August 2015
Green Door Store
Kuroneko
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.
Russ, along with Paul Khimasia Morgan, Adam Lygo and someone I don’t know, step off from HRT’s invocatory setup, although only Adam sports a mask on tonight’s show (Ruse’s is taped to his setup), Paul also has a noise setup, the unknown has a synth and Adam twirls gurgling vocalisations around the room. It’s a tough thing to do well, HRT hedged their bets with black comedy, but playing it straight can be hard to pull off and I think they did. This was pretty scary stuff, you could practically smell the sulphur and see smoke forming in dark corners of the room, Adam’s voice travelling back through time.
Ingrid Plum
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
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.
It doesn’t meant it’s not quality, mind. first up is Inwards doing a Patch from scratch set, where he starts with his modular completely bereft of patch leads and build up a set completely on the fly. Those in the know set up behind him, so we can watch the sweat fly. It’s fascinating to watch and Kristian produces some pretty decent sounds.
Next up is Ragamatic over on the briefest of visits from Germany – he flew in at lunchtime and has to hare off to Stanstead for an early flight which basically means fleeing at 9:30… So we basically have two classic ragas on sitar with backing tracks and some live processing. The first has a slow distorted rhythm, noises rather than beats. The whole floating in spite of the tempo. The second raga has a short tabla / drum machine loop, and a breakdown with an evil overdrive phased section on the sitar sometime around the middle. On the whole it falls somewhere between Hot Roddy and Same Actor on the vector of known sitar performances at SoG, in terms of feel, but actually built around a proper raga than an improvisation built for MaxMSP patches or junglism.
Swarbrooke is poorly so we quickly (far too quickly) enter the realms of the last act of the evening. Thomas Stone also has to get home, though he doesn’t have quite as far to go, he still needs to leave sharp. The Contrabassoon is a beautiful instrument, old smoked wood and brass, curling with the country house air of an old shotgun. The tone is full and autumnal. Thomas has some backing tracks and a loop station along with a snare drum with a couple of transducers perched on top. The backing is simple, single harmonic tones, brief phrases, the activated snare is used sparingly and the overall affect is rather beautiful, we finish the evening on the verge of tears.
For Hardworking Families, a Gibson SG was set up flat across an oil drum table, part of the half input mixing desk setup favoured by HWF this evening. There is something that looks like his chair knocking about, but it’s not his, and he steers clear. so it leaps out all squeals and thrills before Tom reins it in tightly with small moves and the uncontrol gives way to pulses and less harsh high end.
Clive Henry was second on, he’s very precise with his set-up, a chair with a box in precisely the right place at his side that he has a metronome clacking on. He stands leaning forward hands behind his back with wires hanging out of his mouth. although his reputation is for Harsh Noise, the sounds his mouth is (presumably) making are very tonal. He has excellent control stomping around the stage. The second half of his set is quite different, the metronome is turned into something a bit clackier by some laptop processing and he switches to gutteral thrash singing and the noise levels come up. the stomping turns to stalking. he has great presence and you can see why he’s been barely able to speak all evening.
Lorenzo Abbatoir is another kettle of fish, as abstract as things can get, starting with a crumpling plastic water bottle making a rhythm track he stomps and cracks his body music, like Clive it’s a very theatrical performance. Active and dynamic with every action having its auditory consequences. A kind of un-mime thing.
Inside, we started with Wahabi Wimmins Collective Aharon and Simon McLellan engaged in a conversation about improvisation while Simon improvises on the guitar, including a couple of lengthy periods when he’s too busy talking to actually play. But still all that’s improvising, right? They get everyone involved but we don’t really have the time to go into any kind of depth, so like its origin in the communal kitchen, it could do with the space to really unfold. An interesting idea.
Following quickly, immediately in fact, we bang straight into the scarf waving shenanigans of Haz ‘n’ Daz. Dan has a pretty nice looking effects chain, and Howard switches between his full size vintage MS20, recorder and phone. At half time we get oranges. A healthy act. Howard has been at Whitehawk recording crowd noises. Many started by himself. Dan layers on some noise, and Howard synths it up.
