Category: SOG-BLOG

Last light for the trip up

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

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

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

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.



As the evening light has faded

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

July 2025
The Rossi Bar

Lewis Clay starts his set with a lovely warm introductory wash of synth with little sparkling notes met with stabbing interjections of synths and a hint or two of kick and clatter. This is going to be a busy set, and sure enough it almost immediately drops it down to a burbling bass note that almost speaks to us, seems that it may set off a groove, then starts switching back and forth, there are some, elements of the bass are given some room to breathe and finally they take flight with a scattering beat, the whole thing flying spaciously around the room leaving us finding the rhythm, then losing it when we try and focus on it too clearly. Its best held in the periphery. There is a brutal handover to a vast squelching jungle (as in the sweaty green place full of wildlife), full of sound and menace, murky drums ricochet, unseen things scream, birds chirrup derangedly. There’s a bassline with little seeming repetition, its possibly a horribly distorted kick, synthetic monkeys yammer from the trees.  Then a couple of big snares hit and we’re into a clearing. This is a more orthodox post Aphex percussion festival groove, we can nod our heads or shuffle a bit. Notes come in, a sort of melody, the notes are off, microtonal, shifting, the beats suddenly filthy up, more murk, reverb, the notes speed up, the beat pares itself down, the ornamentation lost but keeping its kinetic aspects, the melodic line is gone, too, beeps and burbles intersperse with snare hits. A quick breather of bass twist, then an arrhythmic track of shudders and twists, tones and buzzes. It pares down gradually to the scattered synth stammers and staccatos. Again we’re off on a new beat exploration. This one is like 16th played first on one sound then another, building a pattern eventually, but still all the time its one sound at a time. Bass bass bass bass snare bell bell bell synth synth synth synth synth tom cymbal tom cymbal and so forth, the delays and reverbs kind of allow it to build into layers until a steady scream drowns it out. Then there’s a bit of broken speech, and then back into a full flowing rhythm complex. Washes spin around the coruscating drums then flourishes of tones and ornamentation, back into it again, then the tones return, detuned and arbitrary, spinning off into space, a chopping bass buzz inserts itself into the rhythm which seems to gather even more momentum and then it all breaks down the bass turns squelching, and the drums pick up into just too fast rattling, its like nightmare trance at 500bpm to finish. Here comes the hoover. So many ideas, it’s a demanding set and a storming start to the evening.

Which then calms down considerably for Warped Love Group, which by contrast is all about repetition and groove. And delay, it’s very much about delay. Starting with syncopating cowbell and some weird murky buzz, hi-hats drop then the first delay comes in winds up, down then out into infinity. Eventually a kick drops in super slow. The delay soups itself up into a melodic line, wanders around then drops to let the snare start. Heads nod. The delay drops out, the hi-hats double up. The kick comes back in but skips a bit more, everything else falls away and the kick develops a tonal quality. The delay goes into guitar feedback mode. The new snare sounds like a snapped spring reverb. The first bass line. Extended, almost a drone or dubstep grind whipping up and down. The delay is going haywire now – pitching all over the place. It all drops away again then the kick is put through its paces, wow – up down all over. Hi-hats on the 16, the delay drops down into sub bass territory. Some weird tuned hi tom (maybe) starts bonging. Synth squeaks slip in, then after a bit of a delirious spell, it all drops away to an 808 sounding kick this time. Hip Hop speeds, Boo-Yah Tribe, say. Off-beat toy piano. The rest of the rhythm slinks in. There’s been no actual bass for a while, the booming kick covering that itch. The delay still keeping that melody line going over what sounds like a didgeridoo supplying a bassline. Whip snares, and such a groove now. Drop to hi-hats this time, open trance off beat hats, but on the 8s, claps, the delay gets some gate action, the kick gets  hard again, but is still syncopated, pan drums, the beat is thick, several snares, the delay is whistling then beeping. Then it all stops.

