We are extremely saddened to hear of the death this month of one of the founding members of the Spirit of Gravity Collective, Steve minimal impact Gillitt. In some ways he was the beating experimental heart of the Spirit of Gravity, with his single-minded search for the perfect noise, and keen willingness to collaborate, although if you played with him, he nearly always drowned you out with his volume. His 30 or so live performances in the first 15 years or so of our history were all memorably uncompromising, as were his appearances at related nights such as Wrong Music. He gave us the audience participation concept the electrocreche, although unfortunately we cannot fit this in at our current venue at the Rossi Bar, and his sardonic humour and rebellious attitude kept us honest through the years. His last release on our BandCamp label in 2018 was due to be part of a larger project, which we are very sad not to be able to experience, but he has left an archive of unreleased material from over the years, some of which we hope to be able to share with you in due course. We have lost a friend as well as a remarkable artist, so we will be marking Steve’s passing a number of times through our 25th Anniversary year, but this starts with Geoff Cheesemaster’s more comprehensive tribute on our website here: spiritofgravity.com/steve-minimal-impact-gillitt/
Category: SOG-BLOG
This was an actual birthday
January 2026
The Rossi Bar
Starting the year – a New Year following yet again another hottest year on record – we have a set by an augmented Remember Glaciers, with Jim with his laptop, but also electric guitar, and live memories narrated by Sophie Cowan and flute by Natty Purbrick. The synthesizer, as is the case with Remember Glaciers unfolds at a very slow rate, exceeding slow arpeggios and washes as befits the subject. The guitar and flute unfurl gently in the spaces around Sophie’s story of her visit to the Franz Josef Glacier on New Zealand’s south island. There is a melancholy, as you would expect from a series of performances based on the premise that we could be the last generation to remember glaciers. Jim and Natty alternate their responses to Sophie, each responding to the last’s playing. It’s really understated, and adds a nice level of detail on top of what is usually so stately in its flow. Sophie pauses speaking for a while and takes on some pre-recorded speech and starts to chop it using the Ableton controller, although its somewhat less frenzied than in others of Jim’s projects. While that is happening Jim and Natty play off each other, gently circling around and around. Jim plays a little descending line that indicates closure and the piece ends with Jim’s usual request for more memories of glaciers.
Agnes Haus is next up, with a modular setup and their own flickering grey visuals. Starting with a reverb-y collapse into a church organ from a tidy modular setup. There is some creepy reverbed scrape from an untrue cassette player adding a warbling atmosphere, a scatter of harpsichord chimes give us a narrative frame. A slow regular staple double tap gives a rhythm and everything else strips away. The modular syncopates beeps slowly against that. A pinging piano line emerges from the mass of cables. This cycles away quite hypnotically for a while. Stephe picks up an electric mandolin (I believe) and holding it vertically bows in some harsh raspy drones and some blustery bursts of noise, which builds to a crescendo of squalls and racket – a nice buzzing bass-line underpinning it. It dies away to church organ drones again. Slowly against these we get bouncing little piano parts. The church organ fads and everything slows, there is a flapping fan, there’s a fade out while Stephe tries to find the source of the fan, and with a dramatic twist of a pot, kills it, to a burst of laughter from the audience.
And to finish off the evening it’s our friend from The North Kent Coastal Electronauts, Sophie Sirota who had travelled 90 miles through rain and fog. She starts with a nicely melancholic electric viola line set against an insistent buzzing synth bass with a hard square LFO modulating it. After a while she loops part of the viola, and then gets to work against it adding texture, counter melodic lines. As the loops thicken the bassline seems to recede. There’s some whooshing and then she gets down on the floor to get working on the effects units before hitting us with a melodic line over the top and some metallic fuzz soloing. The second piece starts with a single plucked note that sets up a cascading backing synth line. She sings breathily into a deep reverb. Again it’s loading the looper, some tricky work with a delay pedal, some lovely rich tones, some more singing. Some more of that lovely viola line and back to the vocals. We finish off with a song that was written for an Intox Extravaganza, which may or may be called either “F**k it” or “These are the good days”. This one starts with a jabbing riff through loads of delay, some creaking bass bow-work, and some floating creepiness. Over this insistent backing track Sophie sings, and plays viola lines that to me invoked Tuxedomoon’s haunting “Ninotchka”. Full of Eastern European mystery. The song winds out in a savage deconstruction of the jabbing riff and a harsh warbling.
