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Email Members: www.spiritofgravity.com
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GRAVITATIONAL
PULL
Dispatches
from the Spirit of Gravity / Edition 108 / October 11
·
Happenings:
Next Spirit of Gravity gig: Thursday 27th October 2011
ASHTRAY
NAVIGATIONS / ULTRAHUMANITARIAN / DUNCAN HARRISON / HÁKARL
The
Komedia Studio Bar, 44-47 Gardner Street,
Brighton, BN1 1UN
Time
8:30 - 11:00 Cost £5 / £4
Bang
the Bore is a vaguely defined collective that operates in the grubbily
creative experimental and/or improvised music underground somewhere
between Bristol, Leeds and Southampton. They promote other people's
shows more than they do their own, spend ages driving people to
far-flung locations, book toilets for medieval venues with no
facilities, prefer Exquisite Corpse-style games and swapsies
to actually *releasing music properly* and natter away endlessly in
their online lair, bangthebore.org. They crop up as members of Hunting
Lodge, The A Band and Boduf
Songs' pitiable slave entourage, run the Journal of the Belgae
Folk Club label and save you from burglars. although
that's just skimming a fraction of the cream from the innumerable
projects they're involved with.
Their latest undertaking poses the question, How Many Bands Can You Fit In
A Car? The mission: transport as many Leeds-based bands to your
hometown as possible and put on a night to remember. Who and what does
that entail?
Ashtray Navigations
Ashtray Navigations' Phil Todd doesn't make alternative music, he
creates alternate universes. Via a dizzying array of bands,
projects, alter egos, labels, fanzines, concert promotions,
distributions, collaborations and ad hoc groups he has spent the last
two decades extrapolating What If? histories
using derided, unfashionable and forgotten elements gathered from the
dustbins of rock'n'roll's chequered history,
reimagining how things might have been in less reverent - or
career-driven - hands. As a key figure behind the UK's DIY
underground, he was forging links between like-minded fringe musicians
and releasing a constant stream of bewilderingly consistent material
long before the internet made such activities easy and commonplace.
Website: http://ashtraynavigations.wordpress.com/
Images: http://www.bangthebore.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ashtraynavpromo.jpg
and http://www.bangthebore.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/rockhair.jpg
Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/ashtray-navigations
(song to stream: http://soundcloud.com/ashtray-navigations/6-sponge
)
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ashtraynavigations
UltraHumanitarian
Drum freak-out vs Moog space-out, UltraHumanitarian
sound somewhere between Talibam!, Silver
Apples, Heldon and the Flash Gordon
soundtrack. This Leeds-based prog/pomp
improv duo has been around since 2010 and
consists of Andrew Forknell (Monster Killed By
Laser, A Century of Trees) and Seth Cooke (Hunting Lodge, A Band,
Defibrillators, Ganbatte).
Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seth_photos/4887495451/in/set-72157624591345079
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/seth_photos/3479634913/in/set-72157617299505823/
Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/ultra-humanitarian
(song to stream: http://soundcloud.com/ultra-humanitarian/ultrahumanitarian
)
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ultrahumanitarian
To supplement the travelling roadshow we
have from Brighton:
Duncan Harrison
Surprisingly this is Duncan Harrisons first appearance at The Spirit
of Gravity, young Duncan gives a serious and technical mix of ecstatic
tones, outer body experiences and zoned out noises.
http://www.myspace.com/duncanharrisonspace
Hákarl
Now fully recovered from his 36 hour marathon at Supernormal, Hákarl
presents 'the fealty oath of priapic
masochism'. Expect extreme violin.
“What
does Hákarl taste like? It tastes like
crying. It tastes like broken promises. It tastes like -
bah. That's what it tastes like. Bah.” (From an article called
"the worst foods on earth").
http://soundcloud.com/hakarl/tracks
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:
Brighton
Eyeball:
we are involved with a new listings site/sheet, with all your obscure
and peculiar live music needs, there is a printable pdf
version on the site that's updated regularly (use the print link at the
top, don't be fooled by the Calendar print icon), plus the whole thing
works off a Google calendar so should be up to date. If there is
anything obvious that we haven't listed, let us know.
http://brightoneyeball.wordpress.com/
Also
this month at the De La Warr Pavilion:
APARTMENT
HOUSE + SIMON BOOKISH
LISTEN
TO THIS: DE LA WARHOL
Fri
21 October, special offer for supporters of
Spirit of Gravity - £5 ticket (usually £8)
Produced
by Sound and music, this one-off live event has been specially designed
to partner the Warhol
Is Here exhibition. Avant-garde outfit Apartment House and transgressive
electronic musician and live artist Simon Bookish come together to debut
a brand new performance featuring John Cale
and Lou Reed's concept album Songs for Drella
(created in dedication to Andy Warhol in 1989), alongside other
contemporary compositions. (To take advantage of this offer call 01424
229 111)
RANDOM FRIDAYS: WARHOL IS HERE, 7pm onwards, free
This season's Random Fridays evoke the
spirit of Warhol's Factory with three superb nights of eclectic
experimental art, film and music that spill into all areas of the
Pavilion. Get here early to browse the Warhol
Is Here exhibition after-hours.
