Rattle's new album released today! Plus Sir Richard Bishop and Pan American in London next week!

Hello again! Were you at the Grouper show on Monday? We’re still climbing down from those delirious heights! What an event! Thanks for coming out for that and all those others this past week, it’s your support that’s central to all we do, thank you!   Next week we have two Upset The Rhythm events planned. On Wednesday we’re heading to Redon in Bethnal Green for an extremely rare performance from Pan American (kranky records). Mark Nelson is an ambient-drift legend, having played in Labradford (total UTR faves) and spending the best part of twenty years perfecting his synthesis of dub-inflected, electronic soundscapes with Pan American. Rattle will also be lending their amazing double drum/vocally-wheeling performance to this concert too in celebration of their brand new album on Upset The Rhythm called ‘Sequence’, out today no less! More on that to come!

Next Thursday, we turn out attentions to Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, as Sir Richard Bishop (Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls, Rangda, Sublime Frequencies etc) makes his welcome return to London. Richard is a whirling dervish on the guitar, whipping up a storm as he glides between songs effortlessly with all the panache we’ve come to expect. His performance a few years ago at the Tin Tabernacle are an all-time highlight for us, so we’re very pleased he’s coming back to wow us all again.   Mercurial, Irish, songwriter Cian Nugent will be playing this one too, so that’s going to be pretty special. Read on for all the details on both of these concerts, along with specifics of Mary Lattimore’s show on the horizon too!

As we just mentioned, TODAY, we release our final record of 2018: Rattle’s extraordinary sophomore album ‘Sequence’. Talk about leaving the best til last! This stunningly-crafted, detailed deep-listen arrives in shops today on CD, 180g heavyweight black vinyl and digitally. Our webshop is shipping now too!   Rattle is an ongoing musical project concerned with experiments in rhythm, metre and tension. Katharine Eira Brown and Theresa Wrigley make up the duo from Nottingham, who with just drums and occasional vocalisations weave an expanse of percussive vortices. Their songs swirl and envelop with all the physicality and drama of another world pulling together around its own shifting centre of gravity. The drumbeats phase and side-step, they trade accents and overlap, providing a suitably alive terrain for the vocals to explore similar tendencies of pattern.

Here’s the excellent video for ‘Signal’, “put your ear to the ground, it’s an incredible sound” !

‘Sequence’ was written in much the same way as their debut, with the duo facing each other over their shared palette of drums, allowing songs to develop naturally and suggest their own direction. However, Brown and Wrigley were more confident of what they wanted to achieve with this follow up, having already proven the concept watertight through their debut and subsequent concerts. They knew they could wrestle songs out of the silence with such a setup, so afforded themselves greater time to explore extended, long-form composition.   As a result ‘Sequence’ is composed of just four tracks, each clocking in around 10 mins and focused squarely on a deeper resonance with the creative act, illustrative of how ideas build from scratch, of how music can grow out of repetition. It even feels like a trance or ritual if you give yourself to the recording. Rattle are seeking out a vivid array, an order from the noise, a pattern that unlocks the next.

Upset The Rhythm presents...   PAN AMERICAN RATTLE Wednesday 7 November Redon, Railway Arches, 289 Cambridge Heath Rd, London, E2 9HA 7.30pm | £8 | TICKETS   PAN AMERICAN began during the summer of 1997, Mark Nelson started recording a full length album for kranky at home and at Sound of Music Studios in Richmond, Virginia. Mark Nelson had been playing guitar and singing in Labradford, but wanted to explore the possibilities of sampling and computer technology as well as his interests in dub and techno. The self-titled, debut Pan American album came out on kranky in early 1998. Nelson continued to work on Pan American material as he worked with Labradford, learning to play pedal steel guitar, releasing singles on European labels and getting some studio time in with engineer Casey Rice. Rob Mazurek from Chicago Underground Trio and Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low contributed cornet and vocals, respectively. The resulting album, 360 Business / 360 Bypass, was released by kranky in North America (and Blast First in Europe) in early 2000. After some landmark albums tracing out his territory of sternum-rattling bass rhythms, rippling electronics and outbursts of static with a dub undertow, Pan American slipped back into our consciousness after a break with Cloud Room, Glass Room (Kranky 2013), now adding the estimable talents of Steven Hess (Cleared/Haptic) and Nelson's former Labradford bandmate, Robert Donne to the project. While Nelson assuredly handles all production, the live feel is definitely more prominent, folding in the patter of Hess's percussion and Bobby Donne's languid bass at the centre of seven beautifully diffuse soundscapes bordering on the frontier lands of post-rock, dub techno and ambient electronica, yet never clearly falling within any one sector. Every element is given ample room to breathe thanks to Nelson's typically intricate production render, allowing Hess's hi-hats and cymbal strokes to really shimmer and Donne's bass to ring out wide and sag purposefully low, but you're never really focussed on either, the emphasis is on the whole ecology of sound and the way it's all in fragile and comfortingly sublime equilibrium; a cats cradle of ambient lushness intended to suspend the listener, pensile in its womb-like amniotic fluidity. In these days Nelson is working on his new project Anjou (2 albums on Kranky) and the next Pan American album. http://www.kranky.net/artists/panamerican.html RATTLE are a Nottingham based duo, Rattle focus almost exclusively on drums and more drums, beneath a delicate overlay of vocal harmonies and percussive effects. Formed by Katharine Eira Brown (also of Kogumaza) and Theresa Wrigley (also of Fists), Rattle began as an experiment in crafting rich songs and melody using drums and voice alone. Their music weaves and intertwines post-punk, minimalism and experimental rock, through off-kilter rhythms, patterns and counter melodies. Often starting by picking out the ghost notes from the drums to develop a melody, the song then reveals itself in rounds and harmonies with layer upon layer of rhythm and vocal, lending a choral feel to some of the tracks. Rattle effortlessly blend the avant-garde with irresistible melodies and hypnotic drum beats, using rhythm and harmony to create a refreshing sound that is utterly new - a pretty rare feat these days when we're saturated with so much music. Rattle's debut self-titled album will be released on Upset The Rhythm and I Own You, look out this November for it's exquisite, follow up entitled ‘Sequence’. https://www.facebook.com/rattleandrattle/

