Author: Spirit of Gravity

Happy Birthday Delia

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

May 2017
Green Door Store

So, yes, it’s what would have been the eve of Delia Derbyshire’s 80th birthday if she hadn’t died so young. As one of the series of events in Brighton to celebrate that event, I think this was a suitable occasion.

Lorah Pierre

Lorah Pierre

Lorah Pierre is set up in front of the left hand stack on one of the round tables, a small breadboard device with wires, switches, unknobbed potentiometers wires and bare light bulbs sprouting out. She has a small jeweller’s screwdriver in her hand and the house lights down. She starts with small pulses of white noise serried up in blocks, the bulb pulsing in time. Silence erupts with darkness and then pow! Back in with a thin blast of white noise full throttle, again it pulses as she works at the hidden presets. The blasts fatten out and then fall away in volume. Darkness and flashes of light illuminating us standing around the table watching the concentrated effort. The set climaxes with full throttle blasts and then all too soon in darkness ends.

Karen Constance

Karen Constance

Karen Constance is up on stage, to one side of the screen onto which is projected full size some film by Andy Bolus, it’s large with stained glass colours and the intensity of melting celluloid. After a false start due to connectivity issues, she starts with what sounds like a cassette recording of bricks being chipped resonating through some kind of piano soundboard. It morphs into an unrecognisable lumpy rhythm, before being subsumed by chirruping tape birds and someone gulping a noisy tea before having a sliding door bash their head in. Karen’s collage sets are singular things. Evoking dreams of the city bombsites of my youth, weeds, dust. Machines. There are birds and natural sounds, but it’s not bucolic in any way, when the tonal wind blows it’s through a window, a bell is an oddly warped domestic sound pitch bending into an absurdist shape. Urban Horror. Dogs, elephants. Voices. I’m kind of lost. And a bit scared. It’s dark… she ends with a woman’s voice reading.

Roshi featuring Pars Radio

Roshi feat. Pars Radio

Finishing the evening is Roshi featuring Pars Radio, starting with a new song, well a new cover of an old Persian folk song, “Rashied Khan” with a short clip of an old Iranian film playing behind them. It’s pretty abstract, Roshi’s voice, a constant, her organ holding quivering notes behind her and Graham Dowdall’s occasional beats scattering about behind her. Then a trio of older ones, including the single “Don’t breathe it to a soul” with film, before finishing off with a rattling version of “Three almonds and a walnut” and unusually an encore! “Lor Batche”. Rocking.

4th May at the Green Door Store: Roshi feat. Pars Radio / Karen Constance / Lorah Pierre White

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

A concert for Delia Derbyshire’s 80th Birthday.

Roshi (feat. Pars Radio)
Iranian traditional songs and London electronica.

Roshi Nasehi is a Welsh born singer-composer of Iranian parentage with a strong track record in live performance, collaboration, recording and workshops. As a child she sang 80s pop, songs from musicals and Welsh folk at school and in local choirs. At home her parents played old tapes of Iranian folk and pop music and her father resumed traditional violin playing, which influenced early compositions. She also learned piano and in 1997 won a place at RWCMD to study composition and sang in the jazz ensemble directed by Keith Tippett. She moved to London in 2000 and before long formed her much acclaimed “experimental, electronic Welsh-Iranian folk pop” project Roshi Featuring Pars Radio with prolific percussionist/producer Graham Dowdall. It’s an unorthodox sound world combining Roshi’s intimate singing style with Gagarin’s experimental electronic powers to create a unique genre-crossing, ‘exotic, folktronica landscape.’

Roshi has received several commissions including the Belonging exhibition at the Museum Of London, BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, So & So Circus Theatre, Birds Eye View, the Southbank 2012 WOW festival and the British Council for whom she presented major public sound art pieces in Kuwait in May 2014.

www.roshi.biz/about

Karen Constance
Audio and visual artist in rare solo show.

Included on this year’s Tectonics lineup, sound artist, member of Blood Stereo and the Polly Shang Kuan Band, and co-curator of another UK experimental music festival, Brighton’s Colour out of Space.

