Next Spirit of Gravity gig: Tuesday 26 February

Spirit of Gravity presents

HALAL KEBAB HUT / RY-OM / THIS SOUND BUREAUCRACY

The Three & Ten, 10 Steine St, BN2 1TE

8.30-11pm, £4/£3 concs.

Halal Kebab Hut
”Algorithmic weird junk music performance improvisation art group project band”
www.halalkebab.co.uk

www.myspace.com/halalkebabhut

High Brow Low Art Music or Low Brow High Art Music? Nobody's quite sure, but we have a bloody good time bringing a little bit of improvised mayhem to raves, concerts and restaurants around the country. A mixture of contemporary improvisation and performance art we take being silly very seriously.

ry-om
”Autonomous electro-acoustic soundscape co-operative”
www.myspace.com/ryomnet

Experimental localised noise production, improvised using laptops, guitars, effects pedals, feedback loops, synths, sampling and vocals.

'Both gentle and abrasive sounds are masterfully intermeshed and manipulated, generating a sonic photograph of stark sensations and undeniable beauty.' The internet archive, Sep '07.

This Sound Bureaucracy
”This Sound Bureaucracy organise another open public forum on improvised sound and spoken word”
The founders of The Spirit of Gravity in another attempt to return to form with electropoetic musings on the meaning of whatever is concerning them this month. This should be special their first show in 18 months.

Don't forget we're at our new venue "The Three and Ten" on Steine St, just off St James' St and The Old Steine.

Also this month, from Melting Vinyl:

All Tomorrows Parties' tour provides a melodic, textured electronic drone-fest.
Saturday 16th February 7.30pm - 9.30pm

Audio, 10 Marine Parade, Brighton TEL: 01273 606906
Tickets: £6.50 adv. / £7.50 on the door: Available from Rounder Records: 01273 325440 / Resident: 01273 606312 /

Ticketweb: www.ticketweb.co.uk

F*CK BUTTONS + ALEXANDER TUCKER + ATP DJs

F*ck Buttons - "Thrumming drones, mangled keys, fizzing synths, tribal beats and all manner of mechanical clangings" Time Out

Alexander Tucker - drones, layered vocals and improvisations which have led to collaborations with Stephen O'Malley of SunnO)).
www.atpfestival.com/atp-recordings

Also, featuring a friend of Spirit of Gravity:

The Gluerooms
Experimental-Improv-Live Art-Performance
Tuesday 27^th February 8pm-12, Acts start 9pm, Entry £4, £3 NUS Amersham Arms, 388, New Cross Rd, London, SE14 6TY, 020 8469 1499, www.amersham-arms.co.uk / map

FAMILY BATTLESNAKE / LADYSCRAPER / JOHN WALL

Family Battlesnake - Heavy telepathetic improvisations, dipped in a hazy psychedelic mayhem, from lulling numbness to fierce noise outbreaks.

Ladyscraper - Both brutal and good-natured, dark yet optimistic. It’s a new sort of super-dark sound with a silver lining. We’re pleased as hell with it!!

John Wall - more abrasive shards of modern classical music, spliced hard up against an explosive soundbite from metalers Carcass or free-improv

For details of future Spirit of Gravity events, go to www.spiritofgravity.com/.

· Greetings:

I’m really looking forward to February’s show, the return of 2 acts who played at The Spirit of Gravity in 2006. Firstly Halal Kebab Hut, who combine serious musical intent with about the highest levels of daftness we’ve had. Which is saying something.

One of the funniest and most visual performances you’ll at the Spirit of Gravity – not to be missed.

Also another offshoot from l.r.s. Ry-om, a guitar and electronics duo, who perform quietly and interestingly (beautiful and abstract I said back then: spiritofgravity-brighton.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html).

And to round of the evening the return of the founders: the artistes formerly known as Malevich – This Sound Bureaucracy. Strange electronic poetry.

Possibly.

Other news.

_minimalVector video Channel www.vimeo.com/bartoszdylewski: Bartosz has been very busy setting up an HDTV channel on Vimeo, so far featuring collaborations with Dan Powell and The Vainglories. If you haven’t been to a recent Spirit of Gravity show, fire one of these up, turn it up sit back and enjoy the journey.

Also we have started putting old Spirit of Gravity shows in their entirety up on archive.org at www.archive.org/details/the-spirit-of-gravity. Keep checking back there will be many more in the weeks to come.

Finally, we've been getting some airplay on local radio station "Radio Reverb" recently on 97.2 FM. Also streaming from www.radioreverb.com/. The 11:00pm shows are particularly good.

· Reviewings:

Spirit of Gravity at the Three and Ten, Brighton, Tuesday 22^nd January

After the daftness and fun of the Christmas special it was back to the proper stuff for the New Year!

The first live performance for The Vainglories was, as described on the tin: beautifully crafted electronica with dark undertones and scary undercurrents. Sat at a keyboard, laptop and FX Melbourne native Gillian Allder worked her songs by building up a background through the laptop into concisely structure songs with haunting piano leads over the top.

And also the first 3/4 time piece we’ve had played in longer than I can remember…

The visuals were based around the weird bleach out you get at the end of a roll of 35mm film.

The English Channel took us a little by surprise actually, turning up with a drummer and 2 guitarists. They also had a harmonium, a 303(!) and an interesting little device that was like a small digital toy Tamboura.

They played a brace of long pieces, which evoked Neu!, the Velvet Underground and Fairport Convention in about equal measure. Not necessarily our usual fare, but then again, not necessarily not.

I’d like to see them play for 2 or 3 hours on a hot afternoon somewhere outdoors. _minimalvector used recent photographs from his recent trip back to Poland, snowy railway yards, houses for the visual here. Haunting and at one stage there was a great dynamic with a set of 4 approaching a small station and a rattling run in the music. Nice.

Ex Ludus / Nico / John Cale drummer Graham “Dids” Dowdall as Gagarin was the crowning glory to this mixed evening, playing melody lines fired off percussion pads over tightly rhythmic backing tracks. The tension between the flexibility of tone and timbre available using the pads against the limited range of notes gave an interesting dynamic to what was happening. Steel blue images abstract and graded.

We have video and audio on the Spirit of Gravity mp3 blog from all our recent shows at spiritofgravity-brighton.blogspot.com/

There are other videos on the Spirit of Gravity MySpace page at www.myspace.com/thespiritofgravity

Now there are also downloads available of some complete Spirit of Gravity sets at www.archive.org/details/the-spirit-of-gravity

Yours as ever

El Maestro Con Queso

Editor.

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