November 2014
Green Door Store
Ah, the Spirit of Gravity again. This time we’d booked the Zam Zam records tour and they had two acts a DJ and a demo of the Cymagick thing (which I didn’t see). So no time for the Electrokreche this month, instead we have a nice long intro set from DJ Wildrfid (Simon from Geneva). It’s a great mangling of things: noise, words, music, beats, synths and effects, half played from records have mucked about with live – anything from accordions to techno.
After that Simon plays and makes more mayhem between all the sets.
Breaking Robots
The first stage style set is Breaking Robots who seem to be the [beep] collective’s house band, Natasha Thoday with some kind of odd box with bits that slide in and out , wheels, controllers, she seems to be aggregating Zacarias and Sarah who have more instrument looking devices. Anthony Arborialist is controlling visuals (a job he maintains for the night). For the soundcheck Natasha had been thrashing the PA with some heavy bassdrum techno, but the actual set is a melange of weird noises, glitch and strange electronica.
HUM
HUM are set up behind a long trestle table on the stage, Mark, Heloise and Olmo, bits of kit, microphones, toy synths. In fact it makes me think of the missing elektrocreche. To start off Heloise sings a low key intro, which gets washed into pure atmosphere for a while. Then Mark hollers and wails and it all spins into echo and murk; Hapshash lurching rhythms and psychotic repetition. Electric tranced shamanistic thud.
Mai Mai Mai
Mai Mai Mai is right at the back of the stage hidden next to the screen, in a mask that makes Toni Cutrone look like Cerebus. His set is a crystal clear sound of electronic tones and field recordings of storms, a nicely tonal contrast to the thick soup of HUM. Some PA Juddering bass is particularly pleasing to me.
The evening started with a new duo of Paul Khimasia Morgan and Dan Powell. Dan had his laptop and a scattering of percussion and Paul had a tape player, zither and some jumble of things. Quiet and elliptical, rattling and humming. 
Robert Barry / Bobby Barry / Monster Bobby introduced his book, explained some pieces and what the book was about. He performed three pieces which were more loosely based on his scores than following them. Lots of processing and electronics.
nil set up an impromptu kitchen for Culinary Music, mic’d up the boiling pan and shopping board. Chris Parfitt is so wonderfully deadpan, a career in silent movies was sadly avoided. Dan has a lot more ham. But not literally.
Anthony from [beep], playing as Arboria Auralist, turns up late and line checks and seems to be enjoying himself so much he just plays on, lots of toys with indeterminate function. Some look quite expensive and are impressively tactile, some look home-made and make superbly scrungy noises. His set is suitably freeform and, as the lights get dimmed to accommodate the eventness of his playing, a general air of blissing out takes over from the “what is that thing-ness” although the Tenori-on has a delightful pinball kind of visualisation going on for a rhythm part near the end that I find quite engaging.
Ampism is Paul from Bolide’s solo project, tapes and small synth and effects, its very clean, surprisingly given the source materials, with a nicely constructed sound collage feel. With some proper bass.
Stereocilia is John Scott and plays a lengthy psychedelic set that starts with synth drones and loops before he switches back to his guitar and arpeggios quite nicely over the top, still keeping the loops and drones going in the background, there is a nice point where the background layers fall away leaving only his guitar picking and he adds in a couple of bass string scrapes that sound like Humpback Whale song and another one where the rain against the window makes the sound of a snare resonating against the skin of a non-existent drum.
Then Anthony plays his closing set, a more loose affair than the first, even allowing for the way that had started, with people gathered around looking at what he’s up to, but he does get the hydrophone into his glass of beer, which is good, even if it makes me worry about him spilling sticky drops over everything else as he bangs it about on the table. Good. This is what it’s all about.
I’m Dr Buoyant and Ron Caines have played together a few times now and Tony Rimbaud seems to bring out the best in Ron, giving him the freedom to weave his lines as he wished. At the start Tony started by working on Ron’s sounds, looping and effecting them round. As the set progressed he worked up some more orthodox backing tracks to rumble away under Ron’s improvisations.
Rounding off the evening Tim Holehouse in collaboration with Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth started by burning a great swathe of Sage in a quite alarming manner before getting to work on his acoustic guitar loops. Tim had some doom-y chords going on under that before they both got into some gravelly vocalising and then twin electric guitars sweep up all the loose ends in the looping stations and Ashtoreth gets back to the acoustic guitar for the finale.
Andrew Greaves began with a premiere of his piece for organ, ‘Octabeast’. A rare foray into composition for SoG, this was a massively physical performance, with his swift fingers producing relentless arpeggios, the effort becoming increasingly visible as the piece developed. The overlaying echo, and rhythmic pulse which began to introduce itself, produced a kosmische feel. The accompanying visuals were provided by street photographer Simon Peacock, presented in Andrew’s patent flowing slideshow format, and grounded the experience in a way that more spacey images would have failed to do. Watch out for a photographic exhibition from Simon, with the possibility of further collaborations in store, and you can also find a CD of ‘Octabeast’ at our Bandcamp page at 
Set to his trademark film of Soviet space footage, Gagarin’s set eased in with ambient washes and picked out keyboard notes, but soon his mode of more delicate physical performance was introduced. Moving as lightly as Fred Astaire, his hands and feet danced across his pads and keys, always a pleasure to witness. Glitch funk recognisable from his Biophilia CD, nicely pulled apart and played around with live, was interspersed with less rhythmic interludes creating a subtle and nuanced set. The visuals developed into a more abstract, washed out style as things continued, closing with a more robust beat-driven sequence.
The professionalism of Pawnsphinx’ musical presentation apparently caused some confusion, with some mistaking his set of original pieces for a DJ set. Muscular beats emerged from his laptop, bouncing well-developed drum and synth pads around the venue. He also shared with a bemused audience the bizarre video art of Matthew Barney, from his Cremaster cycle (
So, the first Scope, quite a success.
The Caroline of Brunswick upstairs room is L shaped with a section missing the rather fetching sticky carpet. This is nil’s home for the evening their pile of things scattered about as you would expect, toys wine glasses small instruments, clinking and pinging and rolling and blowing things of every description. Their first set was very intense; quiet, intricate, serious. We closed the window to keep out the random drifting of music from the smoking yard. At some point they do something that makes someone in the audience laugh. Dan picks up on this and continues it. Its most alarming.
Captain Poopdeck took the helm on a table mid-room, Djellabah-clad beats and lots of number related samples, he has some fine new equipment and has spent a deal of the evening reading the manual for some of it. Which is always good to see.
The Zero Map set is the pivot point of the evening, two projectors throwing flames and custom animations around. Chloe’s voice is more prominent than at previous SoG shows. It has some triple octave dropping device on it and she plays a lot of theremin with a Blade-Runnerish stripe of light across her eyes. Karl’s guitar delays in a set that spirals in a nicely psychedelic manner.