And completing the evening of Three Very Different things we have Robyn Rocket And People You May Have Heard Of, Robyn with space trumpet, Arlen (R. Dyer) on various things I can’t really see including soprano sax, & Karl MV Waugh on guitar, all with lots of effects. Robyn Starts proceedings with some short notes from the trumpet into lots of delay, Arlen (it must be) warbles in some musical saw and we have a few notes from Karl pinged into a slow delay. We’re taking this super slow, the arc of the evening has been about reducing beats and we have none, now. The trumpet has a lovely melancholic tone as Robyn slips a line of long sonorities out of it, the guitar delay washes gently underneath, with twinkles and spangles from flexitones and other chiming percussions. Little breathy sounds signal things changing and we shift down even further. We’re in interstellar country here, drifting gently through the cosmos. There’s a little flourish as things layer up, building then washing away again, to a fragmented scatter. Scratchy noises skitter about a quick wind down of the delayed guitar, some long warbling trumpet, wind whistling through the room. There is a melodic line from Robin as we get more space noises from the known. Karl gets a nasty blast of something which causes a little merriment, but amazingly doesn’t distract anyone from the unfolding sounds being produced. There’s a further resetting with a flurry of improv scratchiness, that develops into a bit of a flurry of notes from Robyn that again winds down. We get some quiet scurrying electronics, there’s a set of organ chords that have got into the Looper setting everything on a path. Karl pings sets of notes into the ether. Karl gets a little backwards guitar into his Looper. The soprano makes its appearance walking over that, the trumpet just laying down background drones. The soprano gets into the looper too, several lines layered up. Robyn starts to get a bit more fire into the trumpet, Arlen follows with the sax. Some small bells indicate a wind down. A little loop of staccato trumpet winds us out, warbling guitar, sinuous soprano sax and spacey trumpet all tend it as it leaves, last out is the sax.



A balanced view as summer dawns

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

June 2025
The Rossi Bar

The evening starts with a banging set from Spheress, he has added a Volca to the minimal setup of TR-08 drum machine and two reverb/delay units. He starts with a feedback loop through the FX which settles down into a noise pulse and then modulates out into bass. A kick on the ones comes in, the bass is modulated, and chaotic hi hats introduced, followed by heavily delayed claps, the bass is driving on, the claps fall over each other in disarray and the kick comes in on the fours and drives the bassline off. The delays bring in an off-beat pulse and the Volca brings a new bassline in. The beat steadies briefly, then falls apart into staccato racket. Stan tweaking away at the TR-08s controls, suddenly the beat is back and driving. We have cascading delays, weird pulses and the bassline falling over each other, then thinning out; back to basics, driving on again. The bassline mutates slightly then a squall of feedback and the Volca is off in a new direction. The feedback returns under strict control and we get a trance breakdown with bass feedback on the offbeat and everything is gone into a squall, the bassline returns slow as you like. A boinging super slow bass drum creeps in. we have noise, delayed snares, a heavily spring reverbed beat like something from mid 80s Public Enemy, the reverb is almost vocoder-ish in its depth. Noises build back in, its pretty groovy in a noisy Cabs-y fashion. The bass drum providing the bass line. Drum FX syncopating away. The Volca gives us a beepy offbeat. Imperceptibly the tempo inches up, the reverb drenched noise swirling away. Someone whistles. Intensity mounts.
The Volca comes in again with a mid range-y stab rhythm, the kick is back on the fours. Delays swirling all about. Feedback pulses on the 8s, hi hats 16s, energy levels are high. He’s working away on the drum machines controls again tweaking, scattering, glitching. The filters go on the Volca.  Some weird loop happens and everything judders. It all drops away to nothing, a slight swirl which is caught then sent back into the FX, feedback then the drum machine gives a floor tom staccato beat, with reverb generated bass and again glitched out drum noises spiralling all around. Everything is in motion against that tom tom pulse. Then that drops away leaving us adrift, the clap steadies us, the bass gets abrupt, suddenly it’s all in place and the toms are back or was it a kick all along – bang! A brief respite, then it’s back to the fours for the finale. Section again the intensity builds over the rock solid beat. And it’s done.

