Category: SOG-BLOG

Graham Dowdall aka Gagarin 01.08.54 – 16.06.24

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

We’re sorry to have to let you know that Graham Dowdall, aka Gagarin, died on the 16th June. He had been ill with cancer, and amazingly his last two shows in Brighton were while he was undergoing treatment, including this one for us back in April:
Gagarin Live at The Spirit Of Gravity April 2024 – YouTube

We first met him in January 2008, when he played for us at “The 3 & 10” in Kemptown, during one of our lower points in terms of audience numbers, but something clicked and he returned many times as both a solo artist, as part of Roshi (feat Pars Radio) and in a duo with David Thomas in a special show at The Coach House in Kemptown.

Anyone who chatted to him at one of our shows will know what a lovely man he was, and considering how much cool stuff he’d done, remarkably humble. We’d recommend reading this interview with him:
bassmidstopsandtherest.substack.com/p/no-18-graham-dids-gagarin

Then check out his last album, including a track written up at Stanmer Park during the Sound Plotting event…
Komorebi | Gagarin | Geo Records (bandcamp.com)

It’s really upsetting to lose someone like this who still had a lot to give, he was already working on his next album, and an autobiography that would have been hilarious & endlessly fascinating.

Sunscapes

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

June 2024
The Rossi Bar

Nylon Prawn, Alistair & Nell, electronics & vocals, cornet & tap shoes! The first piece is largely radiophonic synth burbles blending with effected wordless vocal like whales singing to dolphins across vast distances. After a gasping peak it picks up momentum, tumbling away, and flattening out in breathy cornet flutters and synthful swirls. Nell gives a bit more form to her vocals for the second piece, and Al provides a disarming, warping synth sequence, all unlikely intervals, slurred and detuned, that slowly forms into a one note bassline with Nell singing over it. Drums. It becomes more insistent, hypnotic as it progresses, then slumps and boom: an evil bassline and a massive reverb-y kick stomp right in, Nell giving it blues diva over the top. There’s a nice quiet squelchy interlude with Nell back on wordless vox. A beep-y sequence starts that Nell interacts with very nicely that leads to another thump-y kick and occasionally bass tone. This warps into full on space vocals then a beat comes in, fully rounded, syncopated even. Nell bounces off it, scatting then gets back into singing mode again. The cornet gets some action at last. It swings round itself, in speared delays, bouncing to and fro.

Andrew Greaves was next up previewing his new album, our biggest selling physical format release (thumb drive). Against a firm wind Andrew starts with drones, drones that move into runs along the keyboard and back into drones. Beeping sequences spark off their heavily delayed selves, The beeps slow into a melodic line that via a grinding sound builds back into another bouncing sequence. Over this he runs a pair of melodic lines that eventually disrupt the sequences into minimalist basslines. Then again down into space whispers and mesmeric eastern scales. This third one is a slow builder, unfolding, slowly morphing as it progresses. Possibly the most complete piece of the evening, a hint of psychedelia and perhaps a touch of field recordings. And we finish on a very slow coda.

And for the evenings climax, Perry Frank with a very nice borrowed Vox guitar. He uses this and a synthesiser to feed an interesting effects chain. Preloading them with shimmering, pulsating washes. We can see some quite fast strumming or picking that results in a slow cascade of almost static tones. The first piece seems to have almost no dynamics at all, but manages to shift along quite beautifully. Sonically summoning up a cathedral cosmic vastness with slowly shifting shining notes winding through. As the first piece fades away we feel a pulse pushing through it, the guitar returns in crashing waves. A roaring full bodied crashing with a machine whining whirr pushing through. As the waves subside a drum track lumbers into consciousness and synth squalls cut into us. As it develops it conjures up images of a vast clockwork (yet vaguely organic) Godzilla. The volume drops down to a tense few minutes of uneasily quiet trilling. Distant shrieking metallic plates start us out of our reverie, a thrumming spaciousness of treble wrought from the guitar before he gets back to working on the tidal electronics. Again down to a gentle slowly pulsating guitar wash lapping rhythmically at the shore, that slowly evolves into a multi-layered drone – all light aircraft and light – to end. I haven’t really expressed how close your eyes and let it fill your mind beautiful this was. But it was.



