BAMBOO - Xmas single surprise!

Are your eyes full of tinsel and fire yet? Well don’t worry we’ve got the perfect festive jump start for you! Today we’re releasing a surprise double A-side single by Bamboo suffused with the magical spirit of the season. Available now on all the most digital of platforms, the Xmas themed double header features a deeply resounding cover of Greg Lake’s classic ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’, alongside a reworked version of their ‘Stay Another Day’ (East 17, as if you didn’t know) smash from last year! Let’s all hope we get the Xmas we deserve, stream ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ now.



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Xiu Xiu - Girl with Basket of Fruit

Today, Xiu Xiu are sharing the first single from Girl with Basket of Fruit, their new album coming February 8th via Upset The Rhythm. Girl with Basket of Fruit is imbued with the agitation, tension, sorrow and anger that has permeated the daily lives of so many over the last few years. It was produced by Xiu Xiu’s Angela Seo and Greg Saunier of Deerhoof. Xiu Xiu is Thor Harris, Jordan Geiger, Angela Seo, and Jamie "Butch Jenny" Stewart.

Accompanying the single, 'Scisssssssors', is the first act of a three part video series, co-directed by the band’s own Angela Seo, to be released surrounding the album. Featuring Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo as well as Ron Athey, Elliot Reed and others, the themes and references of the series include ritual, mythology, mundane and divergent belief, film, music, and resurrected motifs from preceding Xiu Xiu videos.

'Girl with Basket of Fruit' is available to pre-order now on purple/white/black marbled vinyl and CD here: http://upsettherhythm.bigcartel.com/

Xiu Xiu is the conduit for the uncompromising and unnervingly personal musical works of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie Stewart, plus a roll call of collaborators both in studio and onstage..  Streaming forth a ceaseless torrent of releases, side projects, art offerings and extensive international touring since 2002, Xiu Xiu's music has veered from damaged avant-pop to artfully orchestrated rock, squalls of black-hearted noise and most bases around and between, ever served with a bruising honesty and intensity that has ripped out the hearts of a legion of obsessive listeners.

Latest Xiu Xiu album 'Girl with Basket of Fruit' (out Feb 2019) is a rowdier, yet more stylistically splenetic offering than 2017's 'Forget', with the usual eye-catching list of collaborators this time including Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), Devin Hoff and Haitian percussionists Emmanuel Obi and Ayo Okafor.

 

It could be handfuls of reds

It could be turning Caravaggio’s Boy with Basket of Fruit to face the wall

It could be a commission by the Guggenheim entitled Deforms the Unborn 

It could be the demon Vetis, whose friends call Him The Life Promiser 

It could be that in 1918 a pregnant Mary Turner was hung upside down from a tree by a lynch mob while they cut out her fetus & that this could happen today, as it did then, without consequences for whitey

It could be handfuls of natural pearls

It could be collaborations with master Haitian drummers 

It could be doing the wrong thing together forever

It could be long lists of how The Devil’s acts towards children before, during & after their possession 

It could be short lists of produce, insects & imagined blues musicians 

It could be handfuls of an insane 9 year old's feces smushed on the lunch table

It could be a psychedelic Chicago house song about a pig & about your parents 

It could be your dad’s new husband gave you his boyhood viola

It could be a collaboration with master Yoruba drummers

It could be handfuls of cactus spines & a poison dart

It could be your sister has cancer & they keep chopping parts of her body off

It could be a conscripted arco bass piece that was a dedication to Turkish feminists

It could be Jack Smith has a film called Normal Love

It could be scisssssssors, air conditioner tubes, glasses of ice & seashells

It could be handfuls of hot pink Make Noise 1/8th inch audio cables 

It could be that Nature is making it clear to us that we deserve it and that we are making it clear to Her that we are ready, ready to go

It could be a short novel called The Rhythm Section Talked about Drugs, The Horn Players Talked about Ass & The Strings Talked about Money 

It could be improvised vocals by Elliot Reed & orchestrated vocals by Eugene Robinson

It could be that European religious paintings of male martyrs depict them surrounded by chubby, adoring angels, everyone’s tearful mothers & converted sex workers dutifully sponging out their holy & shallow wounds 

It could be that European religious paintings of female martyrs depict them with their nipples being torn off, throats branded & their naked torsos flayed while they are totally alone aside from the men torturing them 

It could be handfuls of Diamanda Galás & Roy Orbison action figures 

It could be that despite the confusion of this life, people who can still truthfully call themselves human try to push through 2019’s collecting horror

It could be slowed down & fuzzed out field recordings of disappearing frogs

It could be flat purple & black or glossy black & purple

It could be mescal in a bottle & baby on a boob, hair dyed blonde for nobody, nobody move

