GRAVITATIONAL
PULL
Dispatches
from the Spirit of Gravity / Edition 102 / April 11
· Happenings:
Next Spirit of Gravity gig: Thursday 28th April 2011
BROKEN
STAR FEAT. RON CAINES / GUS GARSIDE AND DAN POWELL / MESHMASS
The
Komedia Studio Bar, 44-47 Gardner Street, Brighton, BN1 1UN
Time
8:30 - 11:00 Cost £5 / £4
Broken
Star featuring Ron Caines:
The psycadelicatessens of electronica receive radio interference
Dan Powell and Gus Garside:
Double bass, guitar, percussion, electronics.
Meshmass: genre-defying
loopiness: alto sax, laptop, guitars and other stringed things
Broken Star
The
Celestial Duo return to the Spirit of Gravity.
A one- off performance of "RADIO KAPUTTE STERN" is on the
sonic/visual menu. The psycadelicatessens of electronica receive radio
interference which threatens to kill their improv vibe!!! Meanwhile on
screen: Guerrilla Warfare is played out amongst the ruins of vintage
radios, red hot vacuum tubes and transformers!!!
ANDREW
GREAVES (keys/ beats/shortwave radio and vision/visuals) combines
mangled jazz, avant-garde and electronic influences.
TOM DEL RIO (electromagnetic/strummed guitar and textures) contributes
edge with an arsenal of lo/hifi fx often mistaken for synths.
Also featuring guest artiste Ron Caines on saxophone
Gus
Garside and Dan Powell
"have been collaborating for a couple of years and this lengthy
set was a real highpoint, they both have an interest in Modern
Composition as well as improvising and seemed to combine both tonight,
recalling the rigorous acoustic soundscapes of the avant-garde and a
number of sideways leaps into unknown territories." - Review in
Gravitational Pull
Dan Powell & Gus Garside have been working together on an improv
project for the last two years.
Dan Powell began making sound for installation works in the mid 90's.
Since moving to Brighton in 2000 he has concentrated on experimental and
improvised music. He is a
member of Brighton based collective The Spirit of Gravity and has
performed at spaces across the UK. Dan has released work on net labels
Hippocamp & Wrong Lab and his work has been played on WFMU, Radio
Reverb & BBC Radio 3. He is currently using guitar & small
instruments - Tibetan bowls, mbira, recorder, toys & junk - and
processing the sound live via a laptop using Audiomulch & Pure Data.
Gus Garside has worked in a variety of musical settings - jazz,
contemporary music, pop, cabaret, dance, theatre and, most importantly,
improvised music where he has performed with many leading players.
Gus has just released a duo album entitled TILT with the ex-East of
Eden/Keith Tippett group sax player Ron Caines. He formed arc in 1988
and their third album "The Pursuit of Happiness" was released
on Emanem Records in 2009. He also formed In Sand in 2004 and their
first album "Whatever" came out mid 2008. Gus is part of the
Brighton Safehouse collective and he has collaborated with a wide range
of improvising and contemporary music players and dancers and frequently
works with laptop musicians and also performs solo.
"..where he differs from the average jazz bassist is in the range
of sonorities he conjures from his instrument" Penguin Guide to
Jazz on CD
www.myspace.com/danpowell
www.myspace.com/doublebassandelectronics
meshmass
- produce genre-defying instrumental music through the combination
of live instruments and loops. they mix improvisation with repetition
and live real-time manipulations with pre-arranged structures to create
surprising, atmospheric and varied soundscapes. despite their use of
pre-prepared elements they have never succeeded in doing the same thing
twice.
- are Peter Pick and Richard Miles, long-standing collaborators in
various musical ventures. Richard plays a number of stringed instruments
some of which have had their frets cruelly removed and processes their
sound through a complex network of effects.
Peter
replays and processes found, field and self-generated loops on a laptop
and plays the alto saxophone.
- propose a radical alternative to the fetishisation of the product
previously depended on by the dinosaur music industry, and the culture
of copyright fixation which largely American multinational interests
seek to impose on the world. In this age of weightless production it is
ridiculous to rely on the ancient rituals. ever since the 1970s the
music industry has been fighting a rearguard action against the copying
and informal distribution of their product, fixed according to
preposterous laws which dictate that the consumer does not buy music,
but only an object which contains music. some of us surely form
attachments to the various media on which the music we desire has been
encoded, yet nevertheless the law has always been absurdly restrictive
in declaring that the owner of a vinyl disc is a criminal for copying it
to listen to in his car or on his mobile. Successive technological
innovations from the cassette recorder to the internet have rendered
this absurd position increasingly out of touch with reality - music was
always carried freely in the air and is not to be imprisoned in any
format. it is now possible to distribute music instantly through the web
and meshmass offer interested listeners the opportunity to download at
least one hour per month of new, unpredictable and original music for
use in any context, public or private without further restriction. a
yearly subscription of £10 will be rewarded with more than 12 hours of
music which can then be used not only for personal listening across any
format but also in any other context and for any other purpose; as video
soundtrack, artspace ambience, or performance accompaniment and can be
sampled, looped and re-used freely.- is cast on a shifting net of
independent lines, the gradually shifting perspectives liable to
suddenupheavals. live instruments also generate textural structures,
they dive in out over and among, converse, sing, fight.
