Spirit of Gravity – Page 51 – Spirit of Gravity

Author: Spirit of Gravity

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

Posted on May 2, 2017 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 April 29, 2017 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 April 6, 2017 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 April 2, 2017 by Spirit of Gravity

March 2017
Green Door Store

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 March 23, 2017 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)

I dreamed it was spring again

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Spirit of Gravity

February 2017
Green Door Store

Slow Listener

Slow Listener

Slow Listener bathed in blue light standing just for us. Fidgeting at his lone black box, collaging drones of pure tone and odd blasts of manipulated clank and fade. A slowly unfolding collage of metal sounds, tones give way to reverse cymbal, gong scrape and jangle. Unsettling, unhuman, oddly – but not cold. Emotionally its quite challenging, sucking you in one minute with its rounded pleasantness before forcing you back with some serious high end chittering and blackboard scrape, that giving way to weirdly gated, pitch shifted voices while some ghost breathes backwards through a plasterboard wall. Ending on an endless sustain bell-tone with a one legged pirate stumbling around the flat upstairs in slow motion.

PSK

PSK

“We are PSK it is the only way”. Kev Hough plays long bass guitar notes through some really nasty fuzz pedal while sat behind a trestle table Steve Quixote/Fagan/Psylon provides some electronic rhythms and Pat keyboard and I think voice. Kev also has his megaphone and he’s not afraid to use it, even to reference Theresa May. Steve brings the history of electronic dance music, Kev brings ugly washes of noise and pat 60s organ tones and string synth washes. It works well, Steve’s understanding of the dynamics of programmed drum tracks makes quite the difference. Even when he’s caning the phaser on them. They even have some hooks in there. Possibly even more remarkable at a SoG than the burst of dancing we had a couple of months ago….

D503

D503

D503 drone slowly up from silence seated behind a trestle, Francesco on guitar ringing out occasionally while bass rasp and a trace of white noise slowly firm up, the rhythms more electroshock metronomic here. Eventually the guitar is submerged and as the bass turns to a bulbous pulse the guitar scrapes and flattens out to washes and the whole thing degrades to a 50Hz buzz. Then space winds sweep in and we’re on another build, the hi-hat turning into a robotic scaffold pole thwack around the head before everything empties out leaving endless guitar delays and a whirr of faulty electronics.

2nd March at the Green Door Store: Clive Henry / Gagarin / Feedback Cell

Posted on March 2, 2017 by Spirit of Gravity

Clive Henry
Body/Noise/Body

Clive Henry has been actively pursuing sound for over twenty years. Whilst he has done this in bands and looser groupings, his solo work has seen him pick an untutored route through “noise” and associated areas. His work has often been autobiographical, with recurring themes and ideas including: dissonance, the process of decay, and the human body as instrument. Recent recorded work has concentrated on noise textures and “harsh noise walls”, as well as pieces more clearly akin to musique concrete; whilst live performances have utilised vocal work and a commitment to physicality and tension. His formative experiences in music occurred within the diy punk/hardcore scene and the values of this community continue to inform his musical activities and beliefs. He was a founder member of the bang the bore collective, who have organised gigs and occurrences around the UK. He has played across Europe and the US, and been heard on radio 1. He lives alone in Southampton, with no friends but hundreds of noise tapes which all sound the same. He dislikes writing short bios.

Gagarin
Sonic Cosmonaut

Gagarin is the solo project of Graham “Dids” Dowdall, current member of Pere Ubu and former collaborator with Nico and a myriad of others legendary and unheard of. As Gagarin he makes an electronica that carries influences ranging from Stockhausen to Chicory Tip and everywhere in between and outside. Performing live with a combination of drumpads, samplers, iPads and other hardware his sound is characterised by liberal use of field recordings, strong melodies, fractured rhythms and improvising from a starting point of composition and structure. His last album – the unpronounceable ‘Aoticp’ received rave reviews and lots of airplay including repeated Radio 3 plays. In the middle of recording the follow up – provisionally titled ‘Corvid’ – Gagarin will bring to Spirit of Gravity a mix of work in progress for this, alongside some from ‘Aoticp’ and some reworks of compositions commissioned for 5 hills in Surrey in Summer 2016 which he shared for the first time at Fort Process.
www.gagarin.org.uk
soundcloud.com/ gagarin-1

Feedback Cell
Alice Eldridge & Chris Kiefer: modified Cello

Alice Eldridge and Chris Kiefer’s ever-evolving modified cello project with fresh Reykjavík upgrade: cellos, code, car amps, pickups and lots of soldering. Emits dulcet tones and brutal yelps.

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

The latest release on the Spirit of Gravity label documents a beautiful and unique live collaboration
between the traditional Indian instrumentalists of The Music of Benares and the electronic
soundmakers of The Spirit of Gravity.

The album is available for audition and as a pay-what-you want download on the label’s page:
spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/music-of-benares-in-brighton

On 8 November 2015, sitarists Pandit Shivnath Mishra and Deobrat Mishra, together with tabla player Prashant Mishra – three generations of the same family from Benares, northern India – played a sold-out concert at the Dome studio. Two fusion pieces – performed that evening with the Spirit of Gravity collective’s Geoff Reader, Andrew Greaves and Howard Spencer – are presented on this album, along with four improvisations from a session at Bird Studios the previous day.

The Mishras tour Europe every year but had never previously visited the UK. The collaboration was facilitated by Spirit of Gravity Life President Chris Cook, and the resulting intertwining of subtle synth drones and wash was recorded and filmed by collective members Dan Powell and by Sarah Nelson at the Dome.

“It was great opportunity to perform for the first time in the UK in 2015 – we had some great memories of performing with local musicians and having great cultural exchange with the music” says Deobrat Mishra.