Lorah Pierre White
Recycled DIY hardware & hacking

Recycling of materials, self-built hardware, hacking and bending, along with a DIY ethos that allows interactive installations and performances to develop out of temporal space

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

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Tuesday 2nd May 8.00 to 10.00pm

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

The next edition of the Spirit of Gravity radio show will be broadcast on Tuesday 2nd May from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM.
https://extra.resonance.fm/

** Please note the change of date, the show will now go out on the 1st Tuesday of the month **

Gravity Waves:
The first hour will be a Noise special, details to follow

The Spirit World:
The second half will be a Delia Derbyshire 80th Birthday special, including tracks by:

Delia Derbyshire / Ron Granier – Dr Who theme (1963)
Delia Derbyshire & Anthony Newley – I Decoded You
White Noise – Black Mass: an electric storm in hell
Delia Derbyshire – The Legend of Hell House
Spheress – Kindalini Sprawl
Magliocchi, Boss, Chagas, Okamoto – after silence
Colin Webster & Mark Holub – Qara Capa
Viva la Muerte – Martinez Estrada
Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara – stone of the beach
Der Plan – Hohe kante
Bovaflux – Red Sector
Transept – Follow Your Heart

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.

Just the one duck

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

April 2017
Green Door Store

Duck Rabbit

Duck Rabbit

It was a warm spring day, but a cool spring evening. At the Green Door Store, first up for Spirit of Gravity were Duck Rabbit, intrepid and enterprising sound collectors who had done us proud at the Caroline of Brunswick about eighteen months back. Joe, James and Tom played two improvised pieces tonight – the first drawing on samples from a historic working grain-mill (the last full-time working one, they said), and the second from the sounds of a Liverpool scrapyard. Sometimes they whipped up a storm, twisting and wringing the sounds from their machines – in Tom’s case a self-made controller called a Clarinot. At other times – especially on the fadeouts – the sonics they conjured were so subtle that no one knew if they should applaud yet. Eventually, they did anyway.

Andrew Greaves

Andrew Greaves

Next up, Spirit of Gravity collective member Andrew Greaves played the final instalment of his Octabeast series – the ‘last will and tentacle’. Appropriately, its minor key imparted an elegiac sense of a page turned, or a book closed. Over layered, pulsating sequences and echo loops, Andrew added lyrical notes on the mighty Casio 400, with plenty of rhythmic and harmonic contrast and counterpoint to hold attention fast. Behind him flashed up magnificent, self-produced collages, in which Renaissance cherubs vied for space with Russian iconography, a boxer and 1950s goalkeeper (former Palace legend Bill Glazier, it emerges). Andrew hasn’t combined these two elements of his artistic output before but, on this showing, he should surely do it again. As a performer, the lad done great and, as always, gave 110 percent.

Resonant Blue

Resonant Blue

Last but unleast, Resonant Blue from Hove, who let it be known during the sound check that they would be loud, and didn’t disappoint in that or in the overall impact of their set. With a simple guitar and laptop setup, the duo produced the kind of soundthrob that really rolls and rumbles in the stomach. On the screen, logs burned in a grate – keeping the home fires burning, while Guardian news alerts went off in my pocket about bombs landing in Syria. Much of Resonant Blue’s loudest sounds derived, I think, from a single sampled growl; the higher frequencies sang in the ears, in my case for some days afterwards, enhancing the sense of time well spent. Towards the end to the set, what sounded like a fire alarm mutated into something closer (odd as this may sound) to ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us’ played on the bagpipes.

Unfortunately, no video was taken of this event.

6th April at the Green Door Store: Resonant Blue / Andrew Greaves / Duck Duck Rabbit

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Resonant Blue
Apocalypse Donut Vendors: A mesmeric maelstrom of feedback. A duo or possibly a mono appearance of this highly rated electronic act.

Andrew Greaves
Octabeast album launch: Intense minimalist analogue improvisation. Intense minimalist analogue composition. Not for 5 hours, though, this time. For this show, Andrew will be performing his final edition to the Octabeast series “Octabeast; a Last Will and Tentacle”. Prominently featuring the mighty Casiotone MT400 and a collection of his garish psychedelic/baroque collage images.

Duck Duck Rabbit
Trio of electronic and acoustic improvisors with field recordings, last seen whipping up a storm at The Scope.

Album release
This month’s event showcases the latest release on the Spirit of Gravity label, featuring another memorable live performance – that of Andrew Greaves’ focused and intense rendition of Octabeast, as seen and heard at the Terry Riley 80th Birthday celebration at the One Church, Brighton on 27 June 2015.

