Wendy Eisenberg & Ryan Sawyer to play London next month! April 9th

 

 

Woah… last minute new concert announcement on April 9th, tell your friends, acquaintances, all and sundry! It’s going to be a tremendous evening!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

WENDY EISENBERG & RYAN SAWYER
KIRAN LEONARD
Wednesday 9 April
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB
7.30pm | £12 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/G8802b91cafe

WENDY EISENBERG & RYAN SAWYER came together seemingly by fate. The duo originally came together in a dream Eisenberg had, and not long after, were brought together in reality as substitutes for a show at Union Pool, where they instantly fell in step. Both artists’ work traverses genres from jazz to noise, all sorts of avant substrata and delicate songs, each placing a special emphasis on vast dynamics, textures, and moods. Their performances ebb and flow between long, improvisational pieces and composed songs from each of the artists' repertoires, setting the sonic intersection between Blaze Foley and the New York Art Quartet. The duo has previously opened for caroline at National Sawdust.

Ryan also plays on Wendy’s new single ‘I Don’t Miss You’ (Joyful Noise Recordings). Wendy has previously played for us solo, and as a member of Editrix and Bill Orcutts’s guitar quartet, and their recent album ‘Viewfinder’ was described by The Guardian as “unexpected shifts in pace mix with Americana and jazz, with the singer-songwriter’s distinctive guitar sound driving a song cycle like no other”. Ryan Sawyer has played drums / percussion for Tv On The Radio, Marshall Allen, Susan Alcorn, Gang Gang Dance, At The Drive-In and collaborates frequently with John Dwyer.

https://www.wendyeisenberg.com/
https://ryansawyer.bandcamp.com/music



KIRAN LEONARD’s unique and ambitious body of work spans more than a decade of releases on labels such as Moshi Moshi and Hand of Glory, limited-run noisy DIY fare, and everything in between. The adolescent guitar/chamber prog of early records such as ‘Bowler Hat Soup’ (2013) and ‘Grapefruit’ (2016) earned praise from Pitchfork, the Guardian and the Quietus, and produced several BBC 6Music-playlisted singles. More recent work has seen Kiran attempt to synthesise interests in situated/home recording, collage, his live practice, and a combination of songcraft with graphic scores, as documented on the monumental (i.e. two-hour-long) and abstract ‘Trespass on Foot’ (2021) and ‘River Holds Peace, Some Live’ (2023), a collection of new and old material arranged for an ensemble of multiple electric guitars, cittern and double bass. Last year, After half a decade of songs without choruses, Kiran released ‘Real Home’ on Memorials of Distinction, which was named by the Guardian that summer among the best albums of 2024 so far.

https://kleonard.bandcamp.com/

Chris Cohen - July show announced!

A quick (and very welcome) return visit from Chris Cohen to London this Summer!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

CHRIS COHEN
Thursday 31 July
The Ivy House, 40 Stuart Rd, London, SE15 3BE
7.30pm | £16 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/a62fd570325d

CHRIS COHEN was always a quiet kid. In fact, this introversion was one reason he began playing music as a toddler—to communicate without speaking to identify with others without the direct representation of words. It has worked, too, with Cohen’s terrific stint in the mighty Deerhoof and his own captivating art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen. Somewhere along that long way, Cohen started writing lyrics. He found that, though it didn’t come naturally, the process offered a new sense of self-discovery and reckoning, a way to see himself and the world from unexpected angles. His three twilit albums of casually complicated pop during the last decade radiated these epiphanies: handling family strife, navigating advancing age, and understanding social woes.
 
But Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on ‘Paint a Room’, his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. If Cohen’s meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. There is the endless miasma of state violence on the subversively melodious opener “Damage,” the existential exhaustion of modernity on the horn-traced jangle “Laughing”. With ‘Paint a Room’, Cohen’s music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it’s often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud.
 
https://chriscohen.bandcamp.com

Actual Earth Music - out now!

 

Earth Ball just cracked the planet! ‘Actual Earth Music - Volume 1 & 2’ (out today on Upset The Rhythm) presents two caustic, zoned-out live sets from Canadian noise-rock entropy hunters Earth Ball. 

This new LP captures the band at the peak of their powers, playing live, frying minds, composing spontaneously. 

