Robert Sotelo released & concerts for Astrid Sonne & Shannon Lay next week in London!

 

Hello again!   Q. Who’s the man behind the mask? A. Robert Sotelo!   Q. Did you know his incredible new album of pristine DIY pop 'Celebrant' is released by Upset The Rhythm digitally today? A. Now I do! I heard there’s a vinyl version coming in the next few weeks too, lovely stuff!   Q. Shall we celebrate with this video for ‘The Currency is Love’? A. You bet!

'Celebrant’ is a plucky synth-centric collection of unbridled songs at times surefooted at others threatened by disconnect, skilfully steered by Sotelo with typical classy touch. ‘Dear Resident’ is divinely metronomic, ‘Behaviour’ luxuriates in pitching a silken saxophone into a frenzied drum-off. ‘The Currency Is Love’ swaggers with 80s vibes aplenty: “all the globe is listening as a system of concern” sings Sotelo in clipped manner, enjoying the placement of each word in each song precisely, however seemingly stumbled upon and surreal their selection might seem. With ‘Celebrant’ Robert Sotelo has made an album that sounds as big as its heart and imagination, true depth of feeling, true depth of connection. It’s an ornate album, complex and thoughtful, a fitting tribute to love in unsettled times.

In other label news this proper humdinger of a 7" by Buffet Lunch is now in stock in our webshop!   Gigantic in sound and vision and wit, what a treat!   We also have new records from Philip Frobos, Normil Hawaiians, Bertie Marshall and Screensaver all available to order too!

We also wanted to share this fantastic in-depth chat with the inimitable Bertie Marshall with you. Bertie was featured in last week's Hello Goodbye special for Resonance FM, many tracks from ‘Exhibit’ were aired and even a live bootleg from our Cafe OTO launch party too. Bertie talks about his whole career so far with many fascinating insights cropping up as an eye-witness to punk in the UK. Enjoy!   Listen again here.

OK, shows, shows, shows!   We have some tremendous concerts coming up in London as we wend our way into the Xmas season. Next week is no exception.   We have Shannon Lay and Naima Bock on Monday at St Pancras Old Church bringing their reflective musings, acoustic poignancy and ethereal clouds of song.   Then next Tuesday night we're lucky enough to have Astrid Sonne performing at Iklectik with Nexcyia playing a set too! Astrid Sonne is a Copenhagen-based composer and viola player. Astrid excels at opening up an electronic space to channel different perceptions of sensory and emotional states of being through open, melodic compositions. Sublime!   Read on for lots more show-related  gubbins, including full listings for Brigid Mae Power (Nov 23rd, Lexington) and Hen Ogledd (Dec 7th, corsica Studios) too.

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

Upset The Rhythm presents… ASTRID SONNE NEXCYIA Tuesday 16 November IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, London, SE1 7LG 7.30pm | £11 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/VcvM72ssNib ASTRID SONNE is a Copenhagen-based composer and viola player, using playing and listening as the foundation of her compositional practice. Her third album “outside of your lifetime” (September 2021) is a precisely created record that Sonne arrived at via improvisation, trimming and reassembly. It is made with keys, strings, voice and buttons. Many of the instruments and inputs on the record are carefully processed to efface their personality, so their origins are never exactly clear. One may follow seamless transitions between pure generated oscillating waves and true ten-finger choral organ work. Other tracks present fierce waveforms through a shimmery rotary pulse, heated and perfectly suited for live experience of the music. Hands-on and hands-off effects bleed into each other, and one often can’t tell the difference. The compositions appear like sculptures. With “outside of your lifetime”, Astrid Sonne presents physical music, further developing an expression formed through previous releases. Melodies and deliveries that conjures a clear image of movement, like a sound that has and is humanity. A computer can coat that sound, beautifully, but it cannot make it. And physical music sounds different. It doesn’t sound like music built from yesterday’s ghosts and memories in the machine; it doesn’t sound like a forecasting of the future as we worship the tomorrow that technology will bring us. It sounds like today, in the space around us. https://astridsonne.bandcamp.com/ NEXCYIA is an African-American/French sound artist and experimental ambient musician based in London and Paris. Working with found sound, Nexcyia weaves together harsh sound design and swooping soundscapes into works that bridge many moods, emotions and places through noise, granular synthesis, textures and rhythms. https://linktr.ee/nexcyia

Upset The Rhythm presents… BRIGID MAE POWER MARTA DEL GRANDI Tuesday 23 November The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, London, N1 9JB £10 | 7.30pm | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/RtH8QH5df4   * Nb. This show is rescheduled from June 10th and Sept 15th 2020 & April 22nd 2021, original tickets still valid   BRIGID MAE POWER paints expansive songs that are effortless, hypnotic and folk-oriented like Judee Sill, Bill Callahan and Sharon Van Etten. The third album from the celebrated singer/songwriter, ‘Head Above The Water’ is a coming of age opus featuring a ground-breaking amalgamation of traditional folk and country - an engaging blend of strings, bouzouki, piano and Power’s distinctive vocal make this an achingly beautiful body of work. Recorded in analogue studio The Green Door in Glasgow with Alasdair Roberts co-producing alongside Brigid and Peter Broderick. It’s a continuing tale of everyday survival; more diverse, different, a bigger canvas, with broader brushstrokes. Country and traditional folk rub shoulders, making for a juxtaposition of threads, with added instrumentation from five musicians lured into the studio to provide larger dynamics. After two lauded albums for Tompkins Square, Brigid Mae Power releases her new album on 5th June via Fire Records. www.brigidmaepower.com   MARTA DEL GRANDI is an award-winning jazz vocalist navigating new territory, crossing borders of genre and style from West Coast ‘60s to ambient exotica, from plaintive Lynchian etherealism to dramatic Morricone scores. Newly signed to Fire Records, the eclectic Italian-born singer songwriter releases her new album ‘Until We Fossilize’ on November 5th 2021. Filled with thoughts and emotions, stories, rumours and beliefs, ‘Until We Fossilize’ is an unraveling of time and distance; a self-produced gem filled with lush strings, electronic ambience and eclectic vocals. https://www.firerecords.com/artists/marta-del-grandi/

