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For Email Members: www.spiritofgravity.com email: spiritofgravity@btinternet.com

GRAVITATIONAL PULL

Dispatches from the Spirit of Gravity / Edition 106 / August 11

·         Happenings:

Next Spirit of Gravity gig:          Thursday 25th August 2011

Spirit of Gravity presents

WHITE TIGER / FINN, SMITH & ZIEMIANIN / NIL

The Komedia Studio Bar, 44-47 Gardner Street, Brighton, BN1 1UN
Time 8:30 - 11:00 Cost £5 / £4

White Tiger: Guerrilla noise pranksters
Nil : Chris Parfitt and Dan Powell: flute, saxophone, percussive guitar, Pure Data
Finn, Smith & Ziemianin: Self-build textural dynamics

White Tiger
Guerrilla soundists James 'Your Laughter' Barton, Ed 'Tiger Trapper' Briggs, Thom 'The Astronomer' Punton and Maxwell 'Betamax' Hallett, when we can steal him back from London's sooty grasp, formed White Tiger as a side project of experimental musical hedge-fund, A Scandal in Bohemia, ("best band in Brighton" - The Wire), White Tiger use laptops as their weapons of choice, but their groping hands often land upon things like ukuleles, drums and various brass instruments.
www.myspace.com/whitewhitetigertiger

Kacper Ziemianin, Peter Smith and James Stephen Finn
London based musicians, Kacper Zieminian, Peter Smith and James Stephen Finn, each coming from different backgrounds, met in 2007 at Middlesex University where making noise together was a natural consequence. The three form an improvisational musical act where there is no focus on musical melody, but rather on texture and constantly changing dynamics.
They combine a variety of instruments and sound-sources such as electronic toys, circuit bending, mixers, turntables, bass guitar, found objects, self-built instruments, guitar, laptop, feedback, and a whole array of effects units to create interesting and dynamic improvisations. This focus on improvisation allows for a creation of sounds through a process of reaction and attention to changing mood, producing sounds ranging from ambient to noise. Every performance is different and unpredictable.
A free to download EP featuring live performances on "the best radio station in the world" (The Village Voice) Resonance 104.4FM is now available from Oso Records.
www.osorec.wordpress.com / www.ziemianin.net

Nil
Chris Parfitt, member of the Brighton based SafeHouse improvising and experimental music collective, performed across the south east. Plays as part of Noteherder and McCloud and 4thirtythree, both improvising bands. Collaborations with Chris Cook, Dave Lawrence, Gus Garside and Dan Powell, and has been an occasional member of the Spirit of Gravity Quartet. Plays soprano, flutes and piano and will explore samples, loops and vocal expression. Likes cycling and does not have time for DIY.

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. He has been working in a duo with Double Bassist Gus Garside for the last  four years and their collaboration has been well received at venues in Brighton, London and further afield. He has also collaborated with a range of musicians and improvisors including Henry Collins, Chris Parfitt and the Spirit of Gravity Quartet. 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.

The possibility of visuals exists.
Hosted by our very own 'Laptop' Lee Hume
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:

24th September at The Green Door Store: Another Splitting the Atom Collaboration with Club Zygotic: BBBlood, Barking Toad, Aqua Dentata, Cheap Machines and a host of SoG favourites and members.

7th October at The Komedia: A Co-promotion with Bristol’s Bit-Phalanx label for the Japanese earthquake appeal, we are presenting Japanese Electronica star Coppe. More details to follow but this will be very good.

·                     Reviewings

Spirit of Gravity at the Komedia Studio Bar, Brighton, Thursday 28th July 2011

Dirty Eyes
Robin from Slow Listener has teamed up with a maskless Kev Kilter (HRT etc) to get this murky cassette fest sorted. Distorted voices, field recordings, pitch bent voices storytelling – some mortuary radio fiction. Its unclear, repetitive,stereo. The collision of hiss and noise from multiple sources creating undercurrents of swell and boom with rattling lives of their own. Insectoid kettles of their own too. Robin huddles down over the desk working at controls while Kev looms, sweeping cassette players into and out of a microphone's orbit - a different form of control. It mutates into noise until a final “four quid” and it ends.

I'm Dr Buoyant featuring Ron Gaines
Founder Tony Rimbaud eschewed the dice and teamed up with East of Eden sax man Ron Gaines for the second new collaboration of the evening. Ron’s in rather a sombre mood, mournful extended notes weave through Tony’s shimmers and gurgles, heavy and thoughtful. There’s nothing frivolous about this collaboration, it takes a rather lovely Ben Webster line from the scarier end of Tuxedomoon to outer space, Ron pauses to ponder from time to time, occasionally playing solo while Tony prepares his next moves. Its quiet and thoughtful, deceptively slow until the final piece based around echoing blips of Ron’s sax stabbing quite fiercely while he fires off trills and runs bursting through and piercing the murky electronic self with pure clear tones.

Kayaka
The
rather solid figures of Tony and Ron are replaced by the rather slighter figure of Kaya Kamijo, but the music does rather the inverse as the spacious looping electronica gives way to muscular and dense spacetronics, a full thick bass, slowed space bells, an overall feeling of falling slowly backwards through strong drugs. A powerful unrhythmic start gives way to an irregular drum machine thunder with repetition of unrelated noises noising around it. As if Hal hadn't wanly dreamt tandem but in an act of Crowleyan Will fought back and recovered his own plastic mind parts his own good self. It’s strong stuff.

Transept
Harmonium
, synthesiser, guitar-scrape, Wyatt-esque falsetto and a laptop controlling more or less abstract visuals, their sound ranged from sparse Eden Ahbez sea-shanty to thick electro-acoustic drone, songlike sometimes but mechanical grind elsetimes. The final piece starts out as a drone, a thin martial rhythm (with a nice touch of spring reverb) makes its presence felt as the song evolves into a portentous “Wish you were here” mass of significance, then drops to a self important organ note and finishes up with just that lonely beat.

Their LP on Dronehenge (http://dronehenge.com/trspt001/ ) has some great space music, really, recommended.

Yours as ever

El Maestro Con Queso

Editor.


Gravitational Pull is the official newsletter of The Spirit of Gravity Collective, though the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Collective. Your email address will not be passed on to any organisation outside of The Spirit of Gravity Collective. If you wish to unsubscribe to this mailing service please contact: spiritofgravity@btinternet.com