July 2017
The Rose Hill
minimal impact
So, a little holiday from The Green Door Store, but we will be back there for this month. But it was a lovely trip out to The Rose Hill. Where Steve started with a remarkably bucolic start to a minimal impact set, with his Indian drone box and harmonium, slowly dredging up the trademark thickening that we’ve come to know and accept… weird wandering resonances, fuzzy tones warming imperceptibly, like a small guitar propped in a corner. About 5 minutes in its starting to sound like a normal, if slightly chilled, minimal impact set. Shortly thereafter the bass begins to kick in, heralding the start of proper density, the sound begins to properly thicken up, the sitar-y tones disappearing in the murk, as creepy judders, and hisses wash across the tonal base. By 10 minutes it’s properly intense, and just continues to build, peaking at about 18 minutes. At some point he starts spinning in 2 copies of “Metal Machine Music”, adding an unsettling note of familiarity, a little relaxation before the ending back with MMM overlaying the drone box.
To go with the holiday theme, Toby from the 55th Flotilla was kind enough to run the electrocreche for us this month, bringing in a fine array of properly mangled, way beyond merely bent, toys. Lovely.
Ræppen
Ræppen was next up, Tim becowled, with his Sami drum, looped some throat singing into a pedal, a fairly lengthy set of phrases, with some whistling and proper bass end notes. Over that the drum was rattled along with some more singing, before it faded out over some Brighton beach pebbles he’s been touring with for a few years, rattling and thumping on the stage floor. Again looped with sparse bells and chimes. Wind breaths add a chilling edge, before he brings in the throat singing as a top line this time -almost like an SH101 synth line wah-ing over the backing. Unhuman, and definitely uneasy stuff.
Far Rainbow
Third up we had Far Rainbow, Monster Bobby on noise making devices and Emily on drums and percussion, she has a great way around a drum kit, slipping between regular sticking and extended techniques and mousetraps. They start with the sound of the steppes again, wind and rattling bits and pieces, a bass pulse very slowly cycles underneath as Emily builds up work on the cymbals and it drops away to eeriness. An organ cycles in, it sounds Casio, with a slow vibrato, field recordings playback through cheap speakers, slowly rhythms emerge from the electronics, the drums comment on it without joining them, circling round the kit in the opposite direction. It hits peak treble before decaying to a tape loop of a diesel boat making little headway on the Norfolk Broads. It has a monstrous quality to it as it gurgles away the birds slowly coming to the fore as again Emily rattles distractingly on the kit. Slowly Bobby brings drones in and it cascades out in washes of pure reverb and drum, emptying down to gong and triangle.
Annie Kerr, Kev Moore and Gus Garside
And to round off the four acts of the evening we have Annie Kerr, Kev Moore and Gus Garside, on respectively violin & piano, electronic devices, double bass and words. Annie starts on violin, there is a general trebly hubbub of chirruping electronics, Gus and Annie sliding strings around, it’s slippery, elusive. Rather lovely. Sounds wash in and around, it falls out at one point to Gus bowing his bass endlessly with the side of the bow, strings resonating through his effects chain. Overtones and undertones sliding in and out, Kev and Annie conjure almost human voices to hum alongside it. And then Annie goes and picks out some notes on the piano at the side of the stage, small flourishes, space, more notes. Gus and Kev bring a tension under them as Annie gets stuck in leaning over the keyboard hammering a longer series of notes up and down the keyboard, then slowly falling away, picking out a few odd notes. The room is enthralled. From somewhere in the electronic murk it sounds like East Croydon announcements, Gus starts telling one of his stories, Annie punctuates his lines with hard notes. At the end of that Kev gets a feedback vocal tone going and this is matched by a high line from Annie, they circle each other before Gus brings in a lower bowed drone and Annie gets a bit more lyrical, slurring a single note for several minutes up and down the neck of the violin wringing some harshly melancholic tomes from it.
Back to a full strength roster tonight, and we got off to a good start with a set from Barn, with a laptop and controller plus some bits and pieces, his set seems to be in five sections, with a foil. The first reminds me somewhat of my airboat ride from last month, a nice gritty sound, but his properly generated. This breaks into pulses and thence into something that has washes of almost sea like noise, before the final section leads onto a cascade of electronic tones.
Quinta is accompanied by two other keyboard players, who also double up on saw and stylophone and laptop. This as you can imagine pushes the limits of the Caroline’s setup pretty effectively. They start with an unaccompanied vocal piece about Boudicca, before moving into a song with some Nyman-esque very rhythmic interlocking piano parts all three of them intricately locked . They then get stuck into the peripheral kit for an uncanny waltz before coming back to, I was going to say orthodox, but perhaps a more finely structured piece of tightly knuckled piano. A really good mix of modernist composition and sub five minutes pop song lengths.
Rick is down in Brighton for his first solo set as The Oneirologist, which is (I think) a live soundtrack project. The film is called something about moths and has two lights (from a boat, maybe) to which he makes some quiet noise or drones – its too fierce for a drone, but too quiet for noise – so work that out yourself. Strongly textured tones, and resonant knocks from séance next door. Overall, unsettling, I think.
And to round the evening off, Dan Powell plays his final collaboration of the series, this one with minimal impact. it was supposed to be acoustic, so he has his Bontempi reed organ mic’d up to a fuzzbox and delay, Steve minimal impact has his plastic harmonium from India, through a new Space Echo pedal he found somewhere and is rightly very pleased with. I found some old visuals by Karl so turn the projector round to play them over the duo while they hum and drone pleasingly.
Minimal impact came onstage bang on 8:15, seated at a tiny coffee table concealing his kit, a massive video of degraded VHS feedback washing in blue/yellow arcs across the giant screen behind him. Starting with a coarse buzz that thickened out into a full spectrum wall of noise before being slowly washed away in stately swathes of phaser and jets of steam as the buzz reasserts itself as a massive insectoid whirr. A low fidelity immersive experience.
Tony Rimbaud’s hand picked quartet, TR Agency, where second on stage for a commercial break. Ron Caines sat on a chair at the front of the stage, nick stalking behind looping collages, breathy sounds, synthy washes and swirling alto, while nick talks about Stuff. And chewing gum (
Static Memories’ Gus and Dan set up right at the back clearing as much space as possible for Mirei Yazawa to dance. She took up most of the attention of the players and us, lit from a lamp low at the side of the stage, with a pale blue block of ice slowly melting across the background. The music was typically beyond description: scraped bow across double bass, chimes and delays, Mirei twisting in response and driving changes in what they were playing, its all Very abstract. Dancer and musicians interlocked tightly.
Noteherder & McCloud had Bartosz Dylewski who had booked the projector and built the screen supplying visuals, and Chris Parfitt came roaring out in a storm of soprano notes primary geometries sliding around behind him. It took me a while to get up a similar head of steam, but there was some grinding sequences I enjoyed and a section in the middle with me howling through the bitcrusher while Chris circular blew squealing overtones on the sax that still sounds pretty damn intense.
HLCollins starts his set in a rattling trio with Nicholas Langley and Hassni Malik from The Vitamin b12 sat in line at a metal baker’s tray, scraping metal objects of various sizes about. Its theatre and oddly musical, and very funny. After a quick session with Henry up a set of steps banging a mic’d metal bin Nick and Hassni leave the stage and Henry moves onto a didgeridoo coffee machine that spits water but makes amazing sounds, he then moves onto a turntable and some balloons and effects for a comedy improv session that gets slowly creepier with a slurring hum playing back against clicks and bumps and occasional bird call for an ambient music for hell’s ante-room.