Upset The Rhythm presents...   SIR RICHARD BISHOP CIAN NUGENT Thursday 8 November Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 44 Pollard Row, E2 6NB 7:30pm | £10 | TICKETS   SIR RICHARD BISHOP is an experimental guitarist whose improvisations and compositions often reflect the shadow worlds of India, the Middle East, North Africa, and other points along the Gypsy trail. Richard is perhaps best known as a founding member (along with brother Alan Bishop) of experimental ethnic-improv pioneers and underground tricksters Sun City Girls, who for nearly 30 years have produced an extensive discography of over 50 full length albums, 20 one-hour cassettes and a dozen 7" records. Sun City Girls formed in 1981 after the Bishop brothers' stint in the group Paris 1942 which also featured J. Akkari and former Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker. Richard's first solo record, Salvador Kali, was released by John Fahey's esteemed Revenant label in 1998 under the moniker Sir Richard Bishop (the name stuck). The album showcases Bishop's own particular obsessions and roots, drawing from a variety of worldwide sources. Locust Music issued his second record, Improvika, in 2004. This release consists of nine extemporaneous and free-flowing pieces for solo acoustic guitar. In 2005, Bishop began performing relentlessly as a solo artist, playing throughout Europe, Australia, and the United States. He has not stopped since. 2007 saw the album Polytheistic Fragments released on the Drag City Label. It includes works for acoustic, electric and lapsteel guitar, plus two piano compositions. Next up was The Freak of Araby (Drag City, 2009). In May of 2010, Drag City released the album False Flag by Rangda, a new group featuring Bishop, Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire), and Chris Corsano (Flower-Corsano Duo, Flaherty/Corsano, Jandek, Bjork, etc). Richard teamed up with fellow guitarist Bill Orcutt in 2014 for the excellent Road Stories album on Unrock, whilst Drag City again released his most recent solo record, Tangier Sessions. This album sees Bishop's music driven by clever stylistic juxtapositions and attractive melodicism, showcasing his love of Andulsian flamenco guitar style, infusing it with gestures from across Morocco's borders. Richard was also a co-founder of the Sublime Frequencies label (with Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayet). The label, whose mission is dedicated to acquiring and releasing obscure sights and sounds from Africa, India, S.E. Asia and beyond, began in 2003 and currently has over 110 releases to its credit. http://www.sirrichardbishop.net/ CIAN NUGENT is a mercurial guitar player and composer from Dublin, Ireland. Cian combines personal passions, such as suburban/coastal blues, traditional musics, late 1960s-'70s singer-songwriters, jazz ambitions, 20th century composition and the Takoma school into a deeply personal style. New album, 'Night Fiction' is Cian Nugent's third album but his first taking on the role of singer-songwriter. Where his previous two albums: 2013's 'Born With The Caul' and 2011's 'Doubles' saw him exploring extended guitar based instrumentals with his band, The Cosmos, here he has reigned things in and focused his songwriting skills. Guitar fans, do not fear, there is still plenty of soloing and fingerpicking here. With 7 songs both solo and with his band, this album amalgamates everything Cian has done up to this point and reveals a more broad palate of influences, including The Velvet Underground, Richard Thompson, Television, Neil Young, John Lennon, Fred Neil, etc. Cian will perform this show as a trio showcasing lots of songs from his recent album,'Night Fiction', out now on Woodsist. https://soundcloud.com/cian-nugent

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

Thanks for all your time! Have a great weekend! Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

PAN AMERICAN RATTLE Wednesday 7 November Redon, Railway Arches, 289 Cambridge Heath Rd, London, E2 9HA 7.30pm | £8 | TICKETS   SIR RICHARD BISHOP CIAN NUGENT Thursday 8 November Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 44 Pollard Row, London, E2 6NB 7:30pm | £10 | TICKETS   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) RAP 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   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