the side of the stage. He starts in with an uncanny wind, voices lost in the northerlies. It’s frankly terrifying. There are hints of tonalities before razor sharp his edges in to unbalance things for a while. The second piece starts with some modernist string loops on a nicely dissonant figure. This is augmented by some kind of gated phased wash, we get into some serious repetition, displaced slightly by the return of the harsh whine. Everything leaves us apart from the stabs, slowly getting more distorted. The third starts with a murmured conversation heard through a monastery corridor and two oaken doors, it loops and gets caught up in an echo of Tuxedomoon, before being belaboured by that distortion again. The parts circle around each other getting confused & harder to distinguish. Then a jet engine comes along with its orchestra and plays merry havoc and it ends.

Ahtuf Kontrol

Ahtuf Kontrol

Shortly thereafter we have Ahtuf Kontrol, starting with small clean guitar figures and some serious, if occasional bass ramps. They are lacking a dancer, and the trumpet player from the last time they played, but have gained a laptop to go alongside the keys. The bass is joined by sparkles of tones, odd detuning swoops and cascades forming a vast space music. At some stage the bass switches to drone and an odd sequence starts up and we get into some kind of dark Side of the Moon territory. But the rhythm keeps ambushing us with stops and starts, while someone gets messing about on the delays… We switch out of the big sounds for some high synth washes and get back to the pinging guitar and celestial chimes. After that brief respite a one note tonal bass steps up and brings some electric piano and more space (soundwise this time) things happen, then stop happening. What there is detunes, filters and sweeps away. Returns and gets tangled with a flurry of up the neck guitar strangling and we’re back into space for the final segment which hovers somewhere between Tangerine Dream and The Radiophonic Workshop.

The Diamond Family Archive

The Diamond Family Archive

The Diamond Family Archive all the way up from Devon, not your usual Spirit of Gravity setup, acoustic guitar, drums, hurdy-gurdy, zither. Hidden away are a couple of keyboards and enough effects pedals to keep us happy. We start with a drone, equal parts Casio, guitar, and well, everything really, the drums roll around beaten rather than sticked. Somewhere I’m sure is a buddha box, a scratchy bowed figure is slowly eked out of the murk on the guitar, the drone takes on a bit of a swirl and the guitar goes all Henry Flynt before everything drops away for some singing. Both of them sing. For a while. Then everything comes back slightly different. The guitar gets scratchy and starts to shred a bit sitting on the verge of feedback, a bowed violin loop gives a hint of Cale and the drums get a bit of exercise. And then it drops again for a lengthy bit of call and response over abstract drums and hit string loops, with rattles and bass string buzzes. The second song is called blackbird. It starts with cymbal washes and wiped guitar string loops. The Casio drone is a bit more prominent on this song. At least at first. Some really articulate guitar flourishes get into odd loops while one of them plays the harmonica. More singing! More harmonica! What’s going on. Straight into the final song, that’s what. The drone carries through. An odd funeral rhythm is started and a think modulated unregulated synth sound comes through. A sitar like strike of the string and short burst of guitar feedback are added to the loop. The guitarist rides the feedback with a tremolo for a while. They end singing about horses over soft beater rolls around the toms and the guitar feedback loops. Bloody marvellous.

Motherbox

Motherbox

The Diamond Family Archive all the way up from Devon, not your usual Spirit of Gravity setup, acoustic guitar, drums, hurdy-gurdy, zither. Hidden away are a couple of keyboards and enough effects pedals to keep us happy. We start with a drone, equal parts Casio, guitar, and well, everything really, the drums roll around beaten rather than sticked. Somewhere I’m sure is a buddha box, a scratchy bowed figure is slowly eked out of the murk on the guitar, the drone takes on a bit of a swirl and the guitar goes all Henry Flynt before everything drops away for some singing. Both of them sing. For a while. Then everything comes back slightly different. The guitar gets scratchy and starts to shred a bit sitting on the verge of feedback, a bowed violin loop gives a hint of Cale and the drums get a bit of exercise. And then it drops again for a lengthy bit of call and response over abstract drums and hit string loops, with rattles and bass string buzzes. The second song is called blackbird. It starts with cymbal washes and wiped guitar string loops. The Casio drone is a bit more prominent on this song. At least at first. Some really articulate guitar flourishes get into odd loops while one of them plays the harmonica. More singing! More harmonica! What’s going on. Straight into the final song, that’s what. The drone carries through. An odd funeral rhythm is started and a think modulated unregulated synth sound comes through. A sitar like strike of the string and short burst of guitar feedback are added to the loop. The guitarist rides the feedback with a tremolo for a while. They end singing about horses over soft beater rolls around the toms and the guitar feedback loops. Bloody marvellous.

So much saxophone, so little jazz

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

October 2017
Green Door Store

Benen

Benen

Benen start the evening off, they are onstage one sitting on a low chair with a guitar, mostly bent over to control pedals and loopers, the other sat on the floor, with a mic and he’s similarly mostly bent over working away at devices. They counterpoint this low visibility with a nice set of abstract visuals. They eschew using the loopers for thickness, instead deploying an almost empty sound, some really nice scratchy loops that crackle like wax cylinders, wisps of feedback like a docker whistling several warehouses over. Occasionally you get notes of guitar ping or some sustained notes. There’s a bit of imaginative e-bow work as well. A subtle double track of an ascending guitar part with some worrying rubbing sounds that builds to a creepy crescendo quite lacking in histrionics, before dropping off to another creepy start, breaths and little bursts of treble.

