BEAMSPLITTER, Annie Kerr & Gus Garside, Andrew Greaves & Dan Powell 19 AUG 2015

Brighton's long-running avant-music promoters Spirit of Gravity have branched out this year to present more challenging musicians at their The Scope events.  Last night's edition, (XIII), in the cosy environs of the Caroline of Brunswick's Upper Salon comprised a selection of highly virtuoso musicians.
Andrew Greaves & Dan Powell's re-imagining of / homage to Terry Riley's In C on massed electronics I missed due to the willfully erratic sleep patterns of my youngest child, but a quick poll of friends in the audience later on indicated a very interesting presentation of Riley-esque material.  As a fan of Terry Riley myself, I am always keen to find out about anything remotely associated with the bearded one, so I was disappointed to miss this.  Also, Dan Powell is a friend and collaborator of mine, so the regret is doubly chafing.
Annie Kerr & Gus Garside were about halfway through their set when I arrived and having never witnessed Annie Kerr's violin playing before this evening, I was pleased to witness her extremely accomplished standard and extended techniques in mutually supportive interplay with Gus Garside's double bass.  Both amplified, Gus kept his playing clean, (I've sometimes seen him employ digital effects in collaboration with others), and dry while Kerr used the merest hint of, (spring rather than digital?), reverb from her amplifier, presumably to sweeten her violin in the resonance-less Upper Salon and separate her sound from Gus' somewhat.  Their set was extremely immersive with little or no overt references to free jazz in the portion I witnessed, resulting in a delicate and even placid sound environment in places.  They are playing together again at the Coachhouse in september so I shall make sure I get to that one early.
BEAMSPLITTER are Audrey Chen and Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø on cello/vocals and trombone respectively.  They produced a solid half-hour performance of impressive interplay of ideas both using a palette of unusual extended technique; Chen having developed an impressive range of sounds through use of a single chopstick on her cello.  Mildly amplified, they both utilised their microphones as if they were also instruments - mainly through proximity - to great effect.  Chen's vocalese is possibly informed by traditional Chinese song as well as contemporary avant-vocalists like Phil Minton for example, (with whom she has worked).  Henrik M-N's playing is restrained mostly, sometimes mirroring Chen's sounds, until he really lets loose with some noises that actually sound like a trombone towards the end of the set.  Marvellous.  I didn't want it to end.

The British Space Group

The British Space Group

Eyes Turned Skyward

UK  Quiet World  Quiet World 51  CD-R  (2015)

By the looks of the strong design of its sleeve, this disc could be an examination of all those sci-fi, weird (or wyrd) 1970s schools programmes on tv, or their soundtracks, and indeed the first track Remote Viewing is built around a recording of a man talking about déja vous in the kind of officious home-counties accent that tallies with my own recollection of Schools & Colleges programming of that time.  Those expecting a Ghost Box–style, hauntological, period pop will be disappointed though; the music on Eyes Turned Skyward is actually contemporary-sounding drone ambient.  As always, the production is clear and glassy, like peering at the reflection of misty landscapes through the panes of an open window at dawn.

Despite the album being credited to The British Space Group, (although no personnel is listed on the sleeve), I suspect this may be the work of the Quiet World label head Ian Holloway alone.  If so, I admire his attempt to develop his own approach to ambient soundscape with today’s recording equipment, while somehow still simultaneously referencing the experimental sonics of past decades.

Haze Of Summer uses organ tones to steadily build up overflowing feelings of goodwill, while Slow Light, composed as it is of electronic chittering, lightly wah’ed bass and swirling keyboard effects steps up the feeling of being stranded on a star freighter light years from home.

Fourth track The Dust Between The Stars is particularly transporting, and strangely comforting, based around a circling figure played on an analogue electronic bass keyboard of unknown vintage.

The Work Of Fire features a distant mildly ring-modulated electric guitar sound somehow referencing spaghetti westerns and space movie soundtracks.  Breath During Sleep is possibly the most kosmische-inspired piece on the album, reminding me of Amon Duul II’s quieter moments.

The final track; the magisterial The Last Of Time, is a beautiful piece of quiet ambience, where nothing seems to happen much, but in a very good way.

