Category: SOG-BLOG

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.



Monotron bridges

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

November 2023
The Rossi Bar

Cour’en start with laughter, and then whistling, slowly out of nothing a two note bassline starts to form,  drum machine follows, a fizzing distorted organ and Louise’s voice through loads of delay. Thoughts Collide, shouting “Broken!”, an organ solo. Brief. Back to words again and pitch bent organ and end. Some banter. The second song starts on an altogether more buzzing tip, they turned it up and the volume gives an energy to the bass. The organ this time is used for slicing punctuation. An evil guitar solo, feedback and screwdriver fuzz. Back again to words. Then everything stops into delay and guitar feedback “Wot-ot-ot-ot?”. Next one starts on bass drum, then a moodier bassline, less buzz. A spooky organ riff as it’s just after Halloween, the guitar played with an electric toothbrush this time. It drops down to drums and voice for the final voice and stop. The next one starts with an indistinct bass and strident rhythm. The bass suddenly bursts into a pinging acidy burble. The guitar on this one a filthy deep churn. Filtering synth, another one burbling. An exchange of heckling and a proper full throttle bouncing bassline, the vocals come in before the drums, “Who the fuck are you?”, a nice B52s fuzz organ riff. A guitar burst channelling Andy Gill then down to a bassline stomp to end. The last song starts with a rubber band bassline, and a weird CZ101 backwards detuned riff that warps into a modulating drone during the verses. The weird riff to end into reverb and noise and laughter.

Karl M V Waugh next up. A very different type of set, sound-tracking an op art video he’d made. “Watch this, don’t watch me”. A buzzing drone murks up out of the silence, modulating deep layers building up under it. A higher buzz sneaks in, slowly the sound develops, thickens. Still builds nothing lost, more layers; more, more layers. Nothing lost, the top layer warps out into a top buzz. Constantly shifting. A delayed keyboard clanging riff. Still building. A big Tardis modulation enfolds everything as it sweeps into existence. There’s a sound like someone struggling to shut down a feeding back 500w Marshall stack in the dark warehouse next door. It floats along like this for a while, then continues to build as a sea-swell roar swoops in. A synthetic pterodactyl can be heard over this as everything reaches the peak. I can’t see the visuals properly from where I’m sitting, God knows what’s going on there. The storm breaks into fierce acoustic winds that batter the room. Eventually it the wind dies and the bass drone slopes back in, the sea recedes and a nasty buzz envelopes everything. A distant choir, the bass splits into a thrumming bass and circular saw. There’s a lost swirl of synth and slowly everything mushes up into white noise then back down to the buzz to wind out as a single drone from a long lost set of pipes.

Finally we have a new set from Rashamon; vocals he promised us, but the lack of a mic wasn’t promising. The first track starts with what sounds like a recording of Christmas heard coming from a mall. The bass drum kicks in a marching beat, Monotron delay, staccato synth ping. A high melodic line filters between the beats and the rest of the rhythm kicks in.  Some pads before it finally breaks down for the bassline. A nice heavy filter on that. And to make up for the lack of basslines to this point we get a second and a third. A female vocal comes in, ah, its pre-recorded, its provenance unknown, we’ll find out. Hooky, mind. Some synth spirals and what sounds like the chorus and another breakdown into some squelch. Some nice little flourishes of the Monotron, it’s easy to go overboard with the filter and delay, so it’s nice to see it used in such a restrained fashion.  This is pumping. The next starts with an old style breakbeat, booming away in the largest room. Ratchets down sparse drums and a melodic mid synth line and Monotron squelch swoop. It builds up around that, layers of pads and drones, sirens, bells. No vocals on this one, just layers of dark intensity. The next one starts with a nicely modulating squelching arpeggio. Drums and whistling drones gather around. Pointillist synth lines complement it and a rolling beat gathers momentum, an interlocking track of total dynamics, suddenly it shifts and we get a melodic line over a popping rhythm. Again this one just turns into a driving stomper of interlocked rhythmic parts. The final track starts with a voice from a film, a classic bit of Rashamon, something about Halloween and Christmas, a bit funny a bit dark. The final track starts with a monster beat, not so fast, big, jingle bells like some 1990 hardcore tune from before the race to 180bpm began, the bassline is melodic rather than pulsing, swooping under another female vocal, bells, counterpoint it.  Again its intensity to the max, unsettling.



