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GRAVITATIONAL
PULL
Dispatches from the Spirit of Gravity / Edition 62 / November 07
·
Happenings:
BEMASS
/ DAN POWELL / SAME ACTOR
*
* NEW VENUE * *
The
Three & Ten, 10 Steine St, BN2 1TE
8.30-11pm,
£4/£3 concs.
Bemass
Bela Emerson, Magnus Alexanderson, Sten Sandall
Bemass are a new three-piece improv project, comprising Magnus
Alexanderson (Sweden; guitar & processing), Sten Sandell (Sweden;
voice & processing), and Bela Emerson (UK; cello & processing).
Magnus Alexanderson is a composer of electro-acoustic music and a member
of Decision Dream & audiovisual project MASH. Alexanderson has
upcoming collaborations with Gary Smith & Chris Cutler. Bela Emerson
is an innovative performer of electric cello & electronics. In
addition to a thriving solo career, Bela collaborates with Stomp, Ryan
Teague, Drei, and many others. Composer and musician Sten Sandell formed
the Sten Sandell Trio, as well as playing in GUSH, Low Dynamic Orchestra,
and with musician/composers Paal Nilssen-Love (Norway), Sverrir Gudjonsson
(Iceland), Johan Berthling (Sweden), & Evan Parker (UK).
Dan
Powell
Bells, Drones and Small Percussion
Dan Powell, (aka onemancrimewave, the notorious c.h.a.v.) founder of Club
Quiet, and also the man who named the collective brings his own nefarious
brand of laptop trickery to the fold. A former member of OMSK, he has been
making experimental electronic music for around ten years using computers,
wine glasses, field recordings, effects pedals, broken guitars, mini
discs, leaves and bits of fluff from the bottom of his pocket. Dan has
scored two short films by Barry Hale and has a track in the OMSK book and
a CD available for downloading from www.hippocamp.net.
Same
Actor
Sitar and other stringed instruments.
Chris Cook lived in Brighton, has been making electronic music of all
kinds for many years operating under the names Remote and Hot Roddy,
playing sitar along with his beats. In 2004, Cook also started to play as
Same Actor, using various stringed instruments building up soundscapes on
the fly using no pre sequenced material, utilising alternative tuning
systems and world rhythms.
Chris is an active member of Spirit Of Gravity collective despite living
in London. Chris has toured with Monster Bobby (The Pipettes), Bela
Emerson, Britch and Wrong Music.
In 2006 Bip Hop released "Sharp Edges" and Litmus re-released
"CrustMantleCore" Cook moved to London and in 2007 released his
best album yet "One Liners" for Wrong Music.
Hosted by our very own electro-comedian Lee Hume
Visuals by _minimalVector
For details of future Spirit of Gravity events, go to www.spiritofgravity.com/.
·
Greetings:
November
is Electro-acoustic month!
We’re
really looking forward to our first show in our new venue.
Firstly
it’s a great place, upstairs from the Three and Ten pub on Steine
Street, between the Old Steine and St James’ Street, and secondly
because we talked Bemass into coming over from Sweden for their first show
away from home, and thirdly ‘cos we have Chris down from London as Same
Actor, and fourthly because Dan has some new small percussions and fifthly
just ‘cos we’re so damn cheerful.
The
film compilation is about half gone, we’ve already had some airplay for
Terror Wogan by “On the wire”, if you want a copy (previews at the
MySpace page) contact us.
·
Introductionings
If
you’ve been to our recent shows you can’t help but have noticed the
new visuals by _minimalVector. These are produced live by Bartosz Dylewski
using software he developed himself.
There
are some screenshots at www.flickr.com/photos/code_in_a/
and also pictures from live shows on the SogBlog and video on the
MySpace page. The video gives a little idea of how the software interacts
with the performance via the audio and video feed.
Bartosz
studied photography at The National Film, Television and Theatre School in
Lodz, Poland. He worked as a VJ and graphic designer in Warsaw from 2003
until 2006 for a dozen clubs, art groups and theatres before moving to
England where he ended up in Brighton and found us.
The
_minimalVector application was premiered at The Spirit of Gravity on the
29th of May 2007, and has been developed between every show. I think it
was the May show where someone said “Why should we move to Berlin?” at
the end of the night. We’re very pleased to have Bartosz as part of the
collective and he’s quickly become an essential part of the Spirit of
Gravity experience.