On the cover, a rocket orbits a concentric-circle planet while a lone spaceman is sucked into a graphic representation of a black hole.  The spaceman device is nicely carried over from the vortex on the back cover into the blackness of the inside of the booklet.  This title is limited to 50 physical units but is also available from the Quiet World bandcamp site.

http://www.quietworld.co.uk/

https://ian-quietworld.bandcamp.com/album/eyes-turned-skyward

VA AA LR

VA AA LR

Newhaven

GREECE  Organized Music From Thessaloniki  t27  3” CD-R  (2014)

Purchased from Electric Knife Records in Kentish Town just before xmas, here is a document of VA AA LR’s performance at last year’s Fort Process event at Newhaven Fort presented by the consistently excellent Organised Music From Thessaloniki.  Just under 15 minutes, this trio of Vasco Alves, Adam Asnan and Louie Rice produce an abstract sound world unlike very much else these ears have heard under the guise of “music”, if indeed the production of “music” is actually VA AA LR’s intention, or something else entirely.  They appear to me to be sound artists first and foremost, and refer to their own work variously as “often of volatile nature”, “the potential of…the instabilities of a medium” and “disruptive audio material”.  Active only since 2013, other works have appeared on Consumer Waste, Porta, Intonema and Mantile already.

Newhaven sounds like controlled small explosions and things burning, the only clues are the photographs on the fold-over sleeve which depict a lot of smoke coming from somewhere.  For the most part, the boys are content to let whatever devices they use do their own thing in order to produce a kind of process-based performance.  They could have simply been letting off some flares over the cliffs and amplifying the results.  At seven minutes in, there are a couple of loud cracks – followed by the hissing and fizzing of some kind of minor scale ordnance.  As I was regrettably unable to attend Fort Process and witness VA AA LR’s performance and see what they were actually up to, I feel there is little else I can add here except to recommend Newhaven despite its short-ness and urge you to investigate their back catalogue; I heard their recent cassette on Mantile, Ping Cones, recently and that is utterly different but also utterly wonderful.

http://thesorg.noise-below.org/2/

Seth Cooke

Seth Cooke

Four No Input Field Recordings

UK  Every Contact Leaves A Trace  no number  3”CD-R  (2014)

Four delicious slices of noise of identical duration, titled CERO I to IV from Bristolian Seth Cooke.  Cooke may be known to you from his improvisational work with a cut-down sink disposal unit, his involvement with the Bang The Bore promotional entity, his drumming and percussion duties with Hunting Lodge, Defibrillators and UltraHumanitarian or even his previous releases on labels such as Compost & Height, Impulsive Habitat, 1000fussler or Organized Music From Thessaloniki.

The sparse production notes printed on the small sheet of transparency included within the elaborate packaging claim the work was recorded and edited over the course of a year, from October 2012 to October 2013.  The pieces sound like they could be derived from the sort of interference you would get between channels on analogue television receivers in “the old days”, but I suspect Cooke would be offended by such an assumption as I’m sure there is a lot more going on despite the strangely un-credible title Four No Input Field Recordings – an oxymoron, surely?  Or just a rare, (and welcome), case of an “experimental” musician with a sense of humour?  There is a great deal of development from track to track for those who listen closely, and a wealth of detail within the, at first, seemingly impenetrable fizz.  This has the result that the dark energy contained within the music coalesces inside the part of your brain that processes disquiet and enables you to relax fully.  At least that’s what happens to me when I get to the end of CERO IV.

Great hand-assembled multi-part packaging held together with a mini bulldog clip.  The grey card outer sleeve is embossed by what looks like a large sheet of Lego, there’s a digital print of spiral-type design, (see above), with the aforementioned transparency info sheet and disc in its own poly sleeve; all of this encased in a folded second digital print, this time the image is a kind of CAD update of something you might produce using the Spirograph drawing toy.

old covers

    

      

Ampism / Spicer Duo

Ampism / Spicer Duo

Leaving The Halo Dark

UK  White Lodge  WL009  CD-R  (2014)

Two members of Brighton’s crazed free-jazz improvising cabal Bolide moonlighting here with a nocturnal session in a tower block in the centre of town, probably.  This is top quality late-night psych-drone for yr fevered fontanelle.  Gongs, sitar loops, baritone groaning, occasional dings on a cracked bell; miscellaneous wind instruments and electronics outside in some dark corner of the Sussex countryside.  Or Ampism / Spicer’s back garden on a Wednesday night.