The second half proper of the evening was opened by a reading of Andrew Greaves’ new piece “Micromelodics” performed by himself and Adam Bushell. The performance has a projection of the score onscreen, a set of coloured rainbow lines (echoed by the cd covers and colour wheel badges) with the instructions. The piece itself has a progression through a number of improvisations in overlapping scales. Some have a couple of notes some seem to have five or more. Adam and Andrew bounce off each other well, the clear resonance of the vibes in the small space counteracting the fuzzier organ arpeggios.
And rounding off the evening with have Arma Agharta. He disappears at the end of the micromelodics to reappear in khaki and red stripped woollen suit. His set oddly reminds me of Friske Frugt in the tones he uses, but he has field recordings, backing tracks, odd cheap Yamaha sounds and loopy effects chains. And he sings. Presumably in Lithuanian through strobing tremolo. It’s a heady murky psychedelia of mysterious northern origins the like of which I really can’t really recall except by Compass.
Renfield is Dan Powell and Geoff Cheesemaster, Dan had his laptop with some Pure Data patches scratching out noises fed through an effects chain while Geoff had a no input mixing desk setup with some old fuzzboxes and a couple of analogue delays feeding off an old noisy Yamaha mixer. Definitely it was one of those things where you’re wondering who the hell is making that sound. Dan’s output was quite digital and grainy, but the effects chain put some analogue spin on that and the two setups merged into a nice mulch of noise. Textural.
Ron Caines and I’m Dr Buoyant started with Colleen-ish chimes looping from Tony and Ron slowly starting in on his soprano sax from the shadows off at the side, the whole thing was rather lovely, aching with melancholy. It took some time in unfolding before Tony got to work on the effects units and it degenerated into something altogether a bit gnarlier, with Ron picking up the Alto and blowing a bit and Tony got into some orchestral rhythm hammering. They then seemed to do a piece based on loops of Ron’s Sax and it all went into an uneasy dreamstate before rounding off in a circular synth sweep with heavily delayed sax resonating feedback washes overlaid. A really good performance from Ron and Tony, possibly their strongest to date. They’re up again at SafeHouse soon.
Chemical Bbrench is Karl Waugh and his mate Felix. Apparently they play annually, but its their first time at The Spirit of Gravity. They had two guitars, two lots of effects chains and all played back through the PA. Literally. Occasionally you can tell a chunk of noise originates in some chirruping fret run or string scrape, but rather than guitar music it was mostly a solid blast of effects chain full throttle overdrive leavened with slow phaser grinds and broken down by low bouts of feedback. The temptation is to think of it as a straight noise set, but listening back, its a lot more nuanced than that, quite textured and with some nice interplay between the two of them. Which isn’t to say that it didn’t have some nice HNW moments. 
Nuclear Whale is on first. Lots of lovely Dave Smith kit a few other bits and bobs and he’s LOUD. A dense, viscous sound with lots of crunchy beats and not the space to call it techno. Thick strong basslines and noisy melodies to the fore. Boo Cook has visuals running, a cutup of space trip, bombs and glazed talking heads working against the banging of the music quite nicely.
Binnsclagg pull together probably the best set I’ve seen them do since they gave up power tools. Lots of dynamics: peaks and troughs, noise, drones, wrong music mash-ups, sing-a-longs, noise and beauty. A favourite moment for me was a big chunk of the JAMMS first single. Both Verity and Karl on electronic devices, noise machines, tome generators, tone generators, loopers and Kaoss pads. They have words and stand to say their piece. The Verity-led singsong at the end was priceless.
‘Fields’ is a piece by Tim Shaw & Sébastien Piquemal, Tim was at Fort Process last year and they are touring this art piece. They are set up onstage with some extra speakers dotted about and their own wifi network which they have asked people to connect to before they start. On stage and through the big PA they pump out some bassy drones, I nip out to the bar and notice that the phone in someone’s pocket is making a weird sound. As I get back into the main room and wander about all the phones around me have started this thin droning. if you look at their screens white command text is scrolling up and slowly the sounds from the phones begins to diversify. Obviously its quite quiet and thin sounding but the acoustic space afforded by the bass drones leaves plenty of room. all the audience seems to be milling about, comparing phone sounds and talking about what’s happening. Its probably the first time I’ve been so happy with audience noise during a set as everyone is so involved. Aces.