Category: SOG-BLOG

As the evening light has faded

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

July 2025
The Rossi Bar

Lewis Clay starts his set with a lovely warm introductory wash of synth with little sparkling notes met with stabbing interjections of synths and a hint or two of kick and clatter. This is going to be a busy set, and sure enough it almost immediately drops it down to a burbling bass note that almost speaks to us, seems that it may set off a groove, then starts switching back and forth, there are some, elements of the bass are given some room to breathe and finally they take flight with a scattering beat, the whole thing flying spaciously around the room leaving us finding the rhythm, then losing it when we try and focus on it too clearly. Its best held in the periphery. There is a brutal handover to a vast squelching jungle (as in the sweaty green place full of wildlife), full of sound and menace, murky drums ricochet, unseen things scream, birds chirrup derangedly. There’s a bassline with little seeming repetition, its possibly a horribly distorted kick, synthetic monkeys yammer from the trees.  Then a couple of big snares hit and we’re into a clearing. This is a more orthodox post Aphex percussion festival groove, we can nod our heads or shuffle a bit. Notes come in, a sort of melody, the notes are off, microtonal, shifting, the beats suddenly filthy up, more murk, reverb, the notes speed up, the beat pares itself down, the ornamentation lost but keeping its kinetic aspects, the melodic line is gone, too, beeps and burbles intersperse with snare hits. A quick breather of bass twist, then an arrhythmic track of shudders and twists, tones and buzzes. It pares down gradually to the scattered synth stammers and staccatos. Again we’re off on a new beat exploration. This one is like 16th played first on one sound then another, building a pattern eventually, but still all the time its one sound at a time. Bass bass bass bass snare bell bell bell synth synth synth synth synth tom cymbal tom cymbal and so forth, the delays and reverbs kind of allow it to build into layers until a steady scream drowns it out. Then there’s a bit of broken speech, and then back into a full flowing rhythm complex. Washes spin around the coruscating drums then flourishes of tones and ornamentation, back into it again, then the tones return, detuned and arbitrary, spinning off into space, a chopping bass buzz inserts itself into the rhythm which seems to gather even more momentum and then it all breaks down the bass turns squelching, and the drums pick up into just too fast rattling, its like nightmare trance at 500bpm to finish. Here comes the hoover. So many ideas, it’s a demanding set and a storming start to the evening.

Which then calms down considerably for Warped Love Group, which by contrast is all about repetition and groove. And delay, it’s very much about delay. Starting with syncopating cowbell and some weird murky buzz, hi-hats drop then the first delay comes in winds up, down then out into infinity. Eventually a kick drops in super slow. The delay soups itself up into a melodic line, wanders around then drops to let the snare start. Heads nod. The delay drops out, the hi-hats double up. The kick comes back in but skips a bit more, everything else falls away and the kick develops a tonal quality. The delay goes into guitar feedback mode. The new snare sounds like a snapped spring reverb. The first bass line. Extended, almost a drone or dubstep grind whipping up and down. The delay is going haywire now – pitching all over the place. It all drops away again then the kick is put through its paces, wow – up down all over. Hi-hats on the 16, the delay drops down into sub bass territory. Some weird tuned hi tom (maybe) starts bonging. Synth squeaks slip in, then after a bit of a delirious spell, it all drops away to an 808 sounding kick this time. Hip Hop speeds, Boo-Yah Tribe, say. Off-beat toy piano. The rest of the rhythm slinks in. There’s been no actual bass for a while, the booming kick covering that itch. The delay still keeping that melody line going over what sounds like a didgeridoo supplying a bassline. Whip snares, and such a groove now. Drop to hi-hats this time, open trance off beat hats, but on the 8s, claps, the delay gets some gate action, the kick gets  hard again, but is still syncopated, pan drums, the beat is thick, several snares, the delay is whistling then beeping. Then it all stops.