In the middle slot we are really privileged to have Ingrid Plum’s first live show in quite sone time. She starts with an astounding version of “Wayfaring stranger”. She’s set up on a table with a few devices, including a custom circuit board synth. Beginning with full sub-bass drone, she adds in rich crackles and scratches. And then she starts singing pure and clear. A few lines in and a second wobbling bass joins. The juxtaposition of traditional song and 78 crackles & crickets and the electronic tones adds a weird tension increasing the sadness that seems implicit in the song itself. The bass is very intense. After a couple of verses she loops in some humming and gives everything a bit more emotional heft. There are about six layers of vocals cycling under each other and she sets a massive sweep off across the song. The bass drones shift and one ever so slowly aeroplanes off into the stratosphere. Then everything drops apart from a single drone and the vocal loops. A rhythm track of rattling cupboards becomes perceptible, field recordings of voices? Or is it the audience? The bass drones intensify, slowly beating. She returns to the main vocal line “There is no good in me….”  Stark against the drone and rattling shutter. The bass becomes steady then starts pulsing again. a keyboard drone eases in. and a swirl of echoes, ushers in a second set of much higher pitched drones, so we’re pretty full spectrum. Ingrid starts whispering scarily,  ghosting quietly into the microphones. It’s vaguely churchy, but not in a good way. A pointed nasty note fires in, then drops down. The whispering layers up via the looper. I’m scared. The drones start beating against each other all pulsating slightly, the effect increases as more and more notes are added. Then Ingrid starts singing again – long slow “aaaAAAAhhhhHHHHuuuUUUHHHs”. This slowly develops, circling, meandering. Everything becomes steeped in meaning, eventually the whispering falls away, but the drone chord seems to keep building. Then it gently drops away to just the bass note and Ingrids final singing wordless, soulful, forlorn.

And to round off the evening it’s the third visit of Kina: Suttsu and E-Da. Both set up on – or at least near – the floor, so I couldn’t see from the back. They had their usual array of keyboards, percussion, soprano sax, effects and ephemera scattered all around. Also starting off with a drone, but also a whistle and whisp-y synth. A shifty cymbal through delay. It’s all textures. Bass drones filter in, squeaks, some big long reversed cymbal makes everything else drop. A bassy drum booms about. Tabla sounds. Scrapes and squeaks. The delay provides the rhythm, ill defined. Bells bowed and gently ring. There’s an ill-defined presence emerging slowly from the soup. Tape rewind or birds or shakers – just pitched ever so slightly and through shimmering effects. I can hear water, a sine wave, ducks in a flightpath. A sense of trepidation. Heartbeat drums, so slow; b-boom. A build in intensity and the sounds swirl together in a cauldron as Kina unwinds the sax – long notes at first, then odd flurries, the background still ramping up somehow. There is an un-beat of bass-y drum in there. A pattern, but not an obvious one. The drones quieten out, shift and then step up the scales and down, then up. And thicken in a wind tunnel. A bass note. Just one, then the drones fall away, an ending, but E-Da keeps the un rhythm going. Zither flurries flutter away in a loop, a bassline seems to start. Then a new intense set of drones set right off, ramping up in intensity and pitch, E-Das percussion following it. Shakers, sine tone bells, the wind tunnel is back. Star chimes looped infinitely a skronking sax line fierce but subsumed by everything around it. E-Da keeps the framework steady around Kina as she really wails away. I want to start yelling. It’s delirious heady stuff. She gets into some growly low end stuff before getting up into harsher squalls at the top. A big pinging. And somehow it seems to descend into a big bassy synth ball, and a plunging watery hole to end.

Thanks to Jim Purbrick for the photo

 



Number station crackling

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

May 2025
The Rossi Bar

Thee Boxx Menn start with a super sub that could be bass or kick and a filthy speech based short loop that’s 120% distortion, the loop slows down and we get into the business of the set. The sub gains some definition and confirms it’s a kick. Whistling swoops through a helicopter buzz. Everything gains squelch, the whistling included. The helicopter turns into an ominous fleet, and the whistling into an incredible slow long sweep. A filtered military brass band serenades the choppers with what sounds like it may be the opening bars of “Take on me”. There’s a lot of reverb. The choppers do this thing of slowing down considerably but still end up beating at the same speed. Twice. Maybe three times. Everything drones up. A buzz floats up and down the scale, and some other percussion finally joins the kick bring in a lot of energy. Some percussive buzzes and car door rattles herald the arrival of a bassline and then an acid squiggle. So many ideas just rattle through. Morse code short wave tuning, bird song, charging rhythmic noise, delay grime. Amidst the swooping synths a thin fuzzed synth pics out a melodic line and you can sense a drum pattern is emerging from the aural mist a long time before you actually hear it lurking about on the edges of your hearing, then finally it emerges skittling out of the morass. everything drops away to a driving synth riff and the drum track locked together. Around this alarm bells rattle, a second drum/synth pattern locks out the first, and brings some blistering waves of bass that completely obliterate all before it. A rhythm track of ticking brings in the third bassline in about as many minutes. This one with an evil synth riff and kicking double kick pattern.  The drums get looser and louder, the synths fall apart into eratticism. The percussion levels up into syncopated psychotic complete with deranged whistles.it filters down to next to nothing; a nice 50Hz hum. A stripped down version of the drums comes back that’s 50% filtered beeps. Again distorted vocals in the mix, maybe some kind of tribute to Mal who’s in the audience. It finishes on sweep and foghorns

