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July 2018 – upcoming rock gigs – A Sudden Burst of Colour, a-tota-so and Theo tear up The Facemelter (6th July); Heldon and Hirvikolari at Café Oto (14th July)

A quick boost for the heavy stuff at the Facemelter this week, and for an avant-rock return at Café Oto mid-month….

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“Hailing from Motherwell, Scotland, A Sudden Burst Of Colour captures fans of electronic, ambient, dance and rock music with their soundscapes and encapsulating songwriting. Their sound is bright, shimmering and generally uplifting. The instrumental quartet have four globally acclaimed EP releases under their belt, which is evidenced by features from ‘BBC Introducing’, ‘The Scotsman’, ‘Earmilk’ (USA), ‘Arctic Drones’ (Turkey), ‘Stereofox’ (Germany) and many more, so this is a good time to catch them before they break into the wider world. Their recent single ‘I Am The Storm’ was premiered on Daniel P. Carter’s BBC Radio 1 Rock Show and they’re currently in pre-production for their forthcoming album, which is due for release at the end of the year.”

Replacing Bristolian mathrockers Hoggs Bison (who, like Barringtone recently, have come down with a bad case of broken wrist) are “noisy math/grunge band a-tota-so (formed by members of Alright the Captain and Cheap Jazz), who we’ve been dying to put on for ages! In their short one-and-a-half-year existence, they’ve already toured the UK and Europe, shared the stage with Tera Melos, Tangled Hair, Alpha Male Tea Party, Chiyoda Ku, Memory of Elephants, VASA and many more, and played at ArcTanGent and StrangeForms Festival. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the band recently recorded their debut album at Nice Weather For Airstrikes and Snug Recording Co. and are set to release it in September 2018.

“To open, there’s a rare appearance from soloist Theo (described as “an extraordinary maelstrom of soundscapes, loops, beats and power” by ‘Louder Than War), who creates layers of tight guitar melodies and riffs by looping them over and over again, before sitting down at his drum kit and smashing out some fantastic rhythms to them. The range of dynamics and changes he achieves, as well as his ability to make the entire piece a coherent tune from start to finish, is astonishing. We’ve seen him perform around the country, including at ArcTanGent and at our late night Facemelter with Poly-Math and EVILLOOKINGBIRD, so we’re glad to see him make a return.”

Chaos Theory Music Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: A Sudden Burst of Colour + a-tota-so + Theo
The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 6th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

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The upcoming Heldon and Hirvikolari gig at Café Oto appears to be happily selling itself without my input, partially thanks to Heldon mainstay Richard Pinhas‘ reputation as “the French Robert Fripp”. If that’s a fair comparison (and Richard has readily acknowledged that “Fripp has always been my Hendrix”), he might not have King Crimson’s ability to fill larger theatres but he does seem to have a far less compromised reputation in avant-garde hubs like Oto – for one thing, you wouldn’t generally find Robert Fripp going head-to-head with members of The Boredoms. A former junior philosophy professor, he jumped the academic ship in 1974, inspired by his own comparisons between philosophers and rock stars (and by his own taste for science fiction) to form an electronic rock band with a trans-sonic bent. This was Heldon, one of the very first French bands to use synthesizers, and one which would subsequently fall under the spell of King Crimson, Fripp and Brian Eno and develop their own droning improvisatory rock forms.

While the band originally only lasted for the course of the 1970s, Heldon’s albums are currently being reissued by Bureau B: this year, an archive live album, ‘Live in Metz 77’, was released by Bam Balaam. All of which has prompted a return to live action by Richard under the Heldon name. This is their first London concert for literally decades: expect to see an excited anticipatory audience of prog/avant-rock fans of all ages.

Hirvikolari – modular synthesist Mike Bourne and processed-trumpet guy Sam Barton – are more often found being two-fifths of Teeth Of The Sea Last time round, I described them as follows: “while Teeth Of The Sea tend to play great stomping horror-slabs of musical architecture (a flying saucer spitting out rows and rows of heavily-armed tower blocks) Hirvikolari prefer to take the slow path and evolve themselves a great bolus of stewed electronic burble and resonating brass tracks. Ennio Morricone’s been cited as a comparison, as has the long tradition of counter-culture festival techno: both comparisons have some grounding.”

There’s about three handfuls-worth of tickets left: if you want to pluck them from the eager grip of Baba Yaga’s Hut, I’m sure they’d be all too willing to let you have your chance.

Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Heldon + Hirvikolari
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Saturday 14th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here

Tags: A Sudden Burst Of Colour, a-tota-so, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Chaos Theory (event/promoter), Heldon, Hirvikolari, London (England), Mike Bourne, Richard Pinhas, Sam Barton, Teeth Of The Sea, The Facemelter (event), Theo

June 2018 – upcoming experimental gigs – Darkroom in Letchworth (24th June) and at Ambience Chasers in London with Kieran Mahon (26th June)

17 Jun

Darkroom gigs have perhaps become a little rarer since bass clarinettist/modular synth master Andrew Ostler dismantled their shared Hertfordshire base by moving wholesale to Edinburgh (where he’s currently and happily troubling Auld Reekie’s experimental scene on his own).

That said, geography’s really the only working challenge that Darkroom currently face. The electronica duo are a tight, happy and assured unit who, for over twenty years, have continued a well-paced, well-knit career entirely under their own control; happy to lurk a hair’s breadth under the radar while wedding Os’ fluttering flexing rhythms, synth drones, thoughtful reed interjections and dancing timbral adjustments to Michael Bearpark’s powerfully brooding guitar (a sound and approach which blends a thorny, unsettled widescreen texturalism to the muscular, compelled melodic drive of a Neil Young, a David Torn or a David Gilmour). The results have been labelled as “a crossing point between avant-free jazz improvisation and Fripp/Eno-style ambient looping”, compared to Photek, Paul Schutze, Michael Brooks and supernovae, and described as “by turns beautiful and beautifully ugly… a very human music despite the inevitable technology that produces it.”

The first of this month’s two gigs is back in their previous Letchworth home, in the Arts-and-Crafts-Movement embrace of the town’s reknowned Cloisters venue, as part of the Letchworth Festival. They’ll be part of a Cloisters afternoon of “amazing pieces of art work, live performances and (information) about the alternative history of Letchworth”. This is more interesting and less parochial than it sounds, given the town’s influential status as the world’s first self-sufficient garden city design as well as its links with Theosophy and British astronomy and its hordes of sinister black squirrels. There’s no info on who else is playing or exhibiting, nor what times Darkroom are scheduled to have sets in place, so either watch the webpages or just turn up in the early afternoon and let the Letchworth experience wash over you.

Darkroom will also be playing in London a couple of nights later, when they perform at Sonic Cathedral‘s Ambience Chaser electronic night on a bill with minimalist drone-loop-echo man Kieran Mahon. Keiron’s music (informed by hallucination, “acid-drenched dronescapes” and “time and space being ripped apart”) sometimes sounds like the stern ghost of a Highland bagpipe possessing a power sander and then imposing its will on a Tangerine Dream session. For all of the noisy loomings, drapes and abrasions, there’s a sturdy romantic grandeur to his textures and to his constructions: listening to him is never a chore. In addition there’ll be DJ sets from an actual Tangerine Dream-er (Ulrich Schnauss) and from Sonic Cathedral label head Nathaniel Cramp.

Dates:

Darkroom @ Letchworth Festival ‘Art, Music & Performance’ @ The Cloisters, Barrington Road, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, SG6 3TH, England, Sunday 24th June 2018 2.00pm onwards – free entry – information here
Darkroom + Kieran Mahon @ Ambience Chasers #16 – The Social, 5 Little Portland Street, Fitzrovia, London, W1W 7JD, England, Tuesday 26th June 2018, 7:00pm – free entry – information here and here

Tags: Ambience Chasers (event), Andrew Ostler (Os), Darkroom, Kieran Mahon, Letchworth Festival (event), Michael Bearpark, Nathaniel Cramp, Tangerine Dream, The Cloisters (venue) - Letchworth, The Social (venue) - Fitzrovia - London, Ulrich Schnauss

June 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Run Logan Run, Il Santo Bevitore and Minus Pilots at Champion Version’s Edition 3 (21st June); Mother Disorder, Laurel Smith-Pardue, Lucia Naidu, Blanc Sceol with Richard Wilson plus sound installations and homemade instrumentation at Hackoustic (23rd June)

15 Jun

Two imminent IKLECTIK shows…

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Champion Version-hosted three-in-one experimental music gig Edition returns to London on 21st June, hosting the usual trio of acts.

Run Logan Run are Andrew Neil Hayes (saxophones and effects pedals) and Dan Johnson (drum kit and percussion): inspired by spiritual jazz and heavy experimental improv, they’re tagged as “a head-on collision of pounding tribal drums and screaming guttural saxophone” and “architects of intense contrast.” They popped up in here a couple of years ago supporting Iyabe in Bristol, when I described them as “navigat(ing) by the brassy light of Colin Stetson (to whom they’ve played support), Pharoah Sanders, Can, Sons of Kemet and Lightning Bolt”, and have made a name and an underground murmur for themselves as a unit with remarkable powers of synchronisation and improvisation, a strong compositional sense, and a mastery of circular breathing and sound processing.

Sardinian drummer and percussionist Nicola Serra works under the name of IlSantoBevitore and investigates “ethnomusicological research on ethnic electronics.” Drawing on ancient shamanic ritual and its modern-day equivalents in dance and avant-garde electronic cultures, his music merges deep grating power-electronic sound-buzzes and drones with vivacious, purposeful Latin rhythms – a kind of industrial trance-samba aiming to “blur the distance between practitioner and listener”.

Bassist Adam Barringer and percussionist Matt Pittori, a.k.a. Minus Pilots, last featured in this blog while playing at the More News From Nowhere all-dayer in March Gentle souls, their lustrous and open-ended post-rock approach is filled with shuffling, sliding dream rhythms and murmuring tidal-surface guitar echo as well as sheen-clouds of softly visionary noise. While jazz, drone and psychedelia have all had their part to play in Minus Pilot music, more recent work has also incorporated string parts and a connection to the holy minimalist feel of certain contemporary classical pieces.

As with all Edition events, an exclusive to-the-event 7″ single in a limited edition of five, featuring music by the performing artists, will be given away via random draw as part of the evening.

Champion Version presents:
Edition 3: Run Logan Run + Il Santo Bevitore + Minus Pilots
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 21st June 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

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I’ve not come across the regular Hackoustic evening before, which surprises me: its mixture of technology and body politics raises the kind of questions which interest me. It’s billed as “a night of hacked sound – experimental performances, instruments and installations featuring some of the most exciting makers, musicians and artists in London (with an) incredibly diverse array of artists performing and talking about their work, as well as some wonderful installations.”

Future-minded researcher, violinist and instrument builder Laurel Smith-Pardue (who made an appearance at IKLECTIK’s Augmented Instruments Lab last month) will be performing a set on augmented violin “using custom sensor arrangements to detect natural playing techniques and highlight musical and technical expression” while composer /electronics hobbyist/musical repurposer Lucia Naidu will be digging into her box of oddments and projects to play musical motors, computer fans, assorted sparking high voltage devices, and her work-in-progress as she builds towards a current ambition of creating a musical instrument based around neon oscillators.

“Psychosonographic” investigators and musicians Blanc Sceol (Hannah White & Stephen Shiell) “map spaces with sound” and improvise “performances of their experience of a place, using found objects and beautiful self-created acoustic instruments.”) For this Hackoustic evening, they’ll work as a improvising trio with sculptor/musician Richard Wilson, former founder member of ’80s performance ensemble Bow Gamelan (among Blanc Sceol’s spiritual precursors, thanks to their own yen for inventing and constructing their own instruments for use in their own sound/light/performance events).

There’ll be a talk by artist/coder Tim Murray-Browne about his own immersive/interactive work, which “often responds to the movement of the body and draws on embodied experience — preverbal sensations of place, significance and understanding (- and) looks for new contexts for human connection and creativity, places that challenge our assumptions of who we are and what we do.” Also on display will be ‘SoundObject’ by Random International collective member Shobhan Shah (a communication designer who also creates artworks) which “uses cameras, hands and colours for making different sounds”.

Probably the most challenging and unsettling performance (if you’re prepared to enter its world) is likely to be offered by genderfluid performer/enactor Laura/Frank Bowman – a.k.a. Mother Disorder – who creates live gestural compositions via “contact microphones incorporated onto the body, to merge performance art and improvised dark and ethereal electronic music”, often using crystals as a visual metaphor. Featuring themes and reflections on Laura/Frank’s own experiences of transsexuality, therapy and mental health disorders (and on the pressures to conform which they’ve undergone during the process), the Disorder set looks set to be ambiguous, painful and angry but with its own stubborn beauty. Current project ‘Crystalline’ (the most likely to be performed) involves attaching mics at “points of previous self harm” and acting out a process of rage, acceptance and re-formation; in the parallel (and dormant) project ‘Disoria’, Laura/Frank presents themselves as a crystalline avatar “drawing comparisons between the formation of crystals in the earth and the development of a mental disorder.”. Both projects form part of a literal body of work that aims to be “alien yet organic, pointed yet static, a subject of beauty and of horror… tying together the ephemeral and the visceral.”

In addition, instrument maker Tom Fox of Vulpestruments will be running a small pop-up workshop (allowing attendees to create something to take home with them and broaden the pool) and there’ll be a DJ set from #BarrysLounge.

Hackoustic presents:
Hackoustic: Tim Murray-Browne + Mother Disorder + Laurel Smith-Pardue + Blanc Sceol & Richard Wilson + Shobhan Shah + Lucia Naidu + Tom Fox workshop + DJ #BarrysLounge
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 23rd June 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

Tags: #BarrysLounge (DJ), Blanc Sceol, Bow Gamelan, Champion Version (record label), Hackoustic (event), Hannah White, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), IlSantoBevitore, Laurel Smith-Pardue, Lucia Naidu, Minus Pilots, Mother Disorder (Laura/Frank Bowman), Richard Wilson (sculptor/musician), Run Logan Run, Shobhan Shah, Stephen Shiell, Tim Murray-Browne, Tom Fox, Vulpestruments

June 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Monkey Puzzle Trio and V Ä L V Ē (10th June); Laura Cannell’s ‘Modern Ritual’, with Charles Hayward, Hoofus, Jennifer Lucy Allan and Luke Turner (16th June); Ashley Paul & Tom James Scott, Glowering Figs and Ben Pritchard (22nd June)

4 Jun

Despite their increasing whirl of gigs over the past year, it’s difficult to find performance video of V Ä L V Ē besides these gnomic little fragments: glimpses of feet and harps, pedals and synths, shuffles and patch wires. They’ve been rapidly evolving far beyond their beginnings as Chlöe Herington’s vehicle for musical jokes, chance theory and post-Zappa woodwind patchworks and her experiments with samples and homemade instruments. Now, they’re a live, surprisingly accessible avant-everything trio with Elen Evans and Emma Sullivan – reeds and microsynth, melodica, harpstrings and bass, RIO/Raincoats-style vocals that inhabit both the forthright and the naïve – and they’re getting pieces in ‘The Quietus’ about how they’re expanding on synaesthesia and spacework and the disjunction of time, and mining the weird yet archetypal templates of Chlöe’s recurring dreams.

While we’re waiting for more evidence to emerge, here are a couple of pieces which represent a couple of V Ä L V Ē’s varied polarities – the avant-rock all-in wrestle match of Rhythm Strip (based on an EEG reading from Chlöe’s mum) and the warming songwork of the more recent Lights – plus one of those distracted fly-on-the wall videos (this time, of Chlöe negotiating a keyboard, pretty much literally).