Side A features Earth Ball live at The Fox Cabaret in Vancouver, supporting Wolf Eyes on August 4, 2023. Here Earth Ball whip up a vortex of thrashing wild energy, and the ecstatic release is off the charts. Volume 2 occupies Side B, showcasing a collaborative summit at London’s Café OTO on May 21, 2024. This recording features pivotal UK improv luminary Steve Beresford on piano and free-jazz phenomenon Chris Corsano on drums.
 
These two pulse-quickening sets demonstrate how intuitive and inventive the group are when they keep cresting the moment. This is ‘Actual Earth Music’, sharing Earth Ball in their element as they conjure sound from the unknowing ether. ‘Actual Earth Music - Volume 1 & 2’ is out now digitally and as a limited 180g black vinyl pressing.

Thank you to Rob Turner for his spot-on review from this month’s issue of WIRE magazine too, well worth buying a copy for the Cleaners From Venus interview alone! 

UTR
x

Walt McClements + Jacken Elswyth - London show in August

One of our highlights from last year was seeing Walt McClements play with Mary Lattimore at Hoxton Hall, so we’re ecstatic to invite him back this August for a show at Cafe OTO with Jacken Elswyth too, sublime times!

 

 

Upset The Rhythm presents…

WALT McCLEMENTS
JACKEN ELSWYTH
Wednesday 27 August
Cafe OTO, 18-22 Ashwin St, London, E8 3DL 

7.30pm | £12 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Q090a15c33bd

WALT McCLEMENTS is an accordionist, multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Los Angeles. His solo compositions focus on processed accordion, creating patient and emotional meditations that nod to drone and ambient music. His debut record, “A Hole in the Fence” was released in 2021 on American Dreams, and utilized a minimal palette of accordions treated through guitar pedals to create glacial soundscapes and odes to hidden worlds. On his latest record and first for Western Vinyl, “On a Painted Ocean”, he expands his sonic tools to include lush synths, droning pipe organs, and spirited horns, creating a vibrant journey from solitary stillness to community exuberance. The record also follows last year’s “Rain on the Road”, a collaborative album with harpist Mary Lattimore, released on Thrill Jockey.
 
Prior to releasing music under his own name, McClements has been a touring member of Weyes Blood, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and Dark Dark Dark, as well as leading New Orleans art-punk brass ensemble Why Are We Building Such A Big Ship? and one man band Lonesome Leash.

https://www.waltmcclements.com/

 

JACKEN ELSWYTH is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder. In her music making she is focused on exploring traditional tunes, developing extrapolations on folk styles and techniques, and investigating drone, ambience, and improvisation within and beyond folk music. Her debut album At Fargrounds (Wrong speed Records, 2024) was described as a ‘folk-thesis for our times’ by The Quietus. Jacken also organises the Betwixt & Between split tape series, and plays in Shovel Dance Collective too.  

https://jackenelswyth.bandcamp.com/

Quinie - 'Forefowk, Mind Me' announced!

We’re so excited for you to hear Quinie's wondrous new album Forefowk, Mind Me (out May 23rd on Upset The Rhythm)! The first song from the album, ‘Macaphee Turn the Cattle’ escaped into the wild this morning, thanks to KLOF Magazine for premiering the video.

 

A singer working from the Scots song tradition, Quinie brings an approach that is both reverent and radical—exploring authenticity not as an exercise in preservation, but as something lived, questioned, and continually reshaped. ‘Forefowk, Mind Me’ is a conversation between traditions: voice and pipes, accompanied and unaccompanied, DIY and folk. It features a mix of traditional unaccompanied songs, reinterpretations, and original arrangements drawn from Scots, Gaelic, and Irish traditions, alongside toasts, improvisations, and poetic settings. Rather than static and fixed, it’s folk tradition in motion.

'Forefowk, Mind Me' can be pre-ordered as a 180g black vinyl LP w/ risograph lyric print

 
There’s also an option to order the LP with a stunning accompanying art book too!

Also… for those of you in London, we’re hosting a special launch party on May 30th at St Pancras Old Church. Tickets now on sale.

x

Rattle released!

 

Rattle’s entrancing new album ‘Encircle’ is released today!

With this hypnotic third album, Rattle have emerged from the chrysalis with four mutable songs of drum and vocal patterns. They build-up and disintegrate, existing in two places at once, tracing the circle’s edge. What a stunning achievement! Here’s the hot pink vinyl version in all its glory, plus some bonus pics of Rattle joyously meeting the LPs for the first time!

