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:


Midnight in a very slow universe

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

March 2024
The Rossi Bar

With travel home to Worthing being what it is, Olivia Louvel wanted to go on first, so we start the evening with a mix of her songs on Doggerland, Barbara Hepworth and older pieces. It’s her first show since before the COVIDs, it starts with a recording of the voice backed by thin washes of synth, joined by a percussive jab stabbing in fours or fives. Olivia interacts with her projected visuals (herself, lines). Doorbells. The next starts with a much warmer drone and typewriter bursts. Again, Olivia’s voice. A breathy stab. Olivia briefly sings her voice soaring above the mix. Mostly she speaks, her voice warmer. There are layers of vocals. A breathy synth riff plays against her speaking. The third starts with a more insistent mid-range riff that she sings against. Some proper sub bass and synths curl around this. A nice sonic rhythm to start the next one, a foghorn and two whistling steam escapes, strings join in with Olivia’s voice; all interlocking. No drums yet, but this the most rhythmic piece so far. Insistent. Vocal hi-hats: Chssssh ch-ch-ch. The next song picks up vocally from the end of the last, acapella. She tweaks the feedback on the delay, riding it just the right side of feedback, a gurgling bass starts and a slow bass drum on the ones. The gurgle evolves to a judder with a full strength bass drone building underneath. She sets up some kind of stutter on the vocals and it stops. Computer jabs preface a drone and speech, vocoder-y whispers, its very machine language. Modem, rewinds. Card readers; teletypes. The last song starts with a percussive interplay between bass and pinging trebles under Olivia’s singing.  The bass bends. Her voice loops and layers up. The bass line develops and warps

[Something’s Happening] are seated facing each other on the stage across a table. Iris reads and Daryl plays. Well, they start whispering, sound creeps down from understairs, it takes about 5 minutes before something like audibility is achieved. Slowly the electronics come in, or is that the fridge, no it’s definitely from the stage. A snatch of words, back and forth jagged hum, phrase, jagged hum, phrase. I believe she’s reading from a book on critical theory from a conversation after. After reading a page she tears it out of the book. Or did I imagine that. Other sounds come in, a pinging bell. The buzz shifts pitch. Iris’ voice is warm enveloping, I can’t yet make out words, but it’s a comfort against the coldly formless electronics. She applies affects to her voice. A subsonic thud about 30bpm starts, and she bounces off it. A feedback emulating synth tone starts, a gentle melodic clattering rises underneath the electronics. The words are now completely lost to me, its just a human tone, with the rhythm of speech, or something like it – messed up by delay and reverb. Communication is lost. The drum has faded. There are layers of clattering now. A guitar based drone slowly comes into our awareness and the clattering fades to be replaced by a slow chime. “Stop”; a word breaks through, but then its lost again. More notes are added to the chimes loop. It turns out to be the guitar again. Iris just lets her voice loop now against dystopian discords and buzzes. The thud has returned almost building to a perceptible rhythm. The guitar is more guitar-y now, pinging away through languid delays. Iris starts to layer her voice. The beat goes and it winds down, her voice stuck in luxuriant Max Headroom stammers.

Finally, Automouse to bring down the house. Its starts with a buzz, then more buzzing, a distorted doorbell riff, a crunching  bass drone. Then the beat thunks in bass drum staccato, switching to white noise snare, the drums drop for a nasty bassline. This is generally pummelling, bursts of white noise. Then a switch to a faster dancehall bass drum, driving, driving along. Tearing synth stabs build it up, then swamping everything brings in a synth scale up and then into another hammering beat. A double time bass line, and the bass drum is back to a 4/4. A sweep of a synth again and switch the beat up and then down to half tempo. Full on buzzing bassline that pushes forward then veers into randomness briefly before veering back, then switching again. How many synonyms for driving forceful exciting distortion can I come up with, I’m not even halfway through and the energy levels just keep going up & up. It’s a frenzy of sound, it’s not a wall of noise, everything has its place, it’s an overloaded place, but oh, how distinct every sound is. There’s a bit where it all breaks down to more or less one note quadruple speed pulse like someone thrashing the bottom e on a guitar on the 12th fret as fast as they can, blam into a new bass drum. Syncopating in, this ones dropped the tempo, a bit of relief, hi-hats ticking, then a maelstrom of nastiness, then back to the groove. A winding noise like a Monotron delay (I don’t think it is, but has that energy) that pulverises the rhythm, then its all back again to the groove. The next goes in with a tuneful bottle clank. There’s a bit of breakcore-ish switching up the beats. And we’re into the last number the tempo is back to the max, the bass is switched to destruction, the bass drum is all thud and the snare is an assault to the back of the head, energy levels are through the roof, then the bass drum doubles up, the tempo increases even further and boom, it slams into sweeping delay feedback and end.


