December 2017
Green Door Store
Capzilla 20s
The evening started with Capzilla 20s, two SH101s linked up on a table in front of the stage facing each other, me and Caleb in large white mouse-ish masks with long horns. Which meant I couldn’t see much…. We set up drones and started detuning and setting up beat frequencies and standing waves at heavy bass frequencies. After a while a slowly revolving sequence started and we started tweaking the filters and such, before upping the noise. At some stage a couple of other people came in shouting through megaphones and a manifesto cut up into small strips.
Chemical Bbrench
Second on the bill was Chemical Bbrench, set up on the floor of the stage, a two piece, guitars, one detuned down quite a bit. Lots of effects. Vast amounts of feedback. Monster levels of bass drone and wash. Felix obviously had one new string which wouldn’t stay in tune so spent a deal of the set winding up the tuning peg. They play just one show a year, the 2018 show will be in January. I recommend catching it if you missed this one.
Futuro De Hierro
Finally we had Futuro De Hierro from Barcelona. Standing at one of the oil drum tables, some electronics, a stretched cassette tape, feedback and vocals. Keeping the bass levels at fairly excessive levels with brutal distorted kick drums, buzzing basslines and thick layers of distortion. He played some tracks from his new album, ‘Paso en el Vacío’, and a couple of older tracks.
Renfield is Dan Powell and Geoff Cheesemaster, Dan had his laptop with some Pure Data patches scratching out noises fed through an effects chain while Geoff had a no input mixing desk setup with some old fuzzboxes and a couple of analogue delays feeding off an old noisy Yamaha mixer. Definitely it was one of those things where you’re wondering who the hell is making that sound. Dan’s output was quite digital and grainy, but the effects chain put some analogue spin on that and the two setups merged into a nice mulch of noise. Textural.
Ron Caines and I’m Dr Buoyant started with Colleen-ish chimes looping from Tony and Ron slowly starting in on his soprano sax from the shadows off at the side, the whole thing was rather lovely, aching with melancholy. It took some time in unfolding before Tony got to work on the effects units and it degenerated into something altogether a bit gnarlier, with Ron picking up the Alto and blowing a bit and Tony got into some orchestral rhythm hammering. They then seemed to do a piece based on loops of Ron’s Sax and it all went into an uneasy dreamstate before rounding off in a circular synth sweep with heavily delayed sax resonating feedback washes overlaid. A really good performance from Ron and Tony, possibly their strongest to date. They’re up again at SafeHouse soon.
Chemical Bbrench is Karl Waugh and his mate Felix. Apparently they play annually, but its their first time at The Spirit of Gravity. They had two guitars, two lots of effects chains and all played back through the PA. Literally. Occasionally you can tell a chunk of noise originates in some chirruping fret run or string scrape, but rather than guitar music it was mostly a solid blast of effects chain full throttle overdrive leavened with slow phaser grinds and broken down by low bouts of feedback. The temptation is to think of it as a straight noise set, but listening back, its a lot more nuanced than that, quite textured and with some nice interplay between the two of them. Which isn’t to say that it didn’t have some nice HNW moments.