·
Reviewings:
Spirit
of Gravity
at the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton,
Tuesday 16th October
Gloominess
sets in and with the autumn comes cold, colds and the fear of colds. To
keep our theme of travel arrangements and folk from the West Country
going, Jilk and Tulin Fée had to cancel due to problems getting here and
back in time for important stuff the following day.
Also
The Founders (This Sound Bureaucracy) pulled out at the last minute,
leaving emergency stand-in McCloud to gather up a guitarist and preview
the forthcoming Festival compilation.
So
chaos reigns supreme at our final show at the Marlborough Theatre, but
against the odds we managed to pull together another great show.
So
as I said McCloud featuring the endless guitars of Hagbard Strom
kicked off the evening’s entertainment. Starting with a dawn chorus,
gentle jangles of guitar, and pulses of sub bass, it built up via Sh101
didgeridoo distant amen breaks and foot on the monitor wailing guitar
solo’s to a breakdown of murk and chaos before returning to birds and
the gentle strums and delay produced cello.
Excellent
visuals on this from _minimalvector (have a look under the videos on MySpace
www.myspace.com/thespiritofgravity), fragments and colourful washes,
jagged and something.
A
break for Vole (www.vole.info/)
to set up, everyone seeming to at least double up on instruments, a lot of
acoustic instruments, too, with some electronics scattered about.
Starting
out with bowed Vibe block ringing under flute with vocal scatter and
chatter rhythms and some keyboards, Vole played a number of short pieces.
After the density of McCloud and Hagbard Strom the space in their sound
was remarkable, reminding me of Arthur Lyman’s recordings in the
Kaiserdome – although that may have been the influence of the vibes. Or
maybe some of the recordings of when Eric Dolphy played with Chico
Hamilton in the early 60’s, their set had so much room.
Quiet
trumpet, guitar, wooden flute and brushed percussion also played a part.
There was a duet for saw and creaky chair which I clearly remember but
can’t find in the recording. A moment where every time Will tried to put
is guitar down it started to hum really quite loudly, so in the end he
turned up the hum and played his flute along with it.
The
last piece they played (which is on the blog) was masterful, its not often
we get the chance to use “al” words - Lyrical; Pastoral – at the
Spirit of Gravity, but this was all those things and more. Quite lovely.
And
again, great visuals for this a black and white splintered house seemed to
dominate, with a heavily pixilated BLACK and WHITE live feed from a camera
on stage giving the stage a late fifties arthouse movie feel.
Spirit
of Gravity
at the Ryan’s Bar, Stoke Newington, London,
Friday 26th October
SoG
vs London - I reckon The Spirit of Gravity comes out on top.
Official
SoG vice president for life and ambassador to the cultured of the great
metropolis hosted a night in London and invited us up to play, we sent up
Noteherder & McCloud, Same Actor played and we also sent up
_minimalvector to supply visuals.
Local
talents The Hang Playing Hedge Monkeys (www.myspace.com/hangplayinghedgemonkeys)
started the evening with a processed hang drum (a kind of turtle shaped
steel instrument played with the thumbs) which sounds like a cross between
a large thumb piano, a steel drum and a marimba, and another instrument
which looks like a big HiFi Speaker but is played with the hands and makes
drum machine noises. They played briefly and very mellowly, but did come
back.
Second
was Same Actor (www.myspace.com/sameactor),
being close to home Chris could bring along other instruments as well as
the sitar, so we had the guitar and dulcimer, too. The set was a wonderful
rippling melange of filtered and processed sounds and playing, things
strummed, plucked, dropped and scraped through the laptop.
Noteherder
& McCloud (www.myspace.com/noteherdermccloud)
combined McClouds analogue synthesisers with Noteherders
soprano saxophone, radio and growl. They played about 6 short
pieces with differently hardboiled textures. Then Noteherder joined forces
with the Random Hedgemonkeys, along with a tenor saxophone, jaws harp,
didgeridoo for a lengthy freeform groove.
Sound
files will be available on the sogblog and some video of Noteherder &
McCloud.
Mp3’s
and pictures from other Spirit of Gravity events are on the SogBlog, (spiritofgravity-brighton.blogspot.com/),
and there are videos on the Spirit of Gravity MySpace page (www.myspace.com/thespiritofgravity).
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.
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