Here is a lovely review of my set for Stroke Club at Gulliver's, Manchester.
By Cath Aubergine.
"...anyone wandering in unawares would be forgiven for thinking "what the fuck?" - there's a bunch of people sitting about on chairs or even (god help them) the carpet while what initially sounds like a rather quiet aeronautical flypast emanates from the speakers. The sound is coming from the fingers, electronic equipment and imagination of Gary Fisher, a locally-based sound and visual artist whose general philosophy is, as he puts it: "objects, images, sound recordings and live performances may be seen as individual pieces in their own right as well as parts of a bigger 'work in progress' that is the process itself". Tonight he is working in a field somewhere near the far boundary of "ambient music" where, what could be heavily processed found sounds or could be waveforms designed from scratch (and how processed does a sound need to be before it is no longer found but manufactured? You don't find yourself in this kind of thought process watching indie bands, do you?) build, overlap, fold back in on themselves. More abrasive and discordant than, say, Machinefabriek but equally entrancing, this is probably as close to a synaesthetic experience as a person with regular senses will get: these sounds definitely have shapes, of sorts. The room's small glitterball spins slowly above, tracing strings of light across the floor and audience, absorbing and hypnotic."
Photo by Kane
The full review by Cath Aubergine including a set by the mighty WOMB can be found at: www.music-dash.co.uk/live
Stroke club is a regular night of independent music at Gullivers, Manchester.
My own reflections:
I felt the set went really well. I was very relaxed and confident thanks to the general atmosphere of the night and people around me. Although the set was planned in two parts the opening went on for a lot longer than planned as I found I could make a lot more quieter and subtler sounds than your average pub sound-system allows and spent a lot longer developing a 'groove' to work with. This was the kind of thing I have been trying to record at home for ages and I guess feeling like I was playing in a big front room with a bunch of friends under a slowly rotating disco ball gave me the right atmosphere. Rather than fade out slowly to imply that it went on forever as I was tempted to, I just 'pulled the plug' -as one audience member described it -after what felt like about half an hour- and dumped everyone back in the room.
...and just to spoil the magic here's my set-up on the night. Buddha Machine, reverb spring, amplified cymbal, amplified book, tape recorder with amstrad tape, pocket radio, loops and delay.