Surprisingly heavy on ordinary instrumentation

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

October 2023
The Rossi Bar

Ron Caines, Andrew Greaves & I’m Dr Buoyant: if you don’t know him, Ron was the saxophone player with the near legendary prog rock band East of Eden, long before half of us in the audience could walk. He’s been playing with both Andrew (and with his band Broken Star) and I’m Dr Buoyant for a number of years, but this was the first time they’ve played as a trio. The set starts with some layering up of synths by the electronicians but when Ron starts they drop away leaving him to lay some plaintive lines before a thin stream of near feedback creeps in and ever so slowly swells to some lovely swirling, echoing space noises. Ron starts to bounce back off this; trilling and parping, Andrew responds with a flurry of notes and then slows it down to another deep space tone. As things progress Tony starts channelling Ron’s saxophone back through the effects chain, which is nice. Andrew gets into some synth runs, then back into the spacey washes and occasional organ scurry. About 20 minute sin Andrew starts a much effected drum pattern, pinging echoes and squelchy reverbs all over. Ron switches to slight, tremulous bursts until everything starts to thicken out and he gets into some harder blowing. And then it all winds out in light arpeggios and looped sax breath.

The Organ Grinder’s Monkey, it’s the first time we’ve had Ben back in a while, and he’s changed things around a bit, the lovely Black and Chrome Jaguar guitar has gone to be replaced by some multifunctional high end (but at least black) modern thing. He’s also changed his set around a bit, gone are the tight punchy songs and he’s loosened up a bit, but there’s still plenty of structure. No singing though. The first song he starts by getting some guitar loops going through Bill the laptop. There is some odd glitching and you can visibly see him deciding on whether to restart or use it as feature, he decides to forge ahead. When the chiming interlocking guitar loops are cycling away, he gets the guitar to show some of its other features, messing with things, triggering midi sounds, the wayward glitches mostly fall away leaving on the deliberate ones. And thankfully for his stress levels the rest of the set seems devoid of issues. Apart from the unexpected triggering of an amen break. The next one starts with one of his pop guitar riffs, there’s some madness noises and the amen break. The whole thing has that clarity and lightness that reminds me of my favourite of Cornelius’ work. He gets really into messing with the beats at the end, building on his work with the games controller the last time we saw him. The next one starts with the messed up beats. Slower and rather chunky, he plays in a bassline and some more nicely interlocking guitar parts and glitchy frills. There are some great guitar controlled breakdowns on here. Theres a really quick switch into the next song, it’s almost completely formed. Guitar and rhythm doing what I can only describe as tripping along with extraordinarily filthy noises over them. Unless its some kind of dub of the previous song. Organ Grinder’s Monkey on the Version. It does go through a quite expected silly breakdown/chop up at the end. But a great example of what can be done with a bit of imagination on how to do things. An interesting experimental approach to playing, with a great ear, combining to make something really out of the ordinary.

Nina Kohout starts with heavily affected multitracked vocal, thick and well layered. We fall silent, piano comes in and she sings on, simply and alone. Electronic bass tones well up, and a fairly brutal waltz beat starts. The sound is surprisingly spacious after that heavy start. The next song is deceptively simple with an electric guitar and voice. Followed by something that starts with some deep electronic pulses, and slow dread-full beat. Some nice use of a what sounds like a scrapingly bowed cello sound. The beats pick up, heavy on the toms, intensity ramps, yowling backing vocals add to that. And it rounds off with a nice drop to a spooky ending. The next song is about consent, pretty dark, angry and as it’s new I guess raw. Intense, something of Kate Bush about the way the vocal lines interleaving. After a light break for a middle eight we get some seriously heavy synth riffing, deep and ponderous. The next song is much lighter, starting with vocals of a high thin drone before a piano line comes in. There’s a really nice string synth interlude before things go off at a bit of a tangent with interplay between pre-recorded and live vocals and back to the piano line. The next song is a song for waking up and in Slovakian. Multi-tracked and affected vocals start with drones, and a bass pulse “hah!”, church organ washes and reedy pipe melodies follow with synthetic bird whistles. The final song starts with a plonking marimba pattern, the vocals come in, everything fades briefly then a deranged Latin rhythm starts, with some proper sonic bass. Its almost channelling a gothy Herb Alpert, only without the trumpet.