It could be handfuls of that you just have to stop being a wuss & deal with it

It could be…

XIU XIU - 2019 EUROPEAN TOUR DATES 

05/03/2019 Prague (CZ), Studio Hrdinu

https://www.studiohrdinu.cz/

06/03/2019 Lodz (PL), DOM

https://www.facebook.com/klubDOM/

07/03/2019 Warsaw (PL), Hydrozagadka

https://www.hydrozagadka.waw.pl

08/03/2019 Krakow (PL), Klub RE

http://www.klubre.pl/

10/03/2019 Vienna (AT), Chelsea

https://ntry.at/xiuxium?l=de

11/03/2019 Leipzig (DE), UT Connewitz

https://utconnewitz.de/

12/03/2019 Hamburg (DE), Elbphilharmonie

https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/en/

13/03/2019 Berlin (DE), Berghain Kantine

https://www.facebook.com/KantineamBerghain/

20/03/2019 Ancona (Osimo) (IT) Loop Live Club

https://www.facebook.com/loopliveclub/

21/03/2019 Milan (IT), Oibho

http://www.associazioneohibo.it/wordpress/

22/03/2019 Bologna (IT), Covo

http://www.boxerticket.it/ 

23/03/2019 Winterthur (CH), Gaswerk

https://www.gaswerk.ch/

26/03/2019 London (UK), Islington Assembly Hall

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/457380

27/03/2019 Brussels (BE), Beursschouwberg

https://beursschouwburg.be/en/

28/03/2019 Lille (FR) Cave Aux Poetes

https://www.caveauxpoetes.com/

30/03/2019 Utrecht (NL), Tivoli Vredenburg

https://www.tivolivredenburg.nl/agenda/xiu-xiu-30-03-2019/

01/04/2019 Copenhagen (DK), Vega

https://vega.dk

02/04/2019 Stockholm (SE), Fasching

http://www.fasching.se/

04/04/2019 Helsinki (FI), Kuudes Linja

http://www.kuudeslinja.com/ 

05/04/2019 Tallinn (EE), Sveta Bar

https://sveta.ee/

06/04/2019 Riga (LV), Gertrudes Ielas Teatris 

www.git.lv

08/04/2019 Kiev (UA), Closer

https://concert.ua/ru/booking/xiu-xiu

09/04/2019 Lviv (UA), Picasso
https://concert.ua/ru/booking/xiu-xiu-lviv

 

XIU XIU - London concert announced for next March!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

XIU XIU
Tuesday 26 March
Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, Islington, London, N1 2UD
7pm | £13.50 | https://link.dice.fm/xiu-xiu-iah

XIU XIU is the conduit for the uncompromising and unnervingly personal musical works of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie Stewart, plus a roll call of collaborators both in studio and onstage. Streaming forth a ceaseless torrent of releases, side projects, art offerings and extensive international touring since 2002, Xiu Xiu's music has veered from damaged avant-pop to artfully orchestrated rock, squalls of black-hearted noise and most bases around and between, ever served with a bruising honesty and intensity that has ripped out the hearts of a legion of obsessive listeners.

Newly announced  Xiu Xiu album, 'Girl with Basket of Fruit' (out Feb 8th on Upset The Rhythm), is a rowdier, yet more stylistically splenetic offering than 2017's 'Forget', with the usual eye-catching list of collaborators this time including Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), Devin Hoff and Haitian percussionists Emmanuel Obi and Ayo Okafor. For this live operation in London Xiu Xiu will manifest in the form of Jamie Stewart, Thor Harris (best known for his percussion work in Swans) and Jordan Gieger (Minus Story/Shearwater).
http://xiuxiu.org/

Eric Chenaux in London tomorrow, OTO Xmas fair this Sunday and Still House Plants next week!

Morning everyone!   Thank you for coming out recently to see Hen Ogledd and Mary Lattimore, what a great pair of shows they were? We must’ve been going through a harp phase! That ends tomorrow though as we have the magnetic Eric Chenaux in town, a musician so alchemical with his craft that his love-struck guitar epics sound like the heavens cracking open, sad trumpets on high, with Eric’s incomparable swoon drifting throughout.   It’s set to be an exemplary evening of balladeering from the experimental fringes, with the offbeat musings of Robert Sotelo and band opening the show too. This event will take place at The Islington, with live music kicking off from 8.30pm, tickets on the door from 7.30pm, see you there!

Read on for all the details of tomorrow’s concert, along with the full story on next week’s special team-up with Bison Records at Servant Jazz Quarters featuring live sets from Glasgow’s Still House Plants and the wondrous Ashley Paul.   We’ve also added new shows from avant-disco vendors Amor and sturm and drang duo Mésange to our listings section for February too.

