Next Spirit of Gravity gig: Tuesday 25 March

Spirit of Gravity presents

BEMASS / T-TOE / IN SAND

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

8.30-11pm, £4/£3 concs.

An international electro-acoustic extravaganza with custom interactive visuals.
This is going to be weird as sh*t and funny as f*ck.

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) [rescheduled from last November].

MAGNUS ALEXANDERSON - Guitar and processing
A composer of electro-acoustic music, member of Decision Dream & audiovisual project MASH (www.i-mash.net), Magnus has upcoming collaborations with Gary Smith & Chris Cutler.

BELA EMERSON - Cello and electronics
An innovative performer of electric cello & electronics, in addition to a thriving solo career, Bela collaborates with Stomp, Ryan Teague, Drei, and many other.
www.cellobela.com & www.myspace.com/belaemerson

STEN SANDELL - Voice and processing
Stenis a composer and musician using piano, voice, elektronics & harmonium. He is also a member of the groups: Sten Sandell Trio, GUSH, Low Dynamic Orchestra, with musicians/composers Paal Nilssen-Love (Norway), Sverrir Gudjonsson (Iceland), Johan Berthling (Sweden) and Evan Parker (UK). www.sami.se/art/sandell/index.htm & efi.group.shef.ac.uk

T-toe
"The heart of a D'n'B raver, youth of a marching band and classical training, and the greatest lost pop melodies have all brewed together to form T-toe, your friendly local, electro-Breakcore/Dubstep-Trombonist! (Yes, ANOTHER one!). Expertly produced but with his tongue firmly in cheek (when not down the trombone), T-toe has been solidifying his reputation as a future force to be reckoned with thanks to some amazing support slots with the likes of Plaid, Radioactive Man and Si Begg and many other memorable gigs in 2007."

In Sand
With influences drawn from jazz, rock, classical and improvised music put through the mill of electronic glitch this international quintet celebrate the release of their first album "WHATEVER".

RICHARD PADLEY - electric guitar
At the age of 15 Richard was thrown out of his first punk band for inventing chords that no-one else could play. In 1988 he formed the People with Instruments collective (expanded to a big band in 1990) with Matthew Grey. He played radiation guitar noise for the alt.pop outfit The Now Band, as well as composing for films and teaching guitar in a local school.

THOR MAGNUSSON - laptop
Co-founder of the Ixi software collective, the musician, writer and programmer Thor Magnusson develops installations and programmes for events around the world such as Barcelona's SONOR festival and the famous STEIM studios in Amsterdam. He develops programmes to sample and respond, adding the evocative organic energies of field recordings such as the processed sound of fire and ice from his native Iceland.

SATOKO FUKUDA - violin
Satoko is a young classical concert violinist from Japan. She has performed in many major UK venues such as the Barbican, Wigmore, Queen Elizabeth and Royal Albert Halls. She has performed and broadcast live in Ireland, Germany, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, USA and Japan and has studied with Natasha Boyarskaya at the Yehudi Menuhin School and with Itzhak Rashkovsky at the Royal College of Music.

DANNY KINGSKILL - cello
"An atmospheric player with a beautiful big tone" - Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD
Danny is an orchestral player, choirmaster, music therapist, composer, musical director and actor. He is also an inventive and irreverent improviser who can be heard on several albums, including 2 by Arc "a fantastic band who have assimilated much from contemporary classical music and have developed a sharp, intuitive common aesthetic" Resonance.

GUS GARSIDE - double bass
Gus has worked in a variety of musical settings - jazz, pop, cabaret, dance, theatre and improvised music. He has played with many of the leading musicians in the improvised music world and collaborated across art forms with writers, film-makers and, in particularly, dancers. Appearing on several albums including "Out of Amber" (with Arc) "Indispensable for its profound beauty" Improv Jazz, France and Pentimento (with Jon Lloyd and Dave Fowler) "quite simply one of the most consistently interesting and enjoyable albums that has come my way for a long time" The Wire.