Here comes summer

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

September 2023
The Rossi Bar

Starting the evening off, Thon is set up onstage with his hand made hurdy-gurdy noise box, effects rack and a couple of other devices that were hidden behind the huge monitor he had displaying visuals to complement the visuals he had projected behind him. Bowing the string on the noise box get this monster drone started, which he then complemented with scratches at this or thrums of that, or something untoward on the hidden kit. The drone seems to constantly morph into human/unhuman screams. Occasionally it feels like a whip of feedback folds in, but the deep undertow of the bass is pretty much constant. Some kind of Godzilla footstep bass drum, reverbed and down-pitched to below sub bass thumps along. I had visualisations of a car accident in a desert, some kind of narrative conjured itself up. Everything starts to drift, the footsteps and unrelenting bass both fade away leaving a Star Trek shimmer from two bowed ruler like bits of metal on the noise box. A new drone is built around this, oscillating slowly with much higher frequency sounds, much more feedback driven. Eventually a shaky hi-hat style patter seeps in, and almost a bassline starts to undulate under the drones, sub bass, the drones growl and work with the bass, switching around, shifting the dynamics and it slowly drops down to a far choir, then a low organ buzz. A low organ buzz with a windy, church-ish ambience. He works again at the noise box, giving texture and scrape-y grain to the sounds and then a roar slowly envelopes everything and we’re done.

So Missing Music, a set up with two very old Apple Macintoshes, one plugged into the projector so everyone can follow what’s going on, which leads to a lot of murmuring throughout his set from certain sections of the audience. To be honest the details go over my head, but a great deal of trainspotting pleasure is obviously to be had. It’s a lovely set, very soundscape-y, spacious, expansive. A nice contrast to the density of Thon. Its starts with big tonal sounds, pure, floating and bending with radiophonic overtones. A staccato bass counterpoints what we’ll take as the melody line,  providing a little drive, to propel things along. Little bursts of notes give way to great slowed loud bell tones. I recognise a piano keyboard when it comes up and a flurry of piano notes runs around our heads. The slowly modulating line continues through. We get a half beat, something of drum and bass about it, staggering in the background it throws the top line into bright relief. Something of the cathedral about it until it slows down to proper bass. We get some glitching and sparkling, a rattle of delayed snare. And breathing. Space. The sound of space in my imagination epic and beautiful, the sound of Jupiter looming into view. A stepped note part gives way to a nice little arpeggio, still situated somewhere in the cold reaches of the outer solar system. And it runs for a nice little while before the sounds suddenly mutate and we get some glitch-y stutters, smeared sounds its suddenly all a bit MaxMSP, I’m not sure as it could have been on the other screen, but whatever it is giving it the improv-y edge it’s counterbalanced  by a nice slow LFO sweep working against it. A one note pulse heralds the end as it slowly unravels.

En Creux has a no input mixing desk setup; feedback loops through effect chains in and out of her onstage mixer, with no initial signal. Her set starts with a low hum which slowly moves to an undulating buzz. There’s some squelching from a delay that disappears quite quickly. Things can move quite quickly the feedback loops are inherently unstable, and we get a staccato of high pitched before a marvellous dotting bass erupts – superfast pulsing that imperceptibly slows, before she gets to interrupt it to get some rhythm, then a subby noisy wash of bass swamps in underneath it. En Creux is very much at the other end of the sonic spectrum to Toshi Nakamuras spectral treble. We do get some blistering mid ranges here though, it feels dangerous, the sub bass is still riding the room, but these switches of deliriously nasty noises wreak havoc with the senses. She can ride the havoc well, letting it rip on, with some really nicely detailed fine control. Eventually she reigns in the noise to a muffled stutter before dropping it altogether. She does some work on the bass for a while shifting it slightly, giving it a wobble, developing it into something raucous, then back again to something more tonal, dropping the buzz and letting it get wafted about by a delay pulse. This runs for a while and then she thickens it up, and allows it to branch off, one strand filtering out into a reverb-y buzz that slowly disappears, and we’re back to a buzzing vibrating pulse again. Then some squeaking, a dog’s toy. No idea where on earth that came from, but it sounds like it brought its dog with it. Then some nice feedback whistles, before its back to the bass and a machine clacking beat, which becomes everything, even crickets. She slows it, brings it back to speed, introduces new elements that add to it, before it winds down to a saw slowly hacking through a giant tree.