V Ä L V Ē’s next show (just over a week before Chlöe pops up again with the Lindsay Cooper Songbook) is this coming Sunday, supporting the Monkey Puzzle Trio – which unites perpetually/perversely-journeying art-rock and improv drummer Charles Hayward, Pinski Zoo bassist Nick Doyne-Ditmas and longstanding sound-and-place voice artist Viv Corringham. It’s a post-jazz music of deformed rounds, ranging chatter and a kind of reimagined dub focus, via Charles’ assured yet regularly broken-up and disrupted drum cycles, Viv’s cavernous range of vocal effects (stippled by loop pedal and flexible larynx, augmented by mini-disc abuse) and Nick’s bass, which seems to be travelling at two-thirds of the thinking speed of the voice and drums but always knows where to settle and lean on the moving beat.

V Ä L V Ē and Charles Hayward present:
Monkey Puzzle Trio + V Ä L V Ē
Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Sunday 10th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here

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Charles Hayward shows up again just under a week later when he guests at Laura Cannell’s ‘Modern Ritual’ show at LSO St Lukes, performing a self-explanatory experimental piece called ‘30 Minute Snare Drum Roll’, an “improvisational piece that sees him develop a rudimental drum technique into something more complex, subtlety changing density, pressure and volume before our ears.” There are precedents for this kind of thing – people like Max Roach or Art Blakey keeping an audience enthralled by a quarter of an hour of carefully modulated hi-hat – but any excuse to see Charles thinking hard behind a drum kit is a good one.

In many respects, this is a revisitation of the ‘Memory Mapping’ show which Laura brought to Daylight Music in November 2016. More to the point, it also revives an event at Cafe Oto last March, with repeat appearances for Charles’ drum roll, for ‘Wire’/Resonance FM/Arc Light Editions mainstay Jennifer Lucy Allan and for Suffolk-based “edgelands” musician Andre “Hoofus” Bosman.

Hoofus’ experiments in FM overlaps, raw-formed percussion and drifting oscillators “(explore) the uncanny beauty of the intangible, the occult and the arcane seeping through into the post-industrial 21st century world of reason and corporate compliance” resulting in “music of eerie wonder, where oscillating melodic loops meld with distorted rhythms.” In contrast, Jennifer presents her combined talk and performance ‘Foulis’s Daughter: Social and Cultural History of the Foghorn in 30 Interrupted Acts’ accompanied by “the ghost of a long de-activated foghorn which is on a fifteen-second loop”: Jennifer’s history is narrated during the gaps between blasts, tracing “a rhythmic history of the foghorn at the edges of the Atlantic: along the fog-bound Labrador Coast; at a bend on the Firth of Clyde; on the tip of The Lizard and from the cliffs at the South Foreland in Kent.”

In keeping with this drift into New Weird Britain ambience, writer, filmmaker and ‘Quietus’ co-founder Luke Turner explores his own world of liminals with a talk on “urban forests, family, death and sexuality”. This is based around his forthcoming “spiritual memoir” ‘Out Of The Woods’ – a study of Luke’s own coming-to-terms with his bisexual identity and his past experiences with sexual abuse and a religious upbringing, alongside his investigations of “memory and experience in the context of landscape and the natural world”. It’s a journey framed by the trees and the history of Epping Forest, which for Luke seems to have become representative of an ur-forest which allows for the expression of “a wilder, truer, more spiritual self” (and brings those wood-woses, drones and leafery which have threaded through ‘The Quietus’ into fuller perspective). Laura, meanwhile, keeps up her own traditions of reinvention, refurbishment and recontextualising on double recorder and bow-threaded violin: generating eerie, often-violent sonic landscapes of folk melodies and sharp-minded post-classical noise, each calibrated to the particular place where it’s being performed.

The evening will be topped off by a large group collaboration involving all of the named performers plus additional guests.

Laura Cannell: ‘Modern Ritual’
LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England
Saturday 16th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

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More assorted improvisations and explorations come on the 22nd, when Ashley Paul and Tom James Scott team up as a duo at The Old Dentist in Homerton. Both have a fair amount in common, as multi-instrumentalists heading up small exploratory record labels (Ashley with Wagtail, Tom with Skire). Equally, there’s enough distinction between them to make for some interesting friendly frictions as Ashley’s American background, reeds leanings and free-form tastes interact with Tom’s Cumbrian background and the process that’s taken him from classical guitarist to experimental minimalist.

In support are improvising trio Glowering Figs, made up of venerable Ya Basta! free jazzers Ivor Kallin and Dave Fowler (on electric upright bass/vocals and drums, respectively), plus Ivor’s London Improvisers Orchestra comrade and ex-Astrakan member Jerry Wigens on guitar. Come for bilious, awkward avant-power-rock noodlings topped with Ivor’s authoritative stream-of-conscious rantings: here’s an example…

Opening the show is Ben Pritchard – not to be confused with the former Fall guitarist, he’s a London-based artist, songwriter, experimental musician and Ashley Paul bandmember who writes disintegrating-shack instrumentals for prepared acoustic guitar and percussion – strangely compelling pings, scrapes, rattles and string noise with an emotive visual quality as well as a knack for summoning in illusions. You can somehow hear impressions of ghost fiddles, a whittler’s workshop, or vocal chords tweaked by breeze gusts. When he wanders into song, it’s along the frail, fluttering-shirt lines of end-of-the-road Talk Talk, or the sparsest of Robert Wyatt: spontaneous-sounding experimental folk sketches with an undertone of parched, amnesiac blues.

Muckle Mouth presents
Ashley Paul & Tom James Scott + Glowering Figs + Ben Pritchard
The Old Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Friday 22nd June 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

Tags: Ashley Paul, Ben Pritchard, Charles Hayward, Chloe Herington, Dave Fowler, Elen Evans, Emma Sullivan, Glowering Figs, Hoofus, Ivor Kallin, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Jerry Wigens, Laura Cannell, LSO St Luke's (venue) - St Luke's - London, Luke Turner, Nick Doyne-Ditmas, Pinski Zoo, Servant Jazz Quarters (promoters), The Quietus (publication/event/label), Tom James Scott, V A L V E, Viv Corringham, Ya Basta!

June 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Colliding Lines’ ‘Reanimation: Phantasmagoria’ film soundtracking night with Georges Kaplan Presents…, Hypnotique, Alexander Carson and Far Rainbow (6th June)

2 Jun

Despite their unfortunate no-show last month, cineastes and sonicnambulistic encouragers Colliding Lines bounce back with another evening of films and music, this time pairing the Edwardian fantasias of early French cinema with a variety of new accompaniments including Theremin-ery, object-scrabble, dry downtempo post-classical songcraft, Rhodes-and-sax jazz and screebling noise.

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Colliding Lines present:
‘Reanimation: Phantasmagoria’ – featuring Georges Kaplan Presents… + Hypnotique + Alexander Carson + Far Rainbow
New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Wednesday 6th June 2018, 8.30pm – information here and here

“This month we explore the phantasmagoria of 1900’s sci-fi and fantasy films – the magic of hand-tinted films, retro futurism and early special effects, scored live by four different artists.

Films:

• ‘Voyage de la Luna’ (‘Trip to the Moon’), 1902.
• ‘Le Royaume des Fées’ (‘The Kingdom of the Fairies’), 1903.
• ‘L’Album Merveilleux’ (‘Wonderful Album’), 1905.
• ‘Les Tulipes’ (‘The Tulips’), 1907.
• ‘La Grenouille’ (‘The Frog’), 1908
• ‘Le Spectre Rouge’ (‘The Red Spectre’), 1907.

“The programme features the work of film pioneers and stage magicians Georges Méliès and Segundo de Chomón, whose innovations in narrative and visual filmmaking are considered among some of the most influential in film history.

“We are excited to introduce the following soundtrack artists:

“Georges Kaplan Presents… are a musical duo hailing from London’s gnarled and twisting streets, who in all things take their cue from their leader Georges Kaplan. A man of infinite mystery, very little is known about Georges’ true identity save for his love of a hot tempo and a predilection for strong bourbon. Forever on the run, with only his wits to keep him alive he always knows how to stay ahead of the game. A hustler? A master manipulator? A mere shadow? No one can say, although those who claim to know him best simply marvel at his impeccable taste and incalculable talent in outwitting any would-be detractors.

“Hypnotique is a thereministe, electronic musician and auteur based in London whose lyrical subjects range from the apocalypse, post-feminism, erotic narrative and allotments. She’s performed solo shows at Edinburgh Fringe, worked with Gong and The Heliocentrics, toured the Amazon and annoyed Simon Cowell. For this performance she collaborates with electronics and experimental legend Cos Chapman, founder of the Rude Mechanicals. His recent work has included a performance at Berlin Musitecfest and live sound design for dance-theatre in Taipei.

“Alexander Carson is a neoclassical downtempo composer and songwriter based in London. Carson has previously spent the better part of seven years as the lead singer, and songwriter for genre-fluid quintet Wooden Arms. His debut single ‘Lovers’ was released on the 4th of May via Round Table Records.

“Far Rainbow were formed in London in 2014 by Bobby Barry and Emily Barnett, two old friends from Brighton. Improvising using drums, electronics, and whatever random household objects they can extract a noise from, Far Rainbow approach their arsenal of intonarumori as if they were alien artefacts or ritual paraphernalia, operating according to recursive logics only partly comprehensible.”

Here are videoclip versions of the films being shown, with a variety of tintings and existing soundtracks (from classical to noise-rock and irritating French voiceovers…)

Tags: Alexander Carson, Bobby Barry, Colliding Lines (event), Cos Chapman, Emily Barnett, Far Rainbow, Georges Kaplan Presents..., Georges Méliès (filmmaker), Hypnotique, New River Studios (promoter/venue), Segundo de Chomón (filmmaker), Wooden Arms

May/June 2018 – upcoming London experimental music gigs – Shatner’s Bassoon and Man From Uranus at Stour Space (26th May), Author & Punisher, Trepaneringsritualen, Vera Bremerton at Electrowerkz (28th May); Stevie Richards’ Buchla workshop (2nd June)

15 May

Shatner’s Bassoon + Man From Uranus
Stour Space, 7 Roach Road, Old Ford, London, E3 2PA, England
Saturday 26th May 2018, 8.00pm – information

Leeds jazz-punk quintet Shatner’s Bassoon are returning to London a couple of weeks later to play a gig at reclaimed Lea-side venue Stour Space.

A band who’ll happily admit to being “steeped in malfunctioning improvisation, passive-aggressive minimalism, surreal avant-punk and free jazz trances”, they’re touting their first new album for three years. ‘Disco Erosion’ features “intricate yet often evasive song structures, angular rhythms and anxiety inducing psychedelia. The distinct featured instrumentation includes circuit bent delay pedals for keyboard, a myriad of off-kilter sax, a slice of Theremin, clarinet, cowbell and a pinch of Transylvanian organ. The result is a glitchy and deranged carnival of paranoia, which blends influences from the likes of Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa, Cardiacs, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Man From Uranus and Fred Frith.”

Speaking of Man From Uranus, he’s playing the support slot. An “experimental library musician” and rogue psychedelic improviser, he’s spent fifteen years on the fringe rampaging on analogue synths, theremin and assorted devices to create music reminiscent of fantastical backroom mind-voyages or antique afternoons of strange kid’s telly.

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A couple of days later, there’s “an evening of heavy electronics, innovative drone, ritual ambient doom and industrial music” courtesy of Chaos Theory in one of their more synthetic, swampy and cthonic moods.

Author & Punisher is “the solo project of Tristan Shone (hailed by ‘Noisey/VICE’ as a “staggering genius in (his) ability to transform the auditory pollution of industry into music”. A mechanical engineer who wandered from native Boston to California to pursue his artistic interests, he ended up using his scientific skills to build custom musical instruments, which give added depth to the term “industrial”. The mechanical processes that give life to the music aim to reproduce the rhythms of industrial machinery and its relationship to their human operators; a merging of the flesh and the steel.”

In support, growl-and-hiss “solo visionary” Trepaneringsritualen will be delving into “themes of religion, magick and the occult realms of consciousness, taking musical cues from the old school of ritual ambient and death industrial. Rhythmic and seething at times, oozing forward with a creeping sense of desolation, Trepaneringsritualen conjures forth bleak but mesmerising visions of the end-times.”

Opening the show is Berlin-and-London resistance siren Vera Bremerton, “a visionary vocalist, producer and composer, who weaves dark tales of the female experience under religion, the patriarchy and general cultural hatred, using superhuman screams, industrial beats and gritty lyrics… A harrowing, enlightening and extreme experience.” Her work crosses a gamut between dark, driving, angry protest-pop nuggets and extended swathe-y textural clouds of hanging noise and vocal lacerations – see below.

Broken beats/London bass act With Towards Collapse add to the overall stew with DJ sets throughout the evening.

Chaos Theory Music Promotions presents:
Author & Punisher + Trepaneringsritualen + Vera Bremerton + Towards Collapse DJs
Electrowerkz @ Islington Metal Works, 7 Torrens Street, Islington, London, EC1V 1NQ, England
Monday 28th May 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

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Meanwhile, if you’d like to dive deeper into electronic technology – or just hone or diversify the skills you already have, Stevie Richards (a.k.a Cleaninglady is hosting a noontime open workshop at IKLECTIK in early June, based around a legendary West Coast “suitcase synth” – the Buchla Music Easel. Dating back to 1973 (and, in recent years, reincarnated as software emulations by Arturia) the Easel is part of a family of electronic instruments created by Don Buchla, who avoided the word “synthesizer” since he believed that it implied a cloning of existing instrumental sounds. Instead (in parallel with the more conventional creations of Moog, Korg and others) he evolved a line of devices dedicated to creating new sounds; sometimes – but not always – avoiding the use of a standard tempered-scale keyboard, and incorporating a much more complex method of tone generation than those of his rivals. This has led to his creations being the instrument of choice for certain electronic musicians who demand a deeper, more detailed control of tone and timbre as well as the different thinking patterns which the instruments encourage.

While the workshop will be performed on, and led from, the Buchla Music Easel, apparently everything being taught and communicated is “applicable to all hardware in the modular synthesis world, and will hopefully help give you confidence and a deeper understanding of your instrument and it’s application in recording and live performance contexts.” Here’s a Loopop guide to the Easel, plus a video of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith working her own Easel. I’ve also added a recording of Stevie running a modular synth set in New York four years ago.

Modular Synthesis Workshop using Buchla Music Easel
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 2nd June 2018, 11.00am – information here, here and here

Tags: Author & Punisher, Buchla electronic musical instrument, Chaos Theory (event/promoter), Cleaninglady (Stevie Richards), Electrowerkz (event), IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, listening to women, Man From Uranus, Shatner's Bassoon, Towards Collapse, Trepaneringsritualen, Vera Bremerton, women of heart and mind

May 2018 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Hen Ogledd’s freak-folk roar plus performances of Conlon Nancarrow, Alice Jeffries and original work by Naomi Sato, Lore Lixenberg and Serge Vuille at Kammer Klang (1st May); Tre Voci & Kit Downes EP launch (15th May)

21 Apr

Kammer Klang presents:
Hen Ogledd + Lore Lixenberg + Naomi Sato + Serge Vuille
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 1st May 2018, 7,30pm – information here, here and here

Headlining this coming month’s Kammer Klang is the shifting noise-folk improv collective Hen Ogledd: named after the ancient Celtic kingdoms of northern Britain and centring on improvising harpist Rhodri Davies and the distorted bass and acoustic guitar of Richard Dawson (once described as “a one-man Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band“).

Richard and Rhodri initially used the name for a 2013 duo album before expanding it to a larger project. Writer-musician Dawn Bothwell (a sometime video-art-curator who also plays “altered electronic torch songs” as Pentecostal Party and drum machine experiments as half of Blep) joined as an equal partner in 2016, her vocals and electronic instrumentation (synths, loops, delay pedals, telephone) simultaneously pulling the project deeper into freak-noise and adding forthright song structures. On this occasion, Rhodri, Richard and Dawn will be accompanied by a fourth member – frequent Dawson collaborator Sally Pilkington – on keyboard, synth and voice; further thickening a startling brew of sound which seems to excavate, parasitize and transform ancient folk music with a roaring dirty-electric experimentalism.