Upset The Rhythm presents… HEN OGLEDD JENNY MOORE’S MYSTIC BUSINESS Tuesday 7 December Corsica Studios, 4 & 5 Elephant Rd, London, SE17 1LB 7.30pm | £14 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ubtrl5YlLjb HEN OGLEDD are a band comprising Richard Dawson, Rhodri Davies, Dawn Bothwell and Sally Pilkington, Hen Ogledd’s meaning comes from the Welsh name for The Old North. Following on from the quartet’s previous album Mogic, with its digital overtones and themes of artificial intelligence, Hen Ogledd's second album Free Humans takes a deliberately organic and natural approach. Inspired as much by ABBA as the work of 12th century mystic-composer-naturalist-visionary Hildegard von Bingen, touched equally by the spirits of radical philosophical plumber Mary Midgley and PC Music star Hannah Diamond, as quiet as the paintings of Agnes Martin yet bombastic like a Werner Herzog documentary... it’s an album of seamless, glorious contradictions. Tackling themes of love, friendship, Gaia theory, sewers, the nature of time, human stench, and the thrills of wild swimming, it’s remarkable that, given the intense collision of influences and wide-ranging ideas at play, Free Humans somehow coheres into a marvellous whole. Hen Ogledd manages to hold both the tragedy of the wrongs happening in the world and also a sense of hope and liberation in their hands at the same time. https://www.henogledd.com/ JENNY MOORE’S MYSTIC BUSINESS is a London-based six-piece choral-punk ensemble known for their tuned percussion, huge vocals and chanted soulful mantras, a mix of the 90's R&B and post-punk Jenny grew up listening to in the Canadian prairies. A testament to the raw power and untamed joy of communal singing, the band features members of Bas Jan, Trash Kit, F*Choir and Bamboo as well as solo singer-songwriter Rubie. They draw inspiration from artists such as Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, Joan La Barbara and Robert Ashley, as well as feminist poets like Sharon Olds and Lorrie Moore, and David Byrne’s musical use of language, breaking down words into rhythmic tools. ‘He Earns Enough’ EP out on Lost Map Records now! https://jennymoore.bandcamp.com/album/jenny-moores-mystic-business

Thanks for reading, see you next week! Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

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    ASTRID SONNE NEXCYIA Tuesday 16 November IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, London, SE1 7LG 7.30pm | £11.00 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/rxWz0lUxNib   THE MICROPHONES caroline Tuesday 16 November EartH, 11-17 Stoke Newington Rd, Dalston, London, N16 8BH 6pm - 10pm | £17 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/wqbAwjtt1hb   BRIGID MAE POWER (full band) MARTA DEL GRANDI Tuesday 23 November The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/RtH8QH5df4 (This show is rescheduled from June 10th and Sept 15th 2020 & April 22nd 2021, original tickets valid, refunds available too)   HEN OGLEDD JENNY MOORE'S MYSTIC BUSINESS Tuesday 7 December Corsica Studios, 4 & 5 Elephant Rd, London, SE17 1LB 7.30pm | £14 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ubtrl5YlLjb   SHOPPING - CANCELLED (refunds now available) Monday 14 February 2022 The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/43JnT6NN71   CLEMENTINE VALENTINE (PURPLE PILGRIMS) KINLAW Monday 7 March Cafe OTO, 18-22 Ashwin St, London, E8 3DL 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/cDMTPCt5Dkb   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 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/mhxLeUrBL4 (This show is rescheduled from July 22nd 2020 & March 31st 2021, original tickets valid, refunds available too)   FUTURE ISLANDS DAN DEACON Friday 25 March 2022 Alexandra Palace, Alexandra Palace Way, London, N22 7AY 6.30pm | £30.00 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/g3KQl6bmpgb (Promoted in collaboration with our friends Parallel Lines) GROUPER Thursday 14 April 2022 Barbican Hall, Silk St, Barbican, London, EC2Y 8DS 7.30pm | £20 | Tickets:  https://link.dice.fm/uBMlbma5ykb  (Promoted in collaboration with our friends at Barbican)   KRISTIN HERSH (Electric Trio) FRED ABONG Thursday 21 April 2022 The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, London, N5 1RD 7.30pm | £25 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/LbdJu2HTUjb   JAKE XERXES FUSSELL Saturday 7 May 2022 OSLO Hackney, 1A Amhurst Rd, Hackney Central, London, E8 1LL 6.30pm-10pm | £9 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/fUuBdCfJD3 (This show is rescheduled from May 12th and Sep 8th 2020 & May 7th and September 1st 2021, original tickets valid, refunds available too)