In the middle slot its Em- (apparently it’s a typographical thing, a particular kind of dash), she just gets better every time she plays. The set kicks in with a frantic squiggle of a synth line something from a sugar rush 90s J-pop single with equally frenetic drums soon tippy tapping hyperactively under it. Some ominous synth washes stabilise everything, briefly give it a centre from which it explodes into fragments, half bass lines, creaking Halloween synth riff, voice or non-voice, implied acid squelch. The drums worry away at the beat, unstable, bass drum hit-hit-hit, hit, hit-hit, hit-hit-hit-hit. Some big buzzing deep piano notes hint at a change, eventually giving structure for everything else to fight against. Everything falls away leaving the piano and then in comes a new set of skittering synth pulses flurrying away against a super slow snare hit that seems I don’t know – a tenth of the speed of everything else? A mid-range synth part that sounds like some kind of alien trying to communicate with us comes in, to be answered by a whistle thing, the rest solidifies around the snare, slower, more substantial, but still swerving around any kind of normality. It’s like a coked up Bach playing half a dozen bent toy synths with broken fingers. There are still superfast percussion elements, but at around halfway through the set its lurching; there are these odd rhythmic pauses, sudden inexplicable percussive voids that throw you. The sound slowly thins, and seems to slow as it does so, still definitely lurching, a percussion track equal parts buzz, hum, gong, synth stab, altered voice, shimmer. A new percussion track builds out this, a head smacking kick drum and woozy flatulent bass. Woodpecker knocks, two note electric piano, toy piano. Imperceptibly it picks up speed. A groove, so calm after the frenetic rattling from before. Heads nod and shoulders go. A melody hinted at by something in there: a line passed from sound to sound, reverbed piano, gong, buzz, swoosh, bin lid, whirr. We even have a breakdown with some chattering lightweight snare and pads, then the insects are back and the itchy beats return to overwhelm everything, stripping down and speeding up to pure rhythm. There’s a little synth riff as it speeds up then slows down to finish. Tasty.

Finally we had Soborgnost, down from that big city. He leapt in with a big buzzing roar that gave way to a nice riverbed old Skool break, eventually that got some beefy kick and a sub sinewave bass all sonic and tasty. Swirling all round this were skewed delays, flashing synth pads and spiralling gurgles, it felt like it had just got going and flipped into a new beat. Something from the back of a factory, the foreground sonics continued their distractions and again a sudden switch. An insistent kick and snare about 160bpm, followed by 3 note bass, cowbell clang, and a vocal line swerving around it. Drop the drums everything else carries on, 16th gongs, voices, more voices. Or tones? It’s driving now, he hits the groove and sticks with it, the occasional drop or swirl, but its right there. The next track starts with two detuned synth riffs working against each other, they get into a rewind, come back with a solid Residents/Bovell bass line and fast echoed rattling hi hats. Barely audible dub sirens wibbling delays, operatic vocal or high slow synth line? A melancholic piano meanders about, everything seems pitch bent. The next one starts with a mid-bass stomp, heavily delayed bursts of something (guitar? Synth) then some drum thing out of a Throbbing Gristle track comes stomping in. a one note synth line over the top and the delirious delays and screaming and whistling squelch about. The next one starts with another sub bassline stomper, skipping drums, and distorted vocals. It’s as if Sherwood had been involved with the Jack The Tab compilation. There are confusing fuzzed our organ lines, swooping noises, metallic whines. The next one starts with some nasty 8 bit pan drum and backwards zombie calls before another monster flanged bassline kicks in over a 4 to the floor industrial beat. Shouting, rattling, roaring all lost in swampy delay. There’s a breakdown of someone destroying a typewriter to finish. Another flanged bass, this one a bit slower, with a relaxed 120 4/4 kick, and minor destruction noises. The typewriter snare bounces against a white noise punisher. In a totally groovy manner. A masterclass in solid grooves and deranged effects.