Onin

Onin

Onin base themselves in the room area, sax and acoustic guitar played improv style, both playing back through small amps. Thin rails of quiet feedback attenuated by breath and direction. I don’t think I’ve seen such exquisite low volume control of it. At one point the sax player tilts back like a member of a 40s big band and instead of the honking overblown solo expected to erupt, there is a forceful piercing tremolo of almost horrific intent.

Well Hung Game

Well Hung Game

Well Hung Game finish the night off. Quite properly, there is some superficial overlap with Onin, but Well Hung Game set up on the stage and process the baritone sax directly through a monster effects chain. It starts off low key with thin tapers of sax warping off into swirls of delay and threads of distortion. They actually keep it pretty sparse which considering the potential for mayhem the GDS supplies it very restrained, occasionally flurries get into tail chasing loops that build up into something approaching terrifying, but they pull back before it gets out of control. The sax gets to work out in the more guttural regions as you’d hope from a baritone, but he spends plenty of time confounding you in the upper registers as well. During the final stages the saxophone is so twisted by the effects, gated to all hell it sounds like an electric guitar.

2nd November at the Green Door Store: Diamond Family Archive / Motherbox / Ahtuf KONTROL / I’m Dr Buoyant

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The Diamond Family Archive
The Diamond Family Archive are an English lo-fi, psych-folk, multi-instrumentalist duo from The South Hams in Devon.
Live, The Diamond Family Archive craft a mesmeric live-show from drums, acoustic guitars, lots of FX pedals, keyboards set to drone, tape delay, loops and bellows, bows, harmonicas, cosmic harps, toys and broken cymbals. All coming together to create music which holds echos of post-rock, traditional folk, spiritual soul music, psychedelic rock and lo-fi. Foot-stomping, finger-picking, hollering vs pin-drop hush – fragile, lazy grace.

Motherbox
Brighton based synth/drum trio deliver eclectic experimental groove based sonic wisdoms and a new album to your ears. Two men play various analogue and modular synths while another shorter man drums along all whilst earnestly nodding. Eclectic electronic soundscapes with a dram of krautrock.
soundcloud.com/motherboxx-1

Ahtuf KONTROL
Dance and Radiophonics – return after a summer retreat in imagination. Another combination of emotion and vibration to see and feel.

I’m Dr Buoyant
Spirit of Gravity joint founder I’m Dr Buoyant turns out for a rare solo slot, get down early not to miss it. His set-up has been adjusted to give his live loop improvisations a somewhat darker tone, one might say in response to current world events, but probably just because it sounds good. Copies of the IDB and Ron Caines vinyl 7″ will be on sale.
spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/biography-of-an-exile-7-single
soundcloud.com/im-dr-buoyant

Thursday 2nd November 2017 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5
@ The Green Door Store
Undercroft, Brighton Train Station, BN1 4FQ Brighton

I didn’t mention the bats

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

September 2017
Green Door Store

Sunset Graves

Sunset Graves

I don’t properly train-spot the Sunset Graves kit, but I think there’s something modular in there, no sign of a laptop. There are thick sweet drones, the lead lines have a vague air of melancholy that channels the best early UK dance music, beats that never seem to actually loop, always evolving and slightly off centre. Pleasingly complex without losing the groove. Some proper bass that shakes my camera while I’m filming. One track from near the end has a heavyweight crush of reminiscent of Tackhead. All you can see of him is strings of red lights and thin coloured lines projected against the dark, in blocks – almost TV static. But not static.

Thomas Ragsdale

Thomas Ragsdale

Thomas Ragsdale is second up, after a quick handover, his visuals vertical lines that I can’t tell if waver with the beat or have their own lifecycle. Starkly monochrome after the neon purity of Sunset Graves’ colours. After the thick beatiness we’ve had Thomas starts pretty low key, half bass pulse and delayed piano figure with a spoken sample. There are some shiny guitar wash loops and ’89 vintage arpeggios that hint even further back to Edgar Froese, with a real sense of drama. He’s sparing with the beats, too, often a hinted at handclap scatter, or broken tambourine pattern.

¥ETI

¥ETI

Finally, we have ¥ETI, they start with just Adam, minus a good 18 inches of beard since I last saw him, hooded with some kind of Ood-like tendrils hanging out. They eschew the visuals of the rest of the evening. Adam building atmosfear with drones and Gregory Peck, and also does some good work in the lower registers. He does three numbers on his own before being joined by Tim the drummer from the Cosham Community Players Association, who basically goes the full Steve Noble: relentless hard driving free drumming, with one eye firmly on a pulse and the other ranging freely across the entire universe. They end up with a drum off between electronic and acoustic drums, which was pretty cool.

5th October at the Green Door Store: Benen / Onin / Well Hung Game

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Benen
Combining layers of ethereal guitar, distant and dystopian noise and eerie, contorted visuals, Benen constructs an impenetrable wall, drenched in waves of melancholic hope.

Onin
James L Malone – Acoustic Guitar / Electric Guitar Joe Wright – Saxophone & Dynamic Feedback James from Duck Rabbit with Joe Wright with a setup that comes from the sparer end of free improv with electronics.
soundcloud.com/verzimprint/onin-dark-star
oninduo.co.uk

Well Hung Game
James Allsopp – Baritone Saxophone / Bass Clarinet Ed Dudley – Electronics Blew us away at Splitting the Atom early in the year, with their high intensity sax and noisy processing setup.
wellhunggame.bandcamp.com/releases

Thursday 5th October 2017 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5
@ The Green Door Store
Undercroft, Brighton Train Station, BN1 4FQ Brighton

COMING SOON: