|
 |
|
 Upset The Rhythm presents…
MODEL HOME - Two day residency HORACIO POLLARD + GAUTE GRANLI (June 10) ROBIN STEWART + DEE BYRNE (June 11) Friday 10 & Saturday 11 June Cafe OTO, 18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston, London, E8 3DL 7.30pm | £12 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/D89677f3b3be MODEL HOME is a hyperprolific experimental hip-hop formation from Washington D.C., instigated by rapper NappyNappa and producer Pat Cain. The duo recruits an ever-changing cast of collaborators to give each record a new feel: Model Home can sound like post-modern take on old school hip-hop, glitchy noise or even improvised exploration. The gist of Model Home is that the music pours out like from a faucet, faithfully channeling the chaos of the everyday thought. Model Home’s music would blend right in with a dystopia. The deteriorating sounds of Patrick Cain’s electronics would be impossible to distinguish from the constant construction that is the score of any contemporary city; NappyNappa’s enigmatic missives would be lost in the roar of public service announcements, personalized advertisements, and omnipresent sirens. Built on the edifice of dub sound systems and DIY basement clatter, their sound is made up of slabs of textured noise and decayed vocals. Releases on Disciples, Don Giovanni Records and Future Times. https://modelhomedc.bandcamp.com/ HORACIO POLLARD as ever manages to be absurd, entertaining and challenging all at the same time – it’s frequently hard to position yourself as a listener in the face of this much great / ridiculous music, and you won’t know whether to guffaw or groan. Who can resist the fun-charged pull of these primitive patterns and primitive, near-ugly sounds? Pollard is one of the few creative people on the globe (Romain Perrot is another) who understands that “good taste” is the very death of art, and as such he needs to be cherished like a Siberian Tiger, albeit one whose pelt is made from artificial dayglo blue fur. https://bandcamp.com/tag/horacio-pollard GAUTE GRANLI channels the churning and grating of unknown presences in a field of indeterminacy into the bulk of his disorienting one-man choir, where moans distorted by their own reverberation are sustained by the trickling and pounding of unseen forces. A new state of presence, welcoming heightened sensory lashings that leave a strange, indelible mark. https://soundcloud.com/verletzte-kreature ROBIN STEWART is one half of energetic techno-noise duo Giant Swan with Harry Wright. Recent solo EPs ‘Time Travel' (Trilogy Tapes), ‘Marsupial’ (No Corner) and ‘Albatross’ (ipaadai) showcase Stewart stepping out on his own with bursts of mutated techno, cavernous dub, industrial pulses and echoed vocals. https://soundcloud.com/djmag/premiere-robin-stewart-triffid DEE BYRNE is a London-based saxophonist, composer and improviser. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. Fuelled by a love of improvisation and a growing obsession for effects pedals, Dee’s solo project blends acoustic sounds with interweaving electronic textures and moody soundscapes. WIRE magazine described Byrne’s music as a collection of “smudged, sultry alto lines that conjure a Fourth Wolrld ambience.” https://deebyrnemusic.com/ |
 Upset The Rhythm presents…
PET SHIMMERS
HAMBURGER Thursday 16 June
Windmill Brixton, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton Hill, London SW2 5BZ 7.30pm | £7 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/yb5e14d00eb4 PET SHIMMERS is an eclectic ensemble made of a collaborative core; solo artist (and recent Katy J Pearson collaborator) Oliver Wilde helms songwriting alongside William Carkeet, emerging producer and one half of London duo Robbie & Mona. Newest recruit Jonny Allan once took center stage duties for the influential Happyness, drummer Mig Schillace spent earlier years drumming for Portishead, and bedroom solo project Soft Den sits with Florrie AL. Melody extraordinaire Lexie Jennings and guitarist Rich Clarke complete the ensemble. The “Sonder” b/w “Edgelord” 7” is the first piece of new music to come from Pet Shimmers since 2020. It’s a moving mass of technicolor instrumentation - sparkling guitar, taut percussion, and crashes of noise. Songwriter Oliver Wilde’s poetic paranoia climbs towards a victorious chorus. It was the first track the group wrote following COVID restrictions, and was recorded at The Louisiana, a crucial grassroots venue in England that acts as a basement studio by night and a rehearsal space during the day. “Sonder” b/w “Edgelord” 7-inch, is due out June 17th via Brokers Tip, the label of Bob Nastanovich. https://petshimmers.bandcamp.com/ HAMBURGER are Tom, Katie, Liv,
Fearghall, Mike and Doug; six goofs from Bristol playing “stupid songs
about their stupid feelings”. Shimmery, wistful bedroom pop with a 12”
EP out now on Specialist Subject. The six tracks on ‘Teenage Terrified’
are highly crafted and reflective, focusing on personal themes and
emotions, but often twisted through a semi-fantastical lens. https://hamburger.bandcamp.com/ |
 Upset The Rhythm presents…
THE SPACE LADY ROBERT SOTELO
Friday 1 July
OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney Central, E8 1LL
