December 2015
Green Door Store
The last SoG of the year, its a bit of a crisp evening when I arrive to set up.
Noteherder & McCloud
Starting the evening were Noteherder & McCloud, who based their set off some recordings of trains and then more notably Tube recordings as we got into the set. It was a slow start with quite a bit of tape hiss delayed and whined up by a bitcrusher into a distant alarm. Chris Parfitt’s soprano sax shouts jumped across that until a rolling, almost swinging bass sequence started up and he got into some really lyrical playing for about ten minutes until it all shredded out into noise and clanging rail screech and than toned down into breath hiss and gurgle.
Steve has some new light sensitive toy on the electrocreche and this provides him and Matt the soundman with some noisy fun in the intervals until it’s time for ….
map71
map71, who have been one of the best things I’ve seen this year, and this was another good one. They took a little while to get right into it, but once they did, it was right there. Andy Pyne’s drumming and synths (a backing track rather than his old keyboard – I couldn’t see) were rock steady, as he takes some Jaki Liebezeit channelling tight beats. Lisa Jayne was a little more animated than sometimes, her left hand flicking as she held her book of spells in the right dexterously turning pages with her thumb. The highpoint came with some DNW buzzing synth, Andy on beaters, pattering out a steady toned rhythm on the toms (even the snare drum has the snare dropped for extra note) while Lisa Jayne intoned her deadpan words.
Matawan
Matawan are all about the textures, the shimmer. I originally thought one of them had a keyboard on his table initially, but he seemed to have an unused guitar propped against the stage side wall there, while the chap in the middle sat stooped down guitar mostly across his lap as he muddled with his racks of effects at his feet. It was a slow drone build, layers modulating back and forth between the pair of players in what initially seemed an improvised set until you noticed that one of them was loading some pretty specific chords into three tiny Mooer loopers he had at his feet, not that when he played them back it sounded like strumming, but the triad of washing layers they produced as he faded from one to another gave clear indication of an compositional element unexpected in a drone environment.
When we left it was clear it had rained while I wasn’t looking.
Gus Garside started the evening with an introduction, and then a piece by James Tenney called “The Beast” which was a complex microtonal piece from a visual score, all bowed often two strings sounding, long notes , very technical and about 6 minutes long “it’s called ‘The Beast’ because it IS a beast”. I should coco.
The second act of the evening was Franck Barriac, over from France for the Himmel massed organs show at Cafe Oto. He was sitting at the back of the room with a quadrophonic setup, the usual Caroline PA behind us and two extra channels at the back, in front of us. Franc’s set was a soundscape piece based around urban field recordings and tones. It’s amazing how unused we are to this surrounding kind of performance, especially with the artist in front of us, sounds from behind (even after the introduction telling us it would happen) seem really disconcerting. Anyway a really nicely structured piece, partly pre arranged and partly improvised, I gather from talking to him.
Finally it was Futuro De Hierro from Spain. We utilised the extra speakers to boost up the sound – which was handy as it happened, as a few minutes into his set the main PA seemed to glitch out, although those of us sat at the back didn’t notice as we were immersed in the joyous racket lurking up behind us. A quick work around the cabling and it all seemed OK again, but Viktor seemed a little subdued. Still some excellent beats and bursts of noise, and some really interesting kit to look at. We must get him back for a full throttle set at The Green Door Store.
Back to a full strength roster tonight, and we got off to a good start with a set from Barn, with a laptop and controller plus some bits and pieces, his set seems to be in five sections, with a foil. The first reminds me somewhat of my airboat ride from last month, a nice gritty sound, but his properly generated. This breaks into pulses and thence into something that has washes of almost sea like noise, before the final section leads onto a cascade of electronic tones.
Quinta is accompanied by two other keyboard players, who also double up on saw and stylophone and laptop. This as you can imagine pushes the limits of the Caroline’s setup pretty effectively. They start with an unaccompanied vocal piece about Boudicca, before moving into a song with some Nyman-esque very rhythmic interlocking piano parts all three of them intricately locked . They then get stuck into the peripheral kit for an uncanny waltz before coming back to, I was going to say orthodox, but perhaps a more finely structured piece of tightly knuckled piano. A really good mix of modernist composition and sub five minutes pop song lengths.
Rick is down in Brighton for his first solo set as The Oneirologist, which is (I think) a live soundtrack project. The film is called something about moths and has two lights (from a boat, maybe) to which he makes some quiet noise or drones – its too fierce for a drone, but too quiet for noise – so work that out yourself. Strongly textured tones, and resonant knocks from séance next door. Overall, unsettling, I think.
And to round the evening off, Dan Powell plays his final collaboration of the series, this one with minimal impact. it was supposed to be acoustic, so he has his Bontempi reed organ mic’d up to a fuzzbox and delay, Steve minimal impact has his plastic harmonium from India, through a new Space Echo pedal he found somewhere and is rightly very pleased with. I found some old visuals by Karl so turn the projector round to play them over the duo while they hum and drone pleasingly.