The rest of the bill is solo sets of various kinds.

Outstanding avant-garde mezzo-soprano Lore Lixenberg will be flying in from her Berlin base to perform her own multi-tracked vocal version of Conlon Nancarrow‘s ‘Study for Player Piano No. 31’ (one voice live, the rest on tape). Nancarrow specialised in piano pieces with a forest of ecstatic multiple parts: impossible for one human to generate on a single standard piano with only ten fingers, but more readily performable via the automatic pedal-pumped player piano (whose system of playing programmed music from punched paper rolls like a computer or music box proved prime for hijacking).

Lore’s apparent aim is to demechanise the music – respecting its original method but bringing it closer to human performance. Though she’s jokingly dubbed this “Nankaraoke”, in a recent interview with NMC Records she also revealed “the idea is to keep the consistency of timbre of the player piano but with the liveness that Nancarrow couldn’t find in his lifetime. I was talking to David Alberman about the first time Nancarrow heard his music played in ensemble; apparently he nearly cried, having been told his whole life that his music was unplayable…”

Saxophonist and reedist Naomi Sato (of Duo X Project, Karooshi Vlinder Vangers and assorted orchestras) will be performing an unspecified solo set on shō (the Japanese 17-pipe bamboo mouth organ). To complete the evening, the Fresh Klang event of new and rare music will be performed by percussionist Serge Vuille – premiering a new work by emerging young British composer Alice Jeffreys, whose music “explor(es) emergent temporal paradoxes in listening”.

* * * * * * * *

I always seem to be doubling up news of Kammer Klang and Nonclassical events, and this time’s no exception. In mid-May, Nonclassical are putting on another Tre Voci gig as the cello ensemble launch their new ‘Auro’ EP with regular collaborator, jazz pianist and organist Kit Downes. (This follows up their previous shared concert) back in February.)

A quick burst of press release for the unfamiliar:

“Formed in 2012, Tre Voci is comprised of Norwegian cellist Torun Sæter Stavseng and British cellists/composers Gregor Riddell and Colin Alexander. Their repertoire ranges from medieval and renaissance vocal music to new commissions and their own compositions. The trio is also focused on structured improvisation, performing with live processed electronics as well as explorations of Scandinavian folk music.

“Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award winning, Mercury Music Award nominated, solo recording artist for ECM Records. He has toured the world with artists such as Squarepusher, Thomas Strønen, Aidan O’Rourke and Django Bates and written commissions for Cheltenham Music Festival, London Contemporary Orchestra, Stavanger Konserthus, Cologne Philharmonie, BBC Radio 3 and the Wellcome Trust.”

As is usual with Tre Voci concerts, there will be a mixture of site-specific improvisations plus written pieces, including original works by all performers. Presumably the setlist includes Kit’s Tre Voci ‘Auro’ commission ‘The Cult of John Frum’ plus the fifteenth century Josquin des Prez and Johannes Ockeghem pieces which also appear on the EP.

Nonclassical presents:
Tre Voci & Kit Downes
The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England
Tuesday 15th May 2018, 8:00pm – information here, here and here

Tags: Alice Jeffreys, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Colin Alexander, Conlon Nancarrow, Dawn Bothwell, Gregor Riddell, Hen Ogledd, Kammer Klang (event), Kit Downes, London (England), Lore Lixenberg, music for cello, music for shō, Naomi Sato, Nonclassical (event/promoter/record label), quartet music, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson, Sally Pilkington (Pentecostal Party), Serge Vuille, The Old Church (venue) - Stoke Newington - London, Torun Saeter Stavseng, Tre Voci, trio music

April 2018 – upcoming London experimental/electronic/hip hop gigs – Zonal (Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin) with Moor Mother (26th April)

7 Apr

Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Zonal with Moor Mother
Corsica Studios, 4-5 Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB, England
Thursday 26th April 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

Back in 2003 – wracked from crises of confidence and mental stability, and apparently “sick of playing to the same audience every night… white dudes dressed in black” – Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick put the cap on twelve years of playing industrial dub and hip hop charge as Techno Animal. Simultaneously, they were suspending a decade-and-a-half of mutual appreciation and collaborations: omnivorous industrial noise-rockers God, free-jazz/hip hop/sound garglers Ice, the sax/breakbeat/datascreams of Curse Of The Golden Vampire…

Techno Animal had begun in 1990: a response by two English Midlanders to the barrelling drums, noise-volleys and unsettling atmospheres of the international industrial movement (at the time, exemplified by the varied but mutually steely work of Tackhead, Swans, Foetus and The Young Gods). Over the course of the following decade, they travelled from the boulevard screeches, Penderecki string-squeals, found broadcasts and tangled jazz steals of their ‘Ghosts’ debut through the squidgier, more meditative tones of ‘Re-Entry’ (dropping much of the hardnut New York door-hammering en route) and the chilly, minimal, irritated illbient moods of the ‘Symbiotics’ album (split with German dub techno duo Porter Ricks).

Although parallel Kev’n’Justin projects kept popping up, they always eventually seemed to get subsumed back into the Techno Animal mothership. The hip-hop components of Ice, in particular, informed the narcotic murmurs and beat collages of TA’s third full album ‘Radio Hades’: it was even more apparent in the subsequent full-on turntable scratches and furious apocalyptic rap-spits riding the chassis of 2001’s ‘The Brotherhood of the Bomb’ (which featured top-notch MC-ing from El-P, Dälek, Vast Aire and the triple-tag alliance of Anti Pop Consortium). Whether impassive or garrulous, all of Techno Animal’s music sported a vein of austere, dank ambience; a pall of stern, frowning horror. Some of the evidence suggests that this came mainly from Justin, who since the late ‘80s had been exorcising his philosophical outrage and his horror at the world via his industrial metal band Godflesh. Eventually it would overwhelm him, with the disbanding of Techno Animal being just one symptom of a fleeing into temporary breakdown and retirement.

Many musical partnerships, especially those which disintegrate under strain, end with mixed feelings: often a toxic rage which pollutes the memory for years to come. Refreshiingly, for Justin and Kevin, there seems to have been none of this. Techno Animal’s working legacy has been more a mixture of affection, mutual pride, acceptance and bewilderment; plus a sense of unfinished business which neither seemed to be able to completely pick up on. Justin worked his way back up to continue some elements of Techno Animal’s work in his JK Flesh project, while Kevin already had another dance music platform in place in the shape of longterm downtempo/dub/ragga project The Bug (and, more recently, King Midas Sound. Both men also became more and more involved with DJ culture, and in 2009 there was a welcome gesture of common warmth when King Midas Sound supported a revived Godflesh at Supersonic Festival.

That said, it’s taken fourteen years on for Kevin and Justin to fully settle back in each other’s pockets and build on what they can do together. For now, at least – it seems to be a comfortable mutual fit. Resurrecting yet another project name (from an obscure CD-R album they spat out back in 2000 – see above), they’re now travelling as Zonal, picking up on old Techno Animal pieces and some of the working methods, but apparently rejecting some of the “bruising” older preoccupations in favour of a “smacked-out hip hop” approach. Whether the minimal electronica bounce of the original Zonal is going to hold any sway over the new work is another matter: the revived partnership made a Berlin debut last year, but under the old Techno Animal monicker (footage below suggesting that whatever they’ve changed they’re still well in touch with the old material). As far as I can tell, this Baba Yaga show is both their British debut and the formal assumption of the new Zonal identity. Possibly a project in flux; more likely a well-established idea trying on a new and better-fitting coat.

Whatever they’re calling themselves, they couldn’t choose a more suitable – a more timely – guest partner, than the unflinching powerful experimental rapper Moor Mother, who’ll be delivering a set of her own before joining the Zonal performance. Here’s what I wrote about her back in January:

“Over five dense and rapidly-evolving years of releasing and expressing, exploring and pushing, (she) has become something terrifyingly vital, cathartic and challenging. From the smooth and simple, app-driven, almost homely patchworks of her first EPs, her soundscaping and beat conjuring has developed into a jolting, stirring, often terrifying sonic canvas. Her lightning-raddled masterpiece, 2016’s ‘Fetish Bones’ (hailed at the time as a record of the year by a sweep of critics, from the furious pseudonymous screeders on the most obscure specialised blogs right up to the ponderous proclaimers of ‘Rolling Stone’), could just as equally be record of the year now. Nothing about it has dated, from the explosive Afro-futurist industrial gumbo of its construction to the horrendously untreated, uncorrected misdeeds it chronicles and the righteous rage it swings back with.

“A furious free-electronic beat investigation into the very fabric of American history from its battered black underbelly, the timbre and horror of ‘Fetish Bones’ reveals (her) as a burst but ever-renewing griot – willingly overwhelmed but still fighting the fight that needs to be fought. Her spit of ideas and incriminations are the symptom of an ongoing wound that won’t stop being burst open: “still had enough blood in my throat to gargle up nine words – “I resist to being both the survivor and the victim” – but I know the reality…” A stern, fearless presence, she rides a broken levee’s worth of dirty-historical floodwater and swirling cyclonic indictments, holding American crimes to account – male violence; systematic and institutionalised white brutality against black bodies and souls, or against the nation’s own tormented psyche. Around her voice (sharp beads of slam poetry chorused and gravelled by a flicker of concrete distortion) there’s a massed, jump-cutting collage of industrial-strength beats, chain gang and plantation songs, subway trains rattling into darkness, layered speeches of resistance, samplings of gospel ecstasy crossing into screams of operatic rage.

“What initially seems like a crazed searchlight, swinging pitilessly and furiously from atrocity to atrocity, rapidly reveals itself as being driven by a diamond-hard intelligence as (she) time-travels back and forth across two American centuries of wrongness, relentlessly weaving her case from aural snapshots of black culture suffering and resisting under the heel that hammers it, and never sugarcoating the price and courage of struggle (“like how mama made biscuits outa nothing, all while having a dope needle in her arm…”)

Justin and Kevin will also be performing Zonal-toned DJ sets around the main event; as will Bristolian DJ Schwet, who gets the between-acts slot. As BYH are saying, “gonna get HEAVY”.

Tags: Afro-futurism, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Justin Broadrick, Kevin Martin (The Bug), London (England), Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), Schwet (DJ), Techno Animal, Zonal

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Categories 2018, dance music, DIY music, drum and bass, dub, electro-acoustic music, electronic, electronica, experimental music, hip hop, IDM, instrumental music, noise, performance art, political music, previews, protest songs, rapping, techno

April 2018 – London classical/classical fusion/experimental gigs – North Sea Radio Orchestra and V Ä L V E at the Lexington (15th April); Sarah Deere-Jones harp-and-choir song cycle in the heart of Westminster (21st April)

3 Apr

North Sea Radio Orchestra + V Ä L V E
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, N1 9JB, London, England
Sunday 15th April 2018, 4.00pm – information here, here and here

Last seen using their classical leanings to command the gorgeous baroque interior of Oxford’s Holywell Music Room, chamber-fusion group North Sea Radio Orchestra are heading back to London to fistbump the other branch of their own roots. Arguably, the Lexington is London’s current home of forward-looking eclectic prog and psychedelia; and the NSRO (whose own moist-aired and mournfully jaunty English psychedelic sensibility is inspired by both Robert Wyatt and Cardiacs) are paying it a visit.

Led, as ever, by the husband-and-wife Fortnam team of Craig and Sharron, they’ll bring along their combination of Anglo-pastoral classical gentility, their London clay bed foundations, their motorik strings-and-reeds chamber-kosmische (equal parts Britten, Neu!, Penguin Café Orchestra and ‘Ivor The Engine’) and their unorthodox vocals (Craig’s vulnerable, transparent murmur; Sharron’s homespun clarion of mezzo-soprano-meets-folk-punk). They’ve always possessed a mingling of the down-to-earth and the numinous, as well as their own spin on English psych’s way of plugging into ancient national myths (the patient ones tucked away in strata far, far below the more prickly, hijackable old pomp-and-circumstances).

Yet, in parallel to the Fortnams’ relocation from London to Salisbury, NSRO’s gradual songwriting and compositional journey (especially over the last couple of albums) has seen them move away from Victorian revivals and fine church woodwork; shifting their poetic patron spirit from their early taste for Tennyson (and through a transitional fix on Blake) to end up with Craig and Sharron’s own experiences of landscape magic, familial loss and loyalties. The process has also seen NSRO quietly phase into a worldview that’s less of a beautifully polished bubble of English nostalgia, and is now more implicitly inclusive of gentle acknowledgements of English connections and fallibilities as well as paeans to oak, ash, ridgeways and birds.

To be fair to them (in times when celebrations of antique, semi-rural Englishness can lead to accusation of chocolate-box/mug-of-tea fascism), NSRO have always seemed naïve as opposed to genuinely being naïve. More recent centrepiece songs and pieces have reflected on the balefulness of nationalism, and celebrated more benevolent co-operations such as the Berlin Airluft – the Fortnam’s kinder, fiercer convictions now written more clearly in the texture of their music; a demonstration that that taste for Wyatt goes deeper than just mood-shadings.

In support are the apparently tireless V Ä L V E – click here for a string of recent posts in which I babble repetitively about their bassoonical beginnings, messy play with lost objects, Rock in Opposition links, and current status as harp/bass/reed toting classical/experimental punks. As with many of the band’s recent gigs, this is familial (V A L V E being another branch on the rambling Cardiacs shrub thanks to mainwoman Chlöe Herington’s role as Knifeworld bassoonist), but V A L V E is a far more elusive beast, deeply embedded in avant-garde visual scoring, synthaesthesia and a kind of feminist tyro-science approach to memory and associations as well as an opportunity to make a noisy puckish semi-improvised racket and a group singing session.

* * * * * * * *

Sarah Deere-Jones and Cornwall Harp Centre present:
Sarah Deere-Jones: ‘Carmina Iocunda: Songs for the Seasons’
St Matthew’s Church, 20 Great Peter Street, Westminster, London, SW1P 2BU, London, England
Saturday 21st April 2018, 6.00pm – free event – information here

Harpist and composer Sarah Deere Jones premieres the first complete performance of her new composition ‘Carmina Iocunda (Songs For The Seasons)’ a twenty-two minute song cycle for choir and lever harp which she describes as “a combination of everything I love – mediaeval literature, the English countryside, the changing seasons, choral music and of course, the sound of the harp.” The piece sets eight mediaeval poems (one by Chaucer, one by Shakespeare, the rest anonymous or unassigned) in four blocks of two, or two for each season, in a format which Sarah notes is “similar to Britten’s famous ‘Ceremony of Carols’.”

The concert is free and runs for an hour – there are no details or confirmation yet, but this suggests that Sarah might also be performing other pieces from her repertoire , whether as composer or as specialist player (in addition to her work on pedal and lever harps, she’s currently the only authentic-style performer on the Regency harp-lute and the dital harp).

Below is a video clip of the original choral version (minus harp) of one of the eight ‘Carmina Iocunda’ pieces, ‘Blou northern wind’ (as performed by Exeter University Chapel Choir back in 2015, while the larger work was still being assembled), as well as one of Sarah in action on both concert harp and windblown Aeolian harp out at Glastonbury Abbey and the Somerset Levels.

Tags: Chloe Herington, Craig Fortname, Geoffrey Chaucer, harp music, listening to women, London (England), North Sea Radio Orchestra, Sarah Deere-Jones, Sharron Fortnam (Sharron Saddington), V A L V E, William Shakespeare, women of heart and mind

March 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – More News From Nowhere ambient/noise/jazz/post-everything alldayer (30th March)

20 Mar

More News From Nowhere presents:
MNFN Good Friday All-Dayer (featuring Kodian Trio + Warren Schoenbright + V Ä L V E + Marlo Eggplant + Minus Pilots + Ow Te + Blick | Trio + Grave Threat + Red Team)
New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Friday 30th March 2018, 3.00pm – information here and here

Walthamstow experimental evening More News From Nowhere hops the Lea again for another stint at the New River Studios in Harringay: this time an all-dayer.