Hosted by our very own electro-comedian Lee Hume
live interactive visuals by _minimalVector

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

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

· Greetings:

This month we have another exciting show lined up for you, shipped in especially from Sweden just for us the two gentlemen that make two thirds of Bemass (the other third being Bela Emerson) inspiring us to an evening of electro-acoustic excess.

If you think improv is about Jazz then this should put you right - Bela’s Cello is rich with the roar of Balkan trains and Turkish mystery, Magnus Alexanderson the “anti-social” post-rock guitarist with speed-metal freakout Desire Dream, and Sten Sandall providing mind altering vocals and electronics.

Then we also have T-Toe grasping a trombone and a box of sweltering electronic tics. On one hand its funny ‘cos it’s a trombone, on the other hand, ‘cos it’s a trombone its actually pretty serious.

And rounding things off we have In Sand who combine a mastery of seriously modern composition with free improv and electronics.

Please come early ‘cos we have a lot to get through and all these artists deserve your undivided attention – bear in mind someone will have to go on first!

Other things:

Our Tuesday night late night brothers Instrumentality have been chucked out of the Fortune of War as part of the seafront modernisation process. To be replaced by a night playing 30 year old funk records (Ed: are you sure about that?.....)

We’ll wish them the best of luck in their search for a new home, hopefully not on a Tuesday.

Archives of old shows: Dan Powell has been uploading more shows to www.archive.org/details/the-spirit-of-gravity, and also some of the collective members are coming up on the Wrong music archive of shows. www.wrongmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=1

Also have a look in the Wrong-Lab for more interesting things.

· Reviewings:

Spirit of Gravity at the Three and Ten, Brighton, Tuesday 26^th February

This Sound Bureaucracy

The old masters return with another set of semi improvised electro-poetica. Nick Rilke was on fine form, hooded and rambling, revisiting an old favourite “Bad Rap” and also what’s sure to become a new favourite “Round here it was all fields”, which was a largely fictitious history of The Spirit of Gravity. Tony Rimbaud was on good form too, loops of squeaks and rumbles some booming slow beats and clacking quick ones, never pausing, ranging from unsettling drones to euphoria.

For the visuals _minimalVector had bought down “An 80’s Polish video mixer wired wrong” to use alongside the laptop. The result gave us big blocks of rounded abstract shapes that ebbed and flowed with the music.

Video of “Bad Rap” on the Sogblog.

Ry-Om played at the Spirit of Gravity a while ago (spiritofgravity-brighton.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html) and it was a pleasure to welcome back their laptop and guitar soundscapes.

They spent some time pre-loading the laptops with guitar sounds after the soundcheck so we only got a couple of glimpses of them during the set. It started with a metronome guitar click that built into a pointillistic rhythm of tiny guitar sounds, eventually this was washed away but a quite beautiful enveloping wave of thrums that filled your head with a velvety loveliness, which then again evolved into a more rhythmic piece to end.

For this _minimalVector put away the video mixer and had some pulsing blue and brown spots that went all stroboscopic spotting when things got more exciting.

Similarly back with a new approach (the meister conductor computer has gone, along with the red and yellow baseball caps - replaced by cloth caps) were Halal Kebab Hut. Because of the visual nature of what they do there were no _minimalvector visuals. HKH started with a poem spoken in non-unison by the six members stood around at the back, the results were a little like the Cabaret Voltaire nonsense poems, but with real words, the juxtapositions producing laughter from the back. This was followed by “Situationist” which involved blowing up and letting down long balloons, the sort used by clowns to make animals. Then squeaking them and hitting each other over the head. I guess you had to be there, A section was played on the Sound Projector (CHECK!) on Radio Reverb (97.2fm and www.radioreverb.com/, Tuesday nights 11pm) and Clive Craske felt compelled to describe it too.

Then they did “Dot Dash Dong” and old piece I’d seen at SoG and Wrong Music, followed by a keyboard piece, and something that involved Kazoos, conducting and lots of standing up and sitting down.

I have some video on the website, but I think it’ll still be pretty mystifying.

Yours as ever

El Maestro Con Queso

Editor.

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