May 2017
Green Door Store
So, yes, it’s what would have been the eve of Delia Derbyshire’s 80th birthday if she hadn’t died so young. As one of the series of events in Brighton to celebrate that event, I think this was a suitable occasion.
Lorah Pierre
Lorah Pierre is set up in front of the left hand stack on one of the round tables, a small breadboard device with wires, switches, unknobbed potentiometers wires and bare light bulbs sprouting out. She has a small jeweller’s screwdriver in her hand and the house lights down. She starts with small pulses of white noise serried up in blocks, the bulb pulsing in time. Silence erupts with darkness and then pow! Back in with a thin blast of white noise full throttle, again it pulses as she works at the hidden presets. The blasts fatten out and then fall away in volume. Darkness and flashes of light illuminating us standing around the table watching the concentrated effort. The set climaxes with full throttle blasts and then all too soon in darkness ends.
Karen Constance
Karen Constance is up on stage, to one side of the screen onto which is projected full size some film by Andy Bolus, it’s large with stained glass colours and the intensity of melting celluloid. After a false start due to connectivity issues, she starts with what sounds like a cassette recording of bricks being chipped resonating through some kind of piano soundboard. It morphs into an unrecognisable lumpy rhythm, before being subsumed by chirruping tape birds and someone gulping a noisy tea before having a sliding door bash their head in. Karen’s collage sets are singular things. Evoking dreams of the city bombsites of my youth, weeds, dust. Machines. There are birds and natural sounds, but it’s not bucolic in any way, when the tonal wind blows it’s through a window, a bell is an oddly warped domestic sound pitch bending into an absurdist shape. Urban Horror. Dogs, elephants. Voices. I’m kind of lost. And a bit scared. It’s dark… she ends with a woman’s voice reading.
Roshi featuring Pars Radio
Finishing the evening is Roshi featuring Pars Radio, starting with a new song, well a new cover of an old Persian folk song, “Rashied Khan” with a short clip of an old Iranian film playing behind them. It’s pretty abstract, Roshi’s voice, a constant, her organ holding quivering notes behind her and Graham Dowdall’s occasional beats scattering about behind her. Then a trio of older ones, including the single “Don’t breathe it to a soul” with film, before finishing off with a rattling version of “Three almonds and a walnut” and unusually an encore! “Lor Batche”. Rocking.