A number of improvising threesomes are on hand. Kodian Trio (tagged as “meticulously disjointed free improv” by ‘Cyberinsekt’) unites saxophonist and Raw Tonk label head Colin Webster (who played at MNFN’s February event), Belgian dronetronic guitarist Dirk Serries (better known as Vidna Obmana or Fear Falls Burning) and Shatner’s Bassoon drummer Andrew Lisle. A more directly ambient-jazz approach is offered by Blick | Trio (comprising Blowpipe/Gyratory System veteran Robin Blick on assorted wind and brass, Andrew Moran on drums and James Weaver on bass, synth and programming). It’s a bit of a competition, but probably the least formal of the lot are Stoke-on-Trent-based “math-jazz wizards” Ow Te (featuring members of Stokie punks Amateur Assassins and Bong Idle, and citing a love of Karate, Codeine and The For Carnation, among others).

Another trio is being brought in by reedswoman and experimentalist Chlöe Herington: her increasingly industrious V Ä L V E project continues to build on its beginnings (synaesthesic graphic scores created and realised by Chlöe, bound in with specific memories and events) while simultaneously evolving into a R.I.O./Raincoats-friendly three-woman exploration vehicle via reeds, bass, concert harp and voices. Further female input into the all-dayer is provided by Marlo Eggplant (the Corpus Callosum label head, onetime Olympia punk and lead figure in the “Ladyz In Noyz” initiative), whose own dense drone improvisations are built with processed autoharp and contact mics.

As regards duos, there’s an appearance from Minus Pilots (percussionist Matt Pittori and bassist Adam Barringer, who “weave sparse textures, crumbling atmospheres and fractured drones with currents of gentle crackle”) and from slithering, thickety London drums-and-electronics pairing Warren Schoenbright (Daniel McClennan and Matthew Pastkewicz) who craft lengthy, ambitious and luminous experiments from poised near-silence to hammering viciousness.

A collaboration between two other projects (the “hard Brexit/funeral electronics” of Ashcircle and the effects-chain noise of MNFN’s own Tim Cowlishaw as Violence) was scheduled to lead to Cruciform Passage Grave: something slanting towards the New Weird Britain end of sinister occult soundcraft. In the event, this needed more rehearsal than time allowed; so instead, Tim’s bringing in Cowboy Flying Saucer drummer Dave Bamford to open up the evening with a reunion of their “kraut-psych-improv-noise” duo Red Team (while Ashcircle’s Tom Macarte and Ciaran Mackle reformat themselves as the siren-in-a-washing-machine screech of Grave Threat).

https://soundcloud.com/violence_ldn/bamford-cowlishaw-practice-1

Tags: Adam Barringer, Amateur Assassins, Andrew Lisle, Andrew Moran, Ashcircle, Blick Trio, Bong Idle, Chloe Herington, Ciaran Mackle, Cruciform Passage Grave, Daniel McClennan, Dirk Serries (Fear Falls Burning/Vidna Obmana), duo music, James Weaver, Kodian Trio, London (England), Marlo Eggplant, Matt Pittori, Matthew Pastkewicz, Minus Pilots, More News From Nowhere (event), New River Studios (promoter/venue), Ow Te, Robin Blick, Shatner's Bassoon, Tom Macarte, trio music, V A L V E, Violence (Tim Cowlishaw), Warren Schoenbright

March 2018 – upcoming experimental music gigs in London – “dreams and shadows” music and film evening at Corpora Aliena #2 with Liz Helman, Bernhard Living/Marinesca Marinesca, Christine Webster and Olga Federova/Yannick Franck’s Outlaw Compound (24th March)

19 Mar

Bernhard Living presents:
‘Corpora Aliena 2’: Liz Helman + Bernhard Living + Christine Webster + Olga Fedorova/Outlaw Compound
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 24th March 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

The second evening in wind-multi-instrumentalist-turned-digital-composer/curator Bernhard Living’s ‘Corpora Aliena’ evenings at IKLECTIK (I missed the first one) continues to present artists who work across a wide range of creative disciplines (in this case, composers who are also filmmakers) while simultaneously keeping up a fair gender balance. Evening no. 2 is “a concert of analogue and digital experimental music performances based on the theme of dreams and shadows… composers who produce subdued sound textures and thoughtful sonic meditations.”

Bernhard is a onetime contemporary classical flute virtuoso with a foot in the British improv scene: from the ’60s onwards he performed Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, Cage and Varèse, and worked with Cornelius Cardew, Hugh Davies, Barry Guy, Mike Westbrook and Linder Sterling’s Ludus. His work from the ’90s onwards has been minimal, electronic and concentrates predominantly on sound colour and sonic textures. That said, he claims inspiration from a vast range of American, European and Russian influences (including jazz, Soviet avant-garde visual arts and techno, the last of which he’s attempted to reinvent as an “evolved non-dance form… one that exists within a different cultural context and along a different time continuum.”

The evening features screenings of two works in which Bernhard collaborates with Russian artist and photographer Marinesca Marinesca (who herself cites a different range of inspirations including Hitchcock, Murnau and Tarkovsky plus “the gothic, the works of Dutch masters, the gentle poetry of Goethe and the dark stories of Edgar Allan Poe”, has a mood inclination towards the “classical subtle world” and who appears in her own work as using a “graceful, autistic androgyne” alter ego character. Marinesca also displays a readiness to draw directly from her own dreams, something she appears to share with Bernhard. Their ten-minute ‘Untitled Dream (Homage to Erik Satie)’, with music by Bernhard and images by Marinesca, is based on two separate dreams, each experienced by the two artists separately on the same night. They’ll also be debuting another new 2018 work called ‘The Metaphysics of Colour’. For some pointers towards what to expect, here’s their earlier minimal mood-and-motion piece ‘Dream Door’.

https://vimeo.com/251033913

Self-taught London composer and video artist Liz Helman will be presenting tracks from her recently released album ‘Daylight Dreaming‘, which continues her place-sensitive delving into music based on field recordings and her aim of “following the thread of the sound to its ultimate destination, which she likes to think of as sonic alchemy.” She’ll also show three of the short experimental films she made in London between 2007 and 2014, visually exploring “notions of dislocation, memory and displacement”: two from 2014 (‘Light [Drone]’, which uses the processed sound of a Seasonal Affective Disorder lamp, and ‘Peripheral’) and 2013’s one-minuter, ‘Imprint’.

https://soundcloud.com/lizhelman/liz-helman-liveiklectiklondon-sep2017recorded-mixed-by-saint-austral-sound

The methods of the Paris-based ambisonic electro-acoustic composer Christine Webster have been influenced by cinema and literature narratives, by the concert possibilities of multiplayer game and virtual reality networks and most recently by the modular synthesis revival. She’ll be mixing between improvised abstractions as well as create live remixes of some of the sound elements from her recent organic/meditative album ‘Iceberg the Drift‘, released earlier this year on Sublunar Society. Christine will also be showing her twenty-six minute 2012 audio-visual piece ‘Fukushima Days’ – a collaboration with Super 8/Rutt Etra video artist Kantoh featuring manipulated footage from the Japanese nuclear disaster, and aiming for “a dark and oppressive feeling, but not without a sense of tragic beauty… a clear support to Fukushima’s endless victims, a warning about the worldwide permanent nuclear threat we have to cope with.”

https://soundcloud.com/sublunarsociety/sets/christine-webster-iceberg-the

Bernhard will also be screening new material by Russian digital artist Olga Fedorova, including her ‘Outlaw Compound’ project made in collaboration with multifaceted Belgian vocal/electronic musician Yannick Franck (Raum, Orphan Swords, Idiosyncrasia and Y.E.R.M.O.) and inspired by “tiki culture, exotica, magick and other manifestations of modern escapist tendencies… the fascination of the industrialised world for a widely fantasised state of primitive innocence that it perceived as a lost paradise.” The first Outlaw Compound album ‘New Primitive‘ was recently released on ZamZamRec.

Tags: Bernhard Living, Christine Webster, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Kantoh (video artist), Liz Helman, Marinesca Marinesca (artist), Olga Fedorova, Outlaw Compound, Yannick Franck

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Categories 2018, DIY music, drone music, electronic, experimental music, film & cinema, films, instrumental music, noise, performance art, previews, process music

March 2018 – upcoming experimental music gigs in London – Tehran electronic music showcase with Hadi Bastani and Pouya Ehsaei (14th March)

7 Mar

IKLECTIK and Kate Carr present:
Hadi Bastani + Pouya Ehsaei
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Wednesday 14th March 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

For this event, London-based sound artist Kate Carr curates a showcase of Iranian experimental electronic music, centring on artists from Tehran: a scene mapped and logged by by sound artist and anthropologist Hadi Bastani (via the Digital Arts and Experimental Music Scene of Iran Facebook page from his own base in the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast).

For all of the focus on Tehran, everyone involved in the concert (from Kate on down) seems to be a diasporan: Hadi living and working in Belfast, gigmate Pouya Ehsaei based in London, and even Kate’s an emigre from Australia. As for originally scheduled third act and “chaotic worlds” envisioners 9T Antiope, in spite of their Iranian origins they’re actually based as nearby as France… and can’t make it as planned, since it seems that even pre-Brexit, visas can be as hard to get in Paris as they might be in Tehran. It all adds a slightly mournful sheen to the occasion. Tehran may have been the original testing ground, but it’s not sending any immediate representatives; and leaving it doesn’t always seem to have made things easier.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs too much. The scheduled appearances by Hadi and Pouya are still on track. In addition to his own sonic contributions, Hadi will be providing an introduction to (and discussion of) the Tehran scene; while Pouya (already a veteran collaborator with dancers, performers and filmmakers as well as other experimental musicians) will be displaying his mixture of “found sounds and folkloric music… focusing on their aesthetics and cultural significance and how these can be applied in modern experimental compositions”. Meanwhile, if you’re curious about what you’re missing due to the absence of 9T Antiope, see below:

https://soundcloud.com/hadi-bastani/ecbatan-2-1

Tags: Hadi Bastani, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Kate Carr, Robin Blick

February 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Kammer Klang featuring Jennifer Walshe and Distractfold Ensemble (6th February)

30 Jan

February’s Kammer Klang sees the Dalston performance evening marching ever further away from contemporary chamber music and embracing an ethos of outright sonic performance theatre. The works presented by Jennifer Walshe and Distractfold Ensemble next week use musicality as merely one available limb of expression – even if many of the tools used are musical.

Kammer Klang presents:
Kammer Klang: Jennifer Walshe + Distractfold Ensemble (playing Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Hanna Hartman and Barblina Meierhans)
Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL
Tuesday 6th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

Witty, shapeshifting Irish composer-performer Jennifer Walshe was once described as “the wild girl of Darmstadt” (by ‘Frankfurter Rundschau’) Often hiding, Residents-like, behind the mask of the fictional ‘Milker Corporation’, she’s delivered nearly two decades worth of intriguing, award-winning work, from near-conventional instrumental composition to way-out self-performed video theatre more reminiscent of a larkier, less traumatic version of Karen Finley.

Examinations and implementations of pop culture have been a persistent creative motif for her. While this can be an embarrassing stumbling block for many a composer hamfistedly trying to ginger up high culture or elevate street culture (most of whom bellyflop soundly into the discomfort zone) Jennifer displays a thorough grounding and innate understanding of how this things can tick. This is clearly displayed in her lightning-switch pop-song collage ‘G.L.O.R.I.’, while her Snapchat-based interactive ‘Thmotes’ project (with its now-you-see-them now-you-don’t exchange of text scores) was but one example of her keen understanding of both how new forms of media operate and how they develop their own operational cultures. Inspired in part by televisual opera experimenter Robert Ashley, she’s also written miniature operas ranging from relatively serious chamber pieces about women in boxing or 2010’s focus-shifting ‘The Geometry’ to trashy X-rated soap scenarios played out by whispering, shrieking, hissing Barbie dolls.

As an intercontinental voice improviser, Jennifer’s co-run witty stunts such as the United Telepathic Improvisation Front; and for the last eleven years she’s exercised and presented a dozen different and distinct alter egos as part of the ongoing Grúpat project (a Dublin art collective of fictional “Guinness Dadaists” in which Jennifer herself creates, becomes and enacts every single artist whether exploring music, films, photography, fashion, sculpture or any overlaps between the forms – personae include grotto-builder Violetta Mahon, filmmaker Freya Birre, sculptor-of-instruments Turf Boon, psychogeographic drag queen multidisciplinarian The Dowager Marchylove and partially-fingerless concert pianist Flor Hartigan). Running through all of this (alongside of the exceptional media savvy) is a riotous stream of Irish absurdism – it’s unsurprising to discover that Jennifer cites Flann O’Brien and the “Irish openness to subterfuge” as spurs to what she does.

Her Kammer Klang performance this time involves her 2016 composition ‘There Was A Visitor’ – of which the title may be a nod to Ashley’s ‘She Was A Visitor’, and which is mostly a compression/selection from another ongoing project of spoofing/serious fictionizing, ‘Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde‘. In some ways a more historically-inclined cousin of Grúpat, ‘Historical Documents…’ is a made-up history of the Irish avant-garde, complete with its own foundation and voluminous archive of compositions, documents, academic articles and sundry ephemera. Jennifer apparently performs it within the context of “a Dadaist Halloween séance”, which she also describes as “a sort of mangled faith healer experience with optional audience engagement.”

(UPDATE, 5th February – for some reason, it seems that Jennifer’s now dropped her scheduled performance of ‘There Was A Visitor’ and replaced it with ‘Is It Cool To Try Hard Now?’, a 2016 composition “for voice, video, electronics and Artificial Intelligence”. There’s not much more information available on this one, other than that it was first premiered at the Jamjar Music Weekend in Belfast – it’s not even listed on the Milker site. If you can find out anything more about it, you’re a better, quicker browser than I am… what the hell, go along and be surprised…)

Manchester’s Distractfold Ensemble (curators of their hometown’s Cut & Splice Festival) will be presenting three pieces, including the evening’s Fresh Klang opener – a performance of Barblina Meierhans’ ‘May I Ask You Something?’. The latter is, in effect a semi-dysfunctional conversation for orchestra: an arrangement of inter-band mutters culminating in an eerie array of distracted frictional instrumental squeaks and a number of uncomfortable silences.

Of the other two Distractfold presentations, ‘Circling Blue’ is a 2010 tape piece by Swedish sound artist Hanna Hartman (for which Manifold members will be handling the sonic diffusion). Originally commissioned by Swedish radio for a themed programme on Nordic forests, it’s an electroacoustic work for the captured sounds of swirling winds and beating rain plus the recorded and stretched notes of soprano Ida Falk Winland.

The last presentation, ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Laughing’ is a piece of music theatre for amplified quartet and tape playback: a segment of Japanese-American electro-acoustic composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s five-movement ‘Sideshow’ sequence. Inspired by the crueller, more exploitative aspects of Coney Island entertainment parks (and drawing its section titles from a set of bleak aphorisms by Karl Kraus, the mordant cultural gadfly and satirist of early 20th century Vienna), the piece is “a meditation on virtuosity, freak shows, entertainment, spectacle, business, and the sacrifices one makes to survive in the world”, in which the instrumentalist perform as if they were “characters in a sideshow. The saxophonist is the Sideshow Giant, having bellow-like lungs. The violist is a sword swallower, expert with a bow sword. The pianist is the Human Spider, having been born with eight hands. The percussionist is the Stuttering Midget and Sideshow Proprietor/Announcer. Each character of this quartet has his or her uncanny double, twin, imposter, accomplice, copycat, deformed clone.”

Strange taped sounds (worked up from Takasugi’s algorithmic processing from his extensive library of recontextualized sonics) plus intense individual performer silences and motions add to the uneasy, surreal and grotesque atmosphere. Reviewing a previous performance in 2017, Stephanie Jones of ‘Sounds Like Now’ observed that it “suggested that the audience (was) masterminding a highly uncomfortable human puppet show… (which) captivated and cradled the audience on thematic pivots such as humour/cruelty and freedom/torturous restraint, while the playback ensured that the performance itself blurred the lines between illusion and fact.”

Tags: Barblina Meierhans, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Daisy Dickinson (visual artist), Distractfold Ensemble, Hanna Hartman, Ida Falk Winland, Jennifer Walshe, Kammer Klang (event), listening to women, London (England), multimedia, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, women of heart and mind

February 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – More News From Nowhere presents a hunk of skronk from Colin Webster, ORE, Well Hung Game and Graham Dunning (1st February); Champion Version’s ‘Edition 2’ sound-and-image evening with Adrena Adrena, Thomas Stone and James Alec Hardy (15th February)

16 Jan

A quick pair of experimental sound pointers for the coming month in London…

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More News From Nowhere presents:
MNFN #23: Dunning/Webster/Underwood + Well Hung Game + ORE + Colin Webster Vs. The Tape Loops
New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, N4 1DN London, United Kingdom
Thursday 1st February 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

Regular Walthamstow avant-gardeners More News From Nowhere travel a few train stops westwards to New River Studios, in order to present a night of improvised fury with, as they put it “four flavours of brass-heavy skronk.”

Ed Dudley and James Allsopp will provide “absolutely rinsing live electronics and baritone sax” as Well Hung Game, while “drone doom tuba” player Sam Underwood plays a set as ORE. Saxophonist Colin Webster brings along a set – billed more as a kind of sweaty, frantic wrestle – of live improvisations in tandem with pre-recorded tape loops provided through a general callout for contributions (which was answered by friends, colleagues and sympathisers including Ian Stonehouse, Phil Julian, Stephan Barrett and Marcus Hamblett). The apparent idea is to subvert the improvising process by playing against and in concord with music which is “constant, unprocessed, and to some extent predictable… this presents an interesting challenge to develop music through a one-way conversation.”

At the end of the evening, Colin and Sam will team up with decks’n’FX wizard Graham Dunning for a session of “brass and turntable minimalist patience.”

Samples below:

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Champion Version presents:
Edition 2: Adrena Adrena + Thomas Stone + James Alec Hardy
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 15th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

Champion Version present the second in their new series of triple-bill concerts, with a lineup that spans ritual drumwork, radiophonics and assorted mergings and collisions within the audiovisual sphere.

“Adrena Adrena are a collaboration between Boredoms/Seefell drummer E-Da Kazuhisa & visual artist Daisy Dickinson. The duo cut a raw blend of drums, noise and organic visual work, featuring in their performances an eight-foot white sphere that hangs above Kazuhisa’s drum kit and which Dickinson maps videos onto; her work was described by William Barns-Graham of ‘Fluid Radio’ as “cosmological and transcendental, drawing attention to the wonder of the earth and our sensuality on it.” The pair completed a short film in 2016, ‘Man On The Hill’, which features E-da playing drums on fire in the mountains.

“The winner of the 2015 NonClassical Records Battle Of The Bands, Thomas Stone creates his immersive music using contrabassoon, samplers, loop pedals and activated percussion. Blurring the boundaries between electronic and acoustic sound production the music explores themes of ritual and presence. An enforced simplicity runs throughout the dreamlike sound world conjured from slowly evolving motifs using the lowest and highest notes possible on the contra’, accompanied by a hiss and murmur from the percussion and pulse-driven samples breaking to moments of fragile beauty.

“Audio-visual artist James Alec Hardy creates feedback systems as a means for negotiating ideas and simplifying complexity, which are manifested by using obsolete analogue video and audio. Sceptical of the ways in which new technology lends itself to the entrapment of minds using specialised propaganda and manipulated suggestion, Hardy creates work that subverts and repurposes old technology.

“Using obsolete analogue equipment, arrays of monitors become symbolic motifs, simple tribal shapes are interrupted and reconstructed, and video sequences are performative, produced by the physical manipulation of machines. Video acts as a physical and sculptural object rather than a virtual electronic portrayal of image and sound. Immediate and sensitive, it conveys his ideas directly in our age of high video literacy, functioning as the meditative stage for the mind and unravelling its own truth by suggesting that truth and narrative are, ultimately, subjective.”

As with the preceding Edition concert, there will be a limited edition five-copies-only 7″ vinyl single featuring music by the artists performing. Assigned by random draw, these will only be available at this event.

Tags: Adrena Adrena, Champion Version (record label), Colin Webster, Daisy Dickinson (visual artist), E-Da Kazuhisa, Ed Dudley, Graham Dunning, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), James Alec Hardy, James Allsopp, multimedia, New River Studios (promoter/venue), Sam Underwood (ORE), Thomas Stone, Well Hung Game

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Categories 2018, acoustic music, DIY music, electro-acoustic music, experimental music, free jazz, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, loop music, noise, performance art, previews, radiophonics, sound collage, tape loops, turntablism

January 2018 – upcoming London experimental rock gigs – Nøught & Dead Days Beyond Hope (17th January), Data Quack + Alex Ward (31st January)

10 Jan

Another quickie – Oxford-rooted avant-rock guitarists James Sedwards and Alex Ward (who’ve been in cahoots for at least twenty years) take their respective bands to the stage at Café Oto this month.

Nøught + Dead Days Beyond Help
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Wednesday 17th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

“All-out, high-voltage line-up with James Sedwards’ avant-punk/jazz-prog/noise-rock group Nøught, and Alex Ward and Jem Doulton’s Dead Days Beyond Help project.

“Nøught is a synthesis of the experimental, avant-punk, jazz-prog and noise-rock credos, distilled into the paradoxical confines of a musically volatile, instrumental power-quartet. Originally formed in Oxford in the late ’90s by eminent guitarist James Sedwards (Thurston Moore Group/Guapo/The Devil), the current line-up has been based in London since 2002.

“Their music is profoundly exhilarating when encountered and often provokes an hypnotic sensation from an audience, as their incendiary live performances can easily entice and captivate a listener due to the highly artful, polished and demanding compositions. Pieces span the extremes of short, catchy, three minute eruptions to long, dense and evolving half-hour incantations. Nøught’s music provides an uncommonly refreshing, non-derivative sensibility and approach, and they continually astound as they develop, invoke and deliver their singularly potent blend of sonic diabolism.

“Dead Days Beyond Help have honed a compositional approach heard to its fullest extent on their 2014 Believers Roast release ‘Severance Pay’ described by ‘The Wire’ as “a reminder that there are still thrills aplenty to be gained from the pursuit of complexity… as playful as it is heavy, as atmospheric as it is cerebral”.

“In their live performances, these variously intricate, sweeping and violent compositions sit side by side with free-wheeling improvisational excursions (reflecting the members’ work with the likes of Steve Noble, Alan Wilkinson and Thurston Moore) and the whims of the moment, which could involve a leap into either a wall of flattening noise or the most emotionally direct country song. In negotiating this dizzying range of materials, DDBH bypass the pitfalls of irony and the obstacle course of genre by the simple guiding principle: intensity-at-all-costs.”

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And Alex is back again at the end of the month, supporting bubbling-under experimental group Data Quack in one of the increasingly interesting gigs being put on at Westminster Kingsway.

Westking Music and Performing Arts presents:
Data Quack + Alex Ward
WKC Theatre @ Westminster Kingsway College, 211 Gray’s Inn Road, Kings Cross, London, WC1X 8RA, England
31st January 2018, 6.30pm – information here and here

“Data Quack is a relatively new group: hanging in the air like a sunny cloud, a silver nitrate window of manly oomph, pronoun prim, joey pouch casually askew. They are likely to blow your mind. Data Quack’s music moves through an array of abstract textures, car chase sequences and violent grooves. Trigger warning: you will be triggered, that’s what music does.

“They are saxophonist and electronics player Ben Vince (who’s been making waves with a series of solo releases and collaborations with Housewives and Mica Levi, threading his way through the London underground like a goods train); drummer Charles Hayward (follower of a 45 year music journey from This Heat to This Is Not This Heat and beyond); keyboard player Merlin Nova (who works in a variety of media, everything changes everything else, no borders, radio, film, song, movement, spoken word, and drawing, and works solo as well as currently gigging with This Is Not This Heat); and guitar/radio/cassette-tape operater Pascal Colman (lifts heavy objects, installations, minimalist funk agogo; a witty, charming, illegible bachelor).

“Alex Ward will be supporting in his solo guise, blowing your mind with guitar, clarinet and voice sonic magic.”

Tags: Alex Ward, Ben Vince, Charles Hayward, Data Quack, Dead Days Beyond Help, James Sedwards, Jem Doulton, London (England), Merlin Nova, Nøught, Pascal Colman, This Heat, This Is Not This Heat, Westking Music (event/promoter)

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Categories 2018, art punk, DIY music, electro-acoustic music, experimental music, experimental/avant-garde rock, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz rock, noise, noise rock, post-progressive rock, previews, rock, skronk, sound collage

January 2018 – upcoming gigs – Moor Mother in London and Leeds (10th and 12th January), with No Home, AlgernonCornelius and Basic Switches

5 Jan

Over five dense and rapidly-evolving years of releasing and expressing, exploring and pushing, the unification of music and words by Moor Mother (a.k.a. Philly sound art/witness-bearing hip hop interdisciplinarian Camae Ayewa) has become something terrifyingly vital, cathartic and challenging. From the smooth and simple, app-driven, almost homely patchworks of her first EPs, her soundscaping and beat conjuring has developed into a jolting, stirring, often terrifying sonic canvas. Her lightning-raddled masterpiece, 2016’s ‘Fetish Bones’ (hailed at the time as a record of the year by a sweep of critics, from the furious pseudonymous screeders on the most obscure specialised blogs right up to the ponderous proclaimers of ‘Rolling Stone’), could just as equally be record of the year now. Nothing about it has dated, from the explosive Afro-futurist industrial gumbo of its construction to the horrendously untreated, uncorrected misdeeds it chronicles and the righteous rage it swings back with.

A furious free-electronic beat investigation into the very fabric of American history from its battered black underbelly, the timbre and horror of ‘Fetish Bones’ reveals Camae as a burst but ever-renewing griot – willingly overwhelmed but still fighting the fight that needs to be fought. Her spit of ideas and incriminations are the symptom of an ongoing wound that won’t stop being burst open: “still had enough blood in my throat to gargle up nine words – “I resist to being both the survivor and the victim” – but I know the reality…” A stern, fearless presence, she rides a broken levee’s worth of dirty-historical floodwater and swirling cyclonic indictments, holding American crimes to account – male violence; systematic and institutionalised white brutality against black bodies and souls, or against the nation’s own tormented psyche. Around her voice (sharp beads of slam poetry chorused and gravelled by a flicker of concrete distortion) there’s a massed, jump-cutting collage of industrial-strength beats, chain gang and plantation songs, subway trains rattling into darkness, layered speeches of resistance, samplings of gospel ecstasy crossing into screams of operatic rage. What initially seems like a crazed searchlight, swinging pitilessly and furiously from atrocity to atrocity, rapidly reveals itself as being driven by a diamond-hard intelligence as Camae time-travels back and forth across two American centuries of wrongness, relentlessly weaving her case from aural snapshots of black culture suffering and resisting under the heel that hammers it, and never sugarcoating the price and courage of struggle (“like how mama made biscuits outa nothing, all while having a dope needle in her arm…”)

Camae’s in England next week for a couple of shows in London and in Leeds. These should be unmissable. Dates below (tickets are now down to the last fifty or so in London, though I’m not so sure about Leeds).

The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT, England, Wednesday 10th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here, here and here
Headrow House, Bramley’s Yard, 19 The Headrow, Leeds, Yorkshire, LS1 6PU, England, Friday 12th January 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here

In London, Camae’s supported by No Home, a.k.a. emergent blackgirl punk Charlie Joseph, who blends wounded lo-fi murmurs and nightmare dream-folk blues wails with suffocating doses of peat-bog guitar noise plus brooding sub-bassy post-punk atmospheres: all of which is a sleight-of-hand cover for the vulnerabilities and contradictions of her songwriting (as if a teenaged, slightly more fucked-up Tracy Chapman had hired in Gnod as producers). Charlie’s own cited touchstones include Mitzi’s building-a-girl narratives and the floating, questioning experimental R’n’B identities of Frank Ocean, plus the shifting roots-tronic approach of Bon Iver and the populist indie of The Strokes. Her interesting, elusive lyrics touch on current soul-aches like toxic masculinity, besieged defensiveness and post-capitalist malaise (though they’re a little too slippery to stick there).

Still a little crude and understated (in comparison to the expansive, whip-smart Moor Mother barrage she’s got to warm up for), Charlie’s only just scraped the surface of what she’s got to say. Give her time – and a few more turns in carefully-chosen, blazing-kiln support slots like this one – and I think we’ll be looking at something quite special. Right now, she’s the whispering ghost of her own future.

In Leeds, the local supports are AlgernonCornelius and Basic Switches – the former a trans-Pennine beatsmaker, the latter a one-woman/circuit-bending/voice-and-effects-pedal show by Hilary Knott (from longstanding Leeds punk-pop “idiosyncrats” Cowtown).

Taking tips from Rza, A Tribe Called Quest and J. Dilla, AlgernonCornelius has spent the last couple of years blending and waxing across a range of hip hop/IDM ideas (from his glitch-soul mangling of Minnie Riperton on 2015’s ‘Blind’ to the shimmying RSJ dub of last year’s ‘Blood Claat’). Basic Switches looks like an extension of Hilary’s other circuit-bending project, Skellingtons, in which she aims for “the harshest possible sound” from twee little Yahama and Casio keyboards plus toys, loop pedals and “broken, cheap drum machines that have previously been rejected by all self respecting electronic music makers.” Wilfully tricky to pin down outside of catching her at a live gig, this unguarded live-at-home Christmas mash-take on George Michael should at least give you some idea of how she works.

Tags: Afro-futurism, AlgernonCornelius, Basic Switches, Cowtown, Hilary Knott, Leeds (England), listening to women, London (England), Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), No Home (Charlie Joseph), women of heart and mind

December 2017 – experimental gigs up and down Britain – Kammer Klang plays Mary Jane Leach in London (5th December) plus Mette Rasmussen, Sofia Jernberg and Dawn Scarfe; Gnod R&D on tour with URUK and pals (7th, 8th, 10th); Xposed Club at Cheltenham with Alexander Hawkins, Raymond MacDonald, Sharon Gal, Stuart Wilding, Chris Cundy (8th)

30 Nov

Kammer Klang presents:
Kammer Klang: Ashley Paul & Ensemble (performing Mary Jane Leach) + Mette Rasmussen & Sofia Jernberg + Dawn Scarfe
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 5th December 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

The coming month’s Kammer Klang has only a tenuous relationship with contemporary classical, concentrating as it does on musicians who espouse either free improvisation or natural resonance.

The evening centres on an ensemble led by clattering, free-form multi-instrumentalist and composer Ashley Paul (who recently supported Powerdove further north at the Old Dentist) and featuring Hyperion Ensemble bass clarinettist/utility person Yoni Silver, cellist/Kammer Klang organiser Lucy Railton, onetime Sonic Youth guitarist-turned-ubiquitous London art musician Thurston Moore and Charcoal Owls’ multi-instrumentalist Tom James Scott on piano (a man who generally brings a specifically Cumbrian twist to his playing, gizmo fiddling and use of field recordings). They’ll be playing ‘Wolff Tones E-Tude’, a cellular Christian-Wolff-inspired piece by American composer Mary Jane Leach (example performance below).