WARNING: there is extreme glitching in the following video:

Before you know it, its daylight all the way up

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

April 2025
The Rossi Bar

Wasps, Dan and Andrew from the collective are an interesting setup, covering the Glass Armonica, effects, synths and laptop set up across two tables facing each other. The laptop seems to be running some processing software like MaxMSP, rather than a DAW, but we’ll come back to that. Their set starts about 15 minutes before they get on stage with a cheeky speaker hidden away under the benches playing back field recordings quite quietly. Slowly a bass-y synth drone emerges and some burbling from something electronic, slipping backwards. The drones are joined by others: deep space drones, and warbling shimmering drones. Into this come time travellers travelling backwards past us without stopping, the Glass Armonicas scraped and reversed by the processing. Loads of rather lovely detail. I can hear Andrew playing a little part on his synth. Almost everything drops away leaving long strokes of the glasses and Something mimicking humpback whale song. Musical chimes stutter, decay first. There’s a faint hiss of sea. Andrew plays a little motif again, this time it almost repeats, lengthens and stretches and disappears again. Sounds rumble and slur. Some delayed drums slowly rattle noisily about. There’s the occasional hint of a bassline. Another little motif from Andrew, this time as a sequence, bobbing about. The sequence hides again, the drums roll slowly up and down. Odd noises twitch from the depths. There’s the wind (though it doesn’t feel as cold down in this basement). The drums give way to abstractions again, as though the tide flows from Andrew back to Dan. Slowly the drones weird space noises begin to overwhelm the chatter of static and erroring 1950 devices. And again one of Andrew’s exotically scaled keyboard runs leaks into consciousness. And switches mine off, I’m quite mesmerised.

Lee Ashcroft is an imposing figure standing behind his Theremin and black box setup – I never did get round to investigating it. The last time he was in Brighton was for a Wrong Music event down at The Volks. Which is to say quite some time ago. He starts with some slow melodic parts on the Theremin, a voice talks about bus stops and rain. A bassline starts, the woman’s voice continues, as does Lee on the Theremin. A string counter line joins the bass. A walking bassline. There’s some distortion quietening the Theremin, A slow bass drum and chime come on the backing track and the woman’s voice is replaced by a man’s. A piano part. It all drops, there’s some singings and the backing gently re in, the returns parts layering up. A nicely buzzing bassline. There is some Theremin almost birdsong. “I’ll never fight Mike Tyson….. I’ll never play in The Championship…” and some whistling. Its fog music. Disrupted by a vast shivering TD arpeggio that swoops across our vision out of sight then swooping slowly back and forth. The next track starts with a nice harpsichord line, with more singing and Lee getting some nicely atypical drones out of the Theremin. Then swooping Starfighter laser blasts. Beatless and weirdly epic even before a massive wall of fuzz kicks in. The singer on this is quite exercised about something. Slow heartbeat kicks start the next track, with a swelling bass low. A woman singing again on this one. It all finishes on a quite unexpectedly meaty finish, all beats and  basslines and counter rhythms. But most of the set is oddly melancholic; reminiscent of Low without ever sounding remotely like them. He must have been exhausted after playing the Theremin for the entirety of the performance.

Finally we finished the evening with R. Dyer. The stage abounding with typical R. Dyer devices from the artfully broken harp held together with a big G-Clamp at the top and strung with a variety of piano/guitar/violin strings, soprano sax, saw, synth, effects and a looper. She starts with the harp and voice, the harp rattle-y, loud and creaking. A séance in a log cabin. Arlen plays a plucked harp loop into a lopsided creaky rhythm then plays a looped sax over the top before singing again. The next song is based around polyrhythms played on the harp. (“This song is about …. 7 minutes long”). The harp is looped then the saw provides a tremulous top line, there’s also something that sounds like vibes to provide the backing track, while Arlen sings and provides more punctuation on the harp. Arlen threatens us with an electric guitar for the next track, which is somehow my fault. And no looping… But there is a key change. Oh, I lied, there is some looping to let the sax be played. The next song is little victories, slightly revamped. Starting with a ticking percussion loop, descending synth part and the looping double soprano lines. It’s more Spartan, Arlen listing the little victories of her own “Spring”, “A new one from someone in Bognor – that I didn’t know!”. We then sang happy birthday to Leanne. There was a lot of back and forth between the audience and R. Dyer that I’ve glossed over, but if you’ve never seen them play, it’s a big thing.

