September 2022
The Rossi Bar
Standing in for Ingrid Plum at a few days’ notice we had Electric Ape, a longstanding audience member and a member of the [beep] group as well as starting his own Kosmische night, I find it hard to believe Simon hasn’t played for us before.
Set up on the stage floor with his modular synth angled up before him with a tidy tray of effects next to him he started off with a lovely unfolding set of drones. Slow chimes, breaths, the occasional wood block. Then there was a subtle shift into almost Martin Denny territory, very exotic mid-tempo percussion, overtaken by an electric hihat and booming bass, a little piano chord here or there and a very eighties sounding string synth. Nice. The next piece is almost all percussion, up-tempo, rim shot, hi tom, shaker, maybe more Afrodesia, if we’re still talking Denny, a wind gets up and a little sonic LFO activity on it, whirling through the slight shift in percussive balance. I can hear what sounds almost like Matt Johnson muttering in the background. The percussion shifts again. Building intensity with little snare roll, then its a drop, and an end. Theresa little gap for applause. Then a boinging bass drum, hyperactive rattly hi hat, more speedy high toms, woodblock. A little gentle interlude of soft piano, then it’s back into the rhythm, then the interlude again, then a little unison, and the rhythm thins out, and goes, the interlude takes us to a slow down into the delay tunnel of resonance.
Shit Creek is next, a warm drone from the keyboard starts, soon to be enveloped by a long note off his violin fed into a looper, they slowly rotate around each other; you can feel the beating and modulation in them, rasps and gurgles form and bubble. Some shimmers slowly emerge, what sounds like the Shangri Las “oooohhh”ing in the next basement, it’s all indistinct and revolves very slowly, blissfully, a slight warble of what could be feedback subtly swans about. It’s all very subtle, enveloping, not a lot seems to be happening even though Lewis is very busy behind his bits and pieces, it’s blissful. Marvellous.
In contrast to the apparent near stasis of Shit Creek, we have the hyperactivity of Yes Indeed. My best description of them was “like two seven year old musical prodigies trying to reconstruct ‘Yessongs’ from a single listen”. I still think that’s reasonable. They have a backing track, and play bass guitar, keyboards, and other things over it. Starting with singing distantly off mic and electric piano. It veers between very structured and completely freeform in a quite erratic manner. There’s headbanging and duck calls. Moments sound like Tuxedomoon, then space chords offset by honking, nicely rounded bass runs. Fat organ chords butt up against lead fuzz bass and twinkling lead piano. Is that a kazoo? Remarkable, haven’t seen anything quite that off the wall in a while.
Muster start the evening off, Dan on small things processed through MaxMSP and synthesiser, if you’re lucky Tony will publish a picture of the frankly ridiculous patch on the SoGBlog; then there’s James seated on electric guitar, played by a variety of brushes, pins, clips, files and a plethora of other unsuitable things. Also fingers & thumbs, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t see a plectrum. Muster fall at the EAI end of what we put on, quiet, spacious and very much from a free improv place. It starts with chimes and scrapes – a very quiet ring of feedback – silence – a more forceful feedback squall. Electronics warble spookily. Clanking, radio voices passed through the guitar pickups, weird tonal radiophonic patches, squeaks. Dan works methodically around his table of things, shuffling the microphone, James a bit more animated: flipping his guitar flat on his lap to crocodile clip the strings or wedge things under the strings, or bringing it back vertically to fret it more orthodoxly or jam the headstock against the small amp for feedback. There was someone in the audience moved to join in for a while a baritone rumbling unverse, not quite comprehensible. Chime box and pinging guitar combine, an odd sproing and unexpected massive detuning of a guitar string. Dan thickens up his output for the final section, James sets his fingers scurrying and lets rip with a proper squall from the amp, a weaving two tone drone from Dan, counterpointed by thumb piano.
Second on the bill is Zoom Around Rainbow. Sat sideways on at his laptop at the back of the stage, right at the screen. He’s enjoying the PA, tweaking the EQ through the set to maximise his bass happiness from the house PA. Starting with a pretty full on textured jet engine roar that slowly builds up with a rattling high hat an occasional bass drum hit slipping in underneath, a full drum pattern gradually pushing its way through. A strangely hooky double pad stab motif slips into your head almost unnoticed adding a vaguely hysterical tinge to things. The drone differentiates itself into a scrabbling set of counter rhythmic figures, the beats morph heralding the next section. Porky hardcore beeps and the drums give it a bit of a 91 feel. The jet comes back and swamps everything in its mighty reverberant roar. New drums, bass, floor toms, no hi hats, the jet engine now in bursts function as a 4 beat on off bassline, melodic content provided by woodblock. Then a pummelling bass drum batters us to the finish of this section. And suddenly they stop and everything washes away blissfully. A swell of bass washes up, a steady firm beat, train rattle percussion alongside, hard long sounds come and go like slowly walking along the construction site of the Lewes Road during lockdown. Its dense where Muster were sparse, getting ever denser. Ever denser. The grinds fade away and more rhythmic parts unfold giving no real relief. Then everything again gives way, this time to space sounds and distorted voices, a rolling slightly, oddly too short drum pattern. Eventually a detuned two not bassline rocks in derailing the rhythm and taking control. Around it swoop pads and squelches. The density falls away. It ends; we are released.
And finally its Vera Bremerton, we had been speaking before lockdown about her coming down to play for us, and now, eventually here she is. She has vocal mics and some heavy duty processing equipment. Possibly a sound source. She starts low key, an odd looping tone, vocalisations, gentle at first, some passing through the equipment unscathed others catching, repeated back at us, verbatim, some mangled, some delayed unfeasibly. Gurgles and shudders. The occasional horrors. This is going to be hard put not to be just a string of verbs. Her voice swoops, closely tracked by some awful electronic banshee, curling against machine judders and machine tool whirrs. She twists some tightly controlled feedback into an engaged tone whale-song, sets an earth hum against it suddenly releasing swarming robot bees against which she sets up some unearthly gurgling. Space ships flicker by sprinkling shimmering trails. She can really do some alarming things to her voice with this kit, processing it into some alien menagerie, or looping vocalisations into plunger rhythms. The thick rhythmic melange calms down into a 30,000 ft. jumbo jet ambience, with unknowable lyrical melodics and childish song-play, suddenly the plunger is back, then gone into a late 20th century modernist soundtrack, unnerving and edgy. Then cascading tones and the return of the bees, a fairly straight melodic vocal refrain, it feels looped but seems different every iteration. A steam belching factory throb underpins everything now. She sings again, now and again the electronic banshee follows her vocal line. The final section has her vocalising a melodic loop and winding distortions of it around itself, bass notes, harsh trebly runs that gets into some pretty extreme areas before winding back out to something fairly lovely to end. “Remarkable” I think I said at the end.