Much of Mary Jane’s work focusses on acoustic properties and how sound environments form in specific spaces with particular resonances and opportunities for difference, combination, and interference tones; in addition, how these may be manipulated by a performer, composer or editor (or by someone who’s a combination of all or some of those things). She herself will be present for the performance, which also includes a stereo-diffused playback of her 1992 radio sound piece/hörspiel ‘Kirchtraum’ (about which she says “Have you ever walked into a church, and it seems as if there is sound rolling around the space that’s been there for a long time? I created ‘Kirchtraum’ to create a sound dreamscape to create that kind of feeling. It uses the phases of a dream, going progressively further back into the past and becoming more chaotic with each phase. I used nightingales to punctuate the different phases of the dream, to differentiate between the dream and the environment…”). In addition, she’ll be present for a pre-concert workshop on Sunday 3rd December from noon until 5.00pm (giving a lecture and offering feedback on pieces any composers care to bring in) and, prior to the concert on the Tuesday, participating in a public talk with Frances Morgan at 7.00pm.

Opening in the Fresh Klang slot is Dawn Scarfe, a sound artist preoccupied with “things that seem to sound themselves, such as resonating glasses, Aeolian wires and self-opening swell boxes”, and who’s brought this preoccupation to sound installations between Cumbria and London, Exeter and Estonia, Brussels and Seoul. Her projects include the livestreamed ‘Reveil‘ “an annual crowdsourced live broadcast which “tracks the sound of the sunrise around the world for twenty-four hours” using open microphones provided by streamers around the world: she’s described it as intending “to open a space for listening to something else – especially from places where humans and not humans meet – and in the course of one earth day to provide a sketch of this emerging field.” 2017’s edition included contributions from Maputo, Tehran, New York, Kolkata, Santiago de Cali, nature reserves in Cumbria’s Walney Island and Australia’s Noosa Biosphere Reserve, and even the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. On this occasion, Dawn will be performing ‘Tuning to Spheres’, written for wine glasses, sine tone generators and turntables.

Closing the evening out will be a free experimental duet between raw Danish Trio Riot saxophonist Mette Rasmussen (who works with both plain and prepared instruments) and Swedish/Norwegian singer/composer Sofia Jernberg (who works with a twisting barrage of vocal techniques including split tone singing, pitchless singing and distorted singing)

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Fresh from some well-publicised collaborations with avant-rock godfathers Faust, countercultural Salford sound wizards Gnod are returning to their ongoing “R&D” tour. For more on their London weekender from last year, click here; at the moment, they’re stripped back down to their core duo of Chris Haslam and Paddy Shine in order to explore the next, as-yet-undecided developments from last year’s seethe of slow, dirty riffage on their bed of dub, urban discontent, psychic reportage and ritual. As part of that development, they’re throwing the stage open to volunteer collaborators on the night, “be it singing , shouting, dancing, bringing an instrument/device to the table or just simply tuning in and coming along for the ride.” Dust off your home-made Azimuth Co-ordinator or pocket Tettix Wave Accumulator; grab that Aztec death whistle from the back of the kitchen drawer; head down and dive in.

Following the Italian/Slovenian leg in November (in which they toured with Italian noise-rock guitar/voice/drums duo OvO and Godspeed-associated Montreal wallcrashers Big ‡ Brave), the British tour will see a blurring of support slot and Gnod expansion. The band’s ranks will be pre-swollen in Glasgow by drummer and oscillator king Julian Dicken (from Glaswegian psych-rockers The Cosmic Dead) and in Bristol by murky industral-technoist Tony Child (a.k.a. Surgeon) and drummer Dan Johnson (from jazz-punkers Run Logan Run). In London, they’ll be augmented by a five-strong gang of John Doran (head ‘Quietus‘ ranter), heavy electronicist Mark Dicker (ex-Trencher, Palehorse, Bruxa Maria), Mark O. Pilkington and Michael J. York of synth-and-bagpipe psychonauts Teleplasmiste and Teeth Of The Sea trumpeter Sam Barton. In addition, the London gig has a clearly defined support act in the shape of URUK, a teamup of bass player Massimo Pupillo (of expansive no-wave trio Zu) and synthesist/multi-instrumentalist Thighpaulsandra (Coil, Spiritualized, various Julian Cope bands). URUK originates from 2016 when mutual fans Massimo and Thipe finally got together; the resulting music, debuted on this year’s ‘I Leave A Silver Trail Through Blackness’ album, references both Coil and Zu but sinks deeper into the world of highly textured dark-ambient drones.

Dates:

Corsica Studios, 4-5 Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB, England, Thursday 7th December 2017, 8.00pm – information
Broadcast, 427 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3LG, Scotland, Friday 8th December 2017, 7.00pm – information
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Sunday 10 December 2017, 7.30pm – information

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Just time, too, to mention another Xposed Club incident over in Cheltenham, in which there’ll be a meet-up duo of pianist Alexander Hawkins and saxophonist Raymond MacDonald (who between them have notched up work and/or leadership duties with Convergence Quartet, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Decoy and more – we also recently saw Raymond exploring the art of the graphic score in London). Also on the bill is well-respected London experimental vocalist/Resonance FM founder Sharon Gal, engaging in duo work with Ghost Mind percussionist (and Xposed host) Stuart Wilding; and a solo set from avant-garde bass clarinet virtuoso Chris Cundy who, as mentioned here some time back, “dips into everything from the philosophical experiments of Cornelius Cardew and John Cage to out-and-out improv to theatre work.”

Various tasters below:

Xposed Club presents:
Alexander Hawkins & Raymond MacDonald + Sharon Gal & Stuart Wilding + Chris Cundy
The Xposed Club @ Francis Close Hall, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ, England
Friday 8th December 2017, 8.00pm – information

Tags: Alexander Hawkins, Ashley Paul, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Bristol (England), Cheltenham (England), Chris Cundy, Dan Johnson, Dawn Scarfe, Ghost Mind, Glasgow (Scotland), Gnod, John Doran, Kammer Klang (event), London (England), Lucy Railton, Mark Dicker, Mary Jane Leach, Mette Rasmussen, Palehorse, Raymond MacDonald, Run Logan Run, Sam Barton, Sharon Gal, Sofia Jernberg, Stuart Wilding, Surgeon (Tony Child), Teeth Of The Sea, Teleplasmiste, The Quietus (publication/event/record label), The Xposed Club (event/promoter), Thighpaulsandra, Thurston Moore, Tom James Scott, URUK, Yoni Silver, Zu

November 2017 – upcoming London jazz/experimental gigs – Jazz in the Round with Arun Ghosh and Eddie Parker (27th); noise and costume chaos in ‘Beyond the Mask’ with Flange Zoo, Isn’tses, Pranic Attack and Madonna Vagina (25th)

20 Nov

As if Monday 27th wasn’t crowded enough already, up pops an interesting jazz gig…

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Jazz In The Round presents:
Jazz In The Round: Arun Ghosh + Eddie Parker (solo) + tbc
The Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Lisson Grove, London, NW8 8EH, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here

British-Asian jazz clarinettist, keyboard player and composer Arun Ghosh (perhaps best known for Arkestra Makara, the pan-Asian chamber-jazz orchestra which made a colourful cross-continental splash at the London Olympics five years ago) is making his Jazz In The Round debut. He’ll be leading a new band featuring saxophonists Idris Rahman and Chris Williams, guitarist Shirley Tetteh, bass player Liran Donin and drummer Dave Walsh.

The concert showcases his newest release, ‘But Where Are You Really From?’ – a keyboard-heavy album of rolling multi-cultural twenty-first century jazz-rock which not only touches lightly on the likes of Yusef Lateef, early ‘70s Miles Davis grooves and Punjabi music but also on A.R. Rahman, David Axelrod, Soft Machine and Egg as well as pulling in touches of kletzmer, hip hop and northern English brass bands (Arun was raised in Manchester). Part-pastoral and part-stirring, it’s a slow-cooking hot-pot of a record.

In the middle of the bill there’s a rare solo spot from Eddie Parker. Perhaps best known as the brilliant flautist for Loose Tubes, he’s also got years of group-leading work under his belt as well as a history of large-scale compositions, community music and dazzling guest spots. For more on what I’ve said about Eddie in the past, click here: but on this occasion, it’s just him and his flutes: no group work, no cunning arrangement, just the chance to see an undersung instrumental master bouncing on his heels, throughly self-reliant. Should be exceptional.

There’s another act yet to be confirmed (in what Jazz In The Round call “jazz lucky dip”), but it’s worth going along for these two alone. From the 7pm doors time, rooting us to past and present, there’ll be the usual Jazz FM DJ sets from event presenter Jez Nelson and his decks colleague Chris Phillips.

* * * * * * * *

IKLECTIK presents:
‘Beyond the Mask’: Flange Zoo + Isn’tses + Pranic Attack + Madonna Vagina
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 25th November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here

If you’re in the mood for a more unruly kind of improvisation, something odder and wilder is stirring in Waterloo a few days earlier and providing “a night of otherworldly misrule, noise and musicality by artists with specially-made masks and costumes, bringing live art, animation, installation and lighting to your senses.”

Ready to romp are human-insectoid modular-electronic/vocal duo Pranic Attack (with their “giant life force swarm of sonic, non-Newtonian synthesis” and “cacophonous cocoon of stroboscopic ear worm sequences”); Isn’tses (who mythscape “paganism, political anger, intergalactic heroism and pop-culture parodies” via self-built synths, noise boxes, circuit-bent toys and mangled vocals amidst luminous props and costumes) and “mythical musical animal” troop Flange Zoo (playing dub-echo psych-political rants and noise-stews on theremin, recorder, free drumkit, custom didgeridoo and stylophone; plus anything else which they can ram through their bevy of effects pedals).

Lurking variously behind these masks and personae and the sonic messy-play are rainbow-rap electronicist Janine A’Bear, dark-drone crooner Listen Lisse, Merkaba Macabre’s Steven McInerney, Tim Drage of Cementimental and multimedia artists Miyuki Kasahara and Calum F. Kerr (plus at least one member of The International Wind Up Toy Orchestra). The evening’s completed by a colourful, textural live-art performance from yet another mask-and-costumerie enthusiast, Paola de Ramos (under her own “Madonna Vagina” persona, which might be referencing the blessed Christian virgin-mother-goddess or La Ciccone: she’s cheeky enough be referencing both).

FLANGE ZOO

All of this is happening at 7.30pm, with a ‘Behind the Mask/ Recreate your Face’ workshop and a display of original masks from the artists, drawings, interactive installations starting an hour earlier. Bring your own alter-egos in for fine-tuning.

Tags: Arun Ghosh, Calum F. Kerr, Cementimental, Eddie Parker, Flange Zoo, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Isn’tses, Janine A’Bear, Listen Lisse, Miyuki Kasahara, Paola de Ramos (Madonna Vagina), Pranic Attack, Steven McInerney (Merkaba Macabre), The Cockpit Theatre (venue) - Lisson Grove - London, The International Wind Up Toy Orchestra

November 2017 – upcoming London gigs – ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ with Anne Garner, Mary Currie, Lis Stewart (9th November); Powerdove and Ashley Paul (15th November)

4 Nov

There’s a pair of interesting female-focussed gigs coming up over the next two weeks in two of London’s more creative music corners, mingling elements of latterday folk, post-punk, Rock In Opposition, experimental noise and avant-garde pop…

Partly due to the pressure of time, and partly due to the eloquence of the press releases, I’ll let them speak for themselves…

* * * * * * * *

Club Integral presents:
‘Anonymous Was A Woman’: Anne Garner + Mary Currie + Lis Stewart
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 9th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

“A night of music by women. Three very different sets from three extraordinary artists.

“Anne Garner‘s lyrical work is inspired by curiosity and a sense of wonder, a hunger to explore and explain the emotional inner life. The magic lies in the ambiguity, in the unanswered question and the breath between notes. It’s in poetry and harmony that Anne finds her safe space, in enveloping and beguiling moods, a place from which to speak the unspoken. Anne will be performing music from her upcoming album, joined by Jack Hayter on pedal steel guitar, Nick Samuel on saxophone and James Murray on guitar.

“Mary Currie is a singer perhaps best known for her work with Gareth Williams (This Heat). Williams and Currie recorded a limited-run cassette-only album, ‘Flaming Tunes‘, in 1985, which over time has become a classic of the lo-fi DIY underground. Since Gareth’s death at forty-eight from cancer, Mary has worked with several collaborators including Howard Jacques (These Records, Bermuda Triangle Test Engineers) and Mick Hobbs (Officer!) in folk group Bucket, and with Mick, Howard and Monica Ruud on a project called Whole New Concept. Mary will be be singing with Alison Craig (Shötley Crüe) – essentially traditional sea songs and modern folk songs.

“Lis Stewart plays mostly folk music on a 1918 Lachenal 55 key Maccann Duet concertina. She plays from time to time with south London folk collection The No Frills Band. For Iklectik, she will be performing English, French and Scandinavian folk tunes, both traditional and modern. Expect driving rhythms and haunting melodies.”

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Muckle Mouth, 33 Chatsworth Road + Murailles Music present:
Powerdove + Ashley Paul
33 Chatsworth Road/The Old Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Wednesday 15th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here, here and here

“Annie Lewandowski is a composer, improviser (piano, accordion), and multi-instrumentalist (singer, guitarist, and keyboardist) whose work has situated her between the worlds of improvisation and independent rock music.

“In the Powerdove combination – in which she’s joined by trouble-makers Thomas Bonvalet (once of Cheval de Frise) and Chad Popple (Collossamite, Behemoth), and previously John Dieterich of Deerhoof – Annie’s songwriting is transformed into singular, arresting, and strange pop music that sees graceful melodies set against raucous percussion arrangements; a music that ”rumbles with immediate beauty and unsettling events.” The band has released eight recordings and performed at festivals and venues across the United States and Europe. Currently touring their new album ‘War Shapes’, this will be their first full-band show in the UK.

“They are joined by the awesome London-based American composer/performer Ashley Paul, who uses an array of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, guitar, bells and percussion, mixing disparate elements to create a colorful palate of sound that works its way into her intuitive songs; free forming, introverted melodies. This blend manifests beautiful and simple musical forms against acoustic experimentation. She’s known for her tense, raw and delicate compositions, playfully combining introverted melodies, free-form song-like arrangements and an unadorned approach to improvisation.”

Tags: Anne Garner, Annie Lewandowski, Ashley Paul, Chad Popple, Cheval de Frise, Gareth Williams, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Jack Hayter, James Murray, Lis Stewart, listening to women, London (England), Mary Currie, Muckle Mouth (event/promoter), Nick Samuel, Powerdove, This Heat, Thomas Bonvalet, women of heart and mind

November 2017 – experimental gigs in England – Christine Ott on tour in Salford, Leeds and London (5th-8th November)

29 Oct

French experimental keyboard player Christine Ott – a sometime collaborator with Radiohead, Yann Tiersen and Tindersticks – is about to visit England as part of an ongoing European tour.

There are only three dates on this part of the tour, but they reveal a constantly shifting focus as Christine moves between different projects and presentations. In Salford, she’s part of a Gizeh Records-sponsored triple bill shared with two Manchester area experimental acts. In Leeds, she’s performing a live, self-penned soundtrack to a classic 1930s silent film blending romantic drama and docufiction, while in London, she’s got an evening split between a solo set and a performance of her duo project Snowdrops, in which she and fellow keyboard player Mathieu Gabry blend assorted keyboards and soundscapes. All will feature Christine’s work on piano and on the ondes Martenot, an antique années folles proto-synthesizer from the 1920s using vacuum tubes, slide controls, early filters and a selection of varied speaker devices to create eerie swooping cadences and strangely-coloured sonic outputs.

