October 2025
The Rossi Bar

Opening the evening we have Rashamon previewing his new album live. Starting with strings layered with organs and choral drones, the occasional beat frequency, or quiet swirl. Gorgeous, a strong violin-ish line appears and slowly develops. A Morse piano quietly muses into our consciousness, fleetingly we wonder of its stories, the violins drop and there’s a very quiet oddly Drexciya swirl that introduces a synth riff that gives rise to further, more prominent swirls excitement builds. Lee segues directly into the piano riff of the second song, more string synth coils, almost immediately synth noises coalesce around the piano. I’m reminded of the long ago first 7”, there’s some emotional build and the piano drops to bass noise and a plangent violin riff. The piano returns. Imperceptibly extra layers join, details, chimes, distant jets, no drums – we start to feel that there may not be drums. Everything drops to a very gnarly bass with unoiled machine creaks and two note pulsation comes to the fore, and we drop to wind and decaying echoes, far off sirens. Which herald the third song. A winding entwining pair of string parts come in, the synth swirls wander around in the background – for some reason that escapes me I’m reminded of Claire M Singer’s organ beautiful drone pieces – beats me. A pizzicato string part bounces around, causing one of the string melodies to digress slightly, and drop to cello sonorities. Always an emotional pitch, this gets seriously lovely. There’s that Drexciya sound again. It brings in a drone and a major pulsing buzzing bass, a hammered synth rhythm tracks around it. There’s a drop to the bass. Tasty. Some John Carpenter territory on that. Still no drums. The violin is back with a pin point melodic line. The remaining parts slowly come back in, then another drop to the bass, but its morphed ever so slightly and feels more present, a thicker string line comes in. Drop again to the bass, which gently mellows out to water and a very thin high saw-tooth, the earlier piano part’s 3 note brother comes in, warmer and bigger. A proper synth bass pings in. a high synth slow almost drone, but melodic starts to unfold ecstatically. It drops down to the piano and weird ponging version of one of the other parts. There’s a thick organ/vocal sounds breathy and powerful and eventually things rejoin. It’s all very emotional, religious.

Perry Frank on his returns opens with a dark side of the moon plane shudder and slowly unfolding guitar warbles underpinning delayed Italian(?) speech. That’s all eventually subsumed by a series of squalls of feedback drone that roll into a slowly rolling looped riff. Fed by bass drones and trebly highlights this takes on a luxurious quality that rolls over gradually into fat uneasy drones. This then mellows out into a wave backed lightweight version of the original riff and the feedback splatters over it all again into a super doom slooooow pump. A high pitched synth drone works its way out of the mire, serenely floating over the top. There’s a very slow fade out to more speech, lead crackles, phaser wash and rattles. We get a clean guitar strum, then after what feels like an age – a second strum. Then a jangle of strings, another strum;  the delay on the guitar slowly builds as he plays on, slowly. A small synth arpeggio blooms into our hearing, some very bassy drone, and then some more shuddering guitar, this time tremolo fuzzed: biting and bassy. The synth shimmers around it. Slowly this builds up to a densely layered squall of synths, guitar scrabbling and feedback. It ebbs then comes back in full force then fades away down to concrete cityscapes and a lush synthy wash. This gives way to a thin little synth riff then big under-amplified guitar strings through fracturing effects. An airfield hum worms in, then more weirdly mid period Pink Floyd guitar lines scattered by Morse code pings and short wave static out of which the voices return.

And finally the return of Automouse, on a brief visit from Edinburgh, she sneaks in (if it’s possible to sneak in wearing an orange box with a huge blinking eye on the front) bringing a low level hum sweeping up, and then up again and again to a whistle joined by a one note bass throb, then ticking clock and the drums stomp in. everything is morphing into a more distorted version of itself, the kick you didn’t notice was missing stomps on your head. The whistle sweeps back down and up, then a fully nasty bit of indescribable-ness motors into life and brings a breakdown. We’re back and rolling. Things motor along and that sound comes back – I think it’s a monstrously detuned hi-hat – it’s overwhelming and then it’s off again. A rim shot heralds the start of the next track and we move swiftly into that, a monster bass all sub-sonics and saw-tooths, the bass drum kicks and stops, kicks and stops. We get a breakdown that comes at you from all sides, SF sirens to the left and right, and switch to a faster bass and the single most distorted snare I’ve ever heard. Then a clicking stick pattern ups the energy levels, a cascading beep squirrels away deep inside the mix. Then it’s back into distortion and murk. A slow down into a sliding bassline and a new way of messing up a snare sound into fragments. Everything is starting to feel feverish, sweaty and slippery. The bass drum drops away leaving everything else to pound away then it comes back in doubled up and double time, chopping the bassline. Then a breakdown into stabs and thunder before a nasty metallic cymbal slices through the mix, hiss hiss, then a fatwashing scythe of treble and a slow bump from the kick drum and we’re off into a semi random synth line which heralds a minor breakcore moment. And then the sound empties out apart from the drums. Coming back with more nasty stabs and beeps before dropping to kick on the 8s for a nice length, and back into a rattling breakcore segment. Which goes back into pounding then returns at half speed. Then we’re off into a lengthy breakdown of sub bass pulse and superfast stick clicking before the return of the sliding bass, and a staccato beat, boom, into noise and super distorted boomy kick and a segment of MT40 drum fills (to celebrate 40 years of Sleng Teng, obviously) that get faster and faster and yet faster… A beepy riff and kick drum on the 8s take us off into the next section. Which is more distorted percussion and beeps. The kick is less distorted more like a cranial assault with a 2×4 now, with a white noise blast for a snare. We get syncopation. No bassline. And buzzing synth line threading through several breakdowns. We end on that thunking bass drum and the sliding synth. A fever dream of the last 45 years of electronic music in a tinnitus sufferer’s head.