Caught up

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

May 2024
The Rossi Bar

I O M starts his set with a pulsating rattling over-reverbed drum, like Stomp playing at the end of a long tunnel, a long washed out synth drone drives over it, hissing and echoing. Occasionally everything falls away leaving a gentle sine wavy pulse, the ghost of the drumming beat, but it all comes back again. The next track starts with a much slower lopsided elliptical rhythm with drums on one extremity and a monstrous buzzing bass on the other. And endlessly delayed stabbing riff provides melodic interest before getting lost in more delay. Somewhere in the middle of this track it all gets lost in a swirling turmoil of echo feedback before the riff returns and is lost again and again. The third starts with a slow attack bass one note bassline, some muttering from Iker and an old style industrial rhythm that ups the tempo again. A shout into distortion and reverb by way of a breakdown and then back to the groove. Then a breakdown to a staggering staccato squeal, set against a pinging hammered metal sound are set against the bassline. The drums don’t seem to quite come back. Everything circles itself swirling round delays , pinging, bass pulse, delays, pinging delays, delays… The next kicks off like vintage Mark Stewart and the Maffia, vast bass, big distorted beats at about 130bpm, a right groove. Indistinct vocals lost in delay and gurgling. The vocals drop an the snare just keeps getting bigger and more distorted, a machine whirr comes along. A slow down again a different groove with syncopated percussion, floating alongside the washes of hiss. The washes overrun, warping beeps and squeaks integrate of the bass, a noisier Masters At Work. Its time for the bass to go all distinct in reverb now. There are drums here and there that coalesce into a beat after a while. The npoise ramps up behind the beat, layers of distortion, siren and growling, drop and build again – nastier. The final song is another vocal one, something like trance swamped in reverb and racket, with I???? growling over the top.

Second up was Faex Optim, the Scots filling in a tasty London sandwich, it’s a name most accurately pronounced phonetically in a very cod Scots accent. Starting with a boing-y bass drum, toy piano note offbeat, joined by arpeggios and female voice washes, and interesting beats, a cleansing refreshment devoid of distortion to clear the mind. The second has a one note piano / synth line modulating in and out of attention, joined by a bassline of equal seeming simplicity that reveals surreptitious shifts, the shuffling snare & cymbals rattle for alternate bars, giving a slight stagger to the rhythm, a stringy pad heralds a drop with a quiet single line from a voice and then back with an ecstatic lead line lost in reverb. The third starts with a radio voice, minor piano chords filtered and slightly warped. A slow windy chugging builds then a fat bassline drops with the beats. The beats and bass disappear leaving entwining lines of piano, washed out chords hanging in space for a seeming age before the rhythm bounces back in. the next starts with a toppy bass slowly ascending, before a deceptive bass drum and clicky cash-register snare come in, another submerged female vocals hidden amongst the circling keyboard parts. We get Wes to turn up the volume a light amount and we’re back with a fat droning bass line that warps into a buzz as the kettle rattle drums start, there’s an ascending piano part that heralds a sudden suspenseful pause before restarting again. The drums drop and the piano part continues out into reverby space to end, then we’re into a murky lo fi organ for the final track, this is underpinned by a razor sharp string sound swooping again from space for a cavernous bass / bass drum a hesitant synth part attracts attention so that a pinging space echo line can weave away. The drums lose clarity at the top ends for a new hi-hat line to come in, the space echo drops down into a lower register, developing into the new bassline. And it all rides out on a repeating piano motif.

