Tag: Alice Eldridge

Buzz and thrum

October 2015
Green Door Store

The Birds of Death Valley

Birds of Death Valley To start the evening we had the return of The Birds of Death Valley for their first show in an age. Dom was on pretty good form on a chair centre stage with iPad and bass guitar, stage right had Howard on recorder, venerable Wasp and some other bits and pieces, and flanking the oil drum table Ben on whistle, kettle trumpet, pipe and unused slide cornet. They started with a fairly abstract song of floating buzzes and analogue-y drones, before the kettle and a bassline get into a more rhythmic mode, the recorder tipping us over into more fragile almost Takako Minekawa area.


F.Ampism

F Ampism Next up was F.Ampism with his electronical cassette collages. On this form he has to be the best person doing this in Brighton at the moment, a stunning set, multi layered and constantly moving, there were some really interesting textures; voices, percussion, and an urgency – no sitting back and letting things wash over the audience, a constant evolution of audio images, evocative and rather mesmerising. Something about the quality of the sound put me in mind of the soundtrack to Black Orpheus, but I can’t quite say what.


Caines & Eldridge

Caines & Eldridge Finally we had Alice Eldridge & Ron Caines celebrating the launch of “Rothko Veil” the latest release on our Spirit of Gravity label (spiritofgravity.bandcamp.com/album/rothko-veil). They recorded the album in 2011, and this may have been the first time they’d played together since and it really felt like something special right from the start. They started with “Sukran” one of the themes off the album, and it was a really good choice . Alice’s thrummed cello almost a bass part circling loop like while Ron’s lyrical playing really set the mood for the rest of their set and gave him a great starting point to work from. They had the themes for the evening on music stands and use another two from the album and two new ones. Alice going through chamber music sonorities and rhythmic parts to drones and over the bridge harshness, while Ron really let fly as the evening progressed.