Category: SOG-BLOG

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.

Unfortunately there is no video of Em-‘s performance due to technical difficulties.


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




An evening of mixed doubles

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

March 2025
The Rossi Bar

A balmy evening, unexpectedly give us Emma Papper and Jason Smart on a return from their Daytrip to Europa set last time, for the night bus to Bognor. To be fair I think we got a lot more space music this time round, but let’s investigate. Starting with a kicking bass drum and abstract electronics and glitches, Jason introduces the set with the title track, there’s a nice counter-play between the straightforward drums and speech and the total abstraction of the clicks, whirrs and bells of Emma’s electronics, I can’t quite work out what she’s triggering from the Electric Wind Instrument. The next song has something about dentists, an acoustic guitar loop from the laptop, shaker rhythm, and total space wibbles, shooting stars etc. from Emma. The next track starts off with a much fiercer rhythm, double kicks, and plenty of percussion, “It is what it is” Mr C style, delayed swoops, gated pings, little swirls. The next one starts with strummed acoustic again from the laptop, “Humdrum” vocals and space swirls from Emma, the second half takes off, losing the guitar and whirling off into swooshing spirals and Casio drones. The next starts off with a nice plucked 12 string riff and synth parts, something of Lazy Sunday Afternoon’s about it. Back to beats for the penultimate track – 4 to the floor, shimmering synth pads and a bassline, “I’m losing you” The EWI seems to be summoning up feedback guitar screech alongside the familiar space-noise and offbeat synth propulsion. A nice little bit of reverse drums to end. There’s a very short custard song. The last one is back into the interaction of poo-psyche acoustic guitar strum and space music.

An unwell Evey occupies the middle ground this evening, his bifurcated set heading veering into both noisy techno and melancholy coldwave. Although… it starts with a slowed bell and wind, and hard plucked zither sample all Get Carter style, into melancholic piano, and the first sub bass of the evening drops. It’s a slow motion crawl into the set decaying out in a mush of delays and harpsichord. The second track is a pounder though fierce fast bass, the zither back harder, they shift about changing focus while a hissing snare heralds the rhythm track. Counter lines on a percussive synth storm in. Delay enhances the melodic qualities of the zither while everything else just gets more intense. The next track starts with bowed cymbal and feedback and an old fashioned bassline on the 16ths, with skittering kicks, Chloe sings: it’s a counterpoint. James reinforces on the chorus. The synth hooks layer up, and it feels very mid 80s Germany in the best possible way. Feedback out and into a monster arpeggiating bass. The lopsided beats completed by slow motion melodic synth, then some fiercely competitive percussion pushes it along into a weird drop, that doesn’t so much build as just get louder and more intense before dropping again to the arpeggio. We get another slow build into a more chaotic end section. The next son starts with a syncopated woodblock and James singing, an abstract synth melody, a slower bassline. Insistent without becoming fast or dense, a bit of a breather…. And then back into the fierce basslines again. Ringing, gently rattling hi hat and Chloe singing again. A breakdown, then back with a more relaxed bassline, and a snare, all nostalgic white noise. The final song starts with a bass guitar line James voice lost in a spring reverb, a shifting pad provides propulsion before a Dr Rhythm superfast hi-hat starts in. There’s some call and response between various synth lines and they’re done.

And finally, it’s someone new to us, part of the Ceremonial Laptop crew. Cederick Knox are performing an AV set, cut ups of video with Theremin and synth, the collages collated for more than disjointed disruption, it feels really carefully put together. Layers of church organ speech, looping and overlapping. Drums, chirruping bird song, children’s choir, this is going to be hard to describe, just a list of things a proper kaleidoscope of sight and sound. Hooky and rhythmical. At times beautifully melancholic, and then a hooter adds some daftness, before you realise it’s part of some cleverly designed beat, made of machines and speech and splashing puddles. A breakdown and a slow build from loops of ticking, violin stabs, voices, flutes, dancing feet, claps, eventually into bass and synth & squawking and clanking, and then a veer sideways into something confusingly psychedelic reminiscent of The United States Of America. The set is split into sections, the third (?) starts with a string quartet from hell, violins, bass, Theremin, big string stabs, dropping to swinging jazz basslines interspersed with applause and then it drops again, this time to a solo piano, bringing in cello with a slowly unfolding line that gets lost eventually in layers of teenage voices. The final section begins with a loop of a voice or breathy sax, layered against vibes, bass, bursts of a trebly drum solo, a chorus line from an opera (?), more of that applause, its mesmeric, then drops to a Japanese guitarist being interviewed on young musician of the year, while he plays in the background, looped for a couple of minutes, its gorgeous and melancholy. Apparently 5 months before he badly damaged his left hand. Which is sad as it was amazing playing. Literally cries of “Bravo!” at the end, that’s a first. First it was people dancing now “Bravo”.