Warmer than April….

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

February 2024
The Rossi Bar

Tam Lin starts the evening off with a watery field recording a slight pinging and a terribly quiet drone. Hum. A terribly quiet hum. Dulcimer notes and a slow knocking bass drum. Abstracted percussion: knitting needles on tobacco tins, the noises slowly change shape into strange forms, morphing buzzes, unfocussed digital washes. The bass drum is back as a more insistent booming monster, the dulcimer a softer plucked arpeggio, a bassline, the drum track is fuller. The drums drop away and we get the plucked arpeggio driving us on in hypnotic repetition, it then mutates slightly and some drums come back with yowling cat melody and ill timed piano. A baion bass drum propels out of this through some more strange melodic lines. Then another percussive interlude, fast pulse low toms and flapping bass drum that slows it all down. Scissor hi-hats erratic snare. An undulating line of machine dialup feedback gives us a pause before a monster descending drum cascade introduces Tam singing for a few bars, a brief pause. Delay feedback starts the second part. A muffled vocal loop, the thud dancehall bassdrum, delayed sharp  metal pinging chords. A bassline like a warehouse wall collapsing, The final track starts with bass line swirling between notes. The bass drum a counterpoint indicating rhythm but not necessarily providing the full thing. dustbin a bowed lid synth melody along with some deliriously detuned synths alternate parts to provide some head nodding sparkle. Everything is full of gaps; pauses, brief halts. And then a stop. Mesmerising.

Geraldine Snell was second, down from Hebden Bridge for the evening. Starting with sounded like a 60 year old drum machine’s bossa nova setting and a keyboard part that sounds uncannily like a celeste from a Casio MT40 with Geraldine channelling Edda Dell’Orso’s wordless vocals, the monstrous wobbly  bass and lyrics kick in at the same time, the wordless vocals looping below providing a cinematically epic backing track. The backing switches suddenly to a shimmer synth for a wind out of layered vocals. Her shoes come off for the second song – “I need to get more grounded”. The second track is slower with a bassline so deep its almost gloriously shapeless. Vocals and harmonium drones. After a while her voice pitches up significantly and the effects give it a sparkle, then the looping starts its magic and the layers of vocals thicken everything up while a weird fairground organ line plays subtly in the background. The third song starts off with an insistent heartbeat and a very 80s sounding bass synth line. Some Lynch-ian reverb-y guitar parts, more wordless vocals to start, then words almost drowned in reverb, the breakdown filters everything down and then when it comes back the vocal multi-tracking starts its delirious work again. Before the next song we get some Yorkshire banter with the audience. The final medley of songs starts with more Casio-ish sounding beats, and a fabulous warbling bassline that spans about 3 octaves, “Breath in” counting, her voices weaving dream states. Sparkling chimes scatter to move on from “Epiphany”, the bassline less obtrusive, a little acapella segment and it all goes into a dub segment everything shifts slightly, settles back briefly into something like a slightly disturbing Beatles nightmare and it shifts off again for my favourite piece of her set, psychedelic, on the verge of breaking into something deranged but just holding back, there are odd sounds, backwards bells and finally you can feel rather than hear the backing vocals emerging from the background, a modulating synth swallows everything and then its just back to the circling voices.

And for the final act of the evening we have a familiar face to SoG regulars playing his first live show in over 10 years, Drass. This was an AV experience, if you’re unfamiliar with his work the visuals are disturbing AI animations, childishly malevolent, a bit gothy. They stare and blink at us. I’m not going to describe the visuals, I’ll be awake for weeks if I get too involved with them. Watch on YouTube. Drass himself stands to the side of the stage singing into a pencil light that looks like a microphone, the mic cunningly hidden on the side of his face effectively an uplighter. Theres a lot of pitch shifting of vocals, mostly down. Again, to greatly creepy effect. Slow squelching one note bassline and rolling drums start us off. “I fell flat on my face”.  A stately three note bass line rolls off the second song, offset by detuned chimes and old style string stabs. String synths and sparse military snare rolls. The third pitches the vocals up the cartoony effect is not comforting “Play your part and serve my purpose” a piano staggers erratically and cavernous bass envelopes us.  the drops provide no respite from the tension. Kettle drums bring in the next song and the voice drops again. Rattling snares and jabbing violin parts vibrate above the formless bass and a drone slowly descends then brings back the threatening vocals. The next song carries on from the last, double pulse drums, or is it bass. Menacing piano, jabbing string parts, a sudden burst of Drum n Bass shifts things up a gear without lightening the mood. The next one starts off with what sounds like mouth drums and western guitar and a litany of names (influences?). The visuals have their faces parading behind him. Again the tempo is up to Drum ‘n’ Bass scatter. Halfway through the bassline drops to half the bar, with a much lighter backing, floating strings and flourishes, (‘Shrigley’?). The last one is genuinely more uptempo rather than relying on double speed drums, a terrifying/hilarious version of “The Ace Of Spades” the AI Lemmy I think would be even more scary in person than the real one. The guitar solo is pretty tasty, too. Theres something of The Residents about the theatricality of the presentation and the pitch shifted voices, but I imagine that’s mostly my vexation at them cancelling their tour of the UK.