This ‘Ethiopian Dervish’ version of Octabeast was based on a series of Ethiopian 5 note scales; the shadow of Terry Riley may be detected in the use of a delay-laded combo organ sound. There is a hint too of famous Riley compositions, such as ‘A Rainbow In Curved Air’, as well as nods to other influential improvising organists like Mike Ratledge, Alice Coltrane, Larry Young and the great Ethiopian players Hailu Mercia and Mulatu Astatke.

The piece was framed as a shorter preview of the longer (5 hours), gallery version later performed by Andrew in October 2016. The album is available for audition and as a pay-what-you want download on the label’s page:
spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/octabeast-ethiopian-dervish

Thursday 6th April 2017 | 8pm – 10.30pm | £5
@ The Green Door Store
Undercroft, Brighton Train Station, BN1 4FQ Brighton

COMING SOON: Delia Derbyshire’s 80th birthday, featuring Roshi feat. Pars Radio / Karen Constance / Lorah Pierre White

Solid brickwork

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

March 2017
Green Door Store

Feed Back Cell

Feed Back Cell

Feed Back Cell were just back from a trip to Iceland, where they’d been doing more development on their modified cellos. Alice Eldridge’s cello seemed to have more acoustic adaptations, apart from the speaker built into the back run off a small car radio amp (with battery) that both were equipped with, hers had sitar style drone bass strings from the bridge up under the neck and some other adaptations, Chris Kiefer had more obviously electronic adaptations with an array of about 25 potentiometers built up over one quadrant.
So; the speakers built into the back can get a feedback loop drone going on, resonating strings and things filtering away. And then you have the standard and extended cello techniques on top of that, and both players have a full repertoire of both, so there’s plenty of that lovely cello rich scrape and drone to go round. There’s a lot of intense watching between the two, odd complimentary moments – and considering the constant changes far fewer of those “who made that sound” looks of surprise than I’d be making.

Clive Henry

Clive Henry

Clive Henry has a simpler setup, notionally, some devices, sampler, contact mic / hydrophone, a big metallic spring and some sleight of hand stuff he keeps hidden behind his back. We’d originally booked him for a Harsh Noise Wall, as I’ve heard he’s about the best at the full on blast of static. But, what we got was a set of subtlety and variety, richly textured, considered, with a surprising dynamic range. To be sure there was some pretty terrifying high frequency wail, and some clothes flapping bottom end, but this was tempered with quiet, sombre passages and the odd moment of comedy boing. And Theresa May which we’ll gloss over. The set seems split into three sections based on originating sound sources, each with their own particular set of sonics and peaks, and their own version of the burst full throttle noise.

Gagarin

Gagarin

And rounding off the evening was Gagarin, we had three new songs, a couple from ‘Aoticp’ and some of the more textured pieces from the ‘5 Hills in Surrey’ pieces. Yeah, so how do we describe Gagarin freshly? He’s added a phone to the setup since he last played at SoG that has some live time-stretching of samples, but he still largely uses the foot pedal triggered drums and hand controlled pads, with a keyboard added. There’s still that satisfaction of watching him dance between the pedals, even if his mobility has been slightly reduced by breaking his pelvis last year. The new stuff is good as well, it sits satisfyingly deep in the bass bins of the Green Door Store while bringing in the more fractured slower tempos of the looser things he’s been doing recently.

Next radio broadcast on ResonanceExtra FM: Thursday 23rd March 8.00 to 10.00pm

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Gravity Waves and the Spirit World

The next edition of the Spirit of Gravity radio show will be broadcast on Thursday 23rd March from 8.00 to 10.00pm on ResonanceExtra FM.
https://extra.resonance.fm/

Gravity Waves

In the first hour of the show we have artists featured at the Sonic Rebellion Now event at 2 Temple Place in March 2017. Audrey Chen (with Phil Minton), Daniel W J Mackenzie and Eva Justka.

The Spirit World

In the second half we have tracks by :
Mark Saunders & Suzueri – Got the Chills (from 10th Sep 2011 @ enban)
McCloud – Lunch II (from Experiments with Teenage Synths)
Hugs Bison – Cogs in a machine (from Remote)
Fane – Concertina Counterpoint-Moss Force
387 – 14:06 (from Paranoiz)
Nil by Nose – Thinking Bread
Kris T Reeder – All out nuclear war (from Utopian Dream)
Spheress – Bittersweet
Keith Seatman – Please wait here (from Boxes Windows & Secret Hidey–Holes)

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.