This is what we do

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

February 2025
The Rossi Bar

Purely because of the logistics of fitting his drums and electronics on the small stage we start the evening off with perennial favourite Dale Frost playing a largely new set. The first song starts with vision On chimes ping in counter rhythms before the punchy drums kick in around them, a complementary beat. A mesh. There’s a couple of nice isolated drum breaks just before the chimes come back in. The second song is much more staccato, backing track with partial rhythms, drums filling some more. The occasional proper sub bass. The jigsaw nearly complete. About halfway through the song a pad comes in that seems to add completeness, but it still feels oddly half time. The third comes on like some oddly time-signatured dub track – the “delayed” piano then de-coupling itself to emphasise the off kilter beat. Flurries of hi-hat, weird percussive squeaks. Then a super slow bass note/bass drum gives it some bottom and possibly bringing it briefly back into 4/4 before it all goes a bit loopy again and speeds right up. The fourth starts with a slurred synth that is then triggered by the drums. Big bubbly synths surround it before we get a rattly snare heralding another tricky rhythm. Theres some great bits in this one as things drop in to come back in including a particularly delirious section of the bubbly synth and rhythms all working around each other before the drums stop and the synth spirals off into the heavens. Dale seems to be priming the synths and pads before this final track starts, then it kicks off with a walking bass and hi-hat stalking drums. After a while there’s some steel pan melody driving it on. We get some breaks to emphasise the synthiness before it all lifts off into D’n’B flight, the bass stretching, steel pans lifting higher and higher, another drop then it’s back into flight again, the drums doubling up in intensity, more counter melodies, back briefly to the original version, a grounding. A slow plod into an organ-tastic breather and then back into full throttle for the end.

In the middle slot we had Whitstable’s Sophie Sirota on viola and effects. She starts with some long notes drawn into new synthesiser shapes by the effects warping away, some plucked strings into decaying delay and the drawn bow alternating feeding into detailed layers of shifting something. Occasionally a tear of screaming distortion, a mutating murky backdrop of delay gives us a bed on which the rest of the first song is constructed, the way the main melodic part of the track warps from nylon to total artifice as the notes develop. With that main line going on she fills some trembling background into the looper before playing a longer melodic line against the first using the range of the instrument from whistling highs to almost cello-like swirling lows. The background swirls have mutated into ghastly whispers by now, she plays through the long melodic line again, but with delays spiralling sounds off it in all directions skilfully skirting feedback hitting that psychedelic sweet spot quite nicely. The second piece starts with the bow bouncing on the strings, feeding into the looper notes, clicks, laying down a bedrock. A succession of drawn single notes is fed into the looper as well, a second layer to slowly develop an overlapping chord. Its pretty static, some more unobtrusive layers sliding in, ghostly. That distortion that we heard briefly before is back, needle sharp. The repetition builds intensity until her lead line slowly emerges from the fog, melancholic & nostalgic before slowly letting the framing lines fall away from under it until all we’re let with is the pinging original rhythm line, choirs of angels and the viola’s melodic line and then it to is gone, dropping down to just the voice to end.

All electronic, Nanonic swirls in with a contact pad synth of extensive tonalities, some blistering swirls and deep, deep subs off into churning delay. Ghostly wails, hard whistling winds. Drops to beeps or lonesome foghorns. Distant gunshot snares herald a regular pulse and a frankly terrifying sub bass drone. A rhythm seems to coalesce, rattling chains envelop us, a bass line forms, other synth lines force their way in. cymbals, slurring delays. That aeroplane arpeggiator from dark side of the moon. Everything stalls. A distant door slams. Silence. The second piece starts with a slurring synth injected directly into a delay for maximum entertainment. Detailed layers of sound course out over us, spaceships shifting from some interstellar portal, Nick manages to evoke both 50s SF film soundtracks and the latest space music. Atonal beeps then shift us into a more structured (if seemingly semi randomly) segment that then leads into a pretty fast pulse beat. A great red noise snare sound. The rhythm disintegrates before our ears. The final piece is straight into the rhythm, a ticking of stick on metal hi-hat style, with rasping synths and pinging bass lines. Interlocking bass lines. Interlocking detuned synth noises. Delay chatter, a bass drum with a distinctly dancehall gait about its swing, if not the tempo. Some Cabs style reverb distortion, this could be something off a 21st Century Red Mecca. Everything here is in thrall to the rhythm. It ends with endless layering up, shrieks, machine thrums, feedback. Highlight. Nice.