Category: SOG-BLOG

That hot week

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

July 2022
The Rossi Bar

So first thing we had as well as the advertised Nuclear Whale we had the bonus of a completely banjo free Fane (I was a bit disappointed with that to be honest) But he did bring some acoustic instrumentation – but also – electronics! Starting with the pair of them on a super fat multi layered drone – organy, but nicely buzzing then added to with nasal whistles and bass nastiness. James started reading from some prepared Gnosticism, there’s a palpable tension to the drone by this point. There’s a deft transition when he stops speaking a modulation to the drone until it’s just a bleepy warble with a nasty glitchy rhythm struggling to come through. James picks up his acoustic guitar and starts a tape of bagpiping. The beeps and rhythm slowly form into actual things from their nebulosity. Shimmers, washes, drums all separate out and run on under James’ strumming. Jon takes his turn in a more declamatory style from his book. The drone storms back in shivery and strong with some chunky rumbling and beatwork under it. We get into a section of whirrs and more acoustic guitar, Jon has some vocal samples he gets into stuttering repetition asJames goes Americana on us. Although he does manage to get it playing backwards by the gentle fade out of the set.

Then it was the return of Robyn Steward, after a brief introduction to her sound world she starts with a breathy loop of her trumpet octaved down for a bass warble, a nice breathing part of mid-range, and a plaintive almost Cornet like line over the top. Stunning. The second song starts with another fairly slow 6 note trumpet line that underpins everything. Over this she harmonises some pads layered into chords, and takes a higher line for the next layer pf loops and drops in the occasional bass wash. She adds a heavily delayed vocal part. The third song seems to unfold immediately, a drone of whistles, bass trumpet pads and mid-range washes. Over this is more developed delayed trumpet part, again fairly melancholy, but this time wandering all over the acoustic spectrum. Some vocal parts lurk around in the background. The final part is more up-tempo seems to be something about trains, its starts with a nicely turned vocal loop that encapsulates a steam train really nicely. There are more interlocking trumpet parts for this Looping round, stuttering ribald notes, melodic parts, the train slips over the hill and stops.

And finally it was Eyal Talmor and his broken synth, he also has some other devices and delivers a set of great subtlety and invention.  You can read this but it makes more sense to go and watch the video on our YouTube channel with the best set of headphones you can find. Anyway, it starts with a chirruping uber murmuration, replaced by a big slow disjointed almost beat of squelching and booms. He uses the full range of the PA, quivering high ends, proper bass, the depths of sub bass, it’s never overbearingly loud but properly sonic with a lot of volume and timbre changes. Rhythms come and go, the sounds from the synth vary wildly, some distortions some fantastically digitally detailed. A lot of dynamic variation, some things unfold slowly some scurry around developing and fading in seconds. His hands move around the keyboards “Like Bobby Crush”, according to one audience member I spoke to, working away at the buttons – there’s one moment where you can see he’s just poised about to make a change but something happens … and… he’s just hanging waiting, enjoying that moment then the moment is gone and he’s back at it.

21st Birthday party

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

June 2022
The Race Hill

Thanks again to everyone who came to the All day birthday party, we had a brilliant day. Thanks to the artists who came down and without exception played a brilliant set.
Thanks to Abraham, Kassia and Jukes from The Rose Hill for their help and support.

McCloud:

 

Bela Emerson and I’m Dr Buoyant:

 

Distant Animals:

 

R. Dyer:

 

Terror Wogan:

 

Screaming Alice:

 

Rashamon:

 

Dan Powell:

 

Fallow:

 

Dhangsha:

 

Meemo Comma:











A bit of a high concept evening

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

June 2022
The Rossi Bar

Adam Martin performing for the first time ever under his own name a piece he composed for his dissertation about his ADHD, a video cutup collage set, Adam is on the floor with a laptop its unclear – is he processing visuals, is he processing sound? Both. It all starts with rumbling and a solarised image, pulsing and lined, a screeching drone laying into it as the image thickens. The sound is chunked into segments along with the visuals, Paul Blart Mall Cop makes an appearance. Voices looped calling back. Ascending vocalese. An explosion. Confusion. Paul Blart speaks. Stages Classic; Inattentive; Over-focused; Temporal Lobe; Limbic; Ring of Fire; Anxious. Max Headroom. Intensity increases, incomprehensibility. And a little Rick-Roll at the end.

BUNKR starts with a floating drone and sweet arpeggio, switching over to minutely detailed little patterns twitching around a detuned version of the drone, the arpeggio comes back with a heavy filter and lovely melody floating around in the pads. About 5 minutes in a bass drum slips in almost unnoticed and a squelch comes in slipping around the rest. The second song starts with an elastic bass, and sliding whistle, a low key brushed drum pattern again imperceptibly makes its way into your consciousness. And out again. Again things return in a slightly altered detuned creepy manner. The third is straight in with the arpeggio and a creepy melody stalking over the top. The arpeggio is constantly mutating in timbre and scope, eventually everything around the arpeggio fades away to be replaced by a stepping bassline overpowering everything with its sense of dread. Finally a high pitched sequencer sparkles in around the top of everything else. The last piece is just an unfolding of layers of drones with a slow arpeggio underneath.