I only gave you Faex Optim’s pronunciation so that I could tease you by saying your guesses at pronouncing Kinga Janicka will be wrong, the Polish “c” at the end is something quite wild. You’ll need help. Any they start with a cloudy whirring delay feedback, soon joined by a harsh ticking hi-hat & syncopated heavily reverbed bass drum that kicks like fury. Kinga rides this groove for a while, with some gentle tweaking to the noises before a running train grind comes in and the bass drum morphs around. More rhythm detail before an decayed orchestral stab offbeat and cowbell and space laser pulses join in, the balance is constantly shifting the noisy murk has separated out into its constituent parts. Threes a doubling up of the bass drum, scraping one of the noises has a definite squelch to it now, then after some scraping gets proper acidy. The erst of the noises blast one, the energy levels pick up a bit more as the bassline switches and the hi-hats drop to a more conventional line, the acid squelch drops and another bass moves in to work with it, a fierce top line heralds the breakdown. It blasts back with a four to the floor bass drum before the other percussions starts to twist around it. Energy levels are up around Automouse’s from last month, but without the overriding distortion. More rhythmic parts come in, the kick gets more complex again and the pressure starts to build again. Another drop to a bass drum, then a machine grinding groove motors off with suburban doorbell beeps  and rubber band thrums giving energy and a drop down to a passing train and farm machine, and a nasty cymbal synth beat distortion to something else brings in a wall of reverb that seems built around a bass drum.  The wind is up to gale strength, the bass drum is lost a a sound like rave stabs from 3 warehouses across joins in, clarifying until you’ re in the room in with it and then it modulates off into a synth riff, and rattly percussion  starts up and the stabs are back. Slowly bit crushed to grit. A gated swooping rusting screech adds Morse dots, everything seems to degrade at this point, filth. The bass drum has slowly got more distorted and reverbed as it drops and comes jumping back. All the lines continue to morph around each other getting increasingly delirious as they go.  Theres a brief period where things start to sound more normal before a dusty, bitty synth line starts. The bass drum starts skipping the occasional beat to add tension, syncing squelching synths push everything along as the rhythm falls apart, pitches rise and tweak, new notes added to existing lines, parts dropping out to return inverted or stuttered, the sound seems more stripped back, but staggering, resonance maxing out, the bass has somehow slowly risen back into consciousness on the 16ths speeding away, and then down to a bending twisting maelstrom lost in reverb and grit and murk.



Invisible friends can be real friends, too

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

April 2024
The Rossi Bar

Starting the evening we had I’m Dr Buoyant with a set founded on his heavily sample based new album. Its starts with a loop of what sounds suspiciously like half a John Barry orchestral phrase, with a tension building pause, superseded by a looped short orchestral jab. Finally Tony gets stuck in with some effects and a switch around with another stab, the two of them circling each other, with pings and whooshes. Another layer of brass on a much longer loop. The delays make it all a bit delirious. Then suddenly it’s into a slower more sonorously lovely phrase. Hmm oboes… and chimes, looping, looping, near repetition breeding disorientation. There’s a guitar phrase almost identical to the chimes swapping with it set against distorted seabirds. Some speech sits just above a slowly circling whistling breathy wind, the whistle goes and it all gets more ominous until a thumped beer bottle bang! Bang! Bang! Pause. Offset against this a distorted string does a slightly delayed matching rhythm. They both briefly step up. The sound is thickened with delays and slower sounds, bass hums. The rhythm steps up against. Its nervous, twitchy, some quick synth-y burbles. Insistent. Space laser zaps. There is a slow build-up of waves and an ominous undercurrent of delay feedback that swells to the end. The whole set is a really disorienting psychedelic repetition, slow evolution and textures

