Next three shows: Air Waves, Amor and Mésange!

Hello there! Two shows for you this week. Tomorrow at The Islington we’re excited to be hosting a rousing evening of propulsive-pop courtesy of Air Waves. Air Waves is Nicole Schneit’s prismatic vehicle for her wistful yet empowering songs. Her mission statement is simple: " I want these songs to be heard by people in my queer community, but also by anyone that wants to feels strong, powerful, and included ”, setting the tone perfectly for her revelatory full-band live show.   Her latest album, ‘Warrior’, was a real leap forward, recorded with and released by Kevin Morby, it’s the real embodiment of courageous understatement. Joining Nicole and her searing live group will be the dauntless talents of Upset Stomach and Molejoy too. Tickets available on the door from 7.30pm, thrills and spills following closely!

That takes us onto Friday night, which we will be spending with avant-Disco expansives Amor at New River Studios. Richard Youngs, Michael Francis Duch, Paul Thomson and Luke Fowler are the four musical travellers behind Amor, who make it their aim to explore the sonic open-ended-ness of dance music, twisting melodic elements, swaddled in tape echo, into new blissful territories.   Optimo Music kindred-spirits The Golden Filter will play this show too, showcasing their radiating, synth-pop experiments. Alexis Taylor will also keep things buoyant with a special vinyl-focused DJ set throughout the night. Tickets for this one will also be available on the door from 7.30pm, with everything kicking off soon after.

Read on for all the particulars, we’ve included the full write-up for next week’s heavy, head-swoon of a concert with Mésange, Historically Fucked and John Hannon (of Liberez) too, that one’s ready to spontaneous combust.   Also, you’ll find in our listings section new events in April for Lea Bertucci, The Flying Luttenbachers, Mosquitoes and The Coolies too! Is April the cruelest month? Not this year, bring it!

Upset The Rhythm presents… AIR WAVES UPSET STOMACH MOLEJOY Thursday 31 January The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 | TICKETS AIR WAVES new album Warrior, the third full-length by Brooklyn-based musician, features a ominous, androgynous figure standing with a bicycle, wearing a gas mask adorned with a daisy. The remarkable image was taken on April 22nd, 1970 at the inaugural Earth Day celebration in New York City by Nicole Schneit's dad, Martin Schneit. Forty-seven years later, artist Em Rooney hand-painted Schneit's original black & white photo, resulting in an image that radiates with Warrior's indefatigable spirit, strength, and love. Like many queer women, Nicole Schneit is a warrior by necessity, fighting for basic rights, dignity, and acceptance. Such determination in the face of hardship and injustice runs in Schneit's family; her new album was inspired in part by her mom who was diagnosed with cancer last year. So the title 'Warrior' and the song are about her. The dignified fighter archetype referenced in the album's title is explored on each of Warrior's eleven pieces of bittersweet, empowering indie pop. According to Schneit the song 'Gay Bets', written after the 2016 election is "about being gay and being proud and open. I was thinking about hate crimes spiking and the current state of the world. Warrior's highlights, and all of the unmissable, satisfying pieces that tie them together show Schneit's perseverance and resilience through crumbling relationships, personal adversity, and the current political climate, all leading to her most powerful collection of songs to date. Understated, subtly sophisticated, and equally empowering and comforting, Warrior (out now on Western Vinyl) launches Air Waves above the apolitical complacency of too many of the group's contemporaries.  https://airwaves.bandcamp.com/ UPSET STOMACH are shoegazey emo-disco meets one hysterical woman vocalist, by way of Fate and Fortune magazine. https://www.facebook.com/upsetstomachuk/   MOLEJOY is a band. undermining with joyous anger pangs, on their own terms. Non-heroic beats for everyone who wants them. Songs/sounds about homogenous feels, pokemon go and radicalising your children. Kind of like .... we don't really know. Molejoy is Giles Brunch, Sophie Chapman and Kerri Jefferis. https://www.facebook.com/molejoyisaband/

