May 2015
The Scope
So due to festival humours we were based down at the Coach House in Brighton’s Kemptown area. It was a lovely evening, balmy even, with a trace of sunlight in the garden.
Wahabi Wimmins Collective
Inside, we started with Wahabi Wimmins Collective Aharon and Simon McLellan engaged in a conversation about improvisation while Simon improvises on the guitar, including a couple of lengthy periods when he’s too busy talking to actually play. But still all that’s improvising, right? They get everyone involved but we don’t really have the time to go into any kind of depth, so like its origin in the communal kitchen, it could do with the space to really unfold. An interesting idea.
Haz ‘n’ Daz
Following quickly, immediately in fact, we bang straight into the scarf waving shenanigans of Haz ‘n’ Daz. Dan has a pretty nice looking effects chain, and Howard switches between his full size vintage MS20, recorder and phone. At half time we get oranges. A healthy act. Howard has been at Whitehawk recording crowd noises. Many started by himself. Dan layers on some noise, and Howard synths it up.
Andrew Greaves and Adam Bushell
The second half proper of the evening was opened by a reading of Andrew Greaves’ new piece “Micromelodics” performed by himself and Adam Bushell. The performance has a projection of the score onscreen, a set of coloured rainbow lines (echoed by the cd covers and colour wheel badges) with the instructions. The piece itself has a progression through a number of improvisations in overlapping scales. Some have a couple of notes some seem to have five or more. Adam and Andrew bounce off each other well, the clear resonance of the vibes in the small space counteracting the fuzzier organ arpeggios.
Arma Agharta
And rounding off the evening with have Arma Agharta. He disappears at the end of the micromelodics to reappear in khaki and red stripped woollen suit. His set oddly reminds me of Friske Frugt in the tones he uses, but he has field recordings, backing tracks, odd cheap Yamaha sounds and loopy effects chains. And he sings. Presumably in Lithuanian through strobing tremolo. It’s a heady murky psychedelia of mysterious northern origins the like of which I really can’t really recall except by Compass.
HazanDaz (Howard Spencer and Dan Powell) came out with nylon tracksuits and a quick blast on a whistle, and sat down at a table on the floor like a couple of school kids. Howard had his old wasp, recorder and some small devices and Dan had his laptop and a collection of small things. I was expecting some world cup related daftness, but what we got was some nice chirrups and drones. I could hear the occasional football commentator, and some samples of recorder to echo Howards. So not daft, but enjoyable. The world cup all seems so long ago now. The bane of topicality.
Meatbreak was somewhat noisier, much denser affair than the footy chaps. Although it slides in unobtrusively with some rumbling bass drones before layering some weird trebles and squelches and then some industrial throb beefed up with distorted pulses of distorted bass drum ending with some space squelch.
“Some old stuff, some new stuff and some extemporisation” said Sarah Angliss at the beginning of her set and that pretty much sums it up. She had a new modular synth set up stage front, which although she had to teeter on the edge of the stage to get to it, added some noise and random elements. The carillon, recorder, Hugo and (for the first time in an age) the Crow, were all present along with some penetrating bass and sweeping space noises. So, kind of Sarah Angliss in a spookier, squelchier, slightly more abstract 12 inch form.