‘Encircle’ can be streamed on all digital platforms now, it is also available on vinyl (pink, black versions) and CD from all the best shops, as well as our Bandcamp and webshop here.

UTR
x

 

Deerhoof - double dates this July!

Two decidedly distinctive Deerhoof dates for your diary!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

DEERHOOF
Monday 28 July
Tuesday 29 July
Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherds Bush, London W12 7LJ
7.30pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/u14f27627efa / https://link.dice.fm/I74bac87ba3a

DEERHOOF long ago established themselves as one of the greatest rock groups ever to stride the earth, the furiously inventive quartet releases new albums on the schedule of a young band still hungry for its first break. Their latest album ‘Noble and Godlike in Ruin’ (their 19th studio album) is either a portrait of a world descending into monstrous hate, dehumanization, and dollar signs, or a haunting self-portrait of band-as-monster, singing tirelessly of love, increasingly alienated from that world. Songs crash and break apart, then reassemble in surprising and delightful new fashion.

The music is joyful and foreboding, cybernetic and deeply human, all at once. Strings that evoke avant-garde chamber music and classic horror-film soundtracks bounce off guitar and bass lines that chug on impervious to the creeping dread. The drums are sometimes filtered to sound almost electronic, but no computer could come up with rhythms so funky and dynamic, with each minute variation from one snare hit to the next conveying worlds of possibility. The world may be going down, but Deerhoof is going down swinging. 

For this pair of shows in London, Deerhoof will be performing different sets each night, featuring material from ‘Noble and Godlike in Ruin’ alongside epic tracks from their extensive back catalogue!
https://deerhoof.bandcamp.com/

Now that's what we call a double headline show!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

MOHAMMAD SYFKHAN
SACRED PAWS
Saturday 17 May
OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney Central, E8 1LL
7pm-10.30pm | £15 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ade9797f4d93

MOHAMMAD SYFKHAN is an Irish based Kurdish/Syrian singer and Bouzouki player. Mohammad’s own brand of ecstatic music takes elements from Middle Eastern and North African music to create an atmosphere of joy, love and happiness. Since arriving in Ireland, Mohammad has used the language of music to integrate into the local community by playing at private parties and concerts. He has been playing music since the 1980’s, while living in the city of Raqqa, Syria  where he began working as a professional singer and started his own band, The Al-Rabie Band which played concerts, parties, weddings and festivals all over Syria. His debut album ‘I Am Kurdish’ came out on Nyahh Records last year. The Quietus explains further that “Syfkhan takes his domestic influences and fuses them with music from beyond those regions, from North African folk rhythms to Turkish psychedelia. It’s a glorious alembic not bound by borders, where Mohammad himself brings a cultivated exuberance to his playing that belies his vintage.” 

https://nyahhrecords.bandcamp.com/album/mohammad-syfkhan-i-am-kurdish 

SACRED PAWS were founded by the Glasgow duo of Ray Aggs (Trash Kit, Shopping) and Eilidh Rodgers (Golden Grrrls) who took their roots in the punk world and wound it together with myriad influences, from Afrobeat, through pop and post-punk, to create a glorious and unique hybrid. ‘Strike A Match’, the band’s urgent and infectious first offering, was released on Mogwai’s Rock Action label in 2017 and won the prestigious Scottish Album of the Year Award that same year. ‘Jump Into Life’, is the lush and layered new album from Sacred Paws, released on March 28th through Merge and Rock Action. Formed of eleven new songs, it takes the roots of the Sacred Paws project and breathes fresh life into it, blossoming into something both abundant and more colourful than has come before; a gentle skewing of their signature sound that feels wildly thrilling. Full of endearing energy, and buoyed by new sounds, textures, and character, ‘Jump Into Life’ is unafraid to reveal its warm and heavy beating heart, even with all the anxiety such a thing entails. 

https://sacredpaws.co.uk/

Perfect Hit!

Buffet Lunch’s new single ‘Perfect Hit!’ is released today! It’s a snappy anthem of clunky guitar, casio wobble and percussive clatter. Teaming up themes like relationships, limbs and an actual swordfish sighting off the Scottish coastline (yes really), Buffet Lunch pack a wonky punch and are not afraid to modulate through multiple key changes. 

