Richard Dawson - The Ivy House - Dec 7th

 

Our good friend Richard Dawson is releasing a new album on Feb 14th called ‘End Of The Middle’, you can pre-order it now through Domino and gain early access to tickets for a decidedly intimate concert with Rich on Dec 7th at The Ivy House in Nunhead. General on sale will be this Friday at 10am sharp too!


Upset The Rhythm presents…

RICHARD DAWSON
Saturday 7 December
The Ivy House, 40 Stuart Rd, Nunhead, London SE15 3BE
7.30pm | £20 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/rd8f8d5f77ac?dice_id=rd8f8d5f77ac

RICHARD DAWSON has drawn so many long drafts from the whirlpools of Elemental North Eastern Archetypes, he may now be one himself. Fearless in his research and willingness to follow his inspiration, Dawson has created an impressive catalogue of music and storytelling steeped in both ancient myths and contemporary dread. A fog of sickness, trauma and mute inevitability inhabits his records and is often expressed in the havoc with which Dawson’s hands produce sounds from his long-suffering guitar, an instrument as bruised, individual and indefatigable as its owner.

Dawson’s forthcoming new album ‘End of the Middle’ (out Feb 14th through Weird World) is intricate, evocative, stripped-back, tactile and almost has the transportive ability to put you in the places and scenarios it describes. The album focuses around a family unit. “It zooms in quite close-up to try and explore a typical middle class English family home,” Dawson says. “We're listening to the stories of people from three or four generations of perhaps the same family. But really, it’s about how we break certain cycles. I think the family is a useful metaphor to examine how things are passed on generationally.”
 
The title of the new album End of the Middle is a suitably slippery contradiction, one that invites multiple interpretations: Middle-aging? Middle-class? The middle-point of Dawson's career? The centre of a record? Centrism in general? Polarisation? The possibility of having a balanced discussion about anything? Stuck in the middle with you? Middle England? Decide for yourself on February 14th 2025.
 
https://richarddawson.net/

New London concert for Jake Xerxes Fussell announced!

 

Surprise! Tickets for Jake's February show at EartH Theatre go on sale tomorrow at 10am! Oooooh

Upset The Rhythm presents…

JAKE XERXES FUSSELL
JENNIFER CASTLE
Saturday 15 February
EartH Theatre, 11-17 Stoke Newington Rd, London, N16 8BH
6pm-10.30pm | £17.50 | Tickets: https://wegottickets.com/event/637936/ and through Dice, See (on sale this Friday at 10am) 

JAKE XERXES FUSSELL is a singer, guitarist and folk music interpreter who has distinguished himself as one of his generation's preeminent interpreters of traditional (and not so traditional) "folk" songs, a practice which he approaches with a refreshingly unfussy lack of nostalgia. By recontextualizing ancient vernacular songs and sources of the American South, he allows them to breathe and speak for themselves and for himself; he alternately inhabits them and allows them to inhabit him. In all his work, Fussell humanises his material with his own curatorial and interpretive gifts, unmooring stories and melodies from their specific eras and origins and setting them adrift in our own waterways.

On his latest album, When I’m Called—his first LP for Fat Possum, and his first as a parent - Fussell returns to a well of music that holds lifelong sentimental meaning, loosely contemplating the passage of time and the procession of life’s unexpected offerings. The album was produced by James Elkington and mixed by Tucker Martine. In addition to Elkington, it features the playing of Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station) and Joe Westerlund (Bon Iver, Califone). Blake Mills contributes guitars on several tracks. Joan Shelley and Robin Holcomb provide backing vocals.

https://www.jakexerxesfussell.com/


JENNIFER CASTLE is a Canadian songwriter, musician, and poet. ‘Camelot’ (Paradise of Bachelors), Jennifer Castle’s extraordinary, moving 2024 chronicle of the artist in early middle age, charts a realer, more rooted, and more metaphorical place than the fabled Camelot of the Early Middle Ages (or its myriad depictions), but it too is a space more psychic than physical. In Castle’s Camelot, the fantastic interpenetrates the mundane, and the Grail, if there is one, distills everyday experience into art and art into faith, subliming terrestrial concerns into sublime celestial prayers to Mother Nature, and to the unfolding process of perfecting imperfection in one’s own nature. Co-produced by Jennifer and longtime collaborator Jeff McMurrich, her seventh record is at once her most monumental and unguarded to date, demonstrating a mastery of rendering her verse and melodies alike with crisply poignant economy. For all their pointedly plainspoken lyrical detail and exhilarating full-band musical flourishes, these songs sound inevitable, eternal as morning devotions.

https://www.jennifercastlemusic.com/music  

Upcoming shows for Lankum, Tyvek, Shannon and the Clams + more!