Upset The Rhythm presents…   AMOR THE GOLDEN FILTER ALEXIS TAYLOR (DJ SET) Friday 1 February New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay Warehouse District, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   AMOR is a quartet based largely in Glasgow, consisting of Richard Youngs, Luke Fowler, Michael Francis Duch and Paul Thomson. AMOR is a 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',  was released in December via Night School Records, who also released the group's previous couple of stupendous EPs. https://amor-glasgow.bandcamp.com/ THE GOLDEN FILTER is the communal guise of Penelope Trappes & Stephen Hindman. Part art project, part electronic experimentation, part disco party, The Golden Filter were born in 2008 in NYC as a disruption to the pop music status quo. Now based in London & firmly welcomed into the Optimo Music family, with releases set for 2019 on Dischi Auotunno and their own 4GN3S imprint.  Their raw, minimal wave live sets and audio creations push the limits of accessible analogue beat-heavy soundscaping & angular vocals. http://www.thegoldenfilter.com/ ALEXIS TAYLOR is a solo artist, DJ and frontman of Hot Chip and About Group. His brilliant, recent album, ‘Beautiful Thing’, was released last year on Domino. Alexis will be performing a DJ set throughout the night for this special event. https://www.facebook.com/alexistaylorsoloofficial/

Upset The Rhythm presents…   MÉSANGE HISTORICALLY FUCKED JOHN HANNON Thursday 7 February The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   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. Mesange 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/ HISTORICALLY FUCKED are an entangled quartet fronted by Greta Buitike, who create short, eruptive songs which they then set about obliterating from the inside. The four-piece is completed by Otto Willberg (bass), David Birchall (guitar) and Alecs Pierce (drums). Their raft of albums on Heavy Petting at varying times brings to mind the very disparate approaches of both The Fall and the John Zorn-composed trio of Patton-Baron-Dunn, without really sounding like either of them. Historically Fucked can be funny, gleefully eruptive and very gratifyingly raucous and auto-destructive, heading off in numerous directions within a matter of seconds. Listen to their records and expect to have no idea what to expect. https://heavypettingtime.bandcamp.com/ JOHN HANNON known for his work as a member of Liberez presents here a solo manifestation of violin flotsam. https://twitter.com/johnhannon4

Thanks as always for reading, Catch you tomorrow and Friday! Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

AIR WAVES UPSET STOMACH MOLEJOY Thursday 31 January The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 | TICKETS   AMOR THE GOLDEN FILTER ALEXIS TAYLOR (DJ SET) Friday 1 February New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay Warehouse District, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   MÉSANGE HISTORICALLY FUCKED JOHN HANNON Thursday 7 February The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   BIG JOANIE SECRET POWER Friday 15 February HQI, The Rotunda, Wood Lane, White City Place, London, W12 7TP (3 min walk from White City tube up Wood Lane. Behind the green gates) 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   KRISTIN HERSH (Electric trio) With ROB AHLERS (drums) & FRED ABONG (bass) FRED ABONG 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 YERBA MANSA Monday 25 March The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, London, E8 2EB 8pm | £7 | TICKETS   XIU XIU (Jamie Stewart, Thor Harris & Jordan Gieger) JOHN BENCE Tuesday 26 March Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, Islington, London, N1 2UD 7pm | £13.50 | 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     THE FLYING LUTTENBACHERS MOSQUITOES Friday 5 April Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette St, Hackney Central, E9 6NU 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS   COOLIES FUN FUN FUNERAL Saturday 6 April The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £8 | TICKETS   LEA BERTUCCI: Projection/Reflection Tuesday 16 April IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, London, SE1 7LG 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS   PRIESTS Thursday 16 May 100 Club, Oxford Street, London, W1D 1LL 7.30pm | £12 | TICKETS (Tickets onsale this Friday at 10am)