Titles set off at a tangent; Frog Lane, Yaffle, (was that the name of the woodpecker from the BBC’s 1970s stop-animation childrens’ show Bagpuss?), Purusha and Twitches, Twigs And Treasure.  “In early Vedas, Purusha meant a cosmic man whose sacrifice by the gods created all life.  This was one of many creation theories discussed in the Vedas.  The idea parallels Norse Ymir, with the myth's origin in Proto-Indo-European religion” is what that great modern technological sage Wikipedia has to tell me.  From what little I know about this Duo, this goes some way to illustrate the personal philosophies of at least one of the participants.

White Lodge is the home of Bolide themselves; other items from this imprint have not disappointed.
Highly recommended for those interested in free music of any stripe.  Presented to us in a plain white cd-r and typed insert in a dvd case with full colour wraparound sleeve designed I suspect by F. Ampism if not both parties.

Splitting The Atom, Green Door Store, Brighton 5 APR 2015

It is staggering to realise that this already is the 25^th STA.  That’s silver and time for a celebration, surely?  I couldn’t stay for the whole day, but here’s what I did manage to see:

Ardisson & Pugh

Charlotte Pugh and Charles Matthews utilising gamelan, recorder and computer in various interesting ways.  Delicate improvisation utilising gamelan bowls hung from a microphone stand and Pugh’s recorder which I initially mistook for a Sho or Shakuhachi.  Here’s a taste of their music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAIPAEbOwv4

They were playing against a back ground of Věra Chytilová’s 1966 film Daisies.  It worked really well.  I’m not sure if Ardisson & Pugh had chosen it specifically or whether it just happened to be projected at the time but it was great.

Timeron

Accidental beats, conflict between man and machine, misbehaving loops Aphex filtered through a sedated TG/industrial sieve.  I liked the overall result, but judging from Timeron’s perplexity toward the end of his set, what we we getting wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

Antipattern is Alastair Strachan who is a long-time fixture on Brighton’s experimental scene.

More misbehaving beats minimal but searching when the kick drum is found it is colossal through the Green Door’s massive pa.  Sttrachan seems slightly taken aback before taming the beast somewhat although I for one could have listened to that untamed kick for hours.  Alastair introduces a hydrophone in a pint of water which is treated to a tube outputting some kind of sonic material into the liquid.  A nod to Lee Patterson, perhaps?

Inwards

2 lads, 1 x mac + doepfer a100, producing pleasing minimal electronica although I was in and out of the room during their set so I’m not best qualified to report on this with any authority.

Cao is Constanza Cao originally from Peru, now based in London.  She produces some beautiful harsh electronics from just a laptop and a Korg ms20 synth.  Dark stuff.  Fantastic.

As I am one quarter of Kuroneko, I can’t and won’t comment further, apart from to say that I enjoyed playing at STA very much.

Orok whom I have seen before at a previous STA felt it necessary to make an announcement to the effect of asking for silence, saying his was “…quiet music…and relaxing – you might want to sit down on the floor…”  Audiences for experimental music are there because they want to be and don’t need to be told what to do, in my experience.  That said, Orok’s set was excellent and fulfilled his own criteria perfectly.  I would have sat on the floor if it wasn’t for the Green Door’s uneven cobbles.

Mouthful o’ Hakarl & The Fiery Biscuit are a new-ish collaboration between two Kevs and a Graham.  Pleasingly reminiscent of North African musics to these ears, possibly due to The Fiery Biscuit’s duduk drum and Hakarl’s saz-like instrument.  Mouthful Of Worms’ Kev Kilter augmented these very musical proceedings with karaoke-mic feedback shenanigans from what I could make out.  Possibly my favourite part of the day.

It was at this point that my own domestic existence cut in rather abruptly and halted my participation in this latest STA, so regrettably I missed Graham Dunning & Embla Quickbeam, Left Hand Cuts Off The Right, Harmergeddon (who Kuroneko performed with at a live cinema event in London earlier in the year and who I recommend seeing wholeheartedly for their unique presentation of video and self-built instruments) and Q’LIL GLB GELLS THALL.

Keep ‘em peeled for the next STA.