And completing the evening of Three Very Different things we have Robyn Rocket And People You May Have Heard Of, Robyn with space trumpet, Arlen (R. Dyer) on various things I can’t really see including soprano sax, & Karl MV Waugh on guitar, all with lots of effects. Robyn Starts proceedings with some short notes from the trumpet into lots of delay, Arlen (it must be) warbles in some musical saw and we have a few notes from Karl pinged into a slow delay. We’re taking this super slow, the arc of the evening has been about reducing beats and we have none, now. The trumpet has a lovely melancholic tone as Robyn slips a line of long sonorities out of it, the guitar delay washes gently underneath, with twinkles and spangles from flexitones and other chiming percussions. Little breathy sounds signal things changing and we shift down even further. We’re in interstellar country here, drifting gently through the cosmos. There’s a little flourish as things layer up, building then washing away again, to a fragmented scatter. Scratchy noises skitter about a quick wind down of the delayed guitar, some long warbling trumpet, wind whistling through the room. There is a melodic line from Robin as we get more space noises from the known. Karl gets a nasty blast of something which causes a little merriment, but amazingly doesn’t distract anyone from the unfolding sounds being produced. There’s a further resetting with a flurry of improv scratchiness, that develops into a bit of a flurry of notes from Robyn that again winds down. We get some quiet scurrying electronics, there’s a set of organ chords that have got into the Looper setting everything on a path. Karl pings sets of notes into the ether. Karl gets a little backwards guitar into his Looper. The soprano makes its appearance walking over that, the trumpet just laying down background drones. The soprano gets into the looper too, several lines layered up. Robyn starts to get a bit more fire into the trumpet, Arlen follows with the sax. Some small bells indicate a wind down. A little loop of staccato trumpet winds us out, warbling guitar, sinuous soprano sax and spacey trumpet all tend it as it leaves, last out is the sax.



A balanced view as summer dawns

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

June 2025
The Rossi Bar

The evening starts with a banging set from Spheress, he has added a Volca to the minimal setup of TR-08 drum machine and two reverb/delay units. He starts with a feedback loop through the FX which settles down into a noise pulse and then modulates out into bass. A kick on the ones comes in, the bass is modulated, and chaotic hi hats introduced, followed by heavily delayed claps, the bass is driving on, the claps fall over each other in disarray and the kick comes in on the fours and drives the bassline off. The delays bring in an off-beat pulse and the Volca brings a new bassline in. The beat steadies briefly, then falls apart into staccato racket. Stan tweaking away at the TR-08s controls, suddenly the beat is back and driving. We have cascading delays, weird pulses and the bassline falling over each other, then thinning out; back to basics, driving on again. The bassline mutates slightly then a squall of feedback and the Volca is off in a new direction. The feedback returns under strict control and we get a trance breakdown with bass feedback on the offbeat and everything is gone into a squall, the bassline returns slow as you like. A boinging super slow bass drum creeps in. we have noise, delayed snares, a heavily spring reverbed beat like something from mid 80s Public Enemy, the reverb is almost vocoder-ish in its depth. Noises build back in, its pretty groovy in a noisy Cabs-y fashion. The bass drum providing the bass line. Drum FX syncopating away. The Volca gives us a beepy offbeat. Imperceptibly the tempo inches up, the reverb drenched noise swirling away. Someone whistles. Intensity mounts.
The Volca comes in again with a mid range-y stab rhythm, the kick is back on the fours. Delays swirling all about. Feedback pulses on the 8s, hi hats 16s, energy levels are high. He’s working away on the drum machines controls again tweaking, scattering, glitching. The filters go on the Volca.  Some weird loop happens and everything judders. It all drops away to nothing, a slight swirl which is caught then sent back into the FX, feedback then the drum machine gives a floor tom staccato beat, with reverb generated bass and again glitched out drum noises spiralling all around. Everything is in motion against that tom tom pulse. Then that drops away leaving us adrift, the clap steadies us, the bass gets abrupt, suddenly it’s all in place and the toms are back or was it a kick all along – bang! A brief respite, then it’s back to the fours for the finale. Section again the intensity builds over the rock solid beat. And it’s done.