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Thanks to Dan for the photos




An evening of mixed doubles

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

March 2025
The Rossi Bar

A balmy evening, unexpectedly give us Emma Papper and Jason Smart on a return from their Daytrip to Europa set last time, for the night bus to Bognor. To be fair I think we got a lot more space music this time round, but let’s investigate. Starting with a kicking bass drum and abstract electronics and glitches, Jason introduces the set with the title track, there’s a nice counter-play between the straightforward drums and speech and the total abstraction of the clicks, whirrs and bells of Emma’s electronics, I can’t quite work out what she’s triggering from the Electric Wind Instrument. The next song has something about dentists, an acoustic guitar loop from the laptop, shaker rhythm, and total space wibbles, shooting stars etc. from Emma. The next track starts off with a much fiercer rhythm, double kicks, and plenty of percussion, “It is what it is” Mr C style, delayed swoops, gated pings, little swirls. The next one starts with strummed acoustic again from the laptop, “Humdrum” vocals and space swirls from Emma, the second half takes off, losing the guitar and whirling off into swooshing spirals and Casio drones. The next starts off with a nice plucked 12 string riff and synth parts, something of Lazy Sunday Afternoon’s about it. Back to beats for the penultimate track – 4 to the floor, shimmering synth pads and a bassline, “I’m losing you” The EWI seems to be summoning up feedback guitar screech alongside the familiar space-noise and offbeat synth propulsion. A nice little bit of reverse drums to end. There’s a very short custard song. The last one is back into the interaction of poo-psyche acoustic guitar strum and space music.

An unwell Evey occupies the middle ground this evening, his bifurcated set heading veering into both noisy techno and melancholy coldwave. Although… it starts with a slowed bell and wind, and hard plucked zither sample all Get Carter style, into melancholic piano, and the first sub bass of the evening drops. It’s a slow motion crawl into the set decaying out in a mush of delays and harpsichord. The second track is a pounder though fierce fast bass, the zither back harder, they shift about changing focus while a hissing snare heralds the rhythm track. Counter lines on a percussive synth storm in. Delay enhances the melodic qualities of the zither while everything else just gets more intense. The next track starts with bowed cymbal and feedback and an old fashioned bassline on the 16ths, with skittering kicks, Chloe sings: it’s a counterpoint. James reinforces on the chorus. The synth hooks layer up, and it feels very mid 80s Germany in the best possible way. Feedback out and into a monster arpeggiating bass. The lopsided beats completed by slow motion melodic synth, then some fiercely competitive percussion pushes it along into a weird drop, that doesn’t so much build as just get louder and more intense before dropping again to the arpeggio. We get another slow build into a more chaotic end section. The next son starts with a syncopated woodblock and James singing, an abstract synth melody, a slower bassline. Insistent without becoming fast or dense, a bit of a breather…. And then back into the fierce basslines again. Ringing, gently rattling hi hat and Chloe singing again. A breakdown, then back with a more relaxed bassline, and a snare, all nostalgic white noise. The final song starts with a bass guitar line James voice lost in a spring reverb, a shifting pad provides propulsion before a Dr Rhythm superfast hi-hat starts in. There’s some call and response between various synth lines and they’re done.

And finally, it’s someone new to us, part of the Ceremonial Laptop crew. Cederick Knox are performing an AV set, cut ups of video with Theremin and synth, the collages collated for more than disjointed disruption, it feels really carefully put together. Layers of church organ speech, looping and overlapping. Drums, chirruping bird song, children’s choir, this is going to be hard to describe, just a list of things a proper kaleidoscope of sight and sound. Hooky and rhythmical. At times beautifully melancholic, and then a hooter adds some daftness, before you realise it’s part of some cleverly designed beat, made of machines and speech and splashing puddles. A breakdown and a slow build from loops of ticking, violin stabs, voices, flutes, dancing feet, claps, eventually into bass and synth & squawking and clanking, and then a veer sideways into something confusingly psychedelic reminiscent of The United States Of America. The set is split into sections, the third (?) starts with a string quartet from hell, violins, bass, Theremin, big string stabs, dropping to swinging jazz basslines interspersed with applause and then it drops again, this time to a solo piano, bringing in cello with a slowly unfolding line that gets lost eventually in layers of teenage voices. The final section begins with a loop of a voice or breathy sax, layered against vibes, bass, bursts of a trebly drum solo, a chorus line from an opera (?), more of that applause, its mesmeric, then drops to a Japanese guitarist being interviewed on young musician of the year, while he plays in the background, looped for a couple of minutes, its gorgeous and melancholy. Apparently 5 months before he badly damaged his left hand. Which is sad as it was amazing playing. Literally cries of “Bravo!” at the end, that’s a first. First it was people dancing now “Bravo”.