To start the evening we had the return of The Birds of Death Valley for their first show in an age. Dom was on pretty good form on a chair centre stage with iPad and bass guitar, stage right had Howard on recorder, venerable Wasp and some other bits and pieces, and flanking the oil drum table Ben on whistle, kettle trumpet, pipe and unused slide cornet. They started with a fairly abstract song of floating buzzes and analogue-y drones, before the kettle and a bassline get into a more rhythmic mode, the recorder tipping us over into more fragile almost Takako Minekawa area.
Next up was F.Ampism with his electronical cassette collages. On this form he has to be the best person doing this in Brighton at the moment, a stunning set, multi layered and constantly moving, there were some really interesting textures; voices, percussion, and an urgency – no sitting back and letting things wash over the audience, a constant evolution of audio images, evocative and rather mesmerising. Something about the quality of the sound put me in mind of the soundtrack to Black Orpheus, but I can’t quite say what.
Finally we had Alice Eldridge & Ron Caines celebrating the launch of “Rothko Veil” the latest release on our Spirit of Gravity label (
Second up is Andre’s Elbow, Dan Powell and Tony Rimbaud, the soundcheck was excellent, Tony processing Dan’s small percussion and throat singing to lovely effect; a rolling thick exotic mosaic. The set itself is marred with some tonal feedback that seemed to get deep into the effects chain and won’t go away, and as a consequence they were too distracted trying to dispatch the thing to really gel. I’d like to see them do it again, as when they had everything back and under control Dan had some whistling vocal drone and singing bowl going on and it finally started to show the promise of the soundcheck.
Rounding of the evening were Deemer; Dee Byrne and Merijn Royaards down from the big city. Dee plays saxophone and Merijn had a stack of old acid boxes; then, between them, they had some old portable CRT style TVs and a whole lot of processing kit. It was a set that felt full of opportunities and at any moment could go shoot off in any of a number of directions – there were elements of jazz, some suppressed 303, some noise things bubbling up through magnetic sensors in front of the TVs – the frame hold lines buzzing through them. And they did visit a number of these places in a remarkably coherent way. Dee plays with a number of the improviser’s we’ve had down recently and they both pay a great deal of attention to what’s going on around them.
Kuroneko were first on, they were due to be augmented by a further player coming down from London, but she was stymied by the Tube strike. Fortunately Ruse23 was on a trip to the old home town so was down here early.
Ingrid Plum started with her pure voice, reminiscent of her singing in the tunnels at Newhaven Fort last autumn, almost designed to put us off the scent. She also had a cassette player with tones from a recent event playing back through a small (very small) Marshall stack. Almost a toy, but it had two speakers with very different tones and she also used a mic input into it that she used dexterously for tonal feedback. It’s a disarming set that skirts noise and fuses well with her vocal style.
Gagarin played a great deal from his new CD, but with the bottom end extended into the depths allowed by the Green Door Store’s Bass bins, and generally toughened up. His visuals were a film of the New Horizons flight to Pluto from the NASA website slowed down to a virtual crawl. The album is a mixture of his field recordings (the Balham garden: birds, trains etc) and scattering rhythms. Not quite the same kind of London sound of his last CD, more like the abstraction of the touch cassette, with more skittering beats, lighter on its feet even with the extra weight of the soundsystem.
Gilli Bloodaxe was first on, backed only by Al Strachan as Foz (who usually supplies slide whistle and other honking interjections) had Spanish lesson that night. He did make the second half of the set, though. We had everyone set up in rows for a change with no milling about, which is a change for the Scope although some of the latecomers were a little more hard to deal with as a consequence – especially if like Foz they heckled. Anyway Tony was on fine elliptical form, telling his punning shaggy doggerel tales, it was a little understated without Foz whoopsie-ing it up. Al had some unusual loops long with his more usual cornet and synth. It was very musical. And appropriately we laughed like drains. Tony ended with an epic, we knew it was an epic because he told us before he started it.
The second act was Isnaj Dui, Katie had a brace of flutes, a looper and some pedals. One of the flutes was a lovely brass and dark wood bass flute with a loop in it not dissimilar to the contra-bassoon Thomas Stone had a couple of months ago – it’s also just as wonderful sounding. She did a number of pieces bouncing off loops with obviously carefully prepared parts, from some highly structured pieces with rhythmic structures to more free flowing lyrical pieces.
Hugs Bison had obviously spent the two days in Brighton well – the video was great, including some excellent footage of one of the rides on the pier that looked like CGI-rendered blue and yellow Lego up on the screen, really glowing. They did a live audio collage of interviews and field recordings with some previously written stuff and live improvisations, it switches from choppy loops to some quite stately organ music, piano parts and rumbling drones.