Tag: Hannya White

Denuded by birth

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

October 2024
The Rossi Bar

Starting the evening off one member down, but not unexpectedly was Altamode. Starting with slow dancehall beats and warm gently oscillating arpeggios Monty alone; shaded and gum chewing in a “Vroom Vroom” tee, did sterling work. A flurry of feedback delay and a voice starts in. next track starts with an unwinding bass and occasional square blasts of noise. Bells chime in. Monty works away at laptop and modular. The bells climb and carillon into a descending delay. The bassline completely unravels into parp and flap dropping almost out of hearing. More words from the laptop, threatening. The noise blasts mutate slowly into a second stentorian bassline. The chimes disturbing now. A woman’s voice “You’re number one” in a tight loop Suddenly “We’re going to take you one step further” and the noise proper kicks in, a bass noise bassline, wheel squeak, pinging feedback squeals. Layered-up voices. Bass and squeak alternate now drowned in racket, then bass drum reverbed to murk bashes in under it and end.

Next up is Hannya White in a very different mode to the last time she was down, much more song based, starting with a bass (drum? pulse?) on the fours and she talks her voice, disturbingly muted, with reverb chains spiralling off it. After a while the song starts to tick like a clock, bat wing drums flutter. The next song starts with a sub sonic throbbing, shortwave radio static, the bassline swirls up then back down again. Clicking bass drum and some truly terrifying screaming start in raising the energy levels right up, the shortwave voice from the future still there, the drums choppy, the screaming looped now alternates with a guttural roar. Something goes wrong and her laptop crashes, so we have a brief interval before it takes up again and carries on with a slightly less thick and intense version of the same song. The drums have dropped and eventually the wobbling deep bass comes back in against the looping screams. The third song starts with a staccato bass drum, again this has the vague air of Prince of Darkness, the static hiss disguising redemption, the hiss slowly recedes and we are left with a sub bass wash and infernal drumming. The next song starts with a slow count “1….2….3….” against a slow crunchy snow step. A toppy bass starts, sprightly and the bass drum follows suit. Vocal layer up against the counting, not densely, though, sparse, a little hum, some talking. The bass drum glitches and a saw-tooth bassline quietly lurks, a drop to the humming, then a ticking beat and everything comes back in. a little more driving. The bass drum starts to overdrive something. Off-beats. “Free, Free”. Another breakdown and then it’s all back again, louder and with more delay drowned in a swamp of bass delay noise. And I think that’s it.

And rounding the evening off in classy style is Alien Alarms & Ieva Dubova. They’ve apparently had a run through and Ieva has scored some parts for herself. She plays the piano, Jim as usual chopping the beats and such on his laptop. They start with one of Ieva’s pieces, “R”, solo piano to start, the room noise drops to next to nothing. Jim has some delayed percussion flourishes and slight seagull scrapes. It’s very subtle and rather lovely. Next is one of Jim’s pieces. Starting with bass drone, AI voice, beeps. This time Ieva providing the haunting flourishes. It subtle and minimal but remarkably atmospheric, adding a tangible layer of dread. No drums. The AI voice breaking down into glitching stammers as the song progresses. the bass drone never falters, and slowly the electronics fade out. The next track is “A leap” another Alien Alarms one, bass line, drums and Jim’s singing. Ieva’s piano again understated, and for “time to take a leeeeeaaaap” a cascade of notes as everything else drops out and it feels like she’s going to take off McCoy Tyner style, which she eventually does after the third chorus, when nothing comes back and she lets fly with the occasional bubbling from Jim. The next track is “The Spirit of Gravity” their first collaboration. Based on the Nietzschean text from which we got our name. Its slightly reworked from the original on the “A poem in 6 parts” compilation for which it was first written, more space, more sub bass drones, more eerie piano, less broken drum parts. Jim watches like a hawk. There are breakdowns, the piano comes back the electronics crescendo as the piano gets higher into tinkling intensity of dripping rains. Back and forth between the two of them now the drums to the fore and now the piano takes control, flurries of notes to end. Avril 14th to end, which Ieva can obviously play in spite of the ridiculous leaps between notes. And extemporise around, so she leads this with the piano, then Jim pitches right in with the drums and full tilt getting into chopping and Ieva gets working right around the song. The closest we’ve had to jazz in a long time, the two of them improvising around each other. I think given the nature of the sound, though, no chance of the Jazz Limiters being triggered. They are on fire. A proper creative energy around the room.


Nocturnal Lee

Posted on by Spirit of Gravity

Febrary 2023
The Rossi Bar

The first act of the evening is Alien Alarms, he’s set up with his launch-pad angled towards us so we can get some idea of what’s going on, and it’s really interesting you can get a much better feel of the way Jim is interacting with the rhythm tracks when you can see what’s going on, beats starting, chopping, and he seems to be really going to town with it for us, stammering the vocal parts and really getting into messing with the beats. The first track is quite slow, tooth rattling sub-sonics and eerie synth, someone deep voiced talking about the wheel of life, the beat almost stalling. The second uses Sun Tzu read by a woman, guitar parts by his son, and singing by Jim. There is an early 2000s nu jazz feel to the top layer undermined by the intricacy of the beat and the dubbing fx. The third is “Less of almost Everything” off the album, again Jim sings, it seems slow, the bass is vast. The fourth track is his track for the upcoming Spirit of Gravity compilation, its starts ponderously, pianos come in, the beat stops and starts becoming more energised each time, the bass turns to a buzzing drone and the beats get almost up to DnB levels underneath. No hi-hats to make it take flight, big piano chords break it up. The vocal samples speed up and it ends on a lovely piano figure. The Aphex Twin cover he dedicates to Lou, it’s even more frenetic than usual as he gets right into the beats and doesn’t have vocals to distract himself with. It ends up with him chopping up the melodic line as well as the rhythm. The final track is the last one he did before getting into his AI work, strings, breaks, bass: a kind of frenzied tribute to Shut Up And Dance, in my mind at least.

Following up closely behind we have Hannya White for her Spirit of Gravity debut, she got in touch with us by sending a track for the radio show, which we loved, so invited her down to play. It starts with breath and a mono-tonal, metronomic bass. She murmurs dogs bark. Bits of the room vibrate. Unexpectedly a flurry of drums breaks in and disappears, this becomes predominant. The dog may now be a piano. I can hear her words more clearly. They layer, the drums are constant. The second track starts with drums. Not what you’d call a rhythm, not at first, a very 80s sounding bass synth, the drums like a double time grime pattern. Something erratic is happening over the solidifying drums. The third starts Star Trek-like, a hammering bass drum confuses us and the filters take away the melody, she talks, pizzicato strings, bowed strings. Fire. The fourth starts with slurred strings and earthquakes. Spaceships, vocal drones. Atonal strings and held breaths. The next starts with an organ sound: bass-y rhythms with stabs laid around them, that falls apart to pin point piano and voice, jazzy cymbal, bits of that organ. The sixth steps everything back up with a fat bass-y pulse, rattle-y drums, kettle whistle, woodblock syncopation and voice. Scary sounds come in from the cars in the woods. The bass falls away and all gets proper creepy and we run away. We finish with possibly “Hauling it down to Mexico” which was our choice. A creaking bassline, screams, Bernard Herriman strings, highway running drums. The whole set is a soundtrack of deranged wonder, shifting, powerful & slightly terrifying.

We finish with the return of Rashamon, for his first set at a regular Spirit of Gravity show for around 10 years. Lee starts with a gated shifting synth, big drones underneath, some of his trademark use of film dialogue intact, then off into song-land a repeated intricate synth figure, some Vangelis string synth, before a big bass kicks in. There are some heart-melting melodic lines before the drums roll in. There’s a classic breakdown and everything returns, a bit darker ; a bit more intense than the first time around. The second breakdown is all bass and weird detuned sounds floating around. When everything comes back the intensity is again ramped up, the melodic line subsumed under the newer tonalities. This segues straight into a lighter arpeggiating line, the weird noises tailing slowly off into piano lines and returning first as radio interference then as rhythm. The third track starts with a skipping bass drum and snare pattern with vocal sample, before a monstrous buzzing hardcore bassline comes in. it drops again, leaving just an echoed stab over the drums before returning in a much more subdued form with a melodic line over it; everything locked together, everything rolling. I stop making notes and just nod my head…. The next starts with a piano vamp under-tracked by Trek bridge noises and a high two note motif that gives it just enough melodic structure. Another piano part comes in and the two notes expand out into a full line. There are reverbed drums, unobtrusive; some dialogue I’m not sure is from the room or the speakers. The final track starts by layering up some heavily indistinct drums over that, it keeps the two notes, a swirl of arpeggios twist away underneath, nagging at the shape of the piece, synth-y drones float in, the drums fade away and we’re left with the sequences and bridge noises. Sublime.