January 2026
The Rossi Bar
Starting the year – a New Year following yet again another hottest year on record – we have a set by an augmented Remember Glaciers, with Jim with his laptop, but also electric guitar, and live memories narrated by Sophie Cowan and flute by Natty Purbrick. The synthesizer, as is the case with Remember Glaciers unfolds at a very slow rate, exceeding slow arpeggios and washes as befits the subject. The guitar and flute unfurl gently in the spaces around Sophie’s story of her visit to the Franz Josef Glacier on New Zealand’s south island. There is a melancholy, as you would expect from a series of performances based on the premise that we could be the last generation to remember glaciers. Jim and Natty alternate their responses to Sophie, each responding to the last’s playing. It’s really understated, and adds a nice level of detail on top of what is usually so stately in its flow. Sophie pauses speaking for a while and takes on some pre-recorded speech and starts to chop it using the Ableton controller, although its somewhat less frenzied than in others of Jim’s projects. While that is happening Jim and Natty play off each other, gently circling around and around. Jim plays a little descending line that indicates closure and the piece ends with Jim’s usual request for more memories of glaciers.
Agnes Haus is next up, with a modular setup and their own flickering grey visuals. Starting with a reverb-y collapse into a church organ from a tidy modular setup. There is some creepy reverbed scrape from an untrue cassette player adding a warbling atmosphere, a scatter of harpsichord chimes give us a narrative frame. A slow regular staple double tap gives a rhythm and everything else strips away. The modular syncopates beeps slowly against that. A pinging piano line emerges from the mass of cables. This cycles away quite hypnotically for a while. Stephe picks up an electric mandolin (I believe) and holding it vertically bows in some harsh raspy drones and some blustery bursts of noise, which builds to a crescendo of squalls and racket – a nice buzzing bass-line underpinning it. It dies away to church organ drones again. Slowly against these we get bouncing little piano parts. The church organ fads and everything slows, there is a flapping fan, there’s a fade out while Stephe tries to find the source of the fan, and with a dramatic twist of a pot, kills it, to a burst of laughter from the audience.
And to finish off the evening it’s our friend from The North Kent Coastal Electronauts, Sophie Sirota who had travelled 90 miles through rain and fog. She starts with a nicely melancholic electric viola line set against an insistent buzzing synth bass with a hard square LFO modulating it. After a while she loops part of the viola, and then gets to work against it adding texture, counter melodic lines. As the loops thicken the bassline seems to recede. There’s some whooshing and then she gets down on the floor to get working on the effects units before hitting us with a melodic line over the top and some metallic fuzz soloing. The second piece starts with a single plucked note that sets up a cascading backing synth line. She sings breathily into a deep reverb. Again it’s loading the looper, some tricky work with a delay pedal, some lovely rich tones, some more singing. Some more of that lovely viola line and back to the vocals. We finish off with a song that was written for an Intox Extravaganza, which may or may be called either “F**k it” or “These are the good days”. This one starts with a jabbing riff through loads of delay, some creaking bass bow-work, and some floating creepiness. Over this insistent backing track Sophie sings, and plays viola lines that to me invoked Tuxedomoon’s haunting “Ninotchka”. Full of Eastern European mystery. The song winds out in a savage deconstruction of the jabbing riff and a harsh warbling.
Purely because of the logistics of fitting his drums and electronics on the small stage we start the evening off with perennial favourite Dale Frost playing a largely new set. The first song starts with vision On chimes ping in counter rhythms before the punchy drums kick in around them, a complementary beat. A mesh. There’s a couple of nice isolated drum breaks just before the chimes come back in. The second song is much more staccato, backing track with partial rhythms, drums filling some more. The occasional proper sub bass. The jigsaw nearly complete. About halfway through the song a pad comes in that seems to add completeness, but it still feels oddly half time. The third comes on like some oddly time-signatured dub track – the “delayed” piano then de-coupling itself to emphasise the off kilter beat. Flurries of hi-hat, weird percussive squeaks. Then a super slow bass note/bass drum gives it some bottom and possibly bringing it briefly back into 4/4 before it all goes a bit loopy again and speeds right up. The fourth starts with a slurred synth that is then triggered by the drums. Big bubbly synths surround it before we get a rattly snare heralding another tricky rhythm. Theres some great bits in this one as things drop in to come back in including a particularly delirious section of the bubbly synth and rhythms all working around each other before the drums stop and the synth spirals off into the heavens. Dale seems to be priming the synths and pads before this final track starts, then it kicks off with a walking bass and hi-hat stalking drums. After a while there’s some steel pan melody driving it on. We get some breaks to emphasise the synthiness before it all lifts off into D’n’B flight, the bass stretching, steel pans lifting higher and higher, another drop then it’s back into flight again, the drums doubling up in intensity, more counter melodies, back briefly to the original version, a grounding. A slow plod into an organ-tastic breather and then back into full throttle for the end.