 

Hello everyone!   Upset The Rhythm have many amazing concerts looming for you in London so we thought you'd like to hear about them.   Our next show will take place on Saturday night and it's a big one: Lankum and Richard Dawson at the Hammersmith Apollo.   As two of the most unique and vital voices in contemporary music, let alone folk, Lankum and Richard Dawson always wow on a near elemental level, it's going to be a beyond special evening. Well worth buying tickets in advance as this one is approaching a full house.

Then next Wednesday on the brink of Halloween we will be pitching up at New River Studios for an lively triple bill from UTR faves Tyvek, Geo and Virvon Varvon.   Fans of rudimentary punk, skeletal agit-funk and blistering art pop will all be catered for. We've been looking forward to this show like Christmas. Having Tyvek back in the UK after such a long time is a rare treat, they are incredible live.   Read on for full write-ups on both of these events, along with those for our upcoming November dates for Shannon and the Clams, Mock Media, Pozi, Dean Spunt (of No Age), Guests, M-G Dysfunction, Uranium Club, Hygiene, Tara Clerkin Trio and Able Noise! Oh my!

Upset The Rhythm & Parallel Lines presents…   LANKUM RICHARD DAWSON Saturday 26 October Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, Hammersmith, London, W6 9QH 7pm | Tickets: https://www.eventimapollo.com/events/lankum/ LANKUM have gained worldwide acclaim for their engrossing albums and captivating, often euphoric live performances. Comprising brothers Ian Lynch (uillean pipes, tin whistle, vocals), Daragh Lynch (vocals, guitar) alongside Cormac Mac Diarmada (fiddle) and Radie Peat (harmonium, accordion, vocals), Lankum channel a diverse set of influences and histories to create a beautifully rare thing: a songbook from and for the people. This October the acclaimed Irish group will play their biggest headline show to date at the legendary Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, London. This will be their only remaining UK concert in 2024 outside of summer festivals. The band have consolidated their reputation as one of Ireland’s most important voices following the release of their 4th, Mercury-nominated, album False Lankum (Rough Trade), which has garnered critical praise across the board and brought their music to legions of devoted new fans. False Lankum is conceived as a single piece of music, comprising 12 inter-connected songs unfolding across an epic 70 minute duration. Drawing on traditional songs and primitive techniques, the band have created an immersive, psychedelic listening experience incorporating experimental overtones and rumbling drones wedded with classic songwriting, close vocal harmonies and timeless narratives. The Lankum live show has evolved into a modern day powerhouse, with the band’s acoustic instrumentation and close-harmony vocals transforming into a vast, kaleidoscopic wall of sound. http://lankumdublin.com/     RICHARD DAWSON has drawn so many long drafts from the whirlpools of Elemental North Eastern Archetypes, he may now be one himself. Fearless in his research and willingness to follow his inspiration, Dawson has created an impressive catalogue of music and storytelling steeped in both ancient myths and contemporary dread. A fog of sickness, trauma and mute inevitability inhabits these records and is often expressed in the havoc with which Dawson’s hands produce sounds from his long-suffering guitar, an instrument as bruised, individual and indefatigable as its owner. https://richarddawson.net/

