Working the Nightshift!

 

 

Upset The Rhythm presents…

NIGHTSHIFT
Friday 29 October
New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN
7.30pm | £7 | https://link.dice.fm/ZGB7YNg89gb

NIGHTSHIFT formed in 2019 in the ecosystem of Glasgow's current indie scene. The city's fertile & creative group of musicians have been committed to pushing the boundaries of and blurring the lines between DIY, punk, experimentalism and indie pop for decades now. Nightshift fit right in, featuring members from current indie stalwarts Spinning Coin, 2 Ply and Robert Sotelo. The band was formed by David Campbell (guitar), Andrew Doig (bass), Eothen Stearn (keyboards/vocals) & Chris White (drums) as a "No Wave/No New York/early Sonic Youth/This Heat-esque" group, but their sound quickly evolved once guitarist/vocalist/clarinetist Georgia Harris joined (as the band was writing ‘Zöe’). Nightshift self-released a full-length cassette on CUSP Recordings in early 2020, laying the foundation of their sound; hypnotic, melodic, understated indie post-punk with hooks that stick around long after you've heard them.

Unlike the band's previous album, the songs on ‘Zöe’ weren't conceived live in the band's practice space, but rather pieced together and recorded remotely during quarantine lockdown. The isolation actually allowed for an openness and creativity to flow and many of the songs took on radically different forms from when they were originally envisioned. Vocalist & primary lyricist Eothen Stearn says "The process of writing these songs separately during lockdown was a kind of exquisite corpse - I liked this gesticulation of reaching out to one another and responding. Building up the next layer and passing it on." Stearn says "poetic restraints" to writing & Eno & Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies concepts were on their mind when composing the words to the songs, and highlights the influence of author Rosi Bradiotti's book ‘The Posthuman’. ‘Zöe’ kicks off with ‘Piece Together’, a mesmeric song anchored by the band's chanted vocals and serpentine guitar licks. ‘Spraypaint the Bridge’ showcases Harris' clarinet in an unexpected & delightful melodic shift during the song's anti-chorus. Elsewhere tunes like the swooning ‘Infinity Winner’ and  ‘Outta Space’s minimalist, slinky rhythm swirl in a late-night vibe, while ‘Make Kin’ ruminates on "Looking to kinship as a way of engaging with entangled environmental and reproductive issues... how a band is a bond" and lurches forward with kinetic guitar strangling & staccato rhythmic percussion from White & Doig. ‘Power Cut’ is the album's centerpiece, luring the listener into involuntary movement with its waves of harmonies, synth drones and metronomic pulse, until they all come crashing down in the song's dissonant midsection. 



 The band acknowledges the whiffs of nostalgia prevalent in ‘Zöe’s songs, and the nature of writing & recording the album is soaked in the self-work, reflection & reevaluations involved not only personally but creatively in each member's lives. Consequently, ‘Zöe’ has become a collection of sketches of hope, growth, awareness of the power of the world & the power of self and possibility.
https://nightshiftgroup.bandcamp.com/ 

 

 

Bertie Marshall - halloween album launch announced!

 

Upset The Rhythm presents…

BERTIE MARSHALL - ‘Exhibit’ album launch
Saturday 30 October
Cafe OTO, 18-22 Ashwin St, London, E8 3DL
7.30pm | £10 | https://link.dice.fm/xRG9evauYgb

BERTIE MARSHALL is a writer/ performer. He is also an acclaimed memoirist, most well known for his book ‘Berlin Bromley’ (2006) about his transformation from Bertie, an anxious, androgynous, depressed teenager, into Berlin, a teenager who would reject suburban values and become a founding member of punk’s “Bromley Contingent”, alongside Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin, and Billy Idol. He’s currently working on ‘Looking: Backwards To Go Forwards’, picking up from where ‘Berlin Bromley’ left off. His other books include the debut novel ‘Psychoboys’ (1997), ‘Nowhere Slow’ (2014), ‘From Sleepwalking to Sleepwalking’ (2016), ‘Wild - re write’ (2017), ‘The Peeler’ (2018) and ‘Pete’s Underpants’ (2019). In 2015 the British Library purchased his writing archive.


From 1980-83, Bertie was the frontman for post-punk boundary-pushers Behaviour Red - they released one single (favourably played by John Peel), did a mini-tour and broke up. At various times Behaviour Red featured Noel Blanden of Normil Hawaiians and fine artist Nicola Tyson. Their sound was characterised by looseness and freedom, boasting at times tribal drumming, streams of vocals, dazed guitars and feedback. Bertie continued sketching out atmospheric compositions afterwards too, walking a tightrope between bewildered pop and gothic folk. Central to everything is Bertie’s commanding voice; heartfelt, impassioned and eagerly leading you through the story.

Bertie became interested in spoken word and performance poetry in the 90s, which then led him into writing and performing in his own plays and devised theatre pieces. He did regular readings and performances in NYC and began writing books inspired by the visceral talents of Acker & Burroughs. Having lived in Berlin, San Francisco, and Brittany, Bertie now lives in London. 

October 29th sees Upset The Rhythm release ‘Exhibit’ by Bertie Marshall, collecting for the first time his songs and spoken word tracks from this fertile period of the 80s-90s. This show will be its timely album launch featuring Bertie reunited with many original musical collaborators.

