January 2016 – upcoming gigs – Laura Cannell plays Liverpool, Glasgow and Bradford (with In Atoms, Jozef van Wissem, Magpahi and Stephanie Hladowski); in London, and an Ichi show at the Harrison. And Tom Slatter doesn’t play Brighton, yet…

There are a series of concerts coming up featuring East Anglian musician Laura Cannell. Playing a variety of instruments (predominantly straight or overbowed fiddle and double recorders, but also percussion and “other rarified wind instruments”, Laura fuses early and mediaeval music with a mixed ancient-and-modern approach to improvisation and to transcendent musical ceremony, taking fragments or inspirations from earlier sounds and melodies as the basis for exploration, illustration and linkages.

Laura will be playing up and down the country over the next few months at a variety of different events and locations, Each one has different musicians on the bill – Brooklyn-based Dutch lutenist and composer Josef van Wissem, who’s bringing the baroque lute out towards the worlds of experimental rock, folk and film; Liverpudlian tape-loop composer In Atoms whose “blissful and evocative” soundscapes and tones mix heath music and throbbing clubby sub-bass with the industrial and reveal him straddling Anglo-pastoralism and the European electronic grandeur of the Schultzes and Jarres; and two Yorkshire singers, Stephanie Hladowski (whose work stretches from reggae to traditional folk) and Magpahi (a.k.a. Todmorden based multi-instrumentalist Alison Cooper, who assembles a collage of folk song, fairy tale, Elizabethan poetry and dreamworld sonics from a variety of instruments and is inspired by “sepia stories, stray animals and recurring dreams of migration”).

Here’s the gig list, and something from each of Laura’s gigmates (including something quite rare from Magpani via the Was Is Das clubnight and promotions):

• Laura Cannell + In Atoms (Deep Hedonia @ Everyman Bistro, Street Cafe & Theatre Bar, 5-11 Hope Street, Liverpool, L1 9BH, England, Thursday January 21st 2016, 8.00pm) – £7.00 advance – information – tickets
• Jozef van Wissem + Laura Cannell (Celtic Connections Festival @ Platform at The Bridge, 100 Westerhouse Road, Glasgow, G34 9JW, Scotland, Friday 22nd January 2016, 7:30pm) – £12.00 – information – tickets
• Laura Cannell + Magpahi + Stephanie Hladowski (The Delius Arts & Cultural Centre/Artworks Creative Communities, 29 Great Horton Road, Bradford, BD7 1AA, England, Saturday 23rd January 2016, 7:30pm) – £5.00 – information here and here – tickets

Laura has further gigs coming up later in the year, which I’ll also be posting about in due course.

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Born in Nagoya, (but now based in Bristol with his wife and collaborator, alt.folk singer Rachael Dadd) Ichi is paying London another visit with his truckload of invented instruments and mind-snagging riffs, digging a dayglo-lined tunnel between the avant-garde and a children’s playroom.

Ichi (The Harrison, 28 Harrison Street, London, WC1H 8JF, UK, Saturday 23rd January 2016, 8.00pm) – £11.00 – information – tickets

From the Harrison’s blurb:

Ichi takes the notion of a one-man band to new limits, combining his quirky handmade instrument inventions (stilt-bass, kalilaphone, balloon-pipes, hatbox-pedal-drum, tapumpet, percussion-shoes & hat-trick-hat) with steel-drum, ping-pong balls, toys & everyday objects all in the space of one short set. Somehow there’s an ancient, ritualistic feel to his performances – he’s like the misplaced leader of a tribe. To see Ichi live is to witness something so playful and unusual you know that you’re experiencing something entirely new. It`s fun, it`s danceable, it`s exciting…. Also a practicing and exhibiting artist and film-maker, Ichi is usually seen with a cine camera in his hand, or his hands rooting through Bristol skips for materials for his musical and sculptural inventions, or his hands in the earth making human sized interactive earth xylophones as he did at Bristol`s Forage Festival.

And where words fail, there’s always the video to Ichi’s recent single Go Gagambo, “a song about mistaken identity (gagambo is an insect unfortunate enough to be mistaken as a big mosquito, resulting in probable death by angry clapping hands)”.

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I’d been hoping to bring you news of London acoustic steampunk-prog hero Tom Slatter playing Britain’s first actual steampunk bar (the recently opened Yellow Book, which is squirreled away in the Lanes of Brighton and claims to have been founded by time-travelling Victorians). Sadly not. Message just in – “This gig has been postponed. Don’t go there expecting to see me on the 23rd! Do go there if you want to see the venue, which is lovely. I will be playing at the Yellow Book in the near future. Watch this space.”

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More gig news next time, including shows by Of Arrowe Hill and Earl Zinger with the Emanative & Collocutor Duo; plus an appearance by Sealionwoman.

Tags: Alex Knapp, Andrew Cheetham, Andrew Gellert, Birchall/Cheetham Duo, Birmingham (England), Blank Paper, Bradford (England), Brandon Curtis, Brighton (England), Butcher The Bar, Camille Maalawy, Cantor Jason Green, Celtic Connections Festival (event), Cosmicide, Dan Bridgewood Hill, Dave Rowe, dbh, Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, duo music, East Anglia (England), Easter, Glasgow (Scotland), Helena Massip, Hey! Manchester (event), Ichi, In Atoms, Interpol, Irma Vep, Jozef van Wissem, Julian Dawes, Kiran Leonard, Laura Cannell, Legs, Let's Eat Grandma, Lip Talk, listening to women, Liverpool (England), London (England), Louisa Stuber, Mathew Scheiner, Mitra Alice Tham, Mon Khmer, Nagoya (Japan), NASDAQ, New York City (USA), Oberhofer, Oldham (England), piano music, Plank, premieres, Pronto Mama, Redolent, Salford (England), Seatoller, Secret Machines, SKP, Sophie Lockett, SPK, Stephen Dickinson, string quartet music, The Holywell String Quartet, Todmorden (England), Tom Settle, Tom Slatter, trio music, Tropic Of Pisces, Vivienne Bellos, Was Is Das? (event/promoter), Yerba Mansa