 The accompanying video was filmed on location in Portobello Town Hall where the band also shot the album cover for ‘Perfect Hit!’ - the album (out April 4th on Upset The Rhythm). Is this the birth of Nu-Music Hall? Glimpsed between long Edwardian red curtains? Quite possibly so! Now let’s learn the dance moves.

Buffet Lunch - album launch!

 

Did anyone say album launch? Let’s celebrate Buffet Lunch’s gob-smacking new album ‘Perfect Hit!’ in style on April 11th at The George Tavern with the esteemed company of Lerryn and Sassyhiya too! Oh my!!


Upset The Rhythm presents…

BUFFET LUNCH - ‘Perfect Hit!’ album launch
LERRYN
SASSYHIYA
Friday 11 April
The George Tavern, 373 Commercial Rd, Stepney Green, London E1 0LA
7.30pm | £8 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ld7ea96b139b

BUFFET LUNCH have been writing pleasingly imperfect pop songs since 2017. Comprised of musicians based in Glasgow, Edinburgh and (sometimes) Newcastle, the group craft ramshackle odysseys of observational charm. Always catchy, often profound. Buffet Lunch have been previously described as a band that create 'a hodgepodge of noises’, and who are 'lyrically ridiculous'. Both claims are strongly denied by the group.
 
Buffet Lunch have released 3 EPs & 2 LPs to date, and just six months after self-releasing the album 'For Display Purposes Only’ return this spring to Upset the Rhythm for their stunning third album 'Perfect Hit!' A meandering masterpiece of low-fidelity musing, ‘Perfect Hit!’ presents the group in upbeat mood, as ever casually melodic, only now with some more weighty subject matter to draw upon. ‘Perfect Hit!’ is built from ideas and plots, melodies and hooks, each stacked upon the other. It’s a puzzle, much like life, you just keep adding to what went before, hoping for order and shelter. Buffet Lunch have grown into this attitude, you must wait until the end and then stand back if you want to see what they’ve built. Now knock on the door and come on in. This event at The George Tavern is the official album launch for ‘Perfect Hit!’.

https://buffetlunchband.bandcamp.com/


LERRYN has been a stalwart of the South East London creative scene for over a decade. The founder of cult creative space Lerryn’s Cafe and later frontwoman of post-punk band Dead Arm, her impact on a DIY scene that has defined a corner of London has been significant. Recent EP ‘As A Mother’ (Redundant Span) is the first offering from the next chapter of Lerryn’s own life, and the debut release under her own name. It is a record written during her experience of pregnancy, motherhood and a period of profound creative reckoning. This collection of songs are intimate, sweet and moving. For this show Lerryn will be performing as a stripped back duo.

https://redundantspan.bandcamp.com/album/as-a-mother

SASSYHIYA want to take you somewhere. The journey starts in Kathy and Helen’s flat in South London. Sit down, close your eyes, and immerse yourself... You are on your way to a musical rainforest a long way from Camberwell. Explore your new surroundings, and you will find beautiful pop blooms like Let’s See What We Can Find, as bright and vibrant as The Sundays, thrusting their colourful faces up from the forest floor. You’ll find tangles of sharp-edged guitar, as if Swiss she-punks Kleenex had been left to evolve here in the rich fertile soil (I Had A Thought). You’ll find dark pools full of lyrical complexity, deceptively deep and immersive, with shimmering reflections of The Go-Betweens (Perennial). Sassyhiya’s debut album ‘Take You Somewhere’ is out now on Skep Wax!

https://sassyhiya.bandcamp.com

Callahan & Witscher + Jake Xerxes Fussell in London next week!

 

Greetings everyone!   Huge thanks to all of you for coming out last week to make both Tristwch Y Fenywod shows so special. What a way for Tristwch to kick off their first ever tour, astonishing performances, brilliant audiences! High fives all round.   Upset The Rhythm have two more excellent events lined up next week too. Next Friday (Valentine's Day, ooh!) we're hosting a concert for the inspired duo Callahan & Witscher.   Callahan & Witscher dice up self-referential lyrics with hyper-eclectic FM rock and quavering auto-tune hooks. It is brilliantly bizarre, probing the purpose and meaning of experimental music in a world where almost everything is reduced to signals and shared information. Really thrilled to have Blues Angles playing this show at The Shacklewell Arms too!