7pm-10pm | £12.50 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/J68e0e40746a THE SPACE LADY began her odyssey on the streets of San Francisco in the late 70s, playing versions of contemporary pop music an accordion and dressed flamboyantly, transmitting messages of peace and harmony. Following the theft of her accordion, The Space Lady invested in a then-new Casio keyboard, birthing an otherworldly new dimension to popular song that has captured the imaginations of the underground and its lead exponents ever since, with the likes of John Maus, Erol Alkan and Kutmah being devotees. Of her early street sets, only one recording was made, self-released originally on cassette and then transferred to a homemade CD. 'The Space Lady's Greatest Hits' released in 2014 through Night School features the best of these recordings - mostly covers but with some originals - pressed on vinyl for the first time and features archival photographs and liner notes from The Space Lady herself. 'Greatest Hits' contains The Space Lady's personal favourites; her haunting take on The Electric Prunes' 'I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night),' a frantic 'Ballroom Blitz' amidst other reconstructed pop music. Following on from this wonderful record, The Space Lady released a split LP in 2015 with the Burnt Ones on Castle Face records which included her spectral take of 'Across The Universe' and a recent LP from 2018 through Mississippi entitled 'On The Street Of Dreams'. https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/exploring-the-intergalactic-wonders-of-the-space-lady ROBERT SOTELO is a mercurial melodist building a resplendent world of pristine DIY pop from the ground up. The Glasgow-based artist’s songs are meticulously crafted, patchworked together with eclectic arrangements and ardent vocal performances. Last year Upset The Rhythm released Robert Sotelo’s vivid new album ‘Celebrant’. ‘Celebrant’ was intended to be and still is to some extent a joyous wedding album (Sotelo is recently married), but in his own words “the pandemic and the death of my aunt Carmen intersected with the original concept so the album is darker than intended in places.” More cinematic and measured than prior albums, Sotelo expounds that “it is purposefully a bigger sounding attempt at my keyboard songs and I felt more ambitious about it in general.” That’s certainly reflected in these twelve sophisticated loops of song, all curiously affecting and catchy, sprinkled with Sotelo’s offbeat musings and keenly accurate observations. Guitars are rarely employed on this record with Sotelo recruiting Iain Mccall, Ross Blake, Celia Morgan and David Maxwell to contribute brass, woodwind, spoken word and acoustic drums respectively. All of these additions blend well with the album’s synthetic core, softening and subtly shaping its pop-first nature into something more nuanced, vulnerable and human. https://robertsotelo.bandcamp.com/album/celebrant |
 Upset The Rhythm presents…
RICHARD DAWSON & CIRCLE MICROCORPS Wednesday 6 July Scala, 275 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9NL 7pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/o9f9fe82d517 RICHARD DAWSON & CIRCLE teamed up to record an epic album together recently called ‘Henki’. Richard Dawson is the Geordie troubadour whose moving songs have been described as state-of-the-nation addresses, even - or perhaps especially - when he’s singing about pre-medieval peasants. Circle are the genre-straddling pioneers of The New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal, known for wearing spandex and singing in a made-up language. Together they are… Richard Dawson & Circle! Their epic joint record might seem a departure to those who are most familiar with Dawson from recent solo albums like 2017’s Peasant and 2020. In fact, ‘Henki’ fits comfortably into the bigger picture of two acts who have always strived for uninhibited originality. Inspired by Circle’s guitarist Janne Westerlund instructing the group during recording to be less straightforward and more “like a plant”, ‘Henki’s seven tracks deal with special plants throughout history. The result is a towering flora-themed hypno-folk-metal record of gargantuan proportions. Dawson & Circle have intricately crafted their sound, with imaginative, constantly evolving arrangements that highlight Circle’s prog credentials. There are also unexpectedly euphoric choruses too: the instrumental mid-section of Silphium makes like a more dissonant take on Xanadu-era Rush, then gradually builds momentum before exploding back to life again just before the 11-minute mark. Methuselah gallops along like a flora-fixated Iron Maiden as it tells the cautionary tale of Donald Currey, a researcher trying to find the oldest tree on Earth who only realised he’d found it after he’d cut it down in 1964. Throughout, there is so much going on that it takes many listens to absorb everything. A tour de force of botanical rock! https://richardmichaeldawson.bandcamp.com/album/henki MICROCORPS is the new project by artist and musician Alex Tucker (Grumbling Fur, Alexander Tucker, Imbogodom) exploring electronics, cello and voice. The debut release XMIT, an eight-track album featuring collaborations with Gazelle Twin, Nik Void, Simon Fisher Turner and Astrud Steehouder, was released on Alter in 2021. In a move away from previous projects Tucker investigates erasing the self, removing obvious traits of the hand and voice, and allowing a focus on the humanoid rather than the human. Instead of recognisable lyrics and coherent imagery, MICROCORPS evolved synthesised voices to generate alternate characters. https://microcorps.bandcamp.com/album/xmit |
Thanks for spending this time with us, see you on the other side of the Jubilee ma'am!
Upset The Rhythm
      |
|
UPSET THE RHYTHM
UPCOMING SHOWS
|
|
Hello there!
Our long-awaited Normil Hawaiians' Dark World compilation has finally arrived back from the plant on LP, only took 14 months to press up!
‘Dark World’ collects together choice material from Normil
Hawaiians’ formative early years of 1979-1981. Tagging along with the
band from their peppy post-punk origins (so brilliantly debuted on ‘The
Beat Goes On’) into the looser, dubbier territories that laid the
foundations for the group’s landmark album ‘More Wealth Than Money’.
LP comes in a handsome gatefold with photo booklet, interviews with
the band, show flyer/download card featuring loads of bonus material
(demos, Peel session etc) and of course the stunning music is imprinted
on a heavyweight slab of black vinyl too.
'Dark World' is available to buy from all top shops now and from our webstore here also. Good things come to those who wait, anyone for a Guinness?
|
 |