Yew hadda bee fare
December 2025
The Rossi Bar
I’ve been kinda putting off reviewing this one. We squeezed in four sets, two of which were performances by Henry Collins and Chase Coley that bookended the night. Both of these were very visual, multi-media and are going to be a bit tricky to describe….
So we started the evening with Hyacinth Bucket and the magical testicle filled with thousands of bumble bees and the essence of creation. There is onstage a huge magical testicle, pink, a film starts with the back story and then Hyacinth Bucket herself appears onscreen and narrates the tale. Chase enacts the part of the shepherd and wanders around the room. And then approaches the magical testicle, and enters, skronking and plonking ensues. The testicle throbs. About ten minutes in The Bumble Bees are summoned. After a little longer angelic voices and a nearly naked Chase covered in magical symbols emerges from the testicle followed by Henry in a red dress coat and they gaze adoringly at the heavens.
Next up, with the tricky task of following that we had Meljoann set up at the side of the stage where she usually VJs. starting with a 4 to the floor kick, and quickly morphing through a variety of beats with a monster boinging kick sound, repetitive vocalisation stabs Meljoann goes for the extreme opposite of HBATMT.. Repetition, minimalism, looping back and forth, then dropping out down to a tiny pinging riff, and then she drops massive explosions onto it before bringing in some kind of truncated D’n’B drum track. Then a fidgeting bassline clambers all over that, before the rhythm track drop back to something possibly a little more techno, thickening up briefly into some kind of gurgly soup before a weird R’n’B drop takes into a pulverising one beat then something that I can only describe as doo-wop – which is a massive misdirection – reminiscent of the heady days when hardcore could go in all directions and often did. A fidgety drum track takes us out under some Prince-like synth drones to end.
Then we had Luuma, a beast of a modular setup, with a laptop and some other devices. It starts with a thick buzzing drone and some feedback whistling. A wind of distortion threads through, there’s a hint of a scraping sound cycling away in the background, the drone starts to blister and bubble. The drone drops away into sustained balloon squeaking, its evil stuff, that starts to burble away until it drops into some kind of square wave LFO thing. That speeds and slows and gets into a bit of squelchy territory before morphing into a different more aeroplane-y drone. This continues for a while before upending in a squall of nasty electronic sounds that skitter about in a radiophonic manner before filtering down to a murky storm. Some giants start arguing over a didgeridoo in a room in the distance. Chris has a big wooden home-made drone instrument, this looks like a didge, but has a single string and some electronics. He rasps at it with a bow (in another life Chris is a talented cellist) setting up layers of harmonics and buzzing before getting into some free improv scratching. It feels like the giants are in torment now. Then he starts some sustained bowing getting thick heavy drones, before thinning it out into streamers of sustained tone based around harmonic standing waves on the string, then thickens this right up into a tasty storm to end.
And to end the night its Chase and Henry again, filling the stage with clutter – old CRT portable TV, tables, home-made bits and pieces, cassette player, cymbal, TV aerial… whatever. This was the dangerous end of the evening.
