Ketchup and Equinoxes

For Email Members: www.spiritofgravity.com email: info@spiritofgravity.com

GRAVITATIONAL PULL

Dispatches from the Spirit of Gravity / Edition 86 / November 09

·         Happenings:

Next Spirit of Gravity gig:            Wednesday 18th November 2009

Spirit of Gravity presents

RYAN JOURDAN / SUNDAY MOURNING / GUS GARSIDE AND DAN POWELL

The Komedia Studio Bar, 44-47 Gardner Street, Brighton, BN1 1UN
Time 8:30 - 11:00 Cost £5 / £4

Ryan Jordan: hacked hardware, screaming circuits, and hypnotic flickers

Sunday Mourning: analog-psychedelic-one-man-jam-band-sandwich

Gus Garside and Dan Powell: he formed In Sand

Ryan Jordan

Response Systems is an exploration into audiovisual performance using an array of sensors and DIY electronics responsive to physical movements in order to control programs such as Pure Data (Pd). It also looks at reshaping and replicating the body through the use of noise, DIY technology and stroboscopic light. This work uses DIY hardware to build a new interface for live computer music performance, aiming to turn the performers body into an instrument allowing them to embody new technologies and electronic devices.

The performance alters the perspective of the performer and performance space through noise, strobe lighting and electronic devices. Flickering shadows of the performers jerking movements, cables, and wires attached to the body are cast onto the walls of the performance space as the performers movements control screaming and shrieking hacked electronics and computer programes, spewing out their internal circuitry.

Sunday Mourning

Sunday Mourning is Mark Wagner (**k) and drummer Sanna Charles. Together they create a sonic hell-hole of acoustic doom, experimental folk and dense psychedelic atmospheres. Referencing anything from Death metal, Avant Garde, Country and Americana and taking it down to new claustrophobic depths, Sunday Mourning have just played a headline set at NYC's Coco66 to great success.

Gus Garside and Dan Powell

Dan Powell & Gus Garside have been working together on an improv project for the last two years. Dan Powell began making sound for installation works in the mid 90's. Since moving to Brighton in 2000 he has concentrated on experimental and improvised music. He is a member of Brighton based collective The Spirit of Gravity and has performed at spaces across the UK. Dan has released work on net labels Hippocamp & Wrong Lab and his work has been played on WFMU, Radio Reverb & BBC Radio 3. He is currently using small instruments - Tibetan bowls, mbira, recorder, toys & junk - and processing the sound live via a laptop using Audiomulch & Pure Data.

Gus Garside has worked in a variety of musical settings – jazz, contemporary music, pop, cabaret, dance, theatre and, most importantly, improvised music where he has performed with many leading players. Gus formed arc in 1988 and their third album "the pursuit of happiness" was released on Emanem Records in 2009. He formed In Sand in 2004 and their first album “Whatever” came out mid 2008. Gus is part of the Brighton Safehouse collective. He has collaborated with a wide range of improvising and contemporary music players and dancers and frequently works with laptop musicians and also performs solo. “…where he differs from the average jazz bassist is in the range of sonorities he conjures from his instrument” Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD

Hosted by our very own 'Laptop' Lee Hume
Visuals by _minimalVector

There will be the elektrocreche available for any unaccompanied toys who will be looked after during the intervals by our professionally trained team of volunteers. And anybody else that wants to bring along a sound toy to play with.

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

We now have a Facebook group where you can be kept up to date with shows and information:

www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=75568366205

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:

There will not be a Spirit of Gravity in December, but we’ll return in the New Year with a schedule of varied and interesting artists. 

Noteherder & McCloud will be playing at The Infernal Salon on November the 27th, and I’ll be DJing at the Globe for Wrong Music on the 16th of December.

I’ve added updates to the Sogblog for the September and October shows, plus White Nights. Honest.

·                     Reviewings:

Spirit of Gravity at the Komedia Studio Bar, Brighton, Thursday 15th October 2009

Not by Radium

Tony Rimbaud looking like he’s on gardening leave from TSB, or maybe on a fishing trip, stands woolly jumper and beanie hatted splurging out dice driven bass bounces and swooshes, with 20th century skittling drum tracks. It rolls, it grooves, and finds a place in my heart for long journeys and ever changing landscapes.

After half an hour Tony is joined by fellow Founder and long standing partner in rhyme Nick Rilke for This Sound Bureaucracy. The ambience changes: the rhythms lose their far reaching vision, becoming blunter; the foreground sounds become shorter – lost in sweeps and shimmers, strangely at once more defined but less focussed. Nick also provides sounds to the mix and gives us a potted biography on Tony before ceding to popular demand with a reprise of the legendary “I remember when this was all fields”. Excellent.

Fractal

Dennis provided the visuals for the evening, an interestingly Saul Bass inclined abstraction of Black and white video feedback, which did something to fill the void left by _minimalVector these last months. And for the music he crouched out of vision over some ill seen kit, with sharp blasts of hot noise and bass with room inside some dubstep drawn rhythms to shiver and confuse.

T-Toe

Terry returned to the seaside to play some trombone infused breaks and sing to wonderfully avuncular effect. Uplifting, melancholy, joyful and playful, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house when he finished. It was like have a much cherished friend come round after a 10 year absence, ply everyone with drink; tell implausibly funny stories of disaster, sing and carouse before disappearing off into the night with a kiss goodbye and the unlikely promise to return soon.

Spirit of Gravity at White Nights, the Phoenix Gallery Brighton, Saturday 4th October 2009

Thanks to everyone who called by the Phoenix Gallery during the Brighton White Nights festival. We had a great time and you may have seen: Nathaniel Virgo; The Tim Sagar Drone Syndicate; minimal impact & the big E orchestra; The Vainglories; Noteherder & McCloud; Dan Powell; HRT; Viv (previously Vole); This Sound Bureaucracy (yes twice! In a month!) and Henry Collins. The Spirit of Gravity Quartet also played at the Ocean Rooms at about 4am.

All the visuals at The Phoenix Gallery White Room were by _minimalVector, who we are hoping will return this month.

Yours as ever

El Maestro Con Queso

Editor.


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