This Sunday, we’re taking part in Café OTO’s Xmas Fair which is a free all-day event (starting from noon) heavy on the mulled wine, mince pies and record / book stalls. We’ll be selling our records, cds, shirts and associated sundries at some bargainous prices throughout the day, before handing over to the OTO Xmas choir and Pat Thomas in the evening!   Strange Attractor, Alter, Bison, Penultimate Press, Fitzcarraldo Editions, The White Review, Wire magazine and many more are also represented. Certainly going to be a good one, drop by and say hello!

OK, onto some excited 2019 news next… this coming March, Upset The Rhythm will be marking our 15th anniversary with a label showcase tour around Britain. Representing a lot of our current UK roster, the tour will see the likes of DIY punk progressives Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles and Dog Chocolate perform alongside hypnotic drum and voice duo Rattle and Guttersnipe, a group from Leeds who shredded their tonal territory into euphoria this year with their debut album.   Within the last fifteen years UTR has organised over 1500 live events in London and racked up a back catalogue you’d have to ask a friend to help carry, 115 titles at point of writing. All about the 15! The big XV! Here are the dates!   Wed 27th March - LONDON - The Dome Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Rattle, Guttersnipe, Dog Chocolate   Thu 28th March - GLASGOW - CCA Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Robert Sotelo, Rattle   Fri 29th March - LEEDS - Brudenell Social Club Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Rattle, Guttersnipe   Sat 30th March - MANCHESTER - White Hotel Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Guttersnipe, Dog Chocolate   Sunday 31st March - CARDIFF - Clwb Ifor Bach Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Dog Chocolate, Rattle

Right! Now it’s time to soundtrack the rest of your week next! Episode 10 of our Upset The Rhythm radio show for CAMP is now uploaded into the interwebs. 120 minutes of our favourite tracks (including Red Channel, Jon Hassell, Errant Monks and Mauve Sideshow), plenty of chatter, plus recent live recordings from Rattle, Mary Lattimore and Terry, listen up!

Upset The Rhythm presents…   ERIC CHENAUX ROBERT SOTELO Wednesday 5 December The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS   ERIC CHENAUX makes conceptual music that’s not meant to sound conceptual. He operates among various ‘traditions’ but perhaps most broadly, Chenaux’s records grapple with the relationship between improvisation and structure in very particular, unique, idiosyncratic ways – and quite without irony or cynicism, through love. Because fundamentally, Chenaux writes love songs, which he sings in a voice honeyed and clear, while his guitar gently bends, frazzes, chortles, diverges and decomposes. This juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice. As a solo artist, Chenaux’s improvisation methods are in certain literal ways solipsistic: as a singer-songwriter, he plays his guitar around and against his voice, challenging easy notions of harmony/harmoniousness, improvising ‘with himself’ in pursuit of surprising himself (and his listeners) as he unfurls ribbons of voice and instrument often to the point of seeming independence, all the better to capture­­ – and be captured by – unforeseen, intimate moments of interdependence: a definition of freedom, as a profoundly intentional state of openness, presence and play. Even within avant-garde currents of folk and jazz balladry, Eric Chenaux feels like an outlier. Yet his music remains wonderfully warm, generous and fundamentally accessible in spite of its irrefutable iconoclasm. While the constitutive elements of Chenaux’s solo work in recent years might suggest some underlying devotion to asceticism, the opposite is much more true: his musical reveries resist, critique and counteract austerity (in all its forms) in a joyful abandonment to the improvised space where playfulness and light-heartedness are taken seriously, and where love is invoked and expressed, without reductive or facile sentimentalism, in a full, nuanced, clear-eyed suspension/rejection of the cynical life. Slowly Paradise (on Constellation Records) is Eric Chenaux’s most recent solo record – a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. It is arguably Chenaux’s most assured and essential solo work, expanding upon the critical acclaim his previous releases Guitar & Voice and Skullsplitter have rightly garnered. http://cstrecords.com/eric-chenaux/  ROBERT SOTELO is the nom de plume of Andrew Doig, a 36 year old serial musician originally from Peterborough, UK. Andrew's middle name is Robert, whilst Sotelo is his mother's maiden name. Sotelo's verdant world of sound is at once intimate, choosing to build songs up from ambitious layers of instrumentation into miniature psych pop overtures of genuine sincerity of feeling. Very much grounded in that particular forward-facing strain of mid-60s rock that edged towards psych, Sotelo's music owes as much to Davies and McCartney's unashamed belief in melody as it does to the uncertainty and confusion that comes with mid-thirties existentialism. Debut album ‘Cusp' (Upset The Rhythm) was an album that explored the individual in a post-social life era, with Sotelo starting the project initially as an attempt to re-engage with the people he used to know, without relying on nostalgia as a common bond. From this worthy spark of a plan, he's created something grand and compelling, a vast tapestry of songs that stand up and sound afresh. Check out his exquisite recent cassette ‘Botanical’ on Nicey Music too. https://robertsotelo.bandcamp.com/