In the middle slot we are really privileged to have Ingrid Plum’s first live show in quite sone time. She starts with an astounding version of “Wayfaring stranger”. She’s set up on a table with a few devices, including a custom circuit board synth. Beginning with full sub-bass drone, she adds in rich crackles and scratches. And then she starts singing pure and clear. A few lines in and a second wobbling bass joins. The juxtaposition of traditional song and 78 crackles & crickets and the electronic tones adds a weird tension increasing the sadness that seems implicit in the song itself. The bass is very intense. After a couple of verses she loops in some humming and gives everything a bit more emotional heft. There are about six layers of vocals cycling under each other and she sets a massive sweep off across the song. The bass drones shift and one ever so slowly aeroplanes off into the stratosphere. Then everything drops apart from a single drone and the vocal loops. A rhythm track of rattling cupboards becomes perceptible, field recordings of voices? Or is it the audience? The bass drones intensify, slowly beating. She returns to the main vocal line “There is no good in me….”  Stark against the drone and rattling shutter. The bass becomes steady then starts pulsing again. a keyboard drone eases in. and a swirl of echoes, ushers in a second set of much higher pitched drones, so we’re pretty full spectrum. Ingrid starts whispering scarily,  ghosting quietly into the microphones. It’s vaguely churchy, but not in a good way. A pointed nasty note fires in, then drops down. The whispering layers up via the looper. I’m scared. The drones start beating against each other all pulsating slightly, the effect increases as more and more notes are added. Then Ingrid starts singing again – long slow “aaaAAAAhhhhHHHHuuuUUUHHHs”. This slowly develops, circling, meandering. Everything becomes steeped in meaning, eventually the whispering falls away, but the drone chord seems to keep building. Then it gently drops away to just the bass note and Ingrids final singing wordless, soulful, forlorn.

And to round off the evening it’s the third visit of Kina: Suttsu and E-Da. Both set up on – or at least near – the floor, so I couldn’t see from the back. They had their usual array of keyboards, percussion, soprano sax, effects and ephemera scattered all around. Also starting off with a drone, but also a whistle and whisp-y synth. A shifty cymbal through delay. It’s all textures. Bass drones filter in, squeaks, some big long reversed cymbal makes everything else drop. A bassy drum booms about. Tabla sounds. Scrapes and squeaks. The delay provides the rhythm, ill defined. Bells bowed and gently ring. There’s an ill-defined presence emerging slowly from the soup. Tape rewind or birds or shakers – just pitched ever so slightly and through shimmering effects. I can hear water, a sine wave, ducks in a flightpath. A sense of trepidation. Heartbeat drums, so slow; b-boom. A build in intensity and the sounds swirl together in a cauldron as Kina unwinds the sax – long notes at first, then odd flurries, the background still ramping up somehow. There is an un-beat of bass-y drum in there. A pattern, but not an obvious one. The drones quieten out, shift and then step up the scales and down, then up. And thicken in a wind tunnel. A bass note. Just one, then the drones fall away, an ending, but E-Da keeps the un rhythm going. Zither flurries flutter away in a loop, a bassline seems to start. Then a new intense set of drones set right off, ramping up in intensity and pitch, E-Das percussion following it. Shakers, sine tone bells, the wind tunnel is back. Star chimes looped infinitely a skronking sax line fierce but subsumed by everything around it. E-Da keeps the framework steady around Kina as she really wails away. I want to start yelling. It’s delirious heady stuff. She gets into some growly low end stuff before getting up into harsher squalls at the top. A big pinging. And somehow it seems to descend into a big bassy synth ball, and a plunging watery hole to end.

Thanks to Jim Purbrick for the photo



Number station crackling

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

May 2025
The Rossi Bar

Thee Boxx Menn start with a super sub that could be bass or kick and a filthy speech based short loop that’s 120% distortion, the loop slows down and we get into the business of the set. The sub gains some definition and confirms it’s a kick. Whistling swoops through a helicopter buzz. Everything gains squelch, the whistling included. The helicopter turns into an ominous fleet, and the whistling into an incredible slow long sweep. A filtered military brass band serenades the choppers with what sounds like it may be the opening bars of “Take on me”. There’s a lot of reverb. The choppers do this thing of slowing down considerably but still end up beating at the same speed. Twice. Maybe three times. Everything drones up. A buzz floats up and down the scale, and some other percussion finally joins the kick bring in a lot of energy. Some percussive buzzes and car door rattles herald the arrival of a bassline and then an acid squiggle. So many ideas just rattle through. Morse code short wave tuning, bird song, charging rhythmic noise, delay grime. Amidst the swooping synths a thin fuzzed synth pics out a melodic line and you can sense a drum pattern is emerging from the aural mist a long time before you actually hear it lurking about on the edges of your hearing, then finally it emerges skittling out of the morass. everything drops away to a driving synth riff and the drum track locked together. Around this alarm bells rattle, a second drum/synth pattern locks out the first, and brings some blistering waves of bass that completely obliterate all before it. A rhythm track of ticking brings in the third bassline in about as many minutes. This one with an evil synth riff and kicking double kick pattern.  The drums get looser and louder, the synths fall apart into eratticism. The percussion levels up into syncopated psychotic complete with deranged whistles.it filters down to next to nothing; a nice 50Hz hum. A stripped down version of the drums comes back that’s 50% filtered beeps. Again distorted vocals in the mix, maybe some kind of tribute to Mal who’s in the audience. It finishes on sweep and foghorns