meshmass,
not messmash. meshmass, not mismatch.
first CD set, point of entry.
9 pieces over 2 discs. only £10.
£15 with a year's subscription.
Hosted
by our very own 'Laptop' Lee Hume
Visuals by _minimalVector
There
will be the elektrocreche available for any unaccompanied toys
who will be looked after during the intervals by our professionally
trained team of volunteers. And anybody else that wants to bring along a
sound toy to play with.
For
details of future Spirit of Gravity events, go to www.spiritofgravity.com/.
Video
and audio on the Spirit of Gravity mp3 blog at spiritofgravity-brighton.blogspot.com/
Video
and audio on the Spirit of Gravity MySpace page at www.myspace.com/thespiritofgravity
Facebook
group with shows and information at www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=75568366205
Downloads
of complete Spirit of Gravity sets at www.archive.org/details/the-spirit-of-gravity
_minimalVector
films featuring Spirit of Gravity acts and guests at www.vimeo.com/thespiritofgravity
·
Greetings:
Void
Vector
at The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea - collective members Caleb
Madden and Bartosz Dylewski have a sound and light installation at this
marvellous Modernist building as part of the Cage season. It’s a great
piece developed from their piece at last year’s White Night.
Noteherder & McCloud
play at The Parasites Ball on the 29th April at The Cowley Club with
Barking Toad, Anarchistwood and, um, The Bald Knobbers. It’s a benefit
for The Cowley Club PA system and will have definitely no television.
Spirit
of Gravity
at the Komedia Studio Bar, Brighton, Thursday
31st March 2011
Last
minute adjustments to the schedule may include...
Needle
Exchange; The Founder who doesn't often play disinterred and set up
at a space on minimal effort’s table at the front of the stage with
his laptop. Mostly based around vocal snippets, his own voice, found
speech and some wordless vocals reminiscent of Edda Dell'Orso. This
coupled with circular acoustic guitar parts and warping bass parts plus
some beats, in a subtly psychedelic fashion recalling a disoriented and
less punchy Rashamon, that ultimately looped all round on itself in a
satisfying ouroboric manner.
minimal effort standing in
for minimal impact who had decided to do his part for the ailing
Egyptian tourist industry. These four brave souls made a decent fist of
standing in for the SoG's resident master of pure blistering noise,
including demonstrating the reasons he uses such a reduced setup live.
It took a while to get going but the second half delivered the goods
combining deep space noise with bass rumbles and odd synthetic wooshes.
4thirtythree covering for
Animal Magic Tricks who has gone to ground somewhat recently, but we'll
be trying to get her back later in the year. It was a good excuse to get
4thirtythree in before their leading figure clears off to Canada for the
summer, gooselike. They started with some flute, guitar and voice all
looping back and forth in an unsettling manner, moved on to a duet for
soprano and tenor saxes with an odd vocal ramble in between. For a 3
piece that have so much looping and tape use going on they create a
great sense of space, with Tim’s gravel voiced neo-beat banalities
given gravitas by repetition providing an elliptical focus - can the
price of solos be so high? Very serious and intense but with a wry
lightness of touch.
And remaining exclusively from the original bill were: Paul
Khimasia Morgan, Simon Whetton and Daniel Morgan. They improvise
using electrical devices, field recordings and eventually a portable
turntable, this was a set of quiet concentration and great subtlety.
Continuing Paul Morgan’s mission for an unshowy noise music that goes
beyond the thrill of volume to provide listenable and absorbing pieces
from very abstract sound sources. Surprisingly for three blokes
sat at a table onstage it was interesting to watch with constant
fiddling with tangible objects, things that lit up were raised and
lowered and there was a definite sense of things being done and
contributions made. I've no idea who was doing what, mind.
Yours
as ever
El
Maestro Con Queso
Editor.
Gravitational
Pull
is the official newsletter of The Spirit of Gravity Collective,
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