Upset The Rhythm & Bison Records presents…   STILL HOUSE PLANTS ASHLEY PAUL Thursday 13 December Servant Jazz Quarters, 10A Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   STILL HOUSE PLANTS are an experimental three-piece from Glasgow. This December they’ll return to London in support of the release of their debut LP, 'Long Play' (Bison Records). Combining visual strategies, free improvisation, garage and punk, Still House Plants build melodic hierarchies scaffolded around ambiguities and intimacy. Fresh from being selected for the Cafe OTO x Jerwood Foundation Artistic Development fund, and following two sold out tapes on Glasgow label GLARC,  'Long Play' collects the group's raw guitar-drum-vocal palette and stretches it to include violin, piano and home recording. Ranging from seconds-long to seven:minute:somethings, the album coagulates to form a heady meld of rudimentary phrases, kinetic repetition and malleable samples. Experimental songwriting is rarely so forthcoming, emotive, or approachable. Still House Plants have also been artists-in-residence for the CCA/AC Projects Music Residency and at The Pipe Factory. The trio have performed internationally too, touring with Mette Rasmussen to perform at Ultra Eczema's 20th Anniversary, Fasching Jazz Club with Rasmussen and Richard Dawson, as well as at KRAAK festival. https://bison-records.bandcamp.com/releases ASHLEY PAUL is an American composer/performer whose intuitive process integrates free form song structures with a focused approach to sound and clatter. A complexity of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared strings, bells and percussion create a delicate palette, uniquely her own. Her solo albums have received critical acclaim being chosen in The Wire: Top 50 Albums of 2013, Pitchfork’s “The Out Door” best experimental sounds of 2013, number one on Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Tongue Top Ten” in Arthur Magazine. Paul’s recent LP on Slip, ’Lost In Shadows’,  is a bewitching, expansive, deeply personal excavation of recent motherhood, told through songs dissolving and re-crystallising at the threshold of free improvisation. At the LP's heart is Paul's mercurial multi-instrumental style, which renders the primal wails, clunks, and twangs of clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and guitar uncannily melodic, alchemised by frank, vulnerable vocals. The deft negotiation of the fragile and the coruscating evidenced on Paul's 'Line The Clouds' (2013) and 'Heat Source' (2014) has now reached a kind of hesitant sublime. https://slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/lost-in-shadows

Thanks as always for your time and attention! See you tomorrow at the show. Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

ERIC CHENAUX ROBERT SOTELO Wednesday 5 December The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS   STILL HOUSE PLANTS ASHLEY PAUL Thursday 13 December Servant Jazz Quarters, 10A Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   THE STALLION: ‘THE DARK SIDE OF THE WALL’ TRIPLE ALBUM LAUNCH! Friday 18 January Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette St, Hackney Central, London, E9 6NU 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   AIR WAVES Thursday 31 January The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 | TICKETS   AMOR Friday 1 February New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay Warehouse District, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   MÉSANGE Thursday 7 February The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   KRISTIN HERSH With ROB AHLERS (drums) & FRED ABONG (bass) Sunday 10 March & Tuesday 12 March Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherd's Bush, London, W12 7LJ 7.30pm | £25 | TICKETS MARCH 10 /  TICKETS MARCH 12   THE SHIFTERS COOL GREENHOUSE Thursday 14 March The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   DAVID NANCE GROUP Monday 25 March The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, London, E8 2EB 8pm | £7 | TICKETS   Upset The Rhythm 15th anniversary label party! SAUNA YOUTH TRASH KIT GUTTERSNIPE VITAL IDLES RATTLE DOG CHOCOLATE Wednesday 27 March Tufnell Park Dome, 2A Dartmouth Park Hill, London, NW5 1HL 5.30pm - 11pm | £10 | TICKETS

Upset The Rhythm's 15th anniversary label tour!

 

Next March Upset The Rhythm will be marking our 15th anniversary with a label showcase tour around Britain. Representing a lot of our current UK roster, the tour will see the likes of DIY punk progressives Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles and Dog Chocolate perform alongside hypnotic drum and voice duo Rattle and Guttersnipe, a group who shredded their tonal territory into euphoria this year with their debut album. Within the last fifteen years UTR has organised over 1500 live events in London and racked up a back catalogue you’d have to ask a friend to help carry, 115 titles at point of writing. All about the 15! The big XV! Here are the dates!