In the middle slot its Em- (apparently it’s a typographical thing, a particular kind of dash), she just gets better every time she plays. The set kicks in with a frantic squiggle of a synth line something from a sugar rush 90s J-pop single with equally frenetic drums soon tippy tapping hyperactively under it. Some ominous synth washes stabilise everything, briefly give it a centre from which it explodes into fragments, half bass lines, creaking Halloween synth riff, voice or non-voice, implied acid squelch. The drums worry away at the beat, unstable, bass drum hit-hit-hit, hit, hit-hit, hit-hit-hit-hit. Some big buzzing deep piano notes hint at a change, eventually giving structure for everything else to fight against. Everything falls away leaving the piano and then in comes a new set of skittering synth pulses flurrying away against a super slow snare hit that seems I don’t know – a tenth of the speed of everything else? A mid-range synth part that sounds like some kind of alien trying to communicate with us comes in, to be answered by a whistle thing, the rest solidifies around the snare, slower, more substantial, but still swerving around any kind of normality. It’s like a coked up Bach playing half a dozen bent toy synths with broken fingers. There are still superfast percussion elements, but at around halfway through the set its lurching; there are these odd rhythmic pauses, sudden inexplicable percussive voids that throw you. The sound slowly thins, and seems to slow as it does so, still definitely lurching, a percussion track equal parts buzz, hum, gong, synth stab, altered voice, shimmer. A new percussion track builds out this, a head smacking kick drum and woozy flatulent bass. Woodpecker knocks, two note electric piano, toy piano. Imperceptibly it picks up speed. A groove, so calm after the frenetic rattling from before. Heads nod and shoulders go. A melody hinted at by something in there: a line passed from sound to sound, reverbed piano, gong, buzz, swoosh, bin lid, whirr. We even have a breakdown with some chattering lightweight snare and pads, then the insects are back and the itchy beats return to overwhelm everything, stripping down and speeding up to pure rhythm. There’s a little synth riff as it speeds up then slows down to finish. Tasty.

Finally we had Soborgnost, down from that big city. He leapt in with a big buzzing roar that gave way to a nice riverbed old Skool break, eventually that got some beefy kick and a sub sinewave bass all sonic and tasty. Swirling all round this were skewed delays, flashing synth pads and spiralling gurgles, it felt like it had just got going and flipped into a new beat. Something from the back of a factory, the foreground sonics continued their distractions and again a sudden switch. An insistent kick and snare about 160bpm, followed by 3 note bass, cowbell clang, and a vocal line swerving around it. Drop the drums everything else carries on, 16th gongs, voices, more voices. Or tones? It’s driving now, he hits the groove and sticks with it, the occasional drop or swirl, but its right there. The next track starts with two detuned synth riffs working against each other, they get into a rewind, come back with a solid Residents/Bovell bass line and fast echoed rattling hi hats. Barely audible dub sirens wibbling delays, operatic vocal or high slow synth line? A melancholic piano meanders about, everything seems pitch bent. The next one starts with a mid-bass stomp, heavily delayed bursts of something (guitar? Synth) then some drum thing out of a Throbbing Gristle track comes stomping in. a one note synth line over the top and the delirious delays and screaming and whistling squelch about. The next one starts with another sub bassline stomper, skipping drums, and distorted vocals. It’s as if Sherwood had been involved with the Jack The Tab compilation. There are confusing fuzzed our organ lines, swooping noises, metallic whines. The next one starts with some nasty 8 bit pan drum and backwards zombie calls before another monster flanged bassline kicks in over a 4 to the floor industrial beat. Shouting, rattling, roaring all lost in swampy delay. There’s a breakdown of someone destroying a typewriter to finish. Another flanged bass, this one a bit slower, with a relaxed 120 4/4 kick, and minor destruction noises. The typewriter snare bounces against a white noise punisher. In a totally groovy manner. A masterclass in solid grooves and deranged effects.