Upset The Rhythm presents… TYVEK GEO VIRVON VARVON Wednesday 30 October New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £12 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/G309daf25a4e TYVEK have remained a singular force. The Detroit group formed somewhere in the mid-aughts by songwriter, vocalist, guitarist, and sole consistent band member Kevin Boyer, who enlisted various friends to cultivate a raw, rudimentary punk sound that manages to get back to basics while at the same time presenting abstract perspectives and weird concepts not normally explored by your everyday garage band. There have been mutations over the years as the band toured regularly and released a run of solid albums with labels like Siltbreeze and In The Red, but with every reformation, Tyvek still didn't sound quite like anyone else. Their new album, the self released Overground (Ginkgo, 2023), stays true to their reputation for delivering hit after hit of blistering punk and remains tightly wound until it unspools into the dreamlike title track, an extended post Velvets plea for human decency. Tyvek's current line-up of all-stars guarantee an intense live show: Shelley Salant (Shells, XV), Alex Glendening (Deadbeat Beat), Fred Thomas (Idle Ray), and Emily Roll (XV) channel the high-energy rock'n'roll of Detroit's past while side-stepping the cliches to push forward into an uncharted future. https://tyvek.bandcamp.com/ GEO are a no wave oddity from The Netherlands, the more mismatched the moving parts appear, the more their music starts to make sense. Since the Groningen quartet’s inception in 2019, they have built a framework of skeletal agit-funk, cartoonish chromatics and neoteric art punk vignettes – sketching negative spaces where chaos and cacophony can sound perplexingly catchy. ‘Out of Body’ – Geo’s long-awaited debut album was released on Erste Theke Tontraeger in April. Geo’s jitterbug, birdbrained post-punk spiels are in the spirit of gung-ho deconstructionists like The Contortionists, The Fall and Gang of Four. On ‘Out of Body’, they play emotions out against each other like some kind of absurdist Punch and Judy show. https://geoband.bandcamp.com/ VIRVON VARVON are part-time punks from London, featuring members of Black Time, Midnight Mines and The Jazz June. They've played Gonerfest in Memphis, Get Lost Festival in Hamburg, and released an LP and two tapes on Girlsville Records. https://girlsville.bandcamp.com/album/virvon-varvon-four-bars-of-hate-2

Upset The Rhythm presents… SHANNON AND THE CLAMS MOCK MEDIA POZI Tuesday 5 November Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, London, N1 2UD 7pm | £20 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/i36cc53102af SHANNON AND THE CLAMS are from Oakland, California and comprise of Shannon Shaw (vocals, bass), Cody Blanchard (vocals, guitar), and Ian Amberson (drums, vocals). Sounding like a prom band from 1964 getting dosed with acid and having the sweetest lovelorn freak out, Shannon And The Clams defy expectations. Imagine a brawling Etta James, backed up by the 13th Floor Elevators singing Shangri La's tunes. Shannon has a voice that can go from a sweet girl group croon to a bluesy ballsy growl before you realize you're headed for the (dance) floor. It's total punk rock bop, brimming with doo-wop glory delivered to your door by the Homecoming Queen and Kings of weirdo rock 'n' roll. Shannon & The Clams’ sonics go from black and white to technicolor on their new album, The Moon Is In the Wrong Place, produced by longtime collaborator Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Faced with the unimaginable sudden loss of Shannon’s fiancé, the project is a holistic exploration of grief and celebration of life coupled with the most expansive, exciting songs and arrangements of their celebrated catalog. The Moon Is In the Wrong Place marks Shannon & The Clams’ 7th studio album together and is out now via Easy Eye Sound. http://shannonandtheclams.com/ MOCK MEDIA, Canada’s new supergroup, contains members: Evan Aasen (Painted Fruits), Garnet Aronyk Muhammad (Crack Cloud), Austin Boylan (Pottery) and Bennett Smith (N0V3L). Mock Media originates in Vernon, British Columbia, a small farming town surrounded by blue lake and majestic mountain ranges. Such wholesome beginnings naturally sparked a heady wanderlust and DIY-spirit within its founding members. Mock Media’s debut LP Mock Media II, out Nov 17th, captures this firebrand four piece’s head-on plunge into enthralling existential contradictions: songs that explore the darkest corners of humanity yet come out at the other end with the unwavering joy that marked their genesis. It’s an album of sneak eclecticism, the high-wired punk rock stylings serve as Mock Media’s framework to clad their agog explorations into pop, electronic, and world folk music. https://mockmedia.bandcamp.com/album/mock-media POZI are the sort of band to tackle the creative cycle of deconstruction and rebuilding with relish. Second album 'Smiling Pools' is testament to that. An LP that sees them at their most expansive yet, it follows a gradual swelling of their sound across two EPs preceding the urgent, self-enforced minimalism of their debut album PZ1 in 2019. The trio of Toby Burroughs, Rosa Brook, and Tom Jones quickly established something of a foundational template on that first album: a hyper-skeletal sound palette of drums, bass and three distinct vocals disrupted by Rosa’s churning violins, from which emerged biting social observations and political angst. These hallmarks haven’t fully gone away over time, but from that urgent energy there has emerged greater confidence and a playful desire to push further out from the loose genre tag of post-punk. https://poziband.bandcamp.com

