Thanks to Ears to Feed for premiering 'Ke ke ke ke ke ya' by Bertie Marshall today!
"After a brief stint fronting the post-punk pioneers Behaviour Red — they released one single in ‘82 and went on a mini-tour — Bertie Marshall managed to create a body of music, which, with the benefit of nearly 40 years of hindsight, showcases how ahead of the curve he was with forging a discordant but rhythmic post-punk sound."
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‘Vague Enough to Satisfy’ is released by Upset The Rhythm on LP, and published by Hex Enduction in novel form on October 1st.
Find them both available to pre-order in our UTR webshop here, along with new forthcoming titles from Clear History, Bertie Marshall, Normil Hawaiians and screensaver too, busy as busy!
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 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.
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.
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.
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 Upset The Rhythm presents…
GAD WHIP
FATHERFIGURES
SEAN SMITH (DJ)
Friday 15 October
PinUps, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT
7.30pm | £7.00 | https://link.dice.fm/zoP2qXE2Agb
GAD WHIP formed in 2014 and blend avant-garde sensibilities
with a contemporary take on the place where DIY culture meets post-punk.
Hints of deconstructed garage rock and interstellar voyaging through
sweat drenched waking dreams. Immediate, powerful, confounding and kept
in place by wry, sometimes observational, semi-spoken vocals. This is
music primed perfect for any 21st century meltdown in a suburban sprawl.
Their music has been released by a range of labels, from NYC’s
Ever/Never Records, Germany’s X-Mist Records, Canada’s Arachnidiscs
Recordings and UK/Poland based Fourth Dimension Records.
FATHERFIGURES released their debut album “Any Time Now…And
High Time Too” in spring 2021. What do they sound like? Post-punk;
exhaust fumes seeping from a neighbour's garage after nightfall; the
gnawing of unresolved disputes with real and imagined foes; the inner
voices arguing amongst themselves until one walks off in disgust. That
sort of thing. https://fatherfiguresuk.bandcamp.com/
SEAN SMITH (DJ set)
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 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.
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Thank you as ever for taking the time to read this.
Have a brilliant long weekend and we’ll actually see you in person next Thursday! Oi oi oi
Upset The Rhythm
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UPSET THE RHYTHM
UPCOMING SHOWS
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Upset The Rhythm presents…
SHANNON LAY
NAIMA BOCK
Monday 15 November
St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, King's Cross, NW1 1UL
7.30pm | £12.50 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/LWiCXICpNib
SHANNON LAY is a L.A. singer-songwriter whose work is of a plainspoken mysticism that goes to the small, bright truth of things, showcasing her unusual songwriting and quietly commanding voice. Shannon has been dominating the local scene in Los Angeles over the past few years, leaving everyone who witnesses completely breathless.
Shannon’s new album, 'Geist', is tender intensity, placeless and ethereal. It exists in the chasms of the present - a world populated by shadow selves, spiritual awakenings, déjà vu, and past lives. “Something sleeps inside us,” Lay insists on the opening track, and that’s the guiding philosophy throughout. A winding, golden, delicate thread of intuition that explores the unknown, the possibility.
Lay tracked vocals and guitar at Jarvis Tavinere of Woods’s studio, then sent the songs out to multi-instrumentalists Ben Boye (Bonnie Prince Billy, Ty Segall) in Los Angeles and Devin Hoff (Sharon Van Etten, Cibo Matto) in New York; trusting their musical instincts and intuition. She then sent those recordings to Sofia Arreguin (Wand) and Aaron Otheim (Heatwarmer, Mega Bog) for additional keys, while Ty Segall contributed a guitar solo on “Shores.”
As a whole, 'Geist' is both esoteric and accessible. There’s the concise, pared-back cover of Syd Barrett’s tilt-a-whirl-esque 'Late Night', while 'Rare to Wake', inspired by Dune, is existential and meditative, a circular guitar riff looping at the core of it. 'Awaken and Allow', is ancient-feeling and mainly a cappella, its melody channels her deep Irish roots, a moment of reflection, before a drop happens - its intensity mirroring the anticipation and anxiety that come with taking the first step to accepting change. 'Geist' is released on October 8th through Sub Pop.
https://shannonlay.bandcamp.com/
NAIMA BOCK co-founded Goat Girl with friends at age 15, and after releasing their debut album on Rough Trade Records she left the band to explore other musical avenues. Her music now combines folk influenced songwriting with jazzy instrumentation, partially inspired by Naima's childhood growing up in Brazil.
https://soundcloud.com/naimabock
Get busy!
Here’s ‘Vacant Street’, the second single from Philip Frobos’ forthcoming debut LP and novel ‘Vague Enough to Satisfy’! Released as digital single today, alongside ‘My Funny Valentine’ as the b-side, ‘Vacant Street’ is a fizzy trip of ‘Whammy’-era B52s groove, hooky basslines and enough muted meanderings to make you wanna join Philip in a sprightly skinny dip. Baker Street!
‘Vague Enough to Satisfy’ is released by Upset The Rhythm on LP, and published by Hex Enduction in novel form on October 1st.
Look out!
Pulsate with ‘No Movement’, the dystopian first single from screensaver’s debut album ‘Expressions of Interest’ out on October 8th!
Thrilled to be working with these Australian 'on point' post-punks and Heavy Machinery on this most gloriously brooding album of albums!
'Expressions of Interest' is available to pre-order now hither.
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What’s this? Another new release from up our busy sleeve! Solar Death Ray' is the debut single from Berlin group Clear History, a scorching post-punk trio intent on bringing a matchbox to the dancefloor. "Light a match and watch it drop, burn it down" they sing on this pulse-quickening single, which sounds equal parts Kleenex, Gang of Four and ESG.
'Solar Death Ray' is taken from the band's debut EP 'bad advice good people' out November 5th on Upset The Rhythm. Thanks to Ears To Feed for premiering the ‘Solar Death Ray’ video!
Clear History make a big deal out of little things, sometimes vice versa. Their influences include correct grammar, Rihanna & ‘The Waiting Room’ by Fugazi. They make muscular songs about intimacy whilst dreaming of an extravagant breakfast the day after the rapture. What will the dance floors look like over there? What music will ring true and make the people move? Clear History are giving this their full atttention!
Clear History’s debut EP is entitled 'bad advice good people' and will be released by Upset The Rhythm on November 5th. The six songs here cast a huge net across themes of raucous opposition, identity, closeness, gifting and exploding cars. They are a full-hearted call to arms from a stubborn Aries concerned with wasting time and energy. With such rapport for the touchstones of danceable post-punk (ESG, Kleenex, Gang of Four) Clear History are proud hi-hat botherers, bounding along with the plummy bassline, joining the dots whilst thinking to the beat. This debut documents the tantalising first sparks from a band intent on holding up a magnifying glass to the sun.
https://clearhistoryband.bandcamp.com