WARNING: there is extreme glitching in the following video:

Before you know it, its daylight all the way up

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

April 2025
The Rossi Bar

Wasps, Dan and Andrew from the collective are an interesting setup, covering the Glass Armonica, effects, synths and laptop set up across two tables facing each other. The laptop seems to be running some processing software like MaxMSP, rather than a DAW, but we’ll come back to that. Their set starts about 15 minutes before they get on stage with a cheeky speaker hidden away under the benches playing back field recordings quite quietly. Slowly a bass-y synth drone emerges and some burbling from something electronic, slipping backwards. The drones are joined by others: deep space drones, and warbling shimmering drones. Into this come time travellers travelling backwards past us without stopping, the Glass Armonicas scraped and reversed by the processing. Loads of rather lovely detail. I can hear Andrew playing a little part on his synth. Almost everything drops away leaving long strokes of the glasses and Something mimicking humpback whale song. Musical chimes stutter, decay first. There’s a faint hiss of sea. Andrew plays a little motif again, this time it almost repeats, lengthens and stretches and disappears again. Sounds rumble and slur. Some delayed drums slowly rattle noisily about. There’s the occasional hint of a bassline. Another little motif from Andrew, this time as a sequence, bobbing about. The sequence hides again, the drums roll slowly up and down. Odd noises twitch from the depths. There’s the wind (though it doesn’t feel as cold down in this basement). The drums give way to abstractions again, as though the tide flows from Andrew back to Dan. Slowly the drones weird space noises begin to overwhelm the chatter of static and erroring 1950 devices. And again one of Andrew’s exotically scaled keyboard runs leaks into consciousness. And switches mine off, I’m quite mesmerised.

Lee Ashcroft is an imposing figure standing behind his Theremin and black box setup – I never did get round to investigating it. The last time he was in Brighton was for a Wrong Music event down at The Volks. Which is to say quite some time ago. He starts with some slow melodic parts on the Theremin, a voice talks about bus stops and rain. A bassline starts, the woman’s voice continues, as does Lee on the Theremin. A string counter line joins the bass. A walking bassline. There’s some distortion quietening the Theremin, A slow bass drum and chime come on the backing track and the woman’s voice is replaced by a man’s. A piano part. It all drops, there’s some singings and the backing gently re in, the returns parts layering up. A nicely buzzing bassline. There is some Theremin almost birdsong. “I’ll never fight Mike Tyson….. I’ll never play in The Championship…” and some whistling. Its fog music. Disrupted by a vast shivering TD arpeggio that swoops across our vision out of sight then swooping slowly back and forth. The next track starts with a nice harpsichord line, with more singing and Lee getting some nicely atypical drones out of the Theremin. Then swooping Starfighter laser blasts. Beatless and weirdly epic even before a massive wall of fuzz kicks in. The singer on this is quite exercised about something. Slow heartbeat kicks start the next track, with a swelling bass low. A woman singing again on this one. It all finishes on a quite unexpectedly meaty finish, all beats and  basslines and counter rhythms. But most of the set is oddly melancholic; reminiscent of Low without ever sounding remotely like them. He must have been exhausted after playing the Theremin for the entirety of the performance.

Finally we finished the evening with R. Dyer. The stage abounding with typical R. Dyer devices from the artfully broken harp held together with a big G-Clamp at the top and strung with a variety of piano/guitar/violin strings, soprano sax, saw, synth, effects and a looper. She starts with the harp and voice, the harp rattle-y, loud and creaking. A séance in a log cabin. Arlen plays a plucked harp loop into a lopsided creaky rhythm then plays a looped sax over the top before singing again. The next song is based around polyrhythms played on the harp. (“This song is about …. 7 minutes long”). The harp is looped then the saw provides a tremulous top line, there’s also something that sounds like vibes to provide the backing track, while Arlen sings and provides more punctuation on the harp. Arlen threatens us with an electric guitar for the next track, which is somehow my fault. And no looping… But there is a key change. Oh, I lied, there is some looping to let the sax be played. The next song is little victories, slightly revamped. Starting with a ticking percussion loop, descending synth part and the looping double soprano lines. It’s more Spartan, Arlen listing the little victories of her own “Spring”, “A new one from someone in Bognor – that I didn’t know!”. We then sang happy birthday to Leanne. There was a lot of back and forth between the audience and R. Dyer that I’ve glossed over, but if you’ve never seen them play, it’s a big thing.

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Thanks to Dan for the photos