Upset The Rhythm presents… DEAN SPUNT GUESTS M-G DYSFUNCTION Tuesday 12 November New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/E8acfa797c7d DEAN SPUNT’s new album for Drag City is titled ‘Basic Editions’ (out Sept 27th). It’s an excursion in electronic sound that unpacks his fascination with language – in this case, the syntax of systems and processes. By turns meditative, compulsive and consumptive, Basic Editions distills a 64 voice module through a headfull of ideas – somewhat like pouring a cornucopia of possible ambient moods and EZ listening impulses backwards through a funnel, inspiring a deceptively absurd rainbow of soul to spray out the other end. With this new release, Dean identifies his process as “using sounds, rather than making sounds”. This approach to music-making is a train of thought that’s been rolling out from the far horizon of the past for ages now – but for Dean, whose previous works within and without No Age depended on their making of sounds, it’s a fresh work stance. Given, however, No Age’s traditional further manipulation of their own sounds (via loops and treatments), Basic Editions delivers further unexpected hard-rights and lefts in the non-aesthetic aesthetic that has defined Dean’s path over the past two decades. Steering toward wacked digital soundscapes that bounce colourfully across the stereo azimuth, Dean creates a kind of post-ambient neo-exotica that hinges upon a giddy conflation of cosmic and comic. https://deanspunt.bandcamp.com/music GUESTS are Jessica Higgins and Matthew Walkerdine of Glasgow, UK, both formerly of the bands Vital Idles and Mordwaffe. They have been closely tied with DIY music, art and publishing for over a decade. Using (amateur) electronics, singing, speaking and field recording they make songs which blend the rhythms of popular music and contemporary approaches to collage, sampling, improvisation and repetition. As inspired by film and art as they are the legacies of twee underground and avant garde experimentalism, their loose, domestically twinged compositions explore feelings, atmospheres and moments which are hard to articulate and the quite literal notion of being a “guest”. “I wish I was special” is their debut record on World Of Echo and has drawn some comparison with the private musings of Flaming Tunes, Idea Fire Company’s domestic electronics, or perhaps even Annea Lockwood’s framing of emotional connection within avant garde structures. https://by-guests.bandcamp.com/album/i-wish-i-was-special M-G DYSFUNCTION is the music and art project of Fred M-G. M-G Dysfunction has previously shared the stage with acts such as The Bug, Marie Davidson, Caroline, Gnod, Divide & Dissolve and Meatraffle. M-G Dysfunction live shows combine musical influences from the likes of Dean Blunt and Death Grips with elements of stand-up comedy and clowning. Most recent single ‘Junglists Only’ came out in August 2024. The third M-G Dysfunction full-length ‘Mista Self-Isolation’ will be released before the end of the year. https://mgdysfunction.bandcamp.com/

Upset The Rhythm presents… URANIUM CLUB HYGIENE Thursday 14 November Number 90 Live, Main Yard, Wallis Road, London, E9 5LN 7.30pm | £13 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/yd631fde96ea URANIUM CLUB released their fourth album, ‘Infants Under the Bulb’, back in March this year through Static Shock Records and Anti Fade. The Minneapolis band recorded the album over the course of 2023 by long time collaborator Grant Richardson and is just as rampant and agitated as ever. Uranium Club once again win their dear listeners over with eccentrically wild guitar parts, revolving voices, elastic-tight drums and the addition of their very own Saints-styled horn section. Lyrically, ‘Infants Under the Bulb’ opens up the history books of unsolved mysteries - unidentified, unsolved, unanswered subjects of suspicious acts or individuals across the last century. Who, what, when and where… but mostly, why? Ignorant humanity of earth orbits the sun once again. The Somerton Man, Bergmann, Bauby, Denton, phone phreakers, and just what is lurking behind the cosmic organ of The Wall? As always, the artwork was handled in-house by the Club and ambitious as ever. The spectacular cover shot captures a carefully coordinated event orchestrated by the Club to photograph a crowd of the local volunteers wearing ponchos standing together in an open field to make the shape of a giant spiral. https://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/album/infants-under-the-bulb HYGIENE returned last year with their most urgent and essential recordings and not many bands can say that after 15 years. '15 Minute City' EP (Static Shock) is an absolute bundle of DIY greatness…it has the chaos and chorus of one the classic 70’s / early 80’s Swell Maps 7”s. ‘L.T.N’ is a robotic and stiff post punk song that doesn’t outlast it's welcome as it lasts just over a minute. Last track ‘Petrol’ is a childlike punk gem that gets stuck in your head after one play. https://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/album/15-minute-city