Gagarin starts his set off quietly, water, slow pads, before the warm middle-y arpeggio starts up set against whooshes and what must be called a pretty banging beat comes blasting in – uncertainly at first, but then pow. Bass drum pounding,pinging percussive sounds, the occasional tinging hi-hat. A cold long note, slowly evolving timbre. And a strong humming riff. It’s taken the recorded version of the track and used it for something much more insistent and driving. The beats stop and we have an almost jazzy set of flourishes out to end. The second track starts with beachy steps, or wet leaf steps, perhaps. A drone starts up, pulsing, bass-y, a thinner slow melodic line, matched by a lovely reedy counter line and then very electronic synthesiser, all working together building, watching, ticking hi hats tickle in, then the booming bass drum: boom boom  boom bdum. More relaxed this time if equally big, then a big sub-bassline that rolls up and down its notes. Everything now drops down to the rhythm tracks. A scratching over them. The melodic lines come back imperceptible until suddenly you notice you’re in the middle of them. The third track starts with a repeating nasal synth line of a rattling tonal electric motor synth. Birdsong and a fast hissing hi-hat pattern, followed by quitter shapeless bass drum, and staccato snare, the synth figure keeps going and the beat speeds along. Super low bass synth line pushes everything along even harder. Graham tapping away on percussion lines, interweaving, a choir sample “oo-ahhs”. A bit more of that birdsong, but this feels a long way from the mellow ambience of “Corvid”. The track segues almost seamlessly into “Stanmer” starting with slow piano notes echoed against the birdsong, it’s a stunning piece he conceived up at The Willow Dome on what is now the Eco-musicology project site at Stanmer Organics. The piano line continues, almost a repetition, but each time through slightly different.  A string pad slowly underpins the piano, and eventually a slow drum comes in, again not quite looping, hi-hat, and then a synth line that follows the piano. It gently eases back out to the slowly dissolving piano and birdsong. A set that worked really well in reverse to what almost anyone else would have done.

And finally we had Melancholic Robot Tantrum easing into his set with a pure warbling set of reversed bell like tones dodging round each other, then a stately buzzing bass in foghorn timing. The bells drop a couple of octaves and then a monster mid-tempo beat kicks in along with some detuned rhythmic synth noises. Hi-hats pick up the energy. Then a vicious noise synth ramp. This is the main melodic component. There is a slightly malevolent air to the piece, it lives in that place where you aren’t sure if it’s repetition or s l o w evolution., the rhythm cuts out and three or four delay feedback strands carry us into the next track, identified by a thunderous jungle rhythm and noise bass. This is driving. Full on, the noise synths just adding passing juggernaut washes. The bass solid. There are no breakdowns, just powering through. The melodic line here provided a metal on metal screech. At some stage the bass breaks up into a cut staccato 8th note battering. The rhythm eventually just falls apart. The next starts with fast pulsing bass and hammer snare. The drums sourced from abstract sounds this time round. Odd noises rhythmically punctuate the bass. Eventually a hissed beat murks up around the bass, and everything morphs to let it in, then a much slower almost Laibach rolling beat takes it out. Everything around that becomes sparer, dubbed punctuation. Then a lighter jungle rhythm floats in. The density overwhelms us then thins out suddenly. Ending on a bass drum, voice (?) and more feeding back effects. A slower D’n’B beat starts the next track with an even slower march beat restraining it. The bass is a double off beat, the drum track evolves quickly, new snares endless changes, the bass coarsening in sound. Its fast/slow, head-nodding. The next one starts with a superfast thrumming bass, syncopated drums work around it, some nice white noise snare, rising synth notes. A breakdown at last for the drums to get all Drum and Bass-y again, and then another build. Some squelching, and a rolling interlocking set of sounds driving us on, the bass thickens , expands and dominates turning into a continuous rumbling morphing note. Another breakdown for something that sounds like a version of the Get Carter soundtrack recalled in a nightmare, while a racketing build builds up hysterically under it. And it all ends chaotically again. We have a few minutes left, unexpectedly, so another track is done, but it takes a while to find. It’s another junglistic monster, this time the rattling fed by drones and pads. This one has a lot going on in the beats they evolve and change constantly. The drones are more subtly altered until you realis that everything is this nasty noise and then some squelchy bass starts in and the drums scatter and everything stops.

Many thanks for the video shot by Tony Bowall: