November 2014
The Scope
Stuart turned up early and cracked jokes and kept everyone (well me at least) entertained before we opened. The evening was a performance of a few of Bobby’s scores from his new book “Music in Text”. Which will help explain some of the things that happen.
As people were coming in I was getting them to do some lemon sucking while listening to the pinging tines of a fork.
Dan Powell and Paul Khimasia Morgan
The evening started with a new duo of Paul Khimasia Morgan and Dan Powell. Dan had his laptop and a scattering of percussion and Paul had a tape player, zither and some jumble of things. Quiet and elliptical, rattling and humming.
Bobby Barry
Robert Barry / Bobby Barry / Monster Bobby introduced his book, explained some pieces and what the book was about. He performed three pieces which were more loosely based on his scores than following them. Lots of processing and electronics.
Nil
nil set up an impromptu kitchen for Culinary Music, mic’d up the boiling pan and shopping board. Chris Parfitt is so wonderfully deadpan, a career in silent movies was sadly avoided. Dan has a lot more ham. But not literally.
Tony Rimbaud has some of the more prepared pieces worked out, and a rather lovely vocal piece compiled out of previously recorded parts.
For the next piece musicians are scattered around the room hidden in corners arpeggiating away, Chris in one corner, little Kev in another, me under the screen, Tony and Steve over by the door…
We have an attempt at conducting a new language, splitting the room by vowels and consonants. but it all ends up as swearing.
It might not help with understanding what went on, but there are some rather lovely photos at Agata Urbaniak’s flickr page:
www.flickr.com/photos/agataurbaniak/sets/72157648968324729
Tony Rimbaud has also uploaded his full pieces on his SoundCloud page:
http://soundcloud.com/im-dr-buoyant
So, the first Scope, quite a success.
The Caroline of Brunswick upstairs room is L shaped with a section missing the rather fetching sticky carpet. This is nil’s home for the evening their pile of things scattered about as you would expect, toys wine glasses small instruments, clinking and pinging and rolling and blowing things of every description. Their first set was very intense; quiet, intricate, serious. We closed the window to keep out the random drifting of music from the smoking yard. At some point they do something that makes someone in the audience laugh. Dan picks up on this and continues it. Its most alarming.
Captain Poopdeck took the helm on a table mid-room, Djellabah-clad beats and lots of number related samples, he has some fine new equipment and has spent a deal of the evening reading the manual for some of it. Which is always good to see.
The Zero Map set is the pivot point of the evening, two projectors throwing flames and custom animations around. Chloe’s voice is more prominent than at previous SoG shows. It has some triple octave dropping device on it and she plays a lot of theremin with a Blade-Runnerish stripe of light across her eyes. Karl’s guitar delays in a set that spirals in a nicely psychedelic manner.