Upset The Rhythm presents… TARA CLERKIN TRIO ABLE NOISE Saturday 16 November EartH Theatre, 11-17 Stoke Newington Rd, London, N16 8BH 6.30pm-10.30pm | £16 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Aeb338640a1d TARA CLERKIN TRIO are Pat Benjamin, Sunny Joe Paradisos and Tara Clerkin, three musicians involved in a number of cult Bristol bands over the years before confidently settling down in triangle formation. They are inspired by and borrow from jazz, trip hop, electronica, psychedelia & minimalism, twirling the non-pretentious strands of these threads together into a trippy green winged-cloak, adorning Arthur Russell and dripping in blue jam. Their self-titled debut LP was released in 2020 and was a sleeper hit, coming in at 35 in the Wire's top 100 albums of the year and in Bleeps top 10. Their latest EP, ‘On The Turning Ground’, was released on World of Echo in November. Whilst their inspirations might be centreless, but the trio still possess a very obvious anchor in the form of their hometown. Bristol stands as a city of multitudes, heterogenous and vibrant in such a way as to allow it to renew and remake time and again. Tara Clerkin Trio drink from that same well, duly reflecting a rich musical heritage built on fwd-facing electronic subcultures and experimental urges. As such, ‘On The Turning Ground’ finds them subject to their own subtle internal evolution, the pervasive sense that you've caught them mid-bloom, on their way to becoming but never anything but themselves. https://taraclerkintrio.bandcamp.com/ ABLE NOISE are an experimental baritone guitar and drum duo, based between The Hague and Athens. Through the use of voice, tape and alternative methods of playing their instruments, they create a minimal and visual musical performance. Their output is primarily focused on live concerts, letting their music be shaped by the physicality of their playing, the acoustic and aesthetic properties of the space, and the dynamics formed between themselves and their audience. Their recorded work relies less on their respective instruments, and more on an assemblage of field recordings, heavily processed instrumentation, and exploratory mixing techniques. They released their recorded debut in 2020 through the Glasgow label GLARC, and their next recorded work is due to be released in late 2024 through London label World of Echo. https://glarc.bandcamp.com/album/recordings

Enjoy the rest of your week and we'll see you on Saturday night! Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

LANKUM RICHARD DAWSON Saturday 26 October Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, Hammersmith, London, W6 9QH (Produced by UTR and Parallel Lines) 7pm | Tickets: https://www.eventimapollo.com/events/lankum/   TYVEK GEO VIRVON VARVON Wednesday 30 October New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £12 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/G309daf25a4e   SHANNON AND THE CLAMS MOCK MEDIA POZI Tuesday 5 November Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, London, N1 2UD 7pm | £20 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/i36cc53102af   DEAN SPUNT GUESTS M-G DYSFUNCTION Tuesday 12 November New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/E8acfa797c7d   URANIUM CLUB HYGIENE Thursday 14 November Number 90 Live, Main Yard, Wallis Road, London, E9 5LN 7.30pm | £13 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/yd631fde96ea   TARA CLERKIN TRIO ABLE NOISE Saturday 16 November EartH Theatre, 11-17 Stoke Newington Rd, London, N16 8BH 6.30pm-10.30pm | £16 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Aeb338640a1d   CHRIS COHEN LARGE PLANTS Tuesday 19 November 100 Club, 100 Oxford St, Oxford Street, W1D 1LL 7.30pm | £14 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ob8ce6dd7dbc   XIU XIU EVICSHEN JOHN LEE BIRD & FABRIZIO MODONESE PALUMBO Tuesday 19 November Heaven, Under The Arches, Villiers Street, London, WC2N 6NG 7pm | £16 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Wbcbd06fdcd1   HUGGY BEAR: KILLED (OF KIDS) book launch Thursday 28 November New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £5 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/eaa27c1c8a63   THE SMASHING TIMES SPECIAL GUESTS (TBA) Thursday 5 December MOTH Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette St, London, E9 6NU 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/va3aba677211   NIGHTSHIFT MARY CURRIE & ROBERT SOTELO ANNELIES MONSERÉ Sunday 8 December The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/pcd6fe8e5f9b   TRISTWCH Y FENYWOD Friday 31 January St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, King's Cross, NW1 1UL 7.30pm | £12 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/s0e4de64285b   SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE Thursday 27 March Metronome London, 41 Commercial Road, Whitechapel, London, E1 1LA 7.30pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Gb5ecad0f987   CLEANERS FROM VENUS (Martin Newell + live band!) THE GARDENERS Wednesday 23 April - SOLD OUT Thursday 24 April - NOW ON SALE! Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherds Bush, London W12 7LJ 7.30pm | £15 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/e2db91604d19   NAP EYES Wednesday 7 May The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £13 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/p590cef01f9d