Dates:

The Eagle Inn, 18-19 Collier Street, Salford, M3 7DW, England, Sunday 5th November 2017, 7.30pm (with A-Sun-Amissa & ARC Soundtracks) – information here and here
Leeds International Film Festival @ Victoria Hall, Victoria Square, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS1 3.., England, Monday 6th November 2017, 8.15pm (TABU live) – information
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England, Wednesday 8th November 2017, 8.00pm (solo performance + Snowdrops performance) – information here and here

November 2017 – London noise/rock/math/polysplurge – Woven Skull and Mésange at Baba Yaga’s Hut (2nd November); Poly-Math, Masiro and Asian Death Crustacean at The Facemelter (3rd November)

26 Oct

Baba Yaga and Chaos Theory rattle the first bones of November with two London instrumental rock shows in the first week of the month, showcasing their usual mixtures of (respectively) unsettling/exultant psychedelic noise and blitzing proggy mathematical structures.

* * * * * * * *

Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Woven Skull + Mésange
Paper Dress Vintage Bar & Boutique,, 352a Mare Street, Hackney, London, E8 1HR, England
Thursday 2nd November 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

Irish noiseniks Woven Skull (who apparently wowed the audience at last year’s Raw Power festival) make strange freeform whirlwinds of churning bramble-feedback guitar, treated mandola and lava-spurt drumming – sometimes repetitive; sometimes tremendously intricate but packed into trapped, webbed layers.

Barring the electricity and the drum kit, they barely sound like rock. Since they take inspiration from “haunted woods and burning bogs”, there’s clearly some dark-folk intent in what they do, but they sound more like a kind of sub-folk or subconscious folk – the burring jostle of hedgerow life in frantic fast-forward, but smeared across protracted time. They clearly have larger ambitions: this summer’s release, ‘ They Were Pebbles But I Call Them Stones’, features additional space and an extended ensemble (including viola, flute and synth) without letting up on the myriad scramble.

I know less about support act Mésange beyond their interest in Neil Young, Dirty Three and Nadja and that they’re a collaboration between post-classical noise-violinist Agathe Max (Kuro) and guitarist Luke Mawdsley (Cavalier Song). Both Agathe and Luke have already shown up in here last year with their other bands – the first at the Rocket Recordings showcase, and the second being raved about in my preview of another Baba Yaga show (“on a cusp between Swans and King Crimson… like a prog band in which the brain hemispheres are falling away from each other….panic, chaos and a liberated excitement loom as possibilities among the brutal rips of guitar, the resonating overtones and the low-hanging atmospherics; yet the band lean on – and sustain – that moment when form and skills of structure and rapid response still remain. Other noise bands simply plod and accumulate: Cavalier Song sway and shift; light-footed knife-fighters, their eyes and attention flicking this way and that while keeping a deadly focus… This is how it’s meant to be done.”)

So let’s look at the way the new band describe themselves – “their music is possessed and steered by a solemn power that embraces the elements and careers through dense electric skies; exposing signs that flutter and flare in dark elegance. Respective strings correspond and meander across ancient fields, while layered voices evoke serene pools of tropic sound, soon to be engulfed by inescapable tides of noise. Unfettered, yet critical, Mésange invites the listener to explore a downy and magnetic earth-scape, teetering between lightning and thunderclap. The tracks unfold like magic spells, each evoking chimes of hope, despair, freedom and oblivion.”

And here’s what it sounds like: a shattering ghostly grind that manages to simultaneously evoke grand and lonesome country structures, unfettered prog hallucinations, the flair of baroque choirs and (for once, without a slavish imitation) My Bloody Valentine’s honeysick psychedelia. A pretty staggering new jump, one that pretty much damn well needs its own genre name.

* * * * * * * *

Meanwhile, back in Camden Town…

Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Poly-Math + Masiro + Asian Death Crustacean
The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 3rd November 2017, 7.30pm – information here, here, and here

Again, all three bands have a familiar ring. Headliners Poly-Math are a heavy Brightonian math-rock trio who last crossed my radar in April last year, and whom the ever-enthusiastic Chaos Theory are now hailing as “the perfect balance of intricate musicianship, infectious hooks, heart-pounding melodies and nuanced buildups…. a pinnacle and example to all fledgling bands in the math rock scene.” Tonight they’re debuting their upcoming “massive prog record” ‘We Are The Devil’ and teasing that the gig may be ” one of our last performances in our current format, maybe…” Hopefully that’s not a hint of chafing personnel wanting to move on, and more a hint that the entire band wants to move up to the next stage: if they were to call it a day, they’d be missed. Here’s an example of them in full spark – a heavy band who are delightfully light on their feet.

Post-mathcore middle-billers Masiro are from Oxford and continue that town’s tradition of incubating and spitting out tight, technical rock bands with omnivorous tastes. In their case, these are a melange of prog, metal and funk grooves… and if that makes them sound like early ’90s macho blokes in shorts, imagine a trio who went the other way, reframing and reappraising those elements from a confusing refracted perspective. As a listener, they make you work to get back to the sources, but it’s a compelling game of reconstruction. They played the Facemelter again back in February and were hailed as “second to none”. Judge for yourselves:

Finally, Asian Death Crustacean continue to excel in the ridiculous name stakes and to impress as a new, hungry band who bait and switch sour-metal growls and luminescent post-rock coils with equal facility.

Tags: Asian Death Crustacean, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Cavalier Song, Chaos Theory (event/promoter), Kuro, London (England), Masiro, Mésange, Poly-Math, The Facemelter (event), Woven Skull

October/November 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – post-various loops and shades from Rothko, Yellow6 and Darkroom (12th October); Moondog For Gamelan plus Steve Lawson/Corey Mwamba duo (28th October); Steel Pan Fusion plays Philip Glass (23rd November)

4 Oct

Several longstanding Misfit City experimental favourites (all veterans of the liminal cross-encroachments between British post-rock, noise and electronic explorations during the 1990s) feature in a mid-month triple bill of shifting noise, words and melodies down at IKLECTIK.

Champion Version presents:
Edition 1: Rothko + Yellow6 + Darkroom
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 12th October 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

Though they’ve passed through a shifting variety of lineups and different instrumentation, Rothko are based around a single constant: Mark Beazley’s resonant post-industrial bass guitar, which speaks stern granite-y notes and impressionistic chthonic drones and blurs, sketching and deepen evocatic musical landscapes from unyielding post-punk city visions to soft-edged post-rock hillscapes.

On this occasion they’re appearing in an expanded version of the beautifully bleak words-and-shades trio last mentioned in ‘Misfit City’ just under a year ago (in which Mark was joined by recitateur Johnny Brown from Band of Holy Joy, and by Inga Tillere on projected visuals). In place for tonight’s show is a fourth member – Mark’s Low Bias colleague Graham Dowdall (a.k.a. Gagarin), whose synth wizardry’s brought him into collaboration with Pere Ubu, Suns of Arqa, Roshi and no less than two former Velvet Undergroundeers (Nico and John Cale).

Intermittent and elusive, yet steadily prolific, Jon Attwood’s solo guitar project Yellow6 has links with the undersung east London post-rock scene of the 1990s (which also spawned A.R. Kane, Disco Inferno, Moonshake and Bark Psychosis (BP’s drummer Mark Hartnett would later put in a Yellow6 stint). Moving away from his initial goth and anarcho-punk roots (tempered with soul), Jon was drawn into the world of minimalism, repetition and reverbed/distorted drone loops. Shaped equally by Jon’s natural humility and his “obsessive need to create” toward an artistic peak he’s not yet reached, Yellow6 has produced over fifty releases with results variously described as “gentle shape-shifting misery” and “beautiful, shimmering and blissful”.

With roots in Cambridge science culture, propulsive and unorthodox ambient duo Darkroom initially found their feet in the fertile 1990s ferment surrounding art-poppers No-Man (initially sporting the latter’s singer Tim Bowness as a member, and providing that particular scene’s experimental edge alongside Steven Wilson’s electrodrones as Bass Communion). Since then, like a wide-orbiting comet, synthworker Os and guitarist Michael Bearpark have forged their own idiosyncratic path in and out of various drone, loop, texture and improv clusters, as well as becoming in-house soundtrackers for brain investigations at the Hub. Moving on from their earlier minglings of boiling starstuff, ambient techno and gasping tidal experimental textures, their more recent music is moody, beating improvised electronica increasingly shaped by Mike and Os’ rediscovery of attenuated blues tones, troubled elongated Neil Young guitar churns and dark bass clarinet voicings. For more assorted ‘Misfit City’ froth and musings on Darkroom, click here. Less celebrated than their gigmates, they’ll be opening the show. They could just as well be closing it.

This concert has been set up by boutique vinyl art-music label Champion Version, who’ll have one of their limited-edition vinyl EP featuring all three acts available on the night.

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Towards the end of the month, there’s an intriguing reconnection between late twentieth-century New York and the Indonesian form which inspired so much of it…

Europalia Arts Festival Indonesia presents:
Iwan Gunawan & Stefan Lakatos’ ‘Moondog For Gamelan’ + Steve Lawson/Corey Mwamba
LSO St Luke’s, 161 Old Street, St Luke’s, London, EC1V 9NG, England
Saturday 28th October 2017, 7.30pm – information

“Few musicians are the source of as much intrigue as Moondog. A blind man from Kansas transplanted to New York City, he dressed as a Viking and chose to live on the streets. His compositions reflect his experiences of hearing his way through the city – motifs borrowed from Jazz, Classical and Native American music unwind over the constant beating of a tom-tom drum, like the thumping of a subway train. Occasionally field recordings of traffic noise or crying babies sneak in, as if leaking through an open window. It’s the sound of a city, the sound of a wealth disparate parts coming together to create a complex whole – a kind of urban gamelan.

“For this concert, Moondog’s output is literally reimagined as gamelan by Iwan Gunawan (a reknowned contemporary Javanese gamelan composer known for combining the tradition with the use of electronics and computers) and Moondog’s friend and pupil Stefan Lakatos (who performs using a homemade percussion instrument given to him by the composer himself). Featuring instruments built especially for the occasion, this performance takes gamelan out of its traditional context, taking on Moondog’s experimental yet optimistic compositions. Almost minimalist in its construction – indeed, Moondog alleged that Phillip Glass once called him the “father of minimalism” – the influential outsider musician’s melodies resonate amid the controlled chaos of gamelan.”

In support, there’s a duo performance by another ‘Misfit City’ favourite – bass guitar looper Steve Lawson and experimental vibraphonist Corey Mwamba. Collaborators for at least a decade, they’re a pair of accessible yet stubborn musicians creating their own long-distance version of village music on the outskirts of the music business. Recorded/filmed evidence of what they do is surprisingly thin on the ground (I can’t find any) so you’ll have to go on word-of-mouth info about their past gigs. Expect some aspects taken from jazz and fed through sundry loops, delays and perky processors, but don’t expect them to be confined by that – their musical minds stretch from contemporary classical and process music to goofy tunes, and their textural tastes from lowdown murmur to ear-piercing noise. A big bucket to dip into.

* * * * * * * *

While we’re still on the topic of New York minimalism and Philip Glass, look out next month for what sounds like it’ll be an enthralling conjunction of Big Apple pulse and Caribbean tonal warmth…

‘Steel Pan Fusion Plays Philip Glass’
The Jazz Café, 5 Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG, England
Thursday 23rd November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“One of the most influential and important composers of the twentieth century, Philip Glass is a pioneer of minimalist music alongside fellow luminaries Steve Reich and Terry Riley. With a body of work that stretches beyond contemporary classical music into film scores, operas and more, the source material is rich for reinterpretation. We have commissioned London based ensemble Steel Pan Fusion to perform a selection of works from Glass’ extensive repertoire, from his peerless ‘Glassworks’ to the soundtrack for ‘The Truman Show’.”

Tags: Champion Versions (record label), Corey Mwamba, Darkroom, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Iwan Gunawan, LSO St Luke's (venue) - St Luke's - London, Moondog, Philip Glass, Rothko, Steel Pan Fusion, Stefan Lakatos, Steve Lawson, The Jazz Café (venue) - Camden Town - London - England, Yellow6

October 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – the Radiophonic Workshop takes over the British Library (13th October)

3 Oct

A quick reposting…

The British Library presents:
Late at the Library: The Radiophonic Workshop & Guests
Entrance Hall @ The British Library, 96 Euston Road, Kings Cross, London, NW1 2DB, England
Friday 13th October 2017, 6.30pm –
information

“The Radiophonic Workshop are one of the most influential electronic music groups of all time. Founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram, it was home to a maverick group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators including the late Delia Derbyshire. In a series of small studios within the labyrinthine corridors of the BBC Maida Vale complex, the Workshop set about exploring new ways of using – and abusing – technology to create new sounds.

“Their influence on popular music has been profound. As the in-house composers of music and effects for the BBC they created the sonic backdrops for ‘Doctor Who’, ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’, ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and countless others. From The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Prince and Pink Floyd through to some of the most innovative contemporary electronic artists and DJs, the Workshop’s legacy continues to grow as new generations of musicians discover their catalogue of extraordinary recordings.

“Now, nearly two decades after the Workshop was decommissioned, original members Peter Howell, Roger Limb, Dr Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland and long-time associate composer Mark Ayres are back working together. They soundtracked the childhoods of several generations, now they’re back to soundtrack your Friday night with a two part set. The first is a live version of their first studio album for twenty-five years, the improvised work ‘Burials On Several Earths’, with guest collaborator Martyn Ware (Heaven 17, The Human League and BEF). The second is a heritage archive set in which the Workshop perform some of their best known material – including the high water mark of early British electronica – the signature tune for ‘Doctor Who’.

“Join the Radiophonic Workshop at 6.30pm for a special in-conversation event ‘Soundhouses: The Radiophonic Workshop at 60’. Tickets include entry to the Late event. Visuals for the night are performed by Obsrvtry, a collaboration between Michael Faulkner (founder of D-Fuse) and Ben Sheppee (creator of Lightrhythm Visuals), with a guest DJ set from Tom Middleton of Global Communication.”

Tags: BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Ben Sheppee, D-Fuse, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Desmond Briscoe, Dick Mills, Global Communication, Lightrhythm Visuals, Mark Ayres, Michael Faulkner, Obsrvtry, Paddy Kingsland, Peter Howell, Roger Limb, The British Library (venue) - Kings Cross - London

June 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Kammer Klang double event – ‘Soarings: A Salon on Else Marie Pade’ (5th June); Apartment House and Jacob Kirkegaard play Pade and Henning Christiansen, plus Vitalija Glovackyte (6th June)

24 May

The June Kammer Klang is a double event centred loosely around Danish composers Else Marie Pade and Henning Christiansen, who variously pioneered mid-twentieth century electronic music and cross-genre intermedia Fluxus experiments.

Kammer Klang presents:
‘Soarings: A Salon on Else Marie Pade’
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Monday 5th June 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
and
Apartment House (performing Henning Christiansen) + Jacob Kierkegaard (presenting Else Marie Pade) + Vitalija Glovackyte + Aguirre DJs
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 6th June 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“The sounds outside became concrete music, and in the evening I could imagine that the stars and the moon and the sky uttered sounds and those turned into electronic music.” – Else Marie Pade.

Increasingly recognised as Denmark’s first composer of electronic music, Else Marie Pade imagined “aural pictures” during a childhood afflicted by illness, and later learned jazz piano. Operating within the Danish resistance in the Second World War while still a teenager, she was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Frøslevlejren internment: an experience which must have had a long-lasting and damaging effect since it undermined her post-war attempts to train as a classical pianist. Undaunted, she concentrated on composing instead: finding her particular niche after hearing a 1952 Danmarks Radio programme on Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète and realising that he’d given aural shape to the same ideas she’d had as a child. From the mid-1950s she was in at the start of art programmes on Danish television, establishing a lifelong position for herself both as a Danmarks Radio producer and as a pre-eminent radio and television composer (at a time when that strand of musical work offered as much genuine creative opportunity as anything in the avant-garde).

