On a sweltering Sunday, it might be as expected that an electronic music night is taking place deep in the basement of The Bee’s Mouth. The world of drone often gets over-associated with the darker, serious side of things after all, but that really is a false assumption. The cosy huddle gathered in the venue’s cellar for tonight’s show are a reminder that the leftfield might focus on listening but there’s also lightness and levitation to be had.
Co-curated by the DAAM (Difficult Art And Music) label with their new voice-piece MEANS Magazine, the promise is a night of audio-visual ambience with performances from four local-ish artists. So a sampler or maybe a celebration of sorts from a fringe community which operates well under the usual indie radar.
First up there’s Tim Spear, the Dorking-based electronic musician who runs the Whi Recordings imprint and also performs as Secret Nuclear. As the aka suggests his soundscapes draw from what Electronic Sound Magazine describe as “a disturbing echo of cold war paranoia”. Secret Nuclear music certainly rumbles with a gravity that comes close to Blanck Mass in full flow but with a deft rhythmic range to distil the intensity. In a half hour set trip-hop shuffles, motoric kosmische and 90s drum’n’ bass all bounce around the basement walls.
Not that Secret Nuclear’s tunes are dependent on beats, his fine detailing shines through via gothic chimes, Muslimgauze tones, layers of synth melody and counter punching chords. It’s all meshed on an impressive scale and synced neatly to visual projections of surveillance kit, board room plotters, warning signs plus flashes of Vladimir and Boris (or that might be my imagination). Head down and focused on the laptop, Secret Nuclear looks up during natural pauses for a smile, a slurp and thanks, underlining he’s one of us (not them).
After a brief reshuffle on the tech table it’s onto the filmic expansiveness of Armatures. Playing on home turf, electronica artist Preston Parris has built up considerable momentum recording as preston.outatime but tonight it’s an outing for his latest configuration. Perhaps to mark the transition, he begins with an ‘oldie’ from 2021, the gorgeous, soundtrack swoop of ‘Permafrost’ with its icy string sounds and delicate Frahm-like piano. The pseudo-Twin Peaks credits that run over the mountain range visuals show the wry playfulness in Preston Parris’s approach.
From here the focus shifts to more current Armatures explorations. With his fingertips lit by the multi-coloured lights of his key pad, he stealthily builds intricate sound structures. ‘Bonds’ from his recent ‘Limitations’ album glitches with dub conscious creativity while twitching to a mesmeric Morse code rhythm. It’s such contrasts that Armatures uses so well, pitching the slow tidal roll of synth strings within the judder and stomp of looped beats on ‘Listed’ plus injecting the euro pop snap of ‘Ditto Machine’ with a jungle skitter and those snare cracks. It’s all giddy stuff, crisply defined in a Floating Points way and topped with intriguing visuals of speeding boats and tessellating patterns.
The evening then veers off into more experimental territory with DAAM’s very own Daniel Hignell-Tully in one of his guises as Distant Animals. The lights are up for starters as the scratchy agitated soundtrack begins, a loop of tense violin, piano and chimes. As the piece unfolds it’s obvious that the music is only one dimension of Distant Animals’ slot. What we get involved here is part charades, part crossword, part slapstick and part improv… a real performance piece.
As the spikey audio ratchets onwards the chalkboards take over. Hignell-Tully scribbles privately on the first slate “It is important that white dudes look down upon technology” then hands the board out for one of the audience to hold up for all to see. Returning to his stage desk he writes on another slate “Move through at speed”, then passes it onto a second punter. The sequence gets repeated until all the boards are shared around showing equally quizzical phrases (“A yapping gull”, “ Bamboo is an invasive species”, “Make poor attempts”) before a new phase begins. Tulley chooses a board to collect, wipes it clean with a tissue scrap and creates another placard for display. Throughout he frantically checks back to paper scripts and timer to keep the choreographed chaos in sync with the modulating soundtrack. “Bring back the avant garde” is DAAM’s strapline – Distant Animals are doing just that with a smile and a sharp intent.
It’s up to Brighton Ambients to round off the evening and restore some equilibrium with their calm, slowly blooming long-form offering. Featuring stalwarts of the local experimental community – Roger Harmar on keys and electronics, guitarist Paul Lewis and Paul Khimasia Morgan on synthesiser – the trio intuitively balance improvisation and narrative. That means throughout their shimmering, extended piece there’s always a sense of gentle movement and direction.
It’s a spatial kind of thing, music that hovers around and about you, which eases from LaBradford minimalism to Stars Of Lid density and back again. In places Harmar’s keyboard patterns hum with new-age melodics, in others the Lewis guitar casts glassy, almost shoegaze reflections. Passages glide by, the trio weaving a chamber string elegance then sliding into a tense, monotone drone. The set’s chilled finale winds down in a haze of woozy, revolving tones or, to borrow Roger Harmar’s phrase a “satisfyingly psychedelic” flourish.
Hopefully the group will re-assemble for more gigs in the future as their dynamic has much more to be tapped into. That can also be said for the whole shebang. Here was an evening that was fun, feisty and forward-thinking. When you see the next DAAM/MEANS promotion coming up don’t hesitate, be curious.
The Bee’s Mouth, Sunday 23rd June 2024
Words by John Parry
Photos by Daniel Hignell-Tully