 

Nap Eyes - London show next May!

 

It's been a lifetime but thankfully... NAP EYES are coming back to London next May! 

Their new album 'The Neon Gate' was released this morning in fact... and the 'best news of the day' award goes to?

Upset The Rhythm presents…

NAP EYES
Wednesday 7 May
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB
7.30pm | £13 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/p590cef01f9d

NAP EYES still bring to mind the bucolic ennui of the Silver Jews and Daniel Johnston’s jittery naïveté, but the sheen and maturity they boast lends a wide-angle appeal. Nap Eyes’ metamorphic fifth long-player collects a cache of nine fascinating songs recorded over the four years since their last album. ‘The Neon Gate’ reveals classic touchstones (the uneasy interplay of physics and philosophy, perambulatory meditations, self-interrogating soliloquies, apertures of surreality, video games), but also evidence of divergent impulses toward nonlinear abstraction and longform improvisational composition (resulting in their most discursive, deconstructed, and deliquescent songs to date) and narrative and lyric formality, imparting the sense that Nap Eyes have transmuted, as has their understanding of what a song is, what it can do, where it might go.


https://napeyes.bandcamp.com/

New single from The Green Child released!

The Green Child return today with the mesmeric, second track taken from their forthcoming album ‘Look Familiar’. Is there a better name for a single than ‘A Long Beautiful Flowing Cape’?  Inspired by the media and online posturing this song unfurls with an infectious shuffling beat backed-up with a spry bassline. Shimmers of synth and twirling guitar tone provide a redolent vista for Raven’s vocal about distorted social contracts to flit through. Available to stream everywhere now, ‘A Long Beautiful Flowing Cape’ is also accompanied by a visual treat of a video made by Wu Li Leung using early editing technology for newscasts. Too much!

‘Look Familiar’ (out Nov 15)is available to pre-order now: https://upsettherhythm.bandcamp.com/
Australian pre-orders through our friends at Hobbies Galore please.


UTR
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'Dream Songs' released today!

The sun is out! And so is this debut 7” EP from cosmic pop duo Robert Sotelo & Mary Currie!

‘Dream Songs’ is an archetypal meeting of minds, at once musing and magical. Robert Sotelo is a bedroom pop songsmith who lives in Glasgow. Sotelo has released six albums since 2017, three of which came out on Upset The Rhythm. He also performs in Order of the Toad, Dancer and Nightshift. Mary Currie is best known as half of touchstone DIY experimentalists Flaming Tunes, alongside Gareth Williams (of This Heat). Currie also performed in Officer!  

These four tracks flutter with a minimalist bass, drum machine and keys dynamic, allowing Sotelo and Currie’s vocals to speak deeply into the back of your mind. ‘Expectations’ is a pensive triumph of whirled moments-n-momentum with Currie’s final words lending much gravity “the outcome of my days is always the same, a void that must be filled, a battle against time that drags us along; mutating, spinning, ebbing, flowing. Begin again, we work to give value to time.”

‘Telegraph Hill’ boasts a glossy fluidity, as it plays with images of motorways, ancient citadels, crows, paralysis and emanations. ‘Lady Fortune’ meanwhile is a tranquil treatise on fate, imbued with finessed electronic embellishments and clarinet flourishes. You can't quite trust where these songs will take you, they feel particularly mercurial.

‘Dream Songs’ is available now from all the best shops and our very own humble webstore here.


Enjoy!
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