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GRAVITATIONAL
PULL
Dispatches from the Spirit of Gravity / Edition 58 / August 07
Happenings:
AD:ART
/ CON_FUZED / NOTEHERDER & MCCLOUD
Marlborough
Theatre, Princes Street, Brighton
8.30-11pm,
£4/£3 concs.
This month we are delighted to present the special application of strange appliances since 2001.
Ad:Art
"Electronica meets prog rock in lo-fi".
Ad:Art takes liberty in combining what seems to be an impossible collection
of style and genres to mix. The outcome is not only interesting but
challenging and surprisingly enjoyable.
What started as a one man project had turned into the duo effort of
electronics and guitars with guests occasionally joining in. Ad:Art created
a punishment and reward approach to their compositions. Rough and difficult
at first hearing, their music often offers a reward in the form of pop
melodies, vocals and straight forward playfulness. The lo-fi yet dense
programming and odd time signatures are countered by rich layers of guitars
and carefully placed vocals. "Mondo bizzaro leftfield Moogy hip hop /
jazz rock freakishness...add a truckload of fuzzy Mooginess, dreamy guitars,
a malfunctioning sampler and turn the cartoonishness up to 11, you're
getting there - ACE!! " Piccadilly records.
"Fruity approach to electro pop with simple effective melodies"
Smallfish records.
Con_fuzed (www.myspace.com/con_fuzed)
"mind-bendingly weird sounds, con_fuzed? You will be!"
con_fuzed was conceived during the final year of Tamsin's music degree at
Dartington college of Arts, as a outlet for her sonic creations using
Max/MSP. With a background in music performance, her use of Max was inspired
by a need to break away from sequencing and perform live.
con_fuzed has been described as creating "a beguiling space" which
is "wonderfully disorienting". In which her "haunting"
vocals are "broken lyrical transmissions", her trumpet sounds are
"ghostly acoustic remnants in the walls of a haunted dancehall"
and her electronics are "whooping, wobbling, bubbling, whirring, then
lurching and whirring higher and harder, all solid and good quality, like a
sea of off-kilter noises to drown the brass in."
Noteherder & McCloud
"Investigations Undertaken".
Noteherder & McCloud is an electro-acoustic improvising duo using
analogue synthesisers and soprano saxophone. Chris Parfitt is a member of 21
grams and Brighton based free improv collective Safehouse. Geoff Reader is
McCloud has occasionally been Terror Wogan and is a member of the Brighton
based electronica collective The Spirit of Gravity. This collaboration is a
fusion of those sensibilities: a bird of paradise set free in the city.
Hosted by our very own eltro-comedian Lee Hume
Visuals by _minimalVector
For details
of future Spirit of Gravity events, go to www.spiritofgravity.com/.
Greetings:
There’s
so much news this month that we’re going to have to keep it short, but
check out these links for exciting developments:
- Chris as
Same Actor has a track on this free online tribute to the late Giorgy Ligeti
– download from www.topher.fr/ligeti/
- Dan
Powell has “the comet project” available for download from hippocamp.net/
- Casio
Headbutt remix of “Animal Hop” due on Womb records - www.wombrecords.com/
for details.
- Dan
Powell has 2 tracks on the CD accompanying the OMSK book available from www.pinkpink.demon.co.uk/omsk-book.html
Also, the
long-awaited Spirit of Gravity Film soundtrack CD will be available from SoG
events from 24th August – sample tracks can be heard at www.myspace.com/thespiritofgravity
Forthcoming:
As part of
the Brighton-wide “Brighton Live” live music event in September, the
Spirit of Gravity will be playing at JuJu (yes the "as seen on TV
shop") in the North Laine – keep looking on www.brightonlive.net/
for developments.
November is electro-acoustic month, and we're hosting a special show for Bemass from Sweden – see our website at www.spiritofgravity.com/ for details.
Reviewings:
Spirit
of Gravity at
the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton,
Tuesday 26th June 2007
This
review did not appear on last month’s e-mail for technical reasons – the
July review does not appear this month for other reasons – hopefully
we’ll catch up soon.
This
line-up was originally going to be our festival spectacular, but plans went
all cockeyed as plans do, and we had a different great show instead, but for
us June was psychedelic night.
J’m
Black (www.myspace.com/freakbeatreactor)
J’m is a
member of the Safehouse collective (www.myspace.com/safehousebrighton) and
is the guitarist with Urban Myth (Planet Mu). Tonight he was using a new
loop setup, plus the guitar, a shed-load of science fiction gadgets and a
semi intelligent device that played rhythm tracks. Starting off with a
shifting palette of effected sounds he settled down
into a loop with a bass drum, a bass part made of a string scrape and
some guitar parts beamed back from the middle of next week, it rolled off
the end of that back through time to establish a crime jazz bass line with a
call and response between J’m and a guitarist playing backwards from a
parallel universe before a drum and bass break asserted itself and ‘J’m
roped it all back together with some fluid guitar playing.
The
Birds of Death Valley
(www.myspace.com/birdsofdeathvalley)
Two figures
- a Sun Ra (www.myspace.com/soundofjoy)
robed and shaded Theremin player (Benni El Imani) and a hatted tie-dyed
machine player (Zabriskie D) visible through of projections of The Planet
Earth from space (us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/skyimage_1956_41176211).
The sound started distorted and alien abstract, before solidifying around
some rolled beats and big bass. Benni moved onto the cornet, while Zab
played the melodica and dropped the bass. The cornet muted and sparkled over
the backing tracks, trills flying off all over the place while programmed
bass and bass guitar organised a planetary meltdown.
ElMaes
(www.geocities.com/djcheesemaster/elmaes.html)
Taking the
ourobocity of their single to
extremes ElMaes did a 20 minute version of “5” (www.wmrecordings.com/releases/wm060.htm).
Starting
with a statement of the law of fives (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism#The_Law_of_Fives)
and a wash of symbols, sitar rings and Ta King counting, Marcus’ cymbals
were swapped for the tabla’s and Chris Cook’s sitar (www.myspace.com/sameactor)
built up, the voices talking endlessly and calling back through echo and
effects, chimes and bells, jangles and more washes of cymbal, it built up
and died away to almost nothing several times, the sitar and tabla parts
intricately entwining with the swirling and decayed voices before winding
back down to a slow count and the law of fives. again. Viewed through the
filter of incense and Illuminatus light show projected out of and into the
stage it was quite a hallucinatory event.
mp3's
are available on the SogBlog (spiritofgravity-brighton.blogspot.com/),
while mp3s from the film compilation are available on the MySpace site (www.myspace.com/thespiritofgravity).
Be our friend.
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
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