Wednesday 27th March - LONDON - The Dome

Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Rattle, Guttersnipe, Dog Chocolate

Ticket link: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/457337

Thursday 28th March - GLASGOW - CCA

Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Robert Sotelo, Rattle

Ticket link: https://ccaglasgow.ticketsolve.com/shows/873599893/events/128832165

Friday 29th March - LEEDS - Brudenell

Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Rattle, Guttersnipe

Ticket link: http://www.brudenellsocialclub.co.uk/

Saturday 30th March - MANCHESTER - White Hotel

Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Guttersnipe, Dog Chocolate

Ticket link: https://dice.fm/event/x9nml-sauna-youth-trash-kit-30th-mar-the-white-hotel-manchester-tickets

Sunday 31st March - CARDIFF - Clwb Ifor Bach

Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Dog Chocolate, Rattle

Ticket link: https://link.dice.fm/upset-the-rhythm-15th-anniversary-tour-clwb-ifor-bach

 

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Upset The Rhythm: radio show 10!

Alright! Episode 10 of our Upset The Rhythm radio show for CAMP is up here now, 120 minutes of our favourite tracks plus live recordings from Rattle, Mary Lattimore and Terry, enjoy:

https://www.mixcloud.com/camp_fr/upset-the-rhythm-28th-november-2018/

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Upset The Rhythm - RADIO SHOW - Episode 10
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*

01. Inu - Feido Auto
02. Red Channel - Crazy Diamonds
03. Norbert Möslang & Andy Guhl - Deep Voices
04. Peter Howell & John Ferdinando - The March Of The Chessmen
05. Collie Ryan - The Well And The Lady
06. Paul Roland - Death Or Glory
07. Jon Hassell - Toucan Ocean
08. Rattle - Live at Upset The Rhythm
09. Mésange - The Return
10. Autumn Poison - Swords Into Ploughshares
11. Mark Renner - More Or Less
12. David Darling - Jessica’s Sunwheel
13. Errant Monks - Black Friday
14. Dark - R. C. 8
15. Special Occasion - The Word
16. Terry - Live at Upset The Rhythm
17. Tesco Bombers - Break The Ice At Parties
18. Dion - Drip Drop
19. Interior - Technobose
20. Mauve Sideshow - Golden Sand
21. Mary Lattimore - Live at Upset The Rhythm
22. Anthony Moore - Secrets Of The Blue Bag pt. 2
23. Deux Filles - Drinking At A Stream
24. Muzzle Tung - Elodea
25. Uproar - Life On The Dole

Rattle in the USA!

Nottingham's hypnotic drum/voice duo Rattle are on tour in the US of A right now! Go see them play the following dates with Protomartyr and Preoccupations! Yeehaw!

RATTLE - *USA* *TOUR*

28/11 - Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw

29/11 - Washington, DC @ Union Stage

30/11 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry

01/12 - Columbus, OH @ The Basement

03/12 - Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk Place

04/12 - Ann Arbor, MI @ Blind Pig

06/12 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall

07/12 - Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room

08/12 - Kansas City, MO @ Record Bar 

 

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Mésange - London show announced for Feb 7th!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

MÉSANGE
Thursday 7 February
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 

7.30pm | £7 | https://link.dice.fm/mesange-the-islington

MÉSANGE is a collaboration between composer/violinist Agathe Max and composer/ musician Luke Mawdsley. Their new album, Gypsy Moth, anticipates the forces of nature, creation and rebirth. Mordant musical tapestries (minimalism, drone and ambient) are washed in dense electric skies, exposing signs that flutter and flare in dark elegance. Ubiquitous modal loops, inspire tension and mystery, a golden harvest where forbidden fruits are gathered by furtive hands mindful of a coming storm. Mésange implore you to explore the threshold between dawn and dusk, self and other, where unfettered territories are sensually intimated in fecund sounds that teeter between lightning and thunderclap. The duo have travelled and toured extensively across the U.K and Europe and have been invited to perform with the acclaimed minimalist composer Terry Riley. Their performances are often improvised and unrestricted by the usual constraints of musical reception, celebrating a queering of gender, the body and identity both visually and sonically.

As a graduate in electro-acoustic composition, Agathe Max has worked within a range of indistinct disciplines including, sound design for experimental film, theatre, contemporary dance and other visual art forms. Agathe uses improvisation to explore a dark(er) materiality rooted in ritual, myth and the supernatural. Agathe Max’s latest recording A Gypsy in a Church (2016) is a daring 22 minute acoustic improvisation, weaving post-classical motifs into a beguiling and hypnotic tapestry that utters speculations on sacred identity and heritage. Other creative actions have included the OFIELD project, processing and forging environmental soundscapes for an imagined utopia/dystopia. Luke Mawdsley is a musician and composer, solo artist, collaborator and guitarist in Cavalier Song. His work meditates on the human condition, stirring memory and desire within musical definitions of a terrific sublime. The results are a series of lush, yet darkly affective, symphonic abstractions weaving in and around melancholic myths and narratives. Luke is currently the lead guitarist in Mugstar and a former member of Liverpool avant-garde group a.P.A.t.T. He has received commissions from The Blue Coat, FACT , Static Gallery and Edge Hill Arts Centre, providing an ongoing portfolio of improvised and soundtrack works.
https://mesange.bandcamp.com/

