10 years flies by like quite a long time

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

GRAVITATIONAL PULL

Dispatches from the Spirit of Gravity / Edition 99 / January 11

·         Happenings:

Next Spirit of Gravity gig:          Thursday 27th January 2011

Spirit of Gravity presents

GLYPHS / COSMONAUTTRANSFER / THE ORGAN GRINDER’S MONKEY / BROKEN STAR VS. I’M DR BUOYANT

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

Glyphs
Steve Goodall and Dan Palmer met at a workshop/performance of Phil Minton's Feral Choir and bonded over a discussion of corpse robbing in bomb-hit ballrooms during the Blitz. Exploring a repertoire of pre-verbal sounds - clicks, pops, moans, shrieks, cackles, rasps, etc. - free vocal improvisation remains at the centre of what Steve and Dan do, though they have also used cassette loops, amplified objects and low-grade electronics in their performances.

Cosmonaut Transfer
Cosmonauttransfer play Music by the Krell. An electronic space symphony.
Cosmonauttransfer will be improvising with vintage audio generators and effects with one foot placed firmly in '60s sci-fi and Radiophonic Workshop soundtracks whilst nodding at Berlin school groups such as Cluster/Harmonia.
Cosmonauttransfer is the current 'space-music' project of David Dilliway from The Reasonable Men. It encompasses collaborations with Theremin and oscillator expert Richard Armstrong-Cripps and Nick Langley of The Vitamin B12 and Hz.

The Organ Grinders Monkey
www.facebook.com/theorgangrindersmonkey
The Organ Grinder's Monkey is a musical collaboration between man and machine, an unholy alliance whose aim is to combine indie-rocking guitars with glitchy lo-fi electro beats and a dash of retro 8-bit synth.
The duo consists of Benjamin Sane: a human who sings and plays guitar, and Bill Murray: the laptop computer who provides the rhythmical backdrop for his organic counterpart. "Man Against Machine III" is the title of their latest EP, and is the final part in an initial trilogy of releases.

Broken Star vs. I'm Dr Buoyant
Anagram Free memory lessons from The Spirit of Gravity Collective. Psychedelic improvtronica.

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/

Videos 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:

As the keen eyed reader of the Spirit of Gravity website (www.spiritofgravity.com) will have noticed, this month is the tenth anniversary of the first show back in January 2001 when Clarence Palmer played with Malevich and Dan Powell. We're obviously still arguing about how we’re going to celebrate the Tenth anniversary officially, so that will happen later in the year. Meanwhile Dan Palmer returns for his first visit since that momentous occasion with The Glyphs. Alongside them we have former member of Malevich I'm Dr Buoyant looking back with Broken Star and investigating how memories and music work, we also have the new and very exciting Organ Grinders Monkey and the former Reasonable Men and Hz return as CosmonautTransfer. Well, I'm looking forward to it.

·                     Reviewings

Spirit of Gravity at the Komedia Studio Bar, Brighton, Thursday 25th November 2010

Unfortunately, the advertised Magnus Alexanderson was stranded in Stockholm by bad health, but fortunately Richard Miles (MSG etc) was able to step up at the last minute. That also meant that we had to juggle the sets and we squeezed two more acts in. So kicking off the very busy evening was...

The Spirit of Gravity Guitar Orchestra playing a piece developed by Andrew Greaves and Tony Rimbaud. Starting off with noise generated by a stageful of guitarists with scary looking utensils - big knives, small axes etc, supported by Andy Pyne on drums that slowly drifted into some Pink Floyd-ey single string riffs and pitching up into whiteout two chord riffereama. Everyone seemed quite surprised at the outcome.

Next up, continuing the dangerous tools theme, Henry Collins in Slash’s Wormhole mode took a ripsaw to a contact mic'd piece of wood. That was fed through the usual melange of nasty effects and noise for a particularly Henry racket. Great fun.

Taking the stage without any tools and only badly wired mains supplies for danger were Noteherder and McCloud. Starting off with the murky noise and Soprano sax floated over the top, they shifted into an old style SH101 sequencer bassline at a dubstep tempo with some serious skronking over the top.

This all hacked along at an alarming rate leaving us a full hour for Geoff Leigh, Bela Emerson and Richard Miles, who were very impressive. Geoff and Richard had missed each other at the soundcheck so met just before taking the stage. Nonetheless the trio combined for a really cohesive set with Bela’s cello providing percussive clicks as well as swoops and drones, Richard’s guitar droning and chirruping and Geoff setting up flute loops and vocalising. They moved from free improv scatting to densely layered almost YesSongs prog to skittering post punk. When they'd finished, we were asked if the trio had recorded any CD's, as they must surely have played together before.

Yours as ever

El Maestro Con Queso

Editor.


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