June 2016
Green Door Store
Tim and Dylan have found some new synths dumped outside, one in particular has some fine fine settings, but some busted keys. Let’s ignore those – we have Hardcore stabs to the max!
Dolly Dollycore
The first act of the day proper is Dolly Dollycore who has a new thing with laptop drones, field recordings and her array of small percussions. She starts with a verse, setting the scene before a recording of water, with layering in over the top transport and rumbles, bells recycling backwards under newer more personal words. The second piece seems more celebratory, the words looking forward where the first piece looked back. The backing is more tonal, there are notes and music and (even) beats. It’s pretty psychedelic, slow backwards gongs evolving into a foghorn climax and winding down in spaceship whirls and tambourine.
Sexton Ming and Jason Williams
The second act is Sexton Ming and Jason Williams, which is idiosyncratic and very personal in a quite different way. Jason comes on first with the green first aid box belping and blooping while Sexton skulks up under a sheet in his underpants. There’s some growling and then he gets dressed and Jase switches to guitar while Sexton tries to light his farts. There is a bash through a Buddy Holly number that warps into “Addicted to Love” all in 90 seconds. Sexton then throws a mixture of Naphthalene and Dettol around while Jason plays bass oud and an ending falls into place quite perfectly.
Some Some Unicorn
Some Some Unicorn are in informal gathering of musicians led by Shaun Blezard who came down last year on his tour of seaside towns. On this occasion the Unicorns were all local:
Annie Kerr – Violin;
Gus Garside – Double Bass;
James Parsons – Drums
Andrew Greaves – Synth
Daniel Mackenzie – Synth
Chris Parfitt – Soprano sax
Jamie Sturrock – Shakahuchi
And Shaun Blezard on phone electronics.
They start with a composed piece of music called “Sustained Piece” by John Stevens – part of his book “Search & Reflect” that sets up the rest of the set quite nicely, it’s slow and evolving and gets everyone into the headspace that Shaun wants. That piece is about four minutes long and after that it breaks into a short duet by Gus and Annie, before switching back to drones. Even the occasional flurries of percussion or flute seem to be soft and loquacious, as the music fades in and out and I’d say most people spend around half of the set one way or another listening rather than playing. It’s all rather lovely.
Elena Desai has assembled a group of guitarists to accompany her film “Micro Infinity”, she’s sat up by the sound desk with her laptop playing the soundtrack and monitoring things. Onstage are the three guitarists, although one has an SH101as well judging from this angle. There’s some suspicious flanger, but that gives things a Twin Peaks creepiness at times, which adds to the films degraded and oversaturated but washed out feel. There is the impression of an unpleasant factory that lurks just out of view of the skies and streets visible through her window.
You can see him onstage with a collection of effects and home-made boxes – a step sequencer and a couple of circuit bent toys. Swarbrooke starts up urgently with an irritated buzz, Harvey enveloped in a comforting darkness, he slashes some chunks of noise across it as the bee starts to warble in a far from idyllic manner. The chunks morph into a machine grind before we drop to something like a live mains applied directly to the head and into a popping rhythm into which he cuts some of the rawest noise I’ve heard in a long time, twisting into an oscillating morphing crush. At one stage you can make him out in the darkness, toy lights flashing as he carries something flashing around the stage screeching. It’s a truncated set, washing out to a thin white noise hiss, but shows how much imagination can be applied to something as seemingly restrictive as noise. Thrilling.
Jeff Stonehouse finishes the evening off in a lovely wash of blue light with a red spot on the screen behind him. He has a long trestle table with his laptop at one end and a novelty guitar stand propping up his 60s Woolworth’s guitar at the other. An office fan blows ribbons gently onto the strings and occasionally he wanders over to it to jangle the bracelets that hang from its head or scrape the strings. The laptop processes all this and has some backing tracks possibly, or field recordings. The whole piece drifts almost in stasis, enveloping and warm. People sit on the floor (in The Green Door Store!) Shimmering developments slowly crystallise from the drones, time passes. I don’t fall asleep this time.
Baby was depleted even beyond the trio we were expecting, Adam Bushell turned up, set up his Vibraphone and drums, slept for an hour and then had to go home poorly. So we were left with Alfie on Double bass and Will on guitar and flute. I’d not seen Alfie before. He started with some plucked figures with Will interjecting on screwed up acoustic guitar, before switching to longer bowed figures and Will switching to flute, with some interesting overtones, switching between lower tones and almost feedback sonorities Alfie tapping the bass body in lieu of Adam, before dropping back to Will on the guitar chords and Alfie back off the bow. Before finishing strongly on long flute tones and bass rumble.
Jack starts his set off with some statement making monster bass blasts. They really make full use of the Green Door Store’s extended bass frequencies, they’re slow and powerful and he builds up some other regular noises in there before picking up his saxophone and letting it rip into his effects chain. There’s some pretty heavy distortion in there and his playing pretty quickly builds in intensity, with the bass blasts getting twisted with pitch bends before it falls away and starts building again around a more complex sequence. I think he could barely talk for a while after the end of that, he looked completely blown out.
Komuso (Derek and Cliff) are joined on stage by Der Rompf (Robert and Stephen). Starting slow, grit and warble with e-bowed guitar sliding in. A big metal sheet propped up against one of the GDS oil drum tables and electronic drums rattle in a Martin Denny-esque exotic patter, curling the guitar off into arabesques before fading out into noise and space whorls. Cliff has an interesting approach to the electronic drums, scraping around the edge and beating the limits rather than time. It builds again before sliding down to a quiet keyboard figure before some bassy growling gets them in the mood for proper metal bashing beats and space beeps to out.
Baby start warble and growl; cornet against cello with vibraphone bell and scrape before it starts to get a bit ominous with some choral decay before will gets onto the acoustic guitar and thinks get into more spacious territory, Alice’s cello dropping to strummed bass figures, odd Vibe tones, stroke of drum and slow cornet or Korg from Al, before Will suddenly stands and switches to flute which picks thing up, Adam beating cymbals, Will circling, the synth toning and Alice harsh jars on the bass strings with a moment of suspension with Al’s effects suspended lighter than air before the cello drones in all scare and we spiral out to nothing. The second piece starts with scrapes and whispers against scurried string plucks, before flute drones in underneath and the Korg does a detuned space warble under vibes and voices and isolated short flute flurries before we do an odd revisit to Denny but in a somewhat more ribald fashion