Category: SOG-BLOG

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.


White crusty muffins

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

December 2023
The Rossi Bar

Starting with Llaabb wwoorrkk, white coated boffins surrounded by an array of identifiable and unidentifiable objects, things to rattle, buttons to push, things to bash and things to gong. An array of percussion, from the tiniest up to a meter wide gong and an East European clone of a Putney VCS. What’s not to love, it’s the first outing for Dolly’s new project with an old friend Simon, and it marvellous, short vignettes of synth business and percussion and whistling, starting with what sounds worryingly like feedback to the sound engineer, but is in fact deliberate, that gives way to a lovely pulsing, with the mentioned whistling. The next piece is chimes and enveloping swoops of synthy-ness. Some lovely modulations unfolding. I’m going to concentrate inevitably on the showy synth, but it’s all really well framed by Dolly’s subtle percussive accompaniment. It’s all marvellously radiophonic as can’t be helped given the sound source, filmic and science fiction-y at times, wailing and droning buzzes in the wind. A set for closing the eyes and waiting for the pictures.

Second up was Secret Nuclear; and it’s not just me that thinks this was a cracking Secret Nuclear set, it’s now available via Bandcamp if you get the urge to listen to it in full. Dorking’s finest. Outflanking us at the start with a white noise/ blasting wind sound (field recording? Noise set?) before settling into a bug buzzing bass and ticking drum machine. The melodic sounds are John Carpenter-ish, OMINOUS. And slowly developing. It’s nearly halfway into his set before we hear a bass drum, and that provides rhythmic punctuation rather than an obvious beat. Even the arpeggios are unnerving, the audio samples murky and confusing sounding like they’ve been ripped from VHS.  The second song breaks into an orgy of glitchy bitcrushing before hitting a fat drone. About 20 minutes into the set a full rhythm track gets in under the heavy drones to push us along with the melody line. Then everything really comes together for the last song, the beats are suitably propulsive, the melodic lines hooky, the bass monstrous, it’s all just creepy enough, it even has a little dub version of itself in the middle. It’s another set with film score undertones.

And finally we have The Yorkshire Modular Society, he has inevitably a racked up modular, in a case that slopes up away from the table with a DR-9 drum machine underneath it, that’s sole function as far as I can tell is to have its light on so it looks nice reflected off the shiny brushed aluminium bottom of the Rack case…. and what he plays is a slowly unfolding generative drone set, ish. Is it constant enough to be drones? I’m not sure, it has high levels of almost repetition, the sound is enveloping and at a volume that it’s almost physical and warm; something to wallow in. At points Dom, ex of Brighton, gets up from his kit and wanders around to ensure the sound is right out in the room. There are sounds that come and go, a whistling wind, a washing swooshing synth, a thrum, a bass that sneaks in rattles everything and then slowly fades away again. Mind rinsing. It’s constant and constantly shifting, a drone, not a drone.