28
October
Ear Films
"The
Earfilm Cinema provides the cinematic score,
3D sound-design and story and leaves you to come up with the mental
pictures." - The Guardian
Step
into an experience that feels at once like a film and at the same time
like a future campfire tale, shared and completed in your imagination.
Here, cinematic storytelling meets three-dimensional sound design and
sonorous live soundtracks. This is storytelling for the 22nd century.
Steve
Reich - Phase to Face
2009.
Dir. Eric Darmon, Franck Mallet. 52 min
Drummer-turned-composer,
Steve Reich has produced some of the most vibrant, original and
interesting music of our time, with influences as varied as Bach,
Stravinsky, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Balinese and Ghanaian
percussion. His technique of ‘phasing’ (short, repeating patterns
moving in and out of phase with each other), used first in It’s Gonna
Rain of 1965, formed the springboard for his complex and colourful
style, with its intoxicating melodic lines and rhythmic patterns. In
this new documentary, Phase to Face, we follow Steve Reich as he
travels from the Autumn in Normandy Festival
to Rome.
Longstone
Sonic experimentalists Longstone are masters of selecting and sequencing disparate musical material into fully formed cohesive albums and performances. They blend electronica with improvised woodwind, percussion, and guitar, creating a fascinating suite of music, ranging from alien soundscapes, through to Krautrock infused, motorik pulses.
·
Reviewings
Spirit
of Gravity
at the Komedia Studio Bar, Brighton,
Thursday 29th
September
2011
minimal
impact’s
pink noise generator: after failing to turn up to his last advertised
show minimal impact snuck a sneaky set in for the very early risers. The
pink noise generator was a present that’s only taken two or three
years to build. This was its first outing and with the patent mi effects
proved rather satisfactory, I believe. I should at this stage say I'm
reviewing half of last month’s show on hearsay and post show listening
as I was very late arriving.
Hobo
Sonn:
Ian Murphy has been a long time coming to The Spirit of Gravity, so I
was a bit disappointed to miss him, but it sounds like a blinder. Taking
a lead from minimal impact, he started in white noise, before tonal hues
began to emerge with some quite extravagant stereo effects, piano
arpeggios, slurred bells and warped carillon all forming part of the
rich abstract palette.
I
arrived about halfway through Hoofus'
very 8bit sounding set, crude synthesis and noisy tones weebling
dream melodies of almost surreal daftness, before a stuttered beat drags
you over into something scarier, a set of unsteady notes summoning a
bass drone, aeroplane squelches and Fireman Sam sirens segue into drain
tunnel didgeridoo and gabba before a toy
piano melody from hell makes you misty eyed, rounding off with a battle
between the space sounds and the noise, I think the noise won.
Kay
Grant Lepke B and Dave May:
I'd seen Dave May play the previous evening at Safehouse,
so his extended technique on the single snare drum and cymbal that made
up his kit didn't come as the surprise it could have been, tapping and
rattling; dragging a beast of a bolt ratchety
across the metal lip of the snare. Dave is a drummer with a voice rather
than a rhythm beast. Lepke B was spinning
CD's of god knows what back and forth while Kay resonantly floated over
it with long pure notes spun into glittering trails of echo, before it
gutters into alien tongue and ticky tock
time travel. The second piece was less “improvy”
in feel based around some Bernard Herrman
sounding discordant string stabs and Thereminy
tones. Dave rattling over it, punctuating the stabs
with real and imagined rhythm. It finished with some more full
throated contributions from Kay with big blocks of crash from Lepke
and Dave scraping and scaring. The final piece was driven by a bass line
of Lepke’s with Dave playing around the
rhythm and Kay slipping back and forth through time.
Up
on the stage this time, with a slideshow projection playing over their
very psychedelic drones, The
Zero Map had the feeling of early ambient house without the
arpeggios. There was some guitar muted and sustained low in the mix,
some singing likewise - melodica too.
Spirals of almost smoke-like sounds funnelled out, solid but not dense,
opaque and spacious, forming and shifting, moving on always. Abstract
and noisy without being dense or monolithic enough to be Noise with a
capital letter they were just themselves: really good.
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
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