Next Spirit of Gravity gig: Tuesday 22 April

Spirit of Gravity presents

CON BRIO / O.M.S. – N.M.A. / THE DISCO TEARS

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

8.30-11pm, £4/£3 concs.

Con Brio
Direct to the brain quality melodies laced with clever beats.
Pure electronica - a sound that glitches through heavenly glances of beauty then yanks you back to reality with cut-up beats dirty enough to make a hammer bleed.

o.m.s. - n.m.a.
From Belgium: field recordings and analogue improvisation - the audible and the inaudible.
The main project of Andy Eeckhaut (1980), since 2001, after been involved in bands and projects playing the more conventional music, as known to society. It features experimental electronics and electro-acoustic music, with sways of noise, (dark) ambient and related. Either starting composition from samples derived from field recordings, or from modular analogue synthesis, live performances always have a great deal of improvisation included. What comes first is the sound an sich, and layers get build or deconstructed, fx added, structures introduced, minimal manipulation, etc. but all comes back to what it is all about initially: sound.

The Disco Tears
Failed to cop off with anyone? Never mind, buck up!
The artistes formerly known as Celled, or Sold, or sometimes The Birds of Death Valley, return with a special tribute to disco heartbreak. Expect Pianos, strings, horns, bass guitar, synthesisers flashing lights and loafers. Or, none of the above.

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

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

There are now also some of _minimalVector’s films featuring Spirit of Gravity acts and guests at the Vimeo HDTV page www.vimeo.com/thespiritofgravity

· Greetings:

Advanced warning that the Spirit of Gravity commission has been accepted for Expo 2008, to be held in Brighton this year. Look out for future announcements, but for the moment, just put Sunday 6^th July into your diaries.

Also, don’t forget that Dan Powell has been uploading archives of old 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 25 March

Firstly an apology for my review of This Sound Bureaucracy at the February gig, I didn’t mention Nick Rilke’s laptop - to be honest I hadn’t seen it, he’d hidden it, and I wasn’t expecting it.

In Sand were missing a violin player tonight, so the lineup was double bass, cello, guitar and laptop. This being the Spirit of gravity we gave unusual prominence to Thors laptop, obviously and he paid us back with roars, clicks, chirrups and unusual warblings which settled alongside rather than underpinned the stringer stuff. For me the highlight was section where a shapeless drone turned to an engulfing wave that consumed everyone else and spat out little balls of improv scratches as it subsided and the other instruments settled back in its wake. I think that may be the bit on the SogBlog. (spiritofgravity-brighton.blogspot.com/

Part of the Bit Phalanx/Clean group of acts from London, Coventry and the West Country, T-toe is the trombone breaks specialist, combining the misty melancholy of the trombone with laptop backings to create a feel somewhere between the Dads Army theme and dubstep. Its ambitious but it works a treat, the downtempo numbers are lovely – I’m a sucker for “Gymnopedie no 1” every time, and Terry’s backing track was on the right side of interesting and elliptical to leave the beauty of the lead part intact, and the uptempo stuff raved like a Wrong Music 12 (www.cargorecords.co.uk/release/4351).

The visuals picked up on the red of Terry’s hair and khaki clothes to give fragmented beiges of trombone bell, hand and hair. There are some good shots of this on both the mp3 blog and the Vimeo page.

bemass are a very interesting proposition, Brighton’s Bela Emerson teamed up with Magnus Alexanderson and Sten Sendall, who travelled all the way from Sweden to play exclusively for The Spirit of Gravity. Everyone concerned has a pedigree as long as your arm of strange and wonderful music, and that’s what we get. Sten provides manipulations of speech, Throat singing and unworldly whistling. Magnus sits back in his chair causing his guitar to make sound, and rocking various pedals, Bela spends most of the set leaning forward Cello on the floor, crackling, playing the saw, or turned round to see what effect she’s having on the visuals from _minimalVector.

For the initial part of their set the core of the sound emanates from Sten, be it chittery skips or guttural rumbles, with Bela using the Cello for percussive effect, with very occasional bowing. Magnus providing drones and wayward unguitar ramblings, although reviewing the recordings it’s very hard to work out what comes from where. As Bela soars with the saw someone provides a Sputnik meeping, and then Magnus comes back with an almost sequencer backing of double handed hammer-on up and down the neck, which drives us into the last part of the set, with the bowed Cello cutting through at the top end and Lovecraftian incantations hellishly rumbling up from below, its an amazing sustained finale.

Lots of Video footage on the Vimeo HDTV site, our MySpace page and the SogBlog (which also has some excellent mp3’s as usual).

Yours as ever

El Maestro Con Queso

Editor.

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