Trash Kit - London show this September!!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

TRASH KIT
ES
NO HOME
Thursday 2nd September
100 Club, 100 Oxford St, Oxford Street, W1D 1LL
7.30pm | £12 |  https://link.dice.fm/orNKF57yWgb

TRASH KIT are Rachel Aggs (guitar, vocals), Rachel Horwood (drums, vocals) and Gill Partington (bass). Three deeply creative individuals who play in a multitude of other groups including Bas Jan, Sacred Paws, Shopping and Bamboo, united by a shared decade of spry musicality that surges through their bodies, hearts and heads with Trash Kit. Their songs once succinct, patchwork post-punk numbers of an honest diary-like nature now tussle more with long-form songwriting, expeditious polyphony and cascades of sung-spoke vocals. Recent tracks like 'Disco' have had their very fabric stretched into smart new shapes, allowing the band to run away with refrains and unlock the dancefloor. Although Trash Kit have their forebears in bands like Sleater Kinney, The Ex and The Raincoats, their sound is still very much their own take on facing forwards and relies as much on the naturalism of an internalised folk music as on their sincerity of vision.

Since forming in 2009, Trash Kit have released two albums for Upset The Rhythm and a selection of singles, 2019 however saw them make their most majestic move yet with their resoundingly huge ‘Horizon’ album. For this album, carefully crafted through years of playing out live, the band have chased down the distance between what they wanted the record to sound like and its realisation. They've augmented these songs with choral arrangements, piano, saxophone, harp, viola and cello. Pulling ideas from everywhere between the earth and sky, to push themselves further, to go beyond. Aggs' guitar playing for this album was informed by her love of guitar music from Zimbabwe, her cyclical motifs billow with lean Mbira rhythms. Horwood has similarly approached her drumkit with an untamable freedom, allowing it to breathe as a vivid lead instrument. Trash Kit's music is woven with silence and punctuation, and this is where the resonant, driving bass of Partington fits in. The bass has become now central to shaping the melody of this new collection of songs. Trash Kit's approach to life as with music is one of openness, inclusion and potential and Horizon is an album with that in dutiful abundance. It is an album that forever listens for the next moment and will meet you once more at the vanishing point.
https://www.facebook.com/Trashkit4lyfe

ES is Maria Cecilia Tedemalm (vocals), Katy Cotterell (bass), Tamsin M. Leach (drums) and Flora Watters (keyboards). Their 2016 debut EP, Object Relations, released on influential London punk label La Vida Es Un Mus, was described as "mutant synth-punk for our dystopian present" (Jess Skolnik, Bandcamp, Pitchfork). The band has since become a vital presence in London's underground DIY music scene, as well as having toured the UK with the Thurston Moore Group in 2017. ‘Less of Everything’. The title of Es' first full length LP could be interpreted as a manifesto pledge, an outright demand or a purely literal sonic descriptor of the London quartet's glacial form of punk rock music. This tension between intent and interpretation has been a fundamental element of the group's output from their formation. The dynamic between Cotterell's bass and Watters' keyboard is at the heart of Es’ sound: intertwining sub-zero melodies, gothic anarcho-punk influences and some kind of entirely unlocatable aquatic component. When combined with Leach's precise drumming, the outcome is original and immediately recognisable. This provides the perfect backdrop for Tedemalm's relentless, pointed vocal style. While comparable 'cold' sounding groups might affect an impersonal, safer mode of lyrical or vocal detachment, Tedemalm's strategy is to "push the lyrics as far as I can thematically until they become absurd … overly dramatic ... while still being sincere in the feeling they're trying to invoke. ‘Less of Everything’ was released last year by Upset The Rhythm.
https://esband.bandcamp.com/

NO HOME is the lo-fi rock solo project of Charlotte Valentine, who fuses the grunge and ambient songs of early 00s new york rock, with an urgent, captivating call to self preservation. Having enthralled audiences at Decolonise Fest and support slots with Downtown Boys, Moor Mother and Big Joanie, No Home's recordings are full of unease and disorientation, modal melodies interwoven with rolling rhythmic noise. Valentine’s powerful voice and experimental song structures dilate and expand time, pushing against the boundaries of genre and resisting enclosure. Surviving under capitalism is a drag—it’s the oldest story in rock’n’roll—but No Home captures the weight of its dehumanization in a uniquely visceral way.
 

https://nohome.bandcamp.com/

Normil Hawaiians - dublab mix!

 

Enjoy this wondrously redolent 60-minute mix from Normil Hawaiians for the ‘Sounds Unsaid’ show on dublab!

 

LISTEN HERE:
https://dublab.de/broadcasts/sounds-unsaid-normil-hawaiians-june-2021/

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FUZZ London show rescheduled to March 18th 2022

 

Upset The Rhythm presents…

FUZZ
(Charles Moothart, Ty Segall, Chad Ubovich)
Friday 18 March 2022
Electric Ballroom
184 Camden High St, Camden Town, London, NW1 8QP
6pm-9.45pm | £17.50 | https://link.dice.fm/mhxLeUrBL4
(This show is rescheduled from July 22nd 2020 & March 31st 2021, original tickets valid, refunds available too)

FUZZ are back! Ty Segall, Charles Moothart and Chad Ubovich's electrifying trio return to London next spring! Fuzz have released three studio albums to date on In The Red, their self-titled release debuting back in 2013, and the more heavy metal influenced II & III dropping in 2015 & 2020 respectively. Moothart and Segall originally formed the group, as Moothart was a touring member and guitarist for the Ty Segall backing band, and later became the drummer of Segall's current touring group. The aim with FUZZ was to take the essential ingredients of the “rock and roll power trio” and put them right out on the chopping block. New album ‘III’ is a much more honest approach for FUZZ: just three humans getting primitive, staying primitive. The goal was never to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s just about seeing how long you can hold on before you’re thrown off. It’s heavy, chaotically controlled, softly serpentine, and blindingly barbaric. To translate the auditory from ethereal to saliva soaked semantics is to shatter a promise as it’s made. In the meantime, Ty, Charles, and Chad walk on. It is what it is.

https://intheredrecords.com/collections/fuzz