RAAD with two As start in silence and darkness before Heather starts slowly working at the electric double bass, it’s a stuttering “Fever”, Chris provides a commentary of occasional electronic squalls. Heather sings. Chris also sings. A slowed down recording of a radio show on fever segues us into the next section. “Fever is your friend” looped. There is processing and some subtle electronic tomfoolery. The double bass works away. The globe smoking as it spins slowly emerges on the visuals behind them. Its all quite stately. They don protective goggles. Heather comes out with an infrared thermometer and starts to scan the audience a temperature chart slowly completing on the screen at the back of the stage.  Chris completes notes on a clipboard. The looped words slowly fade and filter out. Heather hands out bags of herbs. They both start speaking, intoning against each other. Heather kicks in a filthy fuzz on the double bass and grinds out a repetitive riff.

We are now uploading the whole set to YouTube for your entertainment viewing pleasure:

A Tinnitus Special

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

May 2022
The Rossi Bar

It surprised me that we haven’t had more people using mobile devices play at The Spirit of Gravity, around 2010 I was convinced they’d sweep all before them, but they never did, we’ve had a few acts use them as sound sources, but Fizzell brings them centre stage as the major part of his tech, with an outboard processing unit and a little mixer. His set starts with filtered and modulated speech, well I assume speech as it has something of the rhythms and patterns of speech but garbled into pure sound. This ebbs and flows until it’s replaced by a sine bass, rhythmic slab of synth pad, and then a rhythm set by an odd loop of a matchbox drawer being popped, and an odd very 80s sounding bass synth line. He gets working on this building up a warbling rumble in the background. There’s a passage of really nice bell like tones against occasional detuned bass notes. It’s a set that chops from this to that, the next passage is like being clobbered by someone with a typewriter, this section actually builds and develops into something layered, lots of staccato lines warping around each other with a songlike structure and a really good tone bassline, and a really funny breakdown that almost gets clobbered by a fat drone. But when the main lines come back in, there are a couple of other nice indirections like that, too. The last section again seems based around chunks of voice based sound sources, this time filtered down to some pretty strange sounding bass tones.

Second on were The Zero Map, their first show since they played well before lockdown 3 years and 3 days previously…. Karl and Chloe set up behind their tables of stuff, stringed instruments, wind instruments, effects, a Theremin a plethora of stuff. Starting off quietly with muted bass guitar string scrapes and odd sounds played through end of a tunnel reverb, they incrementally build, slowly; sooo slowly: looped long sung exhalations, some odd  guitar flourishes, drones, quivers, I don’t know whats. Then about 15 minutes in it really starts to amp up, the bass drones take on a slightly fiercer tone, the guitar is just that bit more distorted, the drones louder adopting a bit more bite. There’s a slicing detuned guitar that circles ominously. Some voice rather than singing, some wailing, the Theremin gets a bit of work. Finally Karl (as he always does) gets right into my tinnitus frequencies and I have to block my ears for a while. It’s getting good and thick now, a soup of sound, like falling through 2001s stargate. A proper bass roar from Chloe, some actual feedback from somewhere. Some squalling synth sound. Bit of Harsh noise Wall to finish. Bang and done.

And finishing us off for the evening was Teignmouth Electron. I’d seen Maureen play at Wrong Music’s National noise Day event as part of Polly Shuan Kang Band who were excellent, and don’t think I’d seen her since. Maureen had twin cassette players and effects and a few small objects on her table, she stood behind it robed with her hands wide in benediction. “Without freedom of choice there is no creativity” the voice slips backwards at once point then slips away altogether overtaken by a gurgling toney burble. I can make out voices, but not the words. Resonant tunnels seem to spirit the meanings away. Some stately musical parts push through the murk, barely audible, over lowly clanking machines or whistling factories. There’s a nice little riff on that distinctive Casio organ sound. The voices on the cassette cajole and berate inconsonantly, indecipherably; tube trains come and go behind the walls. There are long passages of unfolding, evolving sounds, star trek fx, passages of loops; repetition. There are uncertain pitch controls, pinch wheels seem oval warbling the recordings. A super slow William Burroughs intones against a return of the Casio part. The Casio is replaced by a new synth part, higher penetrating constantly rising against a plethora of women’s voices, conversational looped and frrrp rewound. Frrrp rewound. Frrrrrrrrrp rewound. A murky guitar riff peeks through and disappears behind some proselytising. How nice. Everything drops down to a single woman’s voice, conversational that falls into a loop. The plaintive Casio returns along with Bill and a hymn. “you are not adhering to the current…” then a jangle of the small table bell and its done.