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Rossi correlations

Its been 25 years since the first Spirit of Gravity, the experimental music night in Brighton I helped set up. I’m proud to say I was the first person to play at the first one at The Lift on Queens Road in Brighton in 2001. Back then I was bottom of the bill at a new night that to be honest not may people came to. But I met my friend Henry Collins that night, and saw Clarence Palmer play some great improv, and Nick and Tony did their Maphead thing.

25 years later I was third (out of seven) on the bill at The Electronic Escape, the ‘Gravity’s contribution to this years Great Escape, at our home The Rossi Bar, 2 doors down from where The Lift used to be.

I was really happy with my ambient experimental set. The brief was to make sounds in the upstairs bar for people to buy drinks to. Not sure if I fulfilled that.

Satellites

Wasps is my duo with Andrew Greaves. We started working together when we were artists in residence at the Rose Hill a few years ago. Andrew is a brilliant musician and working with him always opens up new ways of thinking about and playing music.

Satellites is based on a long improvisation we recorded at the beautiful ChiffChaff studios in Brighton – thanks to Phil and Helen for hosting us. We mixed the recordings over the winter and Tony at the Spirit of Gravity label has kindly released them.

Dancing bears in Rottingdean

For over eight years, Suzanne Rolfe, Melita Dennett and Kerry Boettcher have journeyed deep into the heart of Europe’s masked esoteric festivals. From the devilish Krampus parades and primordial Kramperl/ Buttnmandle of Germany, to the horned Perchten of Austria, the vibrant Kurkeri masquerades of Bulgaria, and the animistic Bear dances of Romania.

Their travels, documented through photography, writing and field recordings, culminated in the immersive Wilde Volk installation at Rottingdean Windmill in July 2025.

They asked Spirit of Gravity to come up with some music to accompany the installation, and now there is an album which includes my contribution, Bear dance. I will be honest and say I have never seen a bear dancing, and I’m uncertain how a bear would dance to my work. But I was pleased to be asked.

Capture the moment

In April 2025, Spirit of Gravity sent a call for submissions to a compilation for their Bandcamp label on the theme 2025: Capture the moment. I sent in a track and the album came out at the end of May. Lots of good stuff by Spheress, Rashamon, Screaming Alice and many more. Well worth a listen.

Inside journeys album

Andrew Greaves and I have released an album of the work we made as part of our residency at The Rose Hill in 2022.

The audio sources and ideas for Inside Journeys were sourced by making instrumental recordings in the space to use as textures, recordings of soundings of objects we found, and field recordings made over the course of the residency. I recorded chairs creaking, barrels rolling, glasses being rubbed and and scratched, and all of these are in the mix. Andrew took pictures and filmed the space and the objects scattered throughout.

We spoke to Dave and Gill Barwood, who visited the pub in the late 1980’s, as well as Jim Purbrick who shared a tale of visiting more recently as part of an immersive art performance, and collected memories of the Rose Hill from regulars and local residents. Andrew worked with the Brighton Past group who shared their stories of the pub over the years.

We worked on a text score and used extensive rehearsals and discussion to refine the sound of the piece, which was added to by local historian Dr Geoffrey Mead who we consulted with on the piece, and who gave a series of vignettes on the history of the area around the Rose Hill as part of the performance. 

Andrew created themes and rhythmic motifs based on his exploration of popular songs of the kind that might have been performed in the Rose Hill from the 1930s onwards. His sound palette is suggestive of the audio technology of the time. I used software to manipulate the audio sources recorded in-situ, as well as working with amplified objects sourced from the Rose Hill.

Andrew’s photos and film footage were turned into a complementary visual work by Brighton Synth Explorer, Programmer, and Sound Designer Symmetrical Forces. The performance was complemented by audio interviews played throughout the space to create an immersive, open ended experience during the course of the whole evening.

You can listen and download the album free here:

Inside journeys at Spirit of Gravity

Andrew and I completed our residency at Rose Hill Arts last November. We enjoyed the residency immensely and are delighted with the piece we produced, which we performed at the end of 2022. The live show featured Dr Geoffrey Mead, a local historian who we consulted with on the piece, and who gave a series of vignettes on the history or the area around the Rose Hill as part of the performance. The Rose Hill is releasing it on their record label in early 2024.

We are both members of the Spirit of Gravity collective, so when a slot came up at the April show we were able to put ourselves forward to play a shorter version of the piece. We performed it at the Rossi Bar, Brighton, on 6th April. Jim Purbrick (Alien Alarms) filmed the show. Jim records all the Spirit of Gravity shows and always does a great job, so its worth giving it a watch if you have the time.

The owl and the ark

A few years ago I did a new soundtrack for 2 films by Chris Marker. I’ve always liked the work and wanted to return to it, so when we were planning the Spirit of Gravity 21st birthday party at The Rose Hill I thought I’d give it another try.

The show went well – not just for me, all the sets where brilliant, especially ones by ex-Asian Dub Foundation bassist Dhangsa, Fallow, and Lara Rix-Martin aka Meemo Comma. I got a great recording of my set courtesy of Abraham Moughrabi and put it on my Bandcamp page with a lovely sleeve designed by Bea, my daughter, who I also collaborated with on Four Walks at Old Chapel.

You can give it a listen here

Inside journeys at The Rose Hill

The Rose Hill is a venue, studio complex and creative hub run by musicians and artists and is one of my favourite venues to play at. Before its current incarnation it was pub I used to hang out in with my mate Matt before watching the football.

My friend Andrew Greaves and I had an idea for a work called Inside journeys which would explore the history and physical presence of a space and we approached The Rose Hill to see if they would be interested. We were delighted when they said they where, and even more delighted when they asked us if we would like to be part of their residency programme.

The audio sources and ideas for Inside journeys will be sourced by making recordings in the space of small solo performances, recordings of soundings of objects we find, and field recordings made over the course of the residency. We will also be sourcing historical recordings and any kind of sound ephemera we can lay our hands on, including sheet music relevant to the space and archive recordings. The residency will culminate in a performance of the work on Thursday November 17th 2022.

There’s more on their website and you can pre-book tickets here

Thanks to Kas and everyone at the Rose Hill for giving us the opportunity and supporting us.

Safehouse wildcard sessions 6

The Safehouse collective are a group of improvising musicians based in and around Brighton. They’ve been putting on shows of freely improvised music for many years and I was very pleased to be asked to take part in a the online wildcard sessions project they started during lockdown.

They randomly put people in groups of three and each trio shares files to make a new piece of improvised music. I got involved in session 5 and was really please when Corey Mwamba played a track I was on during his Freeness show on BBC Radio 3.

Session 6 saw me working alongside Paul Dalloway & Rachel Cohen, Dave Allen & Jamie Clark, and Jane Perkins & Matt Finucane. You can hear all 28 tracks here:

A big thank you to Dave Allen and Gus Garside for organising it.