Then next Saturday (Feb 15) we're overjoyed to invite Jake Xerxes Fussell back to London.   Reverent and imaginative, Fussell interprets American folk song, making obscure scripts ring again. Fussell does this with so much authority and ingenuity that his performances are nothing short of magic, accompanied throughout by his charming Southern ease. Fussell's good friend Jennifer Castle will support with her country kick of a set rooted in fantasy and reflection.   This concert will take place at EartH Theatre, and is going to be Jake's largest show to date! It's also an early one: 6.30pm-10.30pm FYI, so please head down in good time.   You can read all about both these terrific events and next month's eagerly anticipated Six Organs Of Admittance show below. Enjoy!

Upset The Rhythm presents… CALLAHAN & WITSCHER BLUES ANGLES Friday 14 February The Shacklewell Arms, Dalston, London, E8 2EB 7.30pm | £8 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ic571250f2f8 CALLAHAN & WITSCHER is the project of NYC-based musicians Jack Callahan and Jeff Witscher. Witscher has been one of the most daring voices in underground American music for two decades, highlighted by releases on Pan and NNA Tapes. Callahan’s focused, uncompromising approach to sound caught the attention of both Demdike Stare’s DDS label and Swiss composer Jürg Frey, who took Callahan on as his first composition student. Fans of their individual work might expect opacity, disruption, or rhythmic irregularity from their collaboration, but their debut LP ‘Think Differently’ sounds like a pitbull in a convertible, a sand-kicking beach party, the dopamine hit you get from 311 or Smash Mouth. It’s a punchy, crunchy, highly infectious record. How did Callahan & Witscher cut the path from the ghostly margins of avant garde musics to the gutters of post-grunge American hard rock? In the words of Callahan, “at some point, you start to need a stronger drug.” The most potent characteristic of this stronger drug is the guitar. And not just any guitar, but a sassy, contagious, blithe guitar. Its presence is a drastic shift for two guys who’ve combined to make dozens of records over the years, not a single one of which has a recognizable guitar sound on it. Alongside the cool breezes and hyperactive fretwork of Callahan’s guitar playing, the songs are backboned by strutting, groove-happy vocals: all bark, all bite. Every song is a careful collage, light but dense, ornate with gang choruses, soulful femme vocals, autotune and whisper scratches. This accumulation almost manages to hide the record’s potent undertow of dread. ‘Think differently’ was released by Post Present Medium last September. https://callahanwitscher.bandcamp.com/ BLUES ANGLES are a two piece formed in 2023 comprising Sian Dorrer (Ravioli Me Away, HMS RMA, Bomber Jackets and Plug) and David Campbell (I’m Being Good and Nightshift). They make music by recycling rhythms, lyrics and melodies to create their own home studio recorded offerings. Influences range from Ween to The Glitter band. Their first recording was the Ruby themed ‘Ruby demos’ which was written to celebrate their friend’s Ruby Wedding anniversary. 2025 foretells an album, European summer tour and specially commissioned song about wine. https://soundcloud.com/bluesanglesmusic

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://link.dice.fm/Ob348d4f5135 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