Twice in the pit; never on the poster

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

August 2023
The Rossi Bar

Far Rainbow start the evening, mostly ‘cos of drums, but also so they can get home with the trains and that. This is one for watching, experiencing. In the first review I wrote for The Spirit of Gravity, I described Brown Sierra as “more electrica than electronica”, and there’s an element of that with Far Rainbow, Bobby has no synthesiser or laptop, but a collection of devices and transducers. His setup a continuation of the composed pieces he did back for us in The Scope days. But it’s not all about Bobby, Emily has her drum kit which is played with an equally diverse array of devices. Sticks, beaters, parcel tape, whisk, seashell… it’s also sent through a fairly hefty delay, and played very quietly. Their set starts with Emily crumpling paper on the snare while Bobby has a rattling can in what looks like a paint pot shaker, cymbal washes, somewhere it sounds like the ghost of a train is coming, the hint of a chimed melody. Bobby goes through his motorised things whirring noisily into the transducers while Emily builds her improve-y scrapings into a crescendo, occasionally a multiply echoed thwack of a stick clatters around the room, or there is a tinging pattern to remind us of the kits more orthodoxly percussive nature. Someone has a bag of stones which they rattle, I’m sure. Ah, it’s Emily. She brings the volume right down. Bobby has a nice modulating warble going on with feedback controlled into something akin to throat singing and a bird song recording. Bobby gets some small metal objects into the shaking can which give us a maraca-ish rhythm to work against before he breaks out the electric hairbrush, which was a particular highlight. A lot of questions right there. Emily builds up the cymbal shimmers behind the whining, then slides the beaters onto the toms, still slowly building, the cymbals seem to have entered the effects chain and continue to shine away. Then we get into the tape ripping into her effects chain. It all wind down with the ghost train, gentle snare scraping and a slow high pitched whirring drone that fades in and out.

Once again standing in at the last minute for someone unable to make it along, we have Alien Alarms. Making full use of the Rossi Bar’s famous bass cabinets to really work everything in the room that isn’t fixed down…. these days Jim sets his controller sloped away from him so you can see what he’s up to, this works really nicely as 1) he’s not just a bloke sat behind a laptop 2) it’s fascinating trying to match his movements over the buttons with what’s coming out the speakers as he chops up the lines running through the song – not just the drum tracks but vocal parts, bass parts, melodic lines particularly work well taking on new forms as he gets stuck into the meaty bits of the songs. The first song is a version of the first thing he wrote as Alien Alarms, all proper bass and field recordings from lockdown. The next few tracks are part of his AI themed album, the first “We must make more of us” starts with a hit that is almost stunning in its intensity. It also has a slap bass part he played. A big fan of Marcus Miller it seems. Some nice chopping on the vocal line with this one. “The Machine of Death” follows, darker, naturally, very intense with a buzzing dip into the subs again. Almost nothing is happening above the mid-range, but what there is, is disorienting. Even the vocal parts are deep. Then into an excellent version of “The Spirit of Gravity off the new compilation “A Poem in Six Parts”. He gets proper psychedelic chopping this up towards the end. That’s followed with his nicely skewed version of “Avril 14th” the final song starts with a rolling hip hop break, with carillon and squelches that gets quite quickly a teensy bit breakcore, the chopping gets quite frenzied in this one, beats zooming in from all sides.