The set started with a fat drone, sourced by pressing an electric screwdriver chassis into the stage making it resonate. Chase enters the stage barefoot and starts getting white noise out of the radio. I can hear the wind coming from somewhere. Henry comes onstage also barefoot and opens a big pot of drawing pins and slowly sprinkles onto a contact miked piece of metal. Chase needs to move and realises that the stage is now very effectively booby-trapped. He picks up the waterphone and tiptoeing across the stage starts bowing it, wrenching high pitched drones, Henry starts scrumpling a cellophane octopus. Chase gets a reverb-y warbling undertone out of the waterphone. He gongs it as well. Henry seems to dismantle the octopus and gets the active noisy element out and continues with the crumpling as Chase gets back onto the radio. Henry gets into a fight with a Middle Eastern horn. Chase starts bowing a big square sheet of steel, while Henry starts rummaging drumsticks on and then around a large steel bin. This sheets more vigorous drumsticks flying around the stage, until the large steel tape measure comes out – Henry reels out about 5 feet of it and starts whipping it about the stage – it’s a nice white source of static bursts, but a little terrifying as zooms around the stage – especially when reversed and the tape holder starts clobbering the objects littering the stage. And getting further afield, Chase gets the screwdriver back to work. The tape measure holder is by now whirling around above the audience’s heads. Chase starts droning the metal bin building up to gong-like crescendos and Henry winds down into cymballic pings off something. Henry leads the audience into a slow plodding stamp that slowly fades out to end.
Had it already started raining, then
November 2025
The Rossi Bar
The Belarina Project is a new musical project from cellist Bela Emerson, and we’re really honoured for her to debut her set of composed pieces at the Spirit of Gravity. Her performances are usually improvised so this is a departure for her. The first piece starts with strong bowed lines into her looper, over this she places a line of equal notes in a higher register, occasionally these are looped, sometimes they are just played and lost, chords are built and shifted. Its surprisingly moving, seemingly simple, an echoing short loop is left trailing off that piece and onto this she builds a rhythmic plucked or is it slapped part. It’s a long line that is looped and subtly built over, before a single melodic line is added, it speaks to me of snow and hills. I’m not sure about anyone else. The third piece starts with a drone and then a bassline that reminds me of Henri Texier for reasons I can’t fathom, Bela sings about past love. The following piece is faster, it starts with a piano part, after a time a plucked bass and buzzing melody part, it’s uplifting in a soft way. The next piece starts off with a raw cello line looped, and again layered up into developing chords, no syncopations here, just exposed emotions. It feels like a lament until some jabbing chords chime in. followed by a bang on the cello bass drum. And finally into the end of the set breathing space.
For Bennu, originally a synth doom outfit according to Zizo’s introduction, he is now playing guitar while his oppo is handling the electronics, it starts with a huge slowly sweeping drone from both sets of hands. The rhythm track is super slow, a couple of kick beats here, a crushing snare there. A super sub bass gnarls up from the drone and wobbles in. A murky synth line is almost lost in the distance. A breakdown, some feedback, the room shakes a little. Great blocks of bass march into view and take us along with them, a thin trebly line and some noises like something from Cabaret Voltaire’s cassette archive, indistinct voices, warbling strings. The kick comes back with its own bass part and a faulty cash machine offset, grinding drones. Its dislocated but still rhythmic enough. The high guitar lines just cuts through. Repetition, halting, starting again, repetition, halting. Finally. Delays spin out from the guitar, the cash register now drones and we can hear a fairy funfair in the distance. It’s unsettling, a female voice can just be heard singing. All the delays slur down. The guitar now sounds like a flapping bass guitar. Entwined around this we get wiry abstractions, thin, circuitous. The rhythm falls apart into stuck cd stammers, swirls of saw-tooth and sine. A snare, or a tin sheet being hit at the bottom of a well, one or the other starts off the next segment in tandem with a blocky buzzing one note synth bass. A synthetic wind blows in from the west, hot and humid, the guitar gurgles malevolently. The drums churn quietly away in the background. A giant brush sweeps the room in lieu of a hi-hat. More machine rhythms, big bass booms, sonic whiplash snare, a drone whines in the midrange and drops away leaving just the blocks of noise. An arpeggio of tonality disrupts the murk. A sledgehammer kick stomps by. Motorbike engine bass, thunk of a snare, rhythmic synth parts. School bell percussion, more voices. It drops to a bassline nicked off a poorly pigeon coo, we get breakdowns – pregnant pauses in the punishing beats.