Upset The Rhythm presents... a Drag City showcase featuring: SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE BILL MACKAY Thursday 27 March Metronome London, 41 Commercial Road, London, E1 1LA 7.30pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Gb5ecad0f987 SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE have built a prolific and diverse body of work over the last 20+ years. Ben Chasny's project is an experimental amalgam of new folk, drone music, percussion and strange textures, with Chasny delivering an outpouring of eclectic releases in the early 2000s for various small labels before finding a longstanding home on Drag City. In 2003, Chasny began an association with Comets on Fire, which led to him becoming a full-time touring and recording member of the band. After recording and touring extensively with Comets on Fire in 2004, Chasny returned to the studio and issued the moving and beautiful School of the Flower on Drag City in January of 2005. Sun Awakens and Shelter from the Ash arrived in 2006 and 2007. After touring and a break in 2008, Six Organs began what would become a prolific return to force, releasing a further 18 astonishing records up to the current time. First was the release of the sonically expansive - and very electric - Luminous Night, followed by the double-disc retrospective RTZ, both of which appeared on Drag City. Chasny also plays in 200 Years alongside Elisa Ambrogio (of Magik Markers), with Donovan Quinn (Skygreen Leopards) in the project New Bums, and is also a member of tightly-wound improv unit Rangda, accompanied by Sir Richard Bishop and Chris Corsano. Chasny more recently developed a card-based creative system called a Hexadic for making music and released several related albums before resuming his primary project with new work like 2021's The Veiled Sea and the 2024 Shackleton collaboration Jinxed by Being. This year Six Organs also released a fully solo album Time Is Glass, which consists of haunted, unsettled rural folk sounds. With Time is Glass, Six Organs of Admittance is captured once again in the intricate tangle of the fretboards, soaring in open skies above. Like lens flare cutting through the speakers; spider-webs cracking the windshield that holds back all the onrushing reality. Blowing the dust away, cutting a new path for cognition. https://sixorgansofadmittance.bandcamp.com/     BILL MACKAY is a guitarist, improviser, composer, and singer based in Chicago. An accomplished collaborator with projects that include Katinka Kleijn (Stir, 2019), Nathan Bowles (Keys, 2021), and Ryley Walker (SpiderBeetleBee, 2017), MacKay is also a solo artist creating multi-dimensional works such as Esker (2017), Fountain Fire (2019) Scarf (2020), and Locust Land (2024), all released on Drag City Records. Bill’s music is a visceral crackling where it meets the air, and Locust Land can’t help but reflect its era more than any other in his discography. A restless energy and urgency is repeatedly felt — in the driving momentum of “Keeping in Time,” “Glow Drift,” and “When I Was Here” — while a dogged persistence radiates from the tone colors and percussion of “Oh, Pearl.” The sense of searching, displacement and longing in vocal tracks “Keeping in Time,” “Half of You,” and “When I Was Here” speak literally to the tumult of current vibrations. Within the arrangements, there’s also departure from previous norms — in addition to the brilliant guitar work for which he is known, Bill plays a variety of keyboards, from piano to organ to synth, extending his music with the available voicings, while enriching the sound field without abandoning his signature brevity. For fans of his singing, and following in the recent tradition of Fountain Fire as well as his collaboration with Nathan Bowles, Keys, Locust Land expresses with an increased vocal presence — and heightened engagement, with Bill’s words and melodies drawing us closer. https://billmackay.com/

Have a brilliant weekend, thanks as ever for reading! Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

CALLAHAN & WITSCHER BLUES ANGLES Friday 14 February The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, London, E8 2EB 7.30pm | £8 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ic571250f2f8   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://link.dice.fm/Ob348d4f5135   SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE BILL MACKAY Thursday 27 March Metronome London, 41 Commercial Road, Whitechapel, London, E1 1LA 7.30pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Gb5ecad0f987   EVIL SWORD SHAKE CHAIN Saturday 5 April New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £8 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/B1970de44fb0   MYRIAM GENDRON THE MEMORY BAND Monday 7 April Grand Junction, Rowington Cl, London W2 5TF 7.30pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/B9332cba32bb   WOLF EYES SLY & THE FAMILY DRONE SOBORGNOST Thursday 10 AprilThe Underworld, 174 Camden High St, London, NW1 9DL 7pm | £15 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/qa5f170d34a7   CLEANERS FROM VENUS THE GARDENERS Wednesday 23 April & Thursday 24 April Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherds Bush, London W12 7LJ 7.30pm | SOLD OUT   RICH(ARD) DAWSON Tuesday 29 April The Clapham Grand, 21-25 St John's Hill, Clapham, London, SW11 1TT 7pm | £30 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/richard-dawson   RICH(ARD) DAWSON Wednesday 30 April The Clapham Grand, 21-25 St John's Hill, Clapham, London, SW11 1TT 7pm | £30 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ed6edd247a05   NAP EYES Wednesday 7 May The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £13 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/p590cef01f9d

Earth Ball - 'Actual Earth Music' announced!

 

Get tectonic! UTR172 has just erupted! ‘Actual Earth Music - Volume 1 & 2’ presents two caustic, yet alluringly unreal live sets from Canadian noise-rock entropy hunters Earth Ball. Following on from the group’s head-turn of an album ‘It’s Yours’ (Upset The Rhythm, 2024) this new LP captures the band at the peak of their powers, playing live, composing spontaneously.
 
Side A features Earth Ball live at The Fox Cabaret in Vancouver, supporting Wolf Eyes on August 4, 2023. Here Earth Ball whip up a vortex of thrashing wild energy, and the ecstatic release is off the charts. Volume 2 occupies