Strange qualities

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

January 2024
The Rossi Bar

So January, starting the year with super-droners Plurals, down to core members Dave and Daniel  and as usual set up on the floor, a bit of a trickier proposition for the low stage at The Rossi Bar with the start the year audience jammed in. I cannot see the kit, I recall a broken cymbal, keyboards, guitar, vocal mike and an array of effects pedals. The set starts with a shimmering lofi pulse enjoined with a submarine ping. Bass winds blow slowly into the frame and a slow loop of a throat clearing bashes in and fades quickly, the bass drone mutates slowly into a nice sawtooth buzz that takes precedence in the mix. I think there is some bowed cymbal scrapes through loads of delay while the buzz becomes ominous. Wed can feel the sound thickening up as other sounds get into the delays. bassy hums, crystalline shards of tight cymbal bowing, that wind returns. Something resembling a strangled guitar figure (that could also easily be a voice) comes in as the build really starts to take hold. The room is really starting to buzz, but there’s more to come. Tractor engine judders, more drones, squeals of feedback. Vocal squeals. Still its building, people can see how its going and come to the back for earplugs. You can start to feel the volume in your viscera. The cymbal is crunched, the only description, it sounds destructive. The guitar seems to be feeding back in three different ways at once. I can hear a violin. I haven’t seen a violin, I don’t think there is one, but it sustains a drone and a scurrying figure of scrapes across its strings, I’m sure it isnt there. Things thin out a bit after this ghost. Strands of thin feedback over chuffing steam train. Its calmer, still loud, but somehow less intense and rather lovely in spite of not actually being pleasant sounding. Space returns in the middle of the mix as the drones drift basswards and everything else fades away leaving a modulating guitar line to hold things together as intensity build again for Boom! The end.

Quite contrastingly we had Expedient Self, guitar loop pedal and effects. Shorter tightly composed pieces. A brief setup of a rhythm track, an intense lead line that multi tracks up quite quickly and suddenly drops down to a arpeggio, quickly builds again in a quite different direction, drops again then more slowly build back up to the first melodic line again, which is allowed to develop more before dropping again to a choppier section that build into delay feedback then drops again to end. The second piece starts really quickly with about 8 loops banged into the looper really quickly. Over this a melodic line reminiscent of Snakefinger writhes its way, tremeloingly away before heading off into a lurid fever dream of pigeons and fake Farfisa solos. Again the third is quickly off the mark, the melodic elements coming from layered arpeggios. We get into some pumping delay feedback while he trills small guitar runs over the top, the drop comes briefly leaving the trilling guitar running and we lose the whole thing to swirly string wipes.

Rounding off the evening with a banging set was Xylitol, eschewing the toys and J-Pop of olden times Catherine was laptopped up. Starting with a whooshing hardcore breath riff with birdsong that morphed into hard chimes and when the drums boomed in went again to pinging arpeggios. The drums hyperactive, everything almost in slow motion against them until a super distorted bassline/bassdrum and whistle melody showed up. Then the full on hardcore breaks. The whistle melody comes over all beautiful to compensate. The drums shift again savagely jungled up. They keep shifting. The breathy riff has gone replaced by an evolving 80s synth descending part. Things shift again, the rhythm carried by a frantic, disturbed frog and snare that turns into buzzing, and again pinging. Shifting again, this one beyond my descriptive powers, again channelling early 90s hardcore, almost lovely detuned synths, fierce drums and a melodic line like a doorbell on the dregs of its battery. Finally a breakdown, into a simple synth line that fills out and wanders away from the tune into pure modulated abstraction. Drums, a bit slower (the ballad?) start up and after a while a massive sine bass slows in in a deranged homage to GLR. Interplanetary hisses, beauty, horrifyingly out of tune synths all merge into something quite wonderful. Then there’s a distinct change to the next tune, harking back perhaps to the bent toys, with a childlike, almost Moog demo line, against which everything else builds in intensity. The last piece starts with a fast high synth riff not unlike chime under which speeding snares and high hats clatter. The synth riff obviously evolves into something else, the drum intensity builds, pads appear, horrible noises emerge and disappear. Half heard piano riffs. Nasty drum bangs, and sudden drops. A pulsing staccato one note bass. Ghostly whoooo noises. My goodness, so much going on, a fever delirium. The first half of the set is a single piece has everything shifting so much the points where songs merge are all but unknowable as it’s just another change in a constantly drifting sea of sound.