Over the course of her lifetime Pade produced a wide variety of sensuous, stimulating electronic compositions to entwine with various broadcast work: avant-garde documentary work, audiovisual ballet and more. Having studied with Schaeffer during the 1950s, she also attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt during the 1960s and early 1970s, studying under Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and György Ligeti (and impressing Stockhausen enough that he’d use her own ‘Glass Bead Game’ piece as a lecture topic). Apparently taken for granted in her home country, Pade’s reputation was greater abroad – her work was eventually compiled in a three-LP retrospective on Important Records (‘Electronic Works 1958-1995’) in 2014, two years before her death.

Regarding the ‘Soarings’ salon:

“…”Soarings” is a rough translation of the Danish word “svævninger” – a word coined by Pade to encompass both the phenomenon of different frequencies colliding to make an interference beat, and the more poetic image of soaring through the air. The ‘Soarings’ salon event is a special opportunity to hear more about her work via talks, film screening and discussion.

“The evening begins with a talk from artist and composer Jacob Kirkegaard, a long-time friend and colleague of Pade’s. Jacob will speak about Pade’s life and work from his unique perspective, having both produced her three-LP retrospective and collaborated with her on their joint composition ‘Svævninger’ (released by Important Records in 2012, and from which the evening takes its name). His presentation will include new images (including recently digitised scores) never previously shown in public.

“The evening will include the UK premiere of Pade’s extraordinary audiovisual piece ‘En dag på Dyrehavsbakken’: one of her very earliest works, which was first broadcast in 1955 by DR (the Danish Broadcasting Corporation). It consists of pictures and sounds recorded over two summers at Dyrehavsbakken, near Klampenborg in Denmark, and also includes electronically-produced sine tones and echo effects. This makes it the first piece of musique concrete and electronic music made by a Danish composer.

“The salon will conclude with a panel discussion with diverse contributions and reflections on Pade’s work and its wider context from Danish musicologist (and ‘Seismograf‘ editor) Sanne Krogh Groth, sound designer/studio manager Jo Langton and ‘Wire’/’Sight & Sound’ writer Frances Morgan. There’ll also be a reading by sound artist Ain Bailey (whose work includes sonic autobiographies and investigations of both architectural acoustics and the role of sound in the formation of identity).”

Jacob Kierkegaard returns for the full Kammer Klang show the following night, where he’ll be presenting Pade’s 1962 work ‘Faust Suite’, generally considered her masterpiece and described by Jennifer Hor of ‘The Sound Projector’ as “beautiful and mysterious, elegant and eerie music that can express deep solitude or wonder… a secret three-dimensional universe where the most amazing experiences may be had.” Over half an hour of sensually chiming oscillator churn (with nimble, challenging digressions of timbre, tone and emphasis), it places Pade’s work in parallel to the electrophonic imaginings of Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram – similarly thoughtful, similarly detailed and discursive; part of a wave of highly individual and original female composers and sonic réalisatrices with much of their work taking place within broadcast media, dancing apart yet in step.

Opening the show is composer/performer Vitalija Glovackyte, who “creates deep-felt chirpy music, bringing together conventional and homemade instruments, electronics, lo-fi devices and visuals. Her works span intimate solo sets and large-scale multimedia performances. Aside from her solo work, Vitalija co-runs the Almost Credible Music Ensemble and is one-half of the experimental pop duo Kinder Meccano.”

The track above stems from an eighteen month residency Vitalija spent with modern chamber ensemble Apartment House, who are also contributing to the evening in a seven-piece formation of Gordon MacKay (violin), Lucy Railton (cello), Frank Gratkowski (bass clarinet), Simon Limbrick (percussion), Kerry Yong (keyboard/piano), Loré Lixenberg (voice) and AH founder Anton Lukoszevieze as conceptualizer and director. They’ll be presenting the UK premiere of Anton’s adaptation of ‘Requiem of Art (NYC) – Fluxorum Organum’, a Henning Christiansen piece originally performed in 1967 (and reworked three years ago by Anton for an Ultima New York performance).

An adherent to the Fluxus art movement, Christiansen spent his artistic life rejecting standard distinctions of stylistic boundaries (including those between nominally different art forms) and the concept of the lone genius. Instead, much of his work was based on direct, implied or encouraged collaboration, whether he was encouraging others to freely interpret his ideas or whether he was actually working in equalized tandem with another artist. In its original form, ‘Fluxorum Organum’ is an example of the latter situation (having been created as the soundtrack portion to a film collaboration between Christiansen and conceptual art godfather Joseph Beuys) while its Lukoszevieze reinterpretation brings it back under the first method. You can view the original Beuys/Christiansen collaboration below:

The month’s Kammer Klang DJ slot is taken care of by representatives of Belgian record label/mail order distributors Aguirre who release and/or stock a wide range of electronic, ambient, experimental to rock, jazz, new wave and reggae. (including Pade and Christiansen recordings plus reissues from the revered French avant-garde record label Shandar. They’ll be playing various selections both from their catalogue and from their enthusiasms.

Programme:

Fresh Klang: Vitalija Glovackyte
Henning Christiansen – ‘Requiem of Art (NYC) – Fluxorum Organum’ (1967-68) adapted by Anton Lukoszevieze for Ultima New York at Issue Project Room, 2014 (UK premiere) – performed by Apartment House
Else Marie Pade – ‘Faust Suite’ (1962) performed by Jacob Kirkegaard
DJs: Aguirre

Tags: Aguirre (record label), Ain Bailey, Anton Lukoszevieze, Apartment House, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Else Marie Pade, ensemble music, Fluxus, Frances Morgan, Frank Gratkowski, Gordon MacKay, György Ligeti, Henning Christiansen, Jacob Kirkegaard, Jo Langton, Joseph Beuys, Kammer Klang (event), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kerry Yong, Kinder Meccano, listening to women, London (England), Lore Lixenberg, Lucy Railton, music from Denmark, Pierre Boulez, Pierre Schaeffer, Sanne Krogh Groth, Shandar (record label), Simon Limbrick, Vitalija Glovackyte, women of heart and mind

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – new SIKE! psych-rock night in Holloway (featuring The Spanish Infanta, Dazy Crown, Eyre Llew and Niris, May 11th); dance/pop/jazz with Agar Agar and Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra plus Is Tropical DJ set (May 16th); a womantronic evening with electric:indigo, A’bear and Lisa Busby (May 18th)

4 May

gigmit presents
SIKE! (featuring The Spanish Infanta + Dazy Crown + Eyre Llew + Niris)
Nambucca, 596 Holloway Road, Upper Holloway, London, N7 6LB, England
Thursday 11th May 2017, 7.00pm – information here, here and here

A new psychedelic rock night, launching at Nambucca in upper Holloway this month, attempts to capture the whole of the range within the genre. Good luck with that – Baba Yaga are still scooping up variations after years of plugging away at it.

That said, SIKE!’s debut night scintillates across a determined four-act psych spectrum from gritty backstreet hardness to sunkissed airiness. There’s the lysergic gutbucket garage sludge of The Spanish Infanta; the gentler post-punk-meets-West Coast-y songs of Dazy Crown, the soaring Icelandic-inspired raptures and wreckage of Nottingham’s Eyre Llew; and the Balearic chillout of instrumental duo Niris (a teaming of guitarist/multi-instrumentalists Nick Engel and Chris Hatwell which covers a broad range between uplit flamenco-inspired guitar duets, ambient sunrise electronica, and breezy dance songs). Examples below.

* * * * * * * *

Snap Crackle & Pop Live presents:
Agar Agar + Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra + Is Tropical (DJ set)
The Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette Street, Hackney, London, E9 6NU, England
Tuesday 16th May 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

Over in Hackney, the Snap Crackle & Pop label are running a Cracki Records night featuring a couple of French and Belgian acts who explore luminous, involved dance-and-groove styles (plus a DJ set from squat-party experimentalists turned international poptronicists Is Tropical).

The ’80s synth pop/acid disco hybrid of Agar Agar mixes resurrected old analogue tech with art school smarts and fluid contemporary sensibilities on identity and expression. Blending electro sunniness with the feeling of a haunt in the full noon brightness, there’s also (as with Elephant) an ineffable bruised melancholy creaming off the top. Their songview’s full of interesting propositions – from Prettiest Virgin’s dancefloor ballad of yearning, slightly predatory female longing (complete with suggestive, part-animated video clip of lost girl, naked dancers, dolphins and fleshy tunnelling) to the surreal night journey of I Am That Guy (with its burnishings of ominous analogue hornsynth, its intimations of housebreaking, and the profanity-laden, deracinated blues-growl of its cross-gender vocal).

Like Agar Agar, Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra draw on the 1980s (predominantly in their attempts to recapture impressions of French cinema and Japanese funk) but also look back towards the ’70s. Like Carl Hudson’s Moon Unit, they breathe new life into Lonnie Liston Smith cosmic jazz-funk, retool a handed-down Horace Silver vocabulary, and flood jazzy cascades and stabbing Wurlitzer syncopations through contemporary dance club sensibilities. On their vocal collaborations – such as Ship, with FM Laeti – they coast towards a Morcheeba cool. Left to their own devices, they’ll veer towards warm, skittish brain-grooves, occasionally like a slightly less oblique French take on Weather Report (or, as on Galaxies, like Brand X or the more fusionesque moments of Genesis).

* * * * * * * *

The Engine Room + Austrian Cultural Forum + The Wire presents:
electric:indigo + A’bear + Lisa Busby (DJ Set)
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 18th May 2017, 8.00pm – information

If you’re more interested in an evening of female musicians working way out in the left-field, IKLECTIK are offering the first British gig in twenty years for Austrian electro-polymath Susanne Kirchmayr – a.k.a. electric:indigo. Composer, DJ, producer and founder of female:pressure (the go-to directory for women in electronic music), on this occasion she’ll be performing “a unique version of her six-channel sound art piece ‘109.47 degrees’. The title of the ultra-wide hyper-stereo piece refers to “the ideal tetrahedral angle in foams as described in Plateau’s laws”. From a set of small acoustic particles ‘109.47 degrees’ creates complex sonic structures that “live on friction, cohesion and constant movement”…” Suzanne will also be being interviewed by ‘The Wire’s Emily Bick.

In support, “vocal/techno/experimental/rap/rainbow workout” artist Janine A’Bear will be performing a synths-and-voicewarp-and computers set of “electronic poetry” boasting “carefully constructed verse combined with themes of a cosmic nature.” That’s quite a lot of grab-quotes there. I’ve also grabbed a few examples of her work and laid them out here – shimmering, layered rivulets of synthesis at a post-techno pulse rate, there’s plenty in there, but if you want to explore her verse it sounds as if you’ll have to tease it out of the soundscaping with a wool-comb.

Working the DJ decks for the evening is musician, Goldsmiths music lecturer and Editions Of You head Lisa Busby; also known for her work with The Nomadic Female DJ Troupe, noise/improve/playback crew Rutger Hauser and electro-Dada duo Sleeps In Oysters (as well as a solo career as singer-composer exploring “the fringes of song… using domestic or outdated playback media as instruments, but also work(ing) in text-based score, installation and site specific performance…”). Come and listen to her uncrate her mind.

If you want to dig a little deeper, it’s worth noting that this concert is part of international sound art exhibition The Engine Room, running between 4th May and 1st June between IKLECTIK and the nearby Morley College.

Tags: A'bear, Agar Agar, Chris Hatwell, Dazy Crown, electric:indigo (Susanne Kirchmayr), Emily Bick, Eyre Llew, FM Laeti, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Is Tropical, Lisa Busby, listening to women, Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra, Moth Club (venue) - Hackney - London, Nambucca (venue) - Upper Holloway - London - England, Nick Engel, Niris, Nomadic Female DJs, Rutger Hauser, SIKE! (event), Sleeps In Oysters, The Engine Room (event) - London - England, The Spanish Infanta, women of heart and mind

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Misfit City

July 2018 – upcoming rock gigs – A Sudden Burst of Colour, a-tota-so and Theo tear up The Facemelter (6th July); Heldon and Hirvikolari at Café Oto (14th July)

June 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Monkey Puzzle Trio and V Ä L V Ē (10th June); Laura Cannell’s ‘Modern Ritual’, with Charles Hayward, Hoofus, Jennifer Lucy Allan and Luke Turner (16th June); Ashley Paul & Tom James Scott, Glowering Figs and Ben Pritchard (22nd June)

June 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Colliding Lines’ ‘Reanimation: Phantasmagoria’ film soundtracking night with Georges Kaplan Presents…, Hypnotique, Alexander Carson and Far Rainbow (6th June)

May/June 2018 – upcoming London experimental music gigs – Shatner’s Bassoon and Man From Uranus at Stour Space (26th May), Author & Punisher, Trepaneringsritualen, Vera Bremerton at Electrowerkz (28th May); Stevie Richards’ Buchla workshop (2nd June)

May 2018 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Hen Ogledd’s freak-folk roar plus performances of Conlon Nancarrow, Alice Jeffries and original work by Naomi Sato, Lore Lixenberg and Serge Vuille at Kammer Klang (1st May); Tre Voci & Kit Downes EP launch (15th May)

April 2018 – upcoming London experimental/electronic/hip hop gigs – Zonal (Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin) with Moor Mother (26th April)

April 2018 – London classical/classical fusion/experimental gigs – North Sea Radio Orchestra and V Ä L V E at the Lexington (15th April); Sarah Deere-Jones harp-and-choir song cycle in the heart of Westminster (21st April)

March 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – More News From Nowhere ambient/noise/jazz/post-everything alldayer (30th March)

March 2018 – upcoming experimental music gigs in London – “dreams and shadows” music and film evening at Corpora Aliena #2 with Liz Helman, Bernhard Living/Marinesca Marinesca, Christine Webster and Olga Federova/Yannick Franck’s Outlaw Compound (24th March)

March 2018 – upcoming experimental music gigs in London – Tehran electronic music showcase with Hadi Bastani and Pouya Ehsaei (14th March)

February 2018 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Kammer Klang featuring Jennifer Walshe and Distractfold Ensemble (6th February)

January 2018 – upcoming London experimental rock gigs – Nøught & Dead Days Beyond Hope (17th January), Data Quack + Alex Ward (31st January)

January 2018 – upcoming gigs – Moor Mother in London and Leeds (10th and 12th January), with No Home, AlgernonCornelius and Basic Switches

November 2017 – upcoming London jazz/experimental gigs – Jazz in the Round with Arun Ghosh and Eddie Parker (27th); noise and costume chaos in ‘Beyond the Mask’ with Flange Zoo, Isn’tses, Pranic Attack and Madonna Vagina (25th)

November 2017 – upcoming London gigs – ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ with Anne Garner, Mary Currie, Lis Stewart (9th November); Powerdove and Ashley Paul (15th November)

November 2017 – experimental gigs in England – Christine Ott on tour in Salford, Leeds and London (5th-8th November)

November 2017 – London noise/rock/math/polysplurge – Woven Skull and Mésange at Baba Yaga’s Hut (2nd November); Poly-Math, Masiro and Asian Death Crustacean at The Facemelter (3rd November)

October/November 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – post-various loops and shades from Rothko, Yellow6 and Darkroom (12th October); Moondog For Gamelan plus Steve Lawson/Corey Mwamba duo (28th October); Steel Pan Fusion plays Philip Glass (23rd November)

October 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – the Radiophonic Workshop takes over the British Library (13th October)

June 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Kammer Klang double event – ‘Soarings: A Salon on Else Marie Pade’ (5th June); Apartment House and Jacob Kirkegaard play Pade and Henning Christiansen, plus Vitalija Glovackyte (6th June)

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