AMOR - London show announced for February!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

AMOR
Friday 1 February
New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay Warehouse District, London, N4 1DN
7.30pm | £7 | http://www.wegottickets.com/event/456624

AMOR is a new quartet based largely in Glasgow, consisting of Richard Youngs, Luke Fowler, Michael Francis Duch and Paul Thomson. AMOR is master-class in blissful, searching, avant-disco fuelled by telepathic ensemble playing and an untouchable, higher joy. Though a young grouping, AMOR’s members have separate exceptional histories in modern music. Richard Youngs has a 140+ long discography covering any number of musics often invented by Youngs himself, while Luke Fowler is an award winning film-maker and visual artist, as well as an electronic musician in his own right. Paul Thomson is a drummer and percussionist with Franz Ferdinand and The Yummy Fur and Michael Francis Duch is a double bassist based in Norway with deep roots in the world of improvisation and minimalist composition. Most important, however, is that AMOR is the sound of a band, as one.

Collectively, AMOR strike a balance between hefty, bass-thick kicks and crisp percussion, an elastic double bass that lends bounce and class to the groove and floating piano chords recalling a warped take on Philadelphia International Records or a version of Can decimating the disco charts of late 70s USA. Steeped in de-constructivist disco practices similar to Arthur Russell yet fully immersed in a higher love, never forsaking movement and joy for ego, AMOR’s embrace of the avant garde and the simplicity of feeling brings forth light. While at times the focal point, Richard Youngs’ vocals are immeshed in the mix, a plaintive, cosmic call and response with the outside. AMOR’s debut album, titled ‘Sinking Into A Miracle’, is due out this December via Night School Records, who also released the group’s previous couple of glorious EPs.
https://nightschoolrecords.com/artist/amor/ 



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Mary Lattimore, Hen Ogledd and Eric Chenaux in London!

Hello there!   Just a quick reminder of our upcoming London shows. This Monday we’re very pleased to invite sublime, harpist Mary Lattimore to play The Lexington. Lattimore’s world of sound is built from intricate layers of plucked strings, gauzy effects and atmospheric gesture. We’ve been fans of her music for a while now so it’s a real pleasure to host her on the last night of her European tour.   We’re also very happy to have Lucinda Chua opening the show with her expansive, spell-spinning cello-work too. Now that sounds just the ticket! Not that we have many of those left though, well worth buying one in advance.

Then our next show sees us slide fully into the festive season! On Friday 30th November there’s only one place to be… The Courtyard Theatre. We have some mytho-techno future pop in the beguiling shape of Hen Ogledd (Sally Pilkington, Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson) booked in. Celebrating the release of their exquisite new record, ‘Mogic’, this rare concert from the quartet of tiny-witch botherers, will also feature live performances from Bamboo and the Tower Ravens, an all-female rapper sword dance team.   Ticket sales for this one are brisk too, so you know what to do. Going to be a memorable night, that’s for sure!

Read on below for a more in-depth look at both of those crucial events, along with the full listing for December 5th’s select show with off-centre, balladeers Eric Chenaux and Robert Sotelo too.   We also announced new concerts for The Stallion (Ben and Alastair from The Country Teasers / Rebel with their dark interpolations into Pink Floyd) and the riotous David Nance Group this week too, both on sale in our listings section… now!

