The NGP12 Story - Finally it Can Be Told!
In various incarnations (including IPS, Fatal Floor and Cementimental,) Chi, Tony, Keith and myself (Tim) have participated in several No Ground Processes events. And so it came to pass that Myk, Dan and possibly other mysterious figures saw fit to bestow upon us a whole event! For various reasons this was a relatively hastily organised affair, and was to take place not in the ususal venue of TJs, Newport, but at Grasroots, Cardiff.
Having prepared our apparatus and knocked out not enough last minute publicity, we turned up on the alotted day, 13/12/2000.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Our view of the audience.
Our unwitting support act. They were just beginning their DJing/MCing practice session when we arrived, and were told by the guy in charge to cease and let us set up. They were understandably not too pleased, but after some compromise and aggro, all was well. They were amused and interested by all the bizzare apparatus we were setting up, but left before the performance began.
Tony's rendering of MC Cheef Keef in action. Thanks to the wonders of cardboard and CDR, we were able to amuse ourselves and various lingering Grassroots people with an uncannily realistic simulation of Keith in full flow. This whiled away the time spent setting up and waiting for our hypothetical audience to arrive.
The closest we got to an audience were various people who were there anyway, didn't know who we were or what we were doing, and left before we quite did anything. Above, a camera-shy specimen of our captive audience.
As the advertised starting time loomed ever closer, we had strewn our equipment liberally around the room, and were beginning to detect a distinct lack of NGPeople turning up. We might well have perished during that long wait had Myk and Tony not gone foraging for food.
Around this time, or possibly some other time, Chris Eynon arrived with his lovely old synthesiser thingy
Eventually we resigned ourselves to the fact that no-one could be bothered to come to experience our lovely films and noises, so we decided to just get on with it. There seemed little point now in bothering with performing seperately in any organised fashion, so we collectively launched into a collaborative, improvised noisemaking session which lasted approximately half an hour.
I demonstrate circuit-bending to Chris while Tony vocalises slightly. Chi vocalised also at some stage. Neither were very audible.
Chris synthesises while Tony plays toy guitar
Some of Cementimental's highly sophisticated apparatus requires the operator to grow one or more additional arms for maximum effect.
What you might have seen if you had bothered to turn up. The back of some people's heads. The fact that the front of my head is visible here demonstrates this picture's inauthenticity. Note also the presence of Chi (AKA DJ Chopstix), who is sadly underrepresented in these images, but was very much present during the actual event.
More of the rock & roll visual spectacle you missed! Well, we had a smoke machine, what more do you want!? I'm sure if there had been some people there to hear us, some trees would have fallen, (?) , but as it was we just hung around chatting and playing with our noize toyz. You wouldn't know from the noise produced though. It sounds quite satisfyingly like an actual event, although perhaps this is largely due to the ample amounts of reverb which was avaliable to us on the nice Grassroots amp! If you listen to the recording, you can just barely hear us talking about future events (ever the optimists!) and the like.
The kitchen posse, who were none to impressed by our cacophany, and fought back with 'Red Dragon FM'. But we just turned up the amp; there was no way they could defeat us with such light weapons. Anyway, it kind of added to the ambience at the time, and was utterly inaudible on the recording, so there!
Well, that's all there is to see for now. We hope you have had a glipse of the amazing one of noise supergroup which you missed and will be sure to attend future NGP events!