ray ✸

Playing at the Cube

Last week I received Graham Dunning‘s newsletter, which was lovely, and it reminded me that I’d like to get in the habit of blogging (and newsletter-ing). I always put it off because I’m not sure where to start, so I’m going to start now and just write about the most recent fun thing that has happened 🙂

A couple of weeks ago I played at the Cube Microplex in Bristol for QWAK Club. Thank you so so sooo much to Nick for inviting me, making the beautiful poster and just being a really lovely host to me and Ross! I’d been feeling quite ill the day before and was worried I wouldn’t be able to make the trip to Bristol from Sheffield, but being given a hot toddy and comfortable bed upon arrival in Bristol made me feel much much better !!

The Cube is an amazing venue and I haven’t stopped talking about it since getting back (as well as other Bristol things – more on that in future!). I loved the neon sign outside. The performance space itself is also beautiful, though I was more nervous than usual before playing because I’m not really used to performing to people sitting down in such an auditorium type of place, but everyone was lovely so it was all good.

It all just felt very spacious and organised, and it’s entirely volunteer run which is amazing. Everyone was v friendly, I met some people I vaguely knew through friends of friends which is always nice, and showed some people how to use Strudel in the smoking area (though not sure I was a good teacher by that point in the night). The venue is also near lots of other nice things – the hare on the hill is a great pub!!!

During my performance my system actually fully crashed and the sound totally stopped. Strangely that actually hasn’t happened to me before, even though I often do $ fast 64 which does break it a bit.. In the end it seemed that Ableton was the issue (I run TidalCycles through that as I sometimes use midi instruments, though I mostly still do normal samples), and when I restarted it it was all good. The audience were really kind during this bit – in the past if I’ve ever felt awkward observed and said ‘talk amongst yourselves’ while figuring something out, I feel like I’ve entered into the longest silence I’ve ever experienced, but when I said it at the Cube everyone started chatting straight away so I was very relaxed while restarting everything! And it kind of made the second half of the show better, I think – I couldn’t really see the crowd because of the lights, which I’d requested, but sometimes when that happens I can feel like I’m playing to nobody and get kind of in my head. But having a little chat with the crowd mid-way through was really nice – maybe something to do on purpose in future..

Also on the lineup for QWAK Club was Luigi Marino doing a solo performance For Cymbals, and Rian Treanor and Rai Tateishi doing a collaborative performance with electronics, physical modelling synthesis + flutes. Both performances were amazing and it was an honour to be sandwiched in the middle!

The morning after the gig, Ross + I met with Maria (of badcirculation) quite early and we had a lovely walk around St George Park and saw many adorable animal scenes, and afterwards we all went to see Guy and had a lovely breakfast complemented by some quiz + synth activities. And then we came back to see Nick before leaving, where we had a long chat about various things to do with venues, festivals etc, which was amazing. I realised I’d not really ever been to Bristol in the day time – the last two times I went, I went straight to Dare to Club (sadly now closed down!), both for Make Hardcore Happy Again nights (once as a punter with Maria after we’d played at an Algorave in Cardiff, and once performing downstairs, where I had to crawl to get into the space where I was playing in). It’s a great place with lots of interesting stuff going on and it’s so nice when you go to a new place and meet all these lovely people !!

OK that’s all! I have a couple of other shows coming up soon – one in at the Old Church in Stoke Newington in London on 4th April, and one at Adela Festival in Ljubljana at the end of May which is going to be so good !!! Aside from that I want to spend some more time working on new things this year and working more collaboratively as well – it’s nice to just be me on my laptop but it will be fun to try some new things.