Rounding off the evening were a Spirit of Gravity super-group, Screaming Alice, Howard our press person and Andrew who designs our posters.  Set up with twin tables of synths including Howard’s infamous original Wasp. Their set started off with some nice swooping synths, bass woooshes and a chattering buzz that all faded out as a funereal kick drum, proper thudding waded in. a double tempo bass line came in, and the wasp returned with some pulsations as the drum switched to the 4/4. Some counter lines building up a rhythmic backing then a drop and these seriously nasty screams slid across. And a messed up voice started talking to us. The drums morph, the bass lines start shifting timbre, the bass becoming a melodic line. Dropping back to drums and voice we get a new gurgling bass come in, that starts all rhythmic then slows down to a warping drone for another drop. We get a radiophonic spirit scream going back and forth across the stage while a bass burbles enigmatically. The scream drops to a drone and a two note percussive synth line starts in to be washed away by a helicopter drone, gull-song and seascape. The helicopter drops to a purely sonic wash about the limits of hearing. The players bouncing ideas back and forth. A rhythmic part comes in being modulated all over the place sonically from bass to mid-range, squelch to stab, and before we notice the drums have snuck back in. Driving counter rhythms lurk up. Splashes of colour, the sounds shift again, and everything seems to shift up a gear, before dropping away again. We’re well into the world of machines for a groove that doesn’t last anywhere near long enough before the drums drop away and they start messing about with the sounds again, then – ooh, its back, slightly new but still with that energy., an offbeat that amazingly sounds more like a skank than a trance pulse, and it’s all on the move again. Figures flitter briefly into view and are gone, odd notes – sheep! The sheep put in quite an appearance, making me think of a banging version of “Chill Out”. The sheep leave but the banging backing stays on. Other odd sounds rattle of squirm across the field of view, then all the rhythm drops away and we’re left with psychedelic sheep, and pulses of energy, delayed organ notes, boops and burps and finally slow LFO sweeps… really quite nicely, a fusion nothing like what either has done on their own.


A pendulum clicks

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

July 2023
The Rossi Bar

A New Question, a chime, mangled voices reversed electronics and strings. Speaking the effected version seems to irrupt before the words leave the lips. The artist wears a Venetian (?) mask and parka. It’s July before the suns come. Twin aerials of a hidden television seem unused. Suddenly a clatter of interruption, an improv cascade of percussion. Then speaking again over juddering bursts of static. Click and scrape and very creepy breathing. The string riff returns to do Tuxedomoon-esque battle with a backwards organ. Is that some machine starting up. Running water, but not in a relaxing way. Stop. Start. There is an incident where the laptop goes flying and everything stops, but a quick recovery to cheers, and it’s a fairly brutal return. Devil voices. Back-masked. Nice. It’s still a somewhat truncated set, ending abruptly not too long after.

Sonaura follows up, starting with a high pitched whistling off his multi cassette deck just about my tinnitus threshold. Some folding in of bass and then clanger burbles writ as drones lead us on into a buzzing landscape of wide vistas. The slow plod of a time dilated clock keeps time, tone-washed murmurs wash In and out and as if of yore a TV voice tells us something then gets looped. Some slow keyboard part lays in. gently recycling itself. The voices die and some big electronics, Greek, old, powerful slide in. there are sum and difference frequencies beating in the weight of the drones, adding texture and even more depth. They wind out to an evolving three note distorted / reverbed chime modulating slowly off into the distance; into a feeling of dread, repetition. Is that a guitar gently strummed? And a finally verrry verry slow fade out to bliss…

Új Bála also starts with voice (his own) an ill-defined bass sequence like a stammering double bass, and growling synth. Synthetic Whale song, scurries of sequenced slurring tones. In the visuals he folds back in on himself. A staccato drum track bursts into life, a monotone bass pulse providing an almost gabber kick for the drums to form around. Over this radiophonic synth sounds and noise jostle with his vocals, a pause and off back into it again. Everything is rhythm. The rhythm degenerates and falls away to another semi random set of noises, bass buzzes, odd wirbles, that eventually build into something rhythmic, at least the phrasing is rhythmic but the tonalities never repeat. You can nod your head but not sing along. The rhythm fades into wobbling bass and squiggling trebles. Driven over by a large diesel motor and malfunctioning church organ. A bass drone pitched up and down (is that not a drone?) makes a bass line, some epic reverb on it and short pitched squeals give some melodic feel, and some LFO action gives it a soaring, whirring feel. Some other bass tones meld in and it gets all John Carpenter on us as the noise levels amp up, then into some kind of pitch distorted gating frenzy and it’s done.