Upset The Rhythm presents…   MARY LATTIMORE LUCINDA CHUA Monday 19 November The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £8 | TICKETS   MARY LATTIMORE is a harpist living in Los Angeles. She experiments with her Lyon and Healy Concert Grand harp and effects. Memories - places, vacancies, allusions - are fundamental characters in Mary Lattimore's evocative craft. Inside her music, wordless narratives, indefinite travelogues, and braided events skew into something enchantingly new. Lattimore recorded her breakout 2016 album, 'At The Dam', during stops along a road trip across America, letting the serene landscapes of Joshua Tree and Marfa, Texas color her compositions. In 2017, she presented 'Collected Pieces', a tape compiling sounds from her past life in Philadelphia: odes to the east coast, burning motels, and beach town convenience stores. In 2018, from a restorative station - a redwood barn, nestled in the hills above San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge - emanates 'Hundreds of Days', her second full-length LP with Ghostly International. The record sojourns between silences and speech, between microcosmic daily scenes and macrocosmic universal understandings, between being alien in promising new places and feeling torn from old native havens. It's an expansive new chapter in Lattimore's story, and an expression of mystified gratitude. A study in how ordinary components helix together to create an extraordinary world. Throughout the shifting locales there is one consistent companion Lattimore engages: a 47-string Lyon and Healy harp. The instrument wires directly into her psyche. Pitchfork's Marc Masters posits, "she can practically talk through it at this point; she's created a language." Lattimore's voice sweeps beneath the plucks and washes of opener "It Feels Like Floating," enraptured by the winding current, and reappearing in the second minute of the immense "Never Saw Him Again." The track elevates towards a shimmering apex of static and percussion before organ drone yields to signature halcyon flutters. As with much of Lattimore's work, the track titles are telling; "Baltic Birch" is a somber windswept march that sways gracefully out of step, a remembrance of a recent trip to Latvia where she was struck by the abandoned resort towns along the Baltic Sea. "Hello From The Edge of The Earth" is an earnest reflection of Lattimore's love of the natural world, recognising the thresholds of varying terrains. 'Hundreds Of Days' is out now on Ghostly International. Mary also writes harp parts for songs and recordings, performing and recording with such great artists as Meg Baird, Thurston Moore, Sharon Van Etten, Jarvis Cocker, Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Ed Askew and Fursaxa. https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/ LUCINDA CHUA is a London-based singer-songwriter whose had a very productive year. The gifted cellist was a member of FKA Twigs’ live band, composed a Tchaikovsky-inspired score for a Russian fashion documentary, and has fostered a wide-ranging community of collaborators from her city’s diverse indie scene—among them Westerman, Ben Vince, and Laura Misch. These wildly different projects show the breadth of the artist’s interests, unified by Chua’s subtle chamber pop touch. Chua’s mode isn’t vigor: her songs are understated and somber, the energy so subdued it’s practically somnolent. Chua used to tour long ago with Stars of the Lid, and indeed that ambient band’s mournful, super-delicate style offers a clear idea of how Chua approaches her music, she was also a member of Felix on kranky records too. There is an unflappable calm present in all of Chua’s work, and on the quiet and intensely-felt recent single, ‘Somebody Who’, she is breaking out on her own. https://soundcloud.com/lucindachua

Upset The Rhythm presents…   HEN OGLEDD BAMBOO TOWER RAVENS RAPPER Friday 30 November The Courtyard Theatre, 40 Pitfield Street, Shoreditch, N1 6EU 7.30pm | £12 | TICKETS   HEN OGLEDD is a project founded by Richard Dawson and harpist, Rhodri Davies, with the addition of Dawn Bothwell and Sally Pilkington. The name of the group is a reference from the Welsh for The Old North. Each hailing from historically different tribal regions of the Old North, the musicians in Hen Ogledd challenge the idea that the ancient world was rife with magic, while the new is infiltrated by cold logic. This has led to the band’s new album for Weird World, ‘Mogic’, being created. This third record from the group is a phantasmal blend of images and ideas that draw upon the mystical and technological. ‘Mogic’ is a discombobulating pop prayer exploring artificial intelligence, witches, nanotechnology, pre-medieval history, robots, romance, computer games and waterfalls. This dynamic album of eddies and swirls, ravishing melodies, hallucinatory textures and rapid rhythms is pinned down by some deft performances: Pilkinton’s picture-perfect pop and earthy singing, Davies’ blazing harp splutterations and guitar moans, Bothwell's twisted telephone techno and bamboozling lyric-bombs and Dawson's utter bass. No small mention must go to special guest Will Guthrie, one of the finest and classiest drummers there is, who's all over this record like long grass on dunes. ‘Mogic’ is released on November 16th and supported by a short tour of the UK of which, this show is the London date! https://youtu.be/5O9BXeFm_yg  BAMBOO is the majestic pop project of Nick Carlisle and Rachel Horwood. Their music is vivid and deeply poignant, locking into a magnetic pull between Rachel's flawlessly resonant folk cadence and Nick's pristine synth pop production. Bamboo’s second studio album, The Dragon Flies Away, was released last year on Upset The Rhythm. The Dragon Flies Away tells a story loosely associated with the Hannya demon mask of Noh theatre plays such as Dojoji, and reflects the range of emotion the Hannya mask is capable of displaying: obsession, jealousy, sorrow and rage. The album presents its story in two acts and is presented with a gatefold sleeve and lyric / artwork sheet. Horwood’s evocative paintings are given centre stage with the packaging, allowing the album's story to grow beyond sound, making the journey all the more immersive. Bamboo are currently a live quartet and have just finished off their new record, ‘Daughters of the Sky’, look out 2019! http://www.bamboosongs.co.uk/ TOWER RAVENS are an all female rapper dance team based in central London. They take their name from the feathered guardians of the Tower of London, and are accompanied by a brazen Beefeater. They dance out in the city on a monthly tour of favourable pubs, and attend events and festivals throughout the year. Rapper sword dancing is a form of traditional dance which comes from the north east of England. The “swords” (inch wide strips of metal with a handle at each end) are used to make intricate locks and patterns whilst the dancers perform precise and neat stepping combined with fast and exciting movements. https://www.facebook.com/towerravensrapper/