Morwell is chatty, the first track is an old track of his that he’d slowed down, its starts straight in, chiming synth part weaving with odd reversed synths, claps but not much else you can hear of a beat, until a while in a shuffle starts up. Some horror film samples. There’s a fair amount of phaser action in here, too. The next track starts with voices “into the light” variations and a lurching erratic beat. Everything is super clean sounding. Nice switch into bongos, with a syncopated plastic rattle. Some trumpet sounds. The beats slowly distort. Still off kilter. Slightly. A breakdown for some stabs. Syncopated like they are from a slowed down Drum and Bass tune. Detuned synth hits on the one, too. Crowd noises. A sweeping rhythm track starts the next one, then a bulbous kick drum boings in heralding a vocal sample. Distant, indistinct, creepy. The drums firm up losing murk and then it stops. The next track is another slowed down track; a tribute to rave. Slowed down and speeded up vocals, stabs, intermittent bass, it’s hardcore but ~120bpm, and all the more delirious for it. Back to clean beats for the next one. Weirdly lumpy, too. Nice subby bassline. Drifting synth stabs, all serving as a bed for space noises. The next starts with film samples and synth shimmers, the voices glitch up into the scattered rhythm track, noises slur around in the background, everything is unfixed until a drum and bass beat starts in and brings it all together. The final track starts with a skanking keyboard, then the hardcore kick stomps along, rattling snare loops, dub trumpets, vocal samples, it’s a short build and drop, build and drop, a lot of energy in the builds, each subtly different, feeling faster than the last..The history of rave rewritten as ‘Artcore.
As we fall into the dark months
October 2025
The Rossi Bar
Opening the evening we have Rashamon previewing his new album live. Starting with strings layered with organs and choral drones, the occasional beat frequency, or quiet swirl. Gorgeous, a strong violin-ish line appears and slowly develops. A Morse piano quietly muses into our consciousness, fleetingly we wonder of its stories, the violins drop and there’s a very quiet oddly Drexciya swirl that introduces a synth riff that gives rise to further, more prominent swirls excitement builds. Lee segues directly into the piano riff of the second song, more string synth coils, almost immediately synth noises coalesce around the piano. I’m reminded of the long ago first 7”, there’s some emotional build and the piano drops to bass noise and a plangent violin riff. The piano returns. Imperceptibly extra layers join, details, chimes, distant jets, no drums – we start to feel that there may not be drums. Everything drops to a very gnarly bass with unoiled machine creaks and two note pulsation comes to the fore, and we drop to wind and decaying echoes, far off sirens. Which herald the third song. A winding entwining pair of string parts come in, the synth swirls wander around in the background – for some reason that escapes me I’m reminded of Claire M Singer’s organ beautiful drone pieces – beats me. A pizzicato string part bounces around, causing one of the string melodies to digress slightly, and drop to cello sonorities. Always an emotional pitch, this gets seriously lovely. There’s that Drexciya sound again. It brings in a drone and a major pulsing buzzing bass, a hammered synth rhythm tracks around it. There’s a drop to the bass. Tasty. Some John Carpenter territory on that. Still no drums. The violin is back with a pin point melodic line. The remaining parts slowly come back in, then another drop to the bass, but its morphed ever so slightly and feels more present, a thicker string line comes in. Drop again to the bass, which gently mellows out to water and a very thin high saw-tooth, the earlier piano part’s 3 note brother comes in, warmer and bigger. A proper synth bass pings in. a high synth slow almost drone, but melodic starts to unfold ecstatically. It drops down to the piano and weird ponging version of one of the other parts. There’s a thick organ/vocal sounds breathy and powerful and eventually things rejoin. It’s all very emotional, religious.
Perry Frank on his returns opens with a dark side of the moon plane shudder and slowly unfolding guitar warbles underpinning delayed Italian(?) speech. That’s all eventually subsumed by a series of squalls of feedback drone that roll into a slowly rolling looped riff. Fed by bass drones and trebly highlights this takes on a luxurious quality that rolls over gradually into fat uneasy drones. This then mellows out into a wave backed lightweight version of the original riff and the feedback splatters over it all again into a super doom slooooow pump. A high pitched synth drone works its way out of the mire, serenely floating over the top. There’s a very slow fade out to more speech, lead crackles, phaser wash and rattles. We get a clean guitar strum, then after what feels like an age – a second strum. Then a jangle of strings, another strum; the delay on the guitar slowly builds as he plays on, slowly. A small synth arpeggio blooms into our hearing, some very bassy drone, and then some more shuddering guitar, this time tremolo fuzzed: biting and bassy. The synth shimmers around it. Slowly this builds up to a densely layered squall of synths, guitar scrabbling and feedback. It ebbs then comes back in full force then fades away down to concrete cityscapes and a lush synthy wash. This gives way to a thin little synth riff then big under-amplified guitar strings through fracturing effects. An airfield hum worms in, then more weirdly mid period Pink Floyd guitar lines scattered by Morse code pings and short wave static out of which the voices return.
And finally the return of Automouse, on a brief visit from Edinburgh, she sneaks in (if it’s possible to sneak in wearing an orange box with a huge blinking eye on the front) bringing a low level hum sweeping up, and then up again and again to a whistle joined by a one note bass throb, then ticking clock and the drums stomp in. everything is morphing into a more distorted version of itself, the kick you didn’t notice was missing stomps on your head. The whistle sweeps back down and up, then a fully nasty bit of indescribable-ness motors into life and brings a breakdown. We’re back and rolling. Things motor along and that sound comes back – I think it’s a monstrously detuned hi-hat – it’s overwhelming and then it’s off again. A rim shot heralds the start of the next track and we move swiftly into that, a monster bass all sub-sonics and saw-tooths, the bass drum kicks and stops, kicks and stops. We get a breakdown that comes at you from all sides, SF sirens to the left and right, and switch to a faster bass and the single most distorted snare I’ve ever heard. Then a clicking stick pattern ups the energy levels, a cascading beep squirrels away deep inside the mix. Then it’s back into distortion and murk. A slow down into a sliding bassline and a new way of messing up a snare sound into fragments. Everything is starting to feel feverish, sweaty and slippery. The bass drum drops away leaving everything else to pound away then it comes back in doubled up and double time, chopping the bassline. Then a breakdown into stabs and thunder before a nasty metallic cymbal slices through the mix, hiss hiss, then a fatwashing scythe of treble and a slow bump from the kick drum and we’re off into a semi random synth line which heralds a minor breakcore moment. And then the sound empties out apart from the drums. Coming back with more nasty stabs and beeps before dropping to kick on the 8s for a nice length, and back into a rattling breakcore segment. Which goes back into pounding then returns at half speed. Then we’re off into a lengthy breakdown of sub bass pulse and superfast stick clicking before the return of the sliding bass, and a staccato beat, boom, into noise and super distorted boomy kick and a segment of MT40 drum fills (to celebrate 40 years of Sleng Teng, obviously) that get faster and faster and yet faster… A beepy riff and kick drum on the 8s take us off into the next section. Which is more distorted percussion and beeps. The kick is less distorted more like a cranial assault with a 2×4 now, with a white noise blast for a snare. We get syncopation. No bassline. And buzzing synth line threading through several breakdowns. We end on that thunking bass drum and the sliding synth. A fever dream of the last 45 years of electronic music in a tinnitus sufferer’s head.
Last light for the trip up
September 2025
The Rossi Bar
First on were Ban Hus. It was originally planned that they would go on last, but apparently they insisted on going on first, and looking at the stage I think that was probably the best choice. The entire stage is crammed with stuff, it looks like Steptoe’s house! When people are arriving they already have a drone going, and occasionally one of them goes on stage and tweaks it. I can’t even begin to describe all the stuff they have – I’d recommend looking at the video, and definitely checking them out at the December Splitting The Atom. So anyway, they start with the drone, which as the set proper starts it drops down to a pocket fan like buzz, thickened out with a full on bass drone, some whirring, then some bashes on a rattly drum. This carries on for a while, with odd little noises seeping around for texture. There’s some rolling crash beater going on with a cymbal and the drone seems to get more intense, some kind of scrape gets built into the cymbal sound. A counterpointing glassy clank, some pinging, still that drone. Some small wooden block percussion, sparking, the drone turns into a buzz, distant bicycles ping their bells, and the drone starts to fade into static then comes back as something approaching a bassline part. Something sounds like a rolodex rhythm part, the bass feeds back in great rolling swoops. Intensity ramps up again, layers of noise, jangling bells whistling. I couldn’t tell by looking but maybe there is some looper action going in, it’s a hell of a thick noise for the two of them. Definitely a chugging delay pedal is getting some action. Eventually it feels like we’re going to lose the bass drone, it sounds like rain, everything lightens up, the rolodex carries on spinning. Ah, we slowly get into machine noises, grinding and repetitive, sheet metal scrape and the wind roaring. We get brief cameos from space whirrs, voices, traffic, distant funfairs end up on a loop. Again it all calms down, some subsonic rumbling, gentle clanking. There’s a hint of a sequence, maybe a bottle clank through an interesting rising delay, the possibility of a bassline returns, booming gently away quite low in the mix. A Morse code message bursts through the mist. There’s a swell of the machine noise again. Another burst of static, a crowd hubbub. It cycles through these. There’s some dialogue about cookies, a blast of delay and it ends.
In the middle slot was the return of Slow Slow Loris after something like 10 years. Starting with vocals fed through some kind of gurgle box, an insistent drone comes up underneath and we can start to make some sense of the singing. There is a shuffle of sandpaper scrapes to give some rhythm. The vocals find a looper and plenty of screaming delay. The drone gains some sawtooth edge and some heavy sweeping. The second track starst with an uneasy scraping tone, interrupted by a heavy machinery thunk, and a declamation. The scrape is back with the rest of the factory, a slow rhythm, lots of reverb, a nasty buzzing chug, and drop down to the thunk again, the voice and then back into the maelstrom. The vocals take on a yelp at the end of each line. And again the drop, this time with a stringy drone and a nice line of feedback. Next time round a proper sub bass drone brings everything back in. Everything gets thicker and thicker in the mix, layers of vocals, layers of drones, then a series of cymbal crashes and we’re in to the next song with a trace of that feedback again. This one starts with gloomy synth drones all Germany 1985, white hot piercing tones cut through the murk and voices. The vocal line leads through, dragging the corpse of a super slow rhythm and Siouxsie’s ghost, we get the vocals layering up into a Bulgarian choir and the voice declaims over them. “Alone”, “I’m tired” again (and how is this done) the drones start to feel super urgent, taking on cello intonations and deep synth tones. The next track starts with layers of male wordless vocals, over which she sings through some kind of backward effect, its creepy, trails of delay spiral off into dark corners, the voice starts ranting. The synth line feels controlled by a rigid square wave LFO: Up then Down, Up then Down, with a harsh trebly noise careering through the mid ranges. The noise line spreads engulfing all, the ranting continues and ends a squall of delay and then everything drops into a sung line over a string-synth tone. Disorientingly we veer between the two parts for a while. Then we get into a creepy low gear bit, indistinct swarms of synth sounds growl round each other, no rhythm, but it’s not drone, the vocals stray into wolfish howl, its all a bit low bitrate, some crushing synth blunder in ramping up some pressure. Then down to seagull(?) squeak on a short loop, and the vocal FX thicken out to sold shards, and the foghorn hits, the synth judders back in. the vocals clarify then murk up again, then drop down to pure thin loveliness singing back to each layered other. The creepy voice “I didn’t sing”. It all fades out to end.
And to finish off the evening its Foreboding Formulas for Forlorn Foreskins, and with a name like that it has to be one of Simon Yorkshire (the host of Intox Extravaganza)’s acts. He started off in a T-shirt with a hand painted slogan on it. This will be a theme. It’s a duo, Simon chatting and Nik on synths, it starts with a fat bassy looping synth pad, “they call equal people” a Shepherd tone wails rising away in the background, then it batters into a chopping industrial rhythm and buzzing bass. Simon puts on another sloganed shirt. He starts singing rather than talking. The noise levels pick up whirling all around the bass line then a vicious drop into an on off bass, and nasty power-saw synth. Bashing back into the beat, then hot on its heels another breakdown, beat, breakdown and off on a D’n’B driving beat with a wobbly bassline. Simon moves around the various mics he has set up on stage, delayed or reverbed. Inner rhymes. Nik swerves off into TV theme land – but one with super-sized sub bass bins, the rhythm track starts to judder, Simon puts more clothes on. The temp slows into a head slapping hip hop beat. The synths are all textures. “Climb the social ladder”. We breakdown again, a lengthy one this time, with a slow shifting elongated bass. Little piping synth bips gently sway along. Occasionally a bit of a beat joins them. We go a bit tempo for a while, nice bassline, counterpointing synth riffs, a little bit of squelch. Then a marching snare riding a loping raw bassline intrudes and off we go into the hinterlands again. Simon his-self is quite layered up by now. Then Nik slips us into a raucous mess of noises drones, swirls, sweeps, mushes and Simon drops his last lines.
It was a travelling show
August 2025
The Rossi Bar
Beginning the evening we had Simon Heartfield, starting with a booming super slow two chord bass riff, behind it build 3 separate arpeggios slowly way down in the mix some drums drift into play, and possibly some more arpeggios all tick-tocking away, weaving round each other, then there’s a puff of air and they mostly evaporate leaving just a couple, and the bass riff and drums and then the nick comes in dancehall style. This feels like a new song, with a syncopating synth riff, glassy cowbell and one of those lines that could be a voice or a synth leading the melody. There’s a short section where the beats go 4×4, but then it’s back to skipping along. Then everything falls away to a squelching and a new beat builds around that, ticking hi hats, white noise snare, the synth starts to ping very occasionally a kick booms. We get some more interweaving synth lines with emergent melodic appeal, and the drums syncopate up again, and we get some weirdly detuned synths, that break everything down and then when it comes back in weirdly fit. As it shifts into the next track the beat takes on that distorted 606 sound on the bass drum that’s all tone, it hits a groove for a while – there’s an offbeat, some work on the beat, rattling the cymbals and a delayed pinging piano line precedes a slow unfolding line that could be from Autobahn. An actual vocal sample, and ooh, that back to the fours on the kick, and some big buzz on a bass every once in a while. Steel pans bounce around the field of sound, followed by that pinging piano again. A filtered voice redolent of that long ago set by Mr Hopkinson’s Computer sings against the human sample, and it breaks down to just those two, before the next piece starts, a pretty broken beat, a stab here, hi-hat there, one note pings in, a horn. Building. A rattlingly fast hi-hat brings it all together and the beat rises to completion. And as it does, we get a breakdown… a little riff on sounds like a CZ organ is part of the puzzle. Another bouncing psychedelic passage with various short notes scattering about from different sounds sources, then a worrying, persistent one note bass line comes in banging away on the 16s, well just enough not to grab your ears, over this there is a riff that’s slow – the notes are fast but occasional – that gives even more interest. Then on to the next track, a bassline that’s all at the end of the bar, an indistinct vocal pad. The drums glitching up a bit for this one. A bit of a boing added into the bass, claps slap us. It’s a really detailed set of what I can only describe as ambient dancehall. It’s not really that, but points the mind in the right direction. Hmmm a little bit of a speed up at the end. Nice.
In the middle slot and coming from a very different place we had electroacoustic duo Partial Wave Child, flute processed through a laptop (I’m guessing MaxMSP judging by the way the flute seems to fall through the shifting effects chains). They start with flute thrumming long notes shifted two ways into low drones and spiralling curlicues of fluttering notes, it shifts into weird overblown notes and shimmering tones. There’s a nice flute line that gets filtered into shifting reverbs that thrum or stretch the flute into new shapes. a sound possibly derived from the flute gives a looping two note line that underpins things for a while, then something cello like is conjured up that ripples of flute lines cascade off. The flute layers up into loops or long delays, clean flute lines floating over the top. Breathy clusters give the loops some urgency as the layers shift into unease. I zone out as the counterpointing flute lines – whistle, flutter squawk – work away against each other and the bass-y cello sounds. As befitting the beautiful august day it’s an oasis of a sunny interlude in a thick wood of chewy electronics. Some proper bass issues from the speakers resonant and rich the loops shift against each other temporally and tonally, stretching, making new correspondences. The flute starts on longer notes, longer lines, the effects pitching them up into slow shrieks and having extracted those finding new beauties within them. Whirring breaths across the flute brings sweeping, shifting tones meandering across the background steadily deepening as we head to an end of shhshhing wind and abstraction, notes with all the flute extracted.
And finally we have Digital Roses, vocals and laptops, keyboards and effects. Theres a little bit of a sneaky start: a short song, just brief ramps of wispy bass and an introduction to the voice. The second starts with string synths and a bell before dropping away to just a couple of lines of that delicious singing and we’re into “Under the sea”, one side of their excellent single. The bass drones slide in, breathe, and expand, the voice is looped, a bassline circling with higher lyrical lines over it. A ballad at the Spirit of Gravity? It winds out with fat basses and the refrain “that’s where you’ll find me”. The second track drops the bass even further, the subs getting to work. A chanted backing line from somewhere, the voice back straight in. a slow off beat hi-hat introduces rhythm, then clatters out while the bass whirls up and something starts grinding and it ends surprising us. Arpeggios introduce the next song, bass swoops and winds around that, machine whirrs slide around that, building a slurring twist, the arpeggio drops to bring a bass pulse in. Then kick drum heartbeats, buzzing bass where the hi-hats used to be. With that buzz comes the voice again, like being in a queue outside an old rave, while the person next to you is the surprising singer. At this stage I think the vocal effects have started playing so there is some improvising going on with those, but we don’t notice. Toy piano chopsticks temp notes start the next one with a two note breath organ line that hits the resonant frequency of the room, that fades and the voice brings it back like a harmonium, think Nico but a voice as expressive as hers was neutral, still stark but clear and bright. They keep it simple for this one, mesmerising, a slow evolution of the harmonium drones, towards the end there’s a little bit of processing on the voice. The penultimate track starts with big piano and string synths that give way to a bass synth and mid-tempo drums, it builds drops for the chorus, veers off for as creepy interlude and back to the beat. Hard rave buzzes disturb the background and we get some monster bass feedback through one of the delays. And then to finish an epic dub version of “Waterfall” the flip of the single. It starts with organ, whispered vocals, bass and flurry of sparkling arpeggios before dropping to bass and voice. Lo-fi beats murk in, and it builds sizzling buzzes, the swirl of synth and another drop to noises and voice before building slowly again. Every run through adding disturbing layers, the ecstatic swirl of the synths tumble down into loops of scattered vocals and a monster sub bass drone that incrementally forms itself into something like the bassline, the voice comes back in full, the bass just pulsing away, off noises scurry about the walls and it ends.