The hottest show on record

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

June 2023
The Rossi Bar

We had a bonus guest tonight due to illness with a touring package due to play at The Bees Mouth, so we started off with M G Dysfunction, he was set up in front of the stage in a fine cowboy short and baseball hat, on a high stool. Which he soon abandons. It’s fair to say he splits the audience, and quite quickly. He starts with a nice piano tune, which he quite quickly annihilates with some hideous country style caterwauling. “Fuck the boys in blue”, I thought it was quite funny. That segues into a drone, moving into a grime inflected number. The backing track on the next one has something of Eno’s Discreet Music about it, and he talks over it about the moon & stars. Back into drones and a murky slow bass drum. Very slow. He sings again. Next one up is dedicated to all the Junglists in the audience, he makes some quip about Chocolate Monk that goes over everyone’s head. The tune has nothing to do with Jungle though. Some fat ugly bass drone, circular ranting. The noise rises up within it, ranting continues. This is my favourite part of the backing track. Juddering bassline, noise swirls through various delays, then a modern RnB backing that quickly tips back into the disgusting racket.

So first of the scheduled acts was the welcome return of Dale Frost, minimal drum kit, electronic pads, novelty cymbals (triple decker-ed, dimpled and warped or full of holes) and some other bits I couldn’t see. Starting with a shimmering roll on the synth triggering drum pads interspersed with occasional drums before he fires off a more familiar song set into the pads, is it sequenced, is it played. Both. Neither who knows. But holing down drum parts and synth lines Dale really pushes the idea of the independently controlled multi-limbed drummer to new lengths. It’s great to watch. The next track is more heavily into the beat, the synths more beeping rhythm lines weaving between the drums. Nice steps up when the beat thickens and the synths multiply with delays. The next track is definitely running off a sequencer. An odd whistly line giving way to a steel drum tick, bass drum on the fours. Then I’m not so sure about the sequencer, he seems to be playing the lines. Playing with my mind. Towards the end of this song he gets stuck into the hidden bits of kit, a keyboard and analogue delay, I’m guessing. One song has a nice one note bassline with some chunky stabs before giving way to something jerky that syncopates within a beat. The last song slows it down, with a nice fat bass and some pinging Tom Tom Club synth sounds. It slowly speeds up, the bass getting a bit rawer and groovier, other sounds trailing around it with a melodic synth line emerging in the firing chorus bits of it. And a big organ flourish to end on a high energy finish.

Then the return of f.Ampism, we had him booked in for one of the first shows after lockdown ended, in that spell of Will It Open Or Not. And it didn’t. But here we are now. He advises us to watch the projections rather than himself as he sets up some almost drones. There’s a bit too much going on to be actual drones, swelling, subtly shifting pitches, a hint of growled voice, a smidge of harmonium, a slowly unfolding melodic line that emerges gradually and slinks away. Its the sound of hot sun coming down through unruffled leaves, a hot still day, something stirs indistinctly in the distance. What it is we never mind. I’m drifting; open my eyes and 10 minutes has blissed, passed. Paul is working away, much more active than would be obvious, but the shifts are there, nothing is actually static even if you never noticed it change, it’s all different.  At some point he gets me up to muck about with the monitor and we get some extra modulating midrange reedy layers sliding into the mix. It’s now quite a think complex montage of sounds. Still quite precise and separate, everything pulsing and morphing in its own individual way. It reaches a crescendo but I’m too blissed out to really notice and stops.

Rounding off the evening we have Cornish (via London) artist Yiskāh. Carrying on where Paul left off with a somewhat more menacing drone. Under this she feeds in a vibrating thin whirr the drone starts to vibrate and branch off, into sub bass whoomf and airplane hum. A ghost of a wind sends its icy chill to taunt us. The PA is pushed about as Jess plays with the sonics of the room. A creeping sensation spiders its way into the stew. The sounds is solid, it’s not unpleasant enough to be HNW, but it has a similar monolithic indistinctness; a vast incomprehensibility where it just quietly fills your head and erases sense of time and place, gentle rather than roaring but nonetheless abstract and almost formless. There are touches of tone that emerge from the fog, perhaps slippery streams of feedback that evaporate as you start to latch onto them. Occasionally things in the room vibrate, shifting around as the pitches from the stage evolve. As it winds down, we’re left with the more pitched sounds; wind, a swirl of sea. Tyre on gravel. None of these things.