Upset The Rhythm presents…   ERIC CHENAUX ROBERT SOTELO Wednesday 5 December The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS   ERIC CHENAUX makes conceptual music that’s not meant to sound conceptual. He operates among various ‘traditions’ but perhaps most broadly, Chenaux’s records grapple with the relationship between improvisation and structure in very particular, unique, idiosyncratic ways – and quite without irony or cynicism, through love. Because fundamentally, Chenaux writes love songs, which he sings in a voice honeyed and clear, while his guitar gently bends, frazzes, chortles, diverges and decomposes. This juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice. As a solo artist, Chenaux’s improvisation methods are in certain literal ways solipsistic: as a singer-songwriter, he plays his guitar around and against his voice, challenging easy notions of harmony/harmoniousness, improvising ‘with himself’ in pursuit of surprising himself (and his listeners) as he unfurls ribbons of voice and instrument often to the point of seeming independence, all the better to capture­­ – and be captured by – unforeseen, intimate moments of interdependence: a definition of freedom, as a profoundly intentional state of openness, presence and play. Even within avant-garde currents of folk and jazz balladry, Eric Chenaux feels like an outlier. Yet his music remains wonderfully warm, generous and fundamentally accessible in spite of its irrefutable iconoclasm. While the constitutive elements of Chenaux’s solo work in recent years might suggest some underlying devotion to asceticism, the opposite is much more true: his musical reveries resist, critique and counteract austerity (in all its forms) in a joyful abandonment to the improvised space where playfulness and light-heartedness are taken seriously, and where love is invoked and expressed, without reductive or facile sentimentalism, in a full, nuanced, clear-eyed suspension/rejection of the cynical life. Slowly Paradise (on Constellation Records) is Eric Chenaux’s most recent solo record – a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. It is arguably Chenaux’s most assured and essential solo work, expanding upon the critical acclaim his previous releases Guitar & Voice and Skullsplitter have rightly garnered. http://cstrecords.com/eric-chenaux/  ROBERT SOTELO is the nom de plume of Andrew Doig, a 36 year old serial musician originally from Peterborough, UK. Andrew's middle name is Robert, whilst Sotelo is his mother's maiden name. Sotelo's verdant world of sound is at once intimate, choosing to build songs up from ambitious layers of instrumentation into miniature psych pop overtures of genuine sincerity of feeling. Very much grounded in that particular forward-facing strain of mid-60s rock that edged towards psych, Sotelo's music owes as much to Davies and McCartney's unashamed belief in melody as it does to the uncertainty and confusion that comes with mid-thirties existentialism. Debut album ‘Cusp' (Upset The Rhythm) was an album that explored the individual in a post-social life era, with Sotelo starting the project initially as an attempt to re-engage with the people he used to know, without relying on nostalgia as a common bond. From this worthy spark of a plan, he's created something grand and compelling, a vast tapestry of songs that stand up and sound afresh. Check out his exquisite recent cassette ‘Botanical’ on Nicey Music too. https://robertsotelo.bandcamp.com/

Thanks for reading, catch you on Monday! Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

MARY LATTIMORE LUCINDA CHUA Monday 19 November The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £8 | TICKETS   HEN OGLEDD (Sally Pilkington, Richard Dawson, Rhodri Davies, Dawn Bothwell) BAMBOO TOWER RAVENS RAPPER Friday 30 November The Courtyard Theatre, 40 Pitfield Street, Shoreditch, London, N1 6EU 7.30pm | £12 | TICKETS   ERIC CHENAUX ROBERT SOTELO Wednesday 5 December The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS   STILL HOUSE PLANTS ASHLEY PAUL Thursday 13 December Servant Jazz Quarters, 10A Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   THE STALLION: ‘THE DARK SIDE OF THE WALL’ TRIPLE ALBUM LAUNCH! Friday 18 January Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette St, Hackney Central, London, E9 6NU 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   AIR WAVES Thursday 31 January The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 | TICKETS   KRISTIN HERSH With ROB AHLERS (drums) & FRED ABONG (bass) Sunday 10 March & Tuesday 12 March Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherd's Bush, London, W12 7LJ 7.30pm | £25 | TICKETS MARCH 10 /  TICKETS MARCH 12   THE SHIFTERS COOL GREENHOUSE Thursday 14 March The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   DAVID NANCE GROUP Monday 25 March The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, London, E8 2EB 8pm | £7 | TICKETS