Spirit of Gravity at the On The Edge, Upstairs at the Open House, Brighton, Wednesday 31st May
As its festival time of the year we like to try and do something different if we can, this year we were lucky enough to be invited to join "On the Edge" at the open house for an evening of improvised music. On The Edge are a spin-off from the popular Safehouse nights in Hove, and are providing a similar mix of interesting, challenging and always entertaining evenings. Friendly too, I got into a number of conversations with different people and a spin off from this show will be on at the August Spirit of Gravity.
Wildcard
ensemble
This is a monthly fixture of On the Edge, once a month all the members' names
are dropped into a hat and this time four names were picked out. The names out
of the hat on this occasion were Monty on keys, Hugh on Guitar, Sam on trumpet
and Andy on saxophone.
They played two pieces, both completely improvised, the first started by Monty from a few electric piano chords. There was some very nice rhythmic interplay between the brasses and the electric guitar rode sustained notes quietly in the foreground. They touched briefly on places that remind me of men in trench coats smoking in the night rain, muted trumpets, dark saxophone and pitter patter piano droplets. The second piece was started by guitar and was generally a more jagged affair, Monty switching between the electric piano and a harsher distorted digital synthesiser sound. There was some very nice rhythmic interplay between the saxophone and trumpet. Great stuff, it was all over far too quickly, I could have done with a third piece, but they were packed and gone before we knew it.
Spirit
of Gravity Quartet
After a night at the dogs Steve was laid up with a bad back so we were a trio,
but lets stick with the programme. Tony Rimbaud on Korg EA-1, which he used
as both a sound source and for filtering sounds from various CD's bought at
random from charity shops. CD's are the new cassettes. Dan Powell on laptop
with a small keyboard plugged into it, using SoftSynth and Audiomulch, at least
that's how it was introduced. McCloud completed the line-up on Roland SH101
and a bent TR-505 drum machine through an old analogue echo box.
So we started the first piece with the bent drum machine, a sparse, slow disjointed semi rhythm of old 80's sounds, McCloud swapping patch leads around in a cheap plastic box mutating the sounds into fuzzed notes and tones. Slowly other sounds were added, notes, tones, filtered garbles and scratches, some harsh arpeggiated waveforms, and echoed blocks of noise. After a while the previously steady drum faded and things just took off, whirling away into dense clouds of chopped echoes.
We had a brief interval, and came back to do a second piece. Starting this time with a tone drone from Tony Rimbaud ("What note is that?" "err, 8!"), blurred digital skreeks, and some helicopter thrumming, this one just built tidally, then washed away before building again. It was a rumbling, flowing conversation between the slowly moving blocks of sound, increasingly it became hard to spot the sources for the individual sounds. Towards the end an echo bobbing bass engulfed the rest and the piece faded in clicking echoes.
We still had some time so we rounded off the evening with an unintentional but undeniable bit of good old fashioned space music, Dan Powell's flourishes bouncing away the bleeps and bloops of McCloud's old synthesiser, all underpinned by Tony Rimbaud's 5 degree background static.
...and the verdict from On The Edge:
Safe house 'On the Edge' May 31st
'On the Edge' tonight welcomed the sound explorers Spirit of Gravity. The set was opened in the time honoured way by the Safehouse Collective players in the guise of the Wild Card Quartet # 4
Wild
card quartet # 4
Andy - Tenor Sax
Sam - trumpet
Monty - electric piano
Hugh - electric guitar
The piece took shape early on. Andy, causal with a smokey sax. Sam, a bright polished sounding trumpet placed over the top of things and at times muted, lazy guitar work from Hue traced patterns, and fizzy piano from Monty ensured no one lost focus. This worked to create a mélange of sound. This is where it started but like any good cocktail you expect contrast and surprises and the wild card quartet produced them. They moved the sound from producing staccato rhythms jumping and skating around, which then softened to gentle phrases and at time a hint of a rock anthem (!).Possible directions opened up and the piano leapt forward, the sax called them back with confident reassurance to calm, for them to again to reach out and explore the possible responses to each other.
The second piece seemed to form from anther place, more dark. The guitar work, this time strident and pulling, the piano worked round this bubbling and babbling. The sax and trumpet working closely over the top creating phrasing that had hazy familiarity… but was not. The quartet worked closely summoning up the sound to into good humoured but intense conversations. The safe house collective through the Wild Card Quartet # 4 produced another fine example of improvisation.
Spirit
of Gravity
Tony Rimbaud
Dan Powell
'The Cheesemaster' McCloud
In front was a large table and on this table is laid out a mass of wires, boxes, laptop key boards and controls, using a wide range of analogue and digital sources Spirit of gravity worked on a table with the intensity of surgeons; building sound then taking it away, working round a pulse, affirmative and bold. This created a pressure of sound which rose. As this continued the balance of sounds became finer and more intricate, smaller sounds blended in, then taken out or washed away and then in came something else from a key board, electronic wizardry, laptop or manipulated CD. It was as though we were travelling along an edge that was getting narrower and higher. They worked on finally setting the audience down safely…. but in a different space.
Set 2: A beats and clicks formed and settled, this was to be the main ingredient, into this then came the other ingredients sounds that danced and shook. We were in a landscape of jagged rocks and pine trees, the changes in the scenery were subtle and clever. At first the sound was exposing, but it warmed and comforted and gently soothed, in the way a train rocks the passenger. Desiccated samples, sustained tones developed. The clicks broke down as the sound was becoming dirty and complicated, the landscape was changing it was more now of decay and destruction. This built on, getting denser and denser but it never overwhelming, it was not claustrophobic. What was going on was the fine art of adjustment refinement manipulation and of cause creativeness.
An excellent set and something which I hope will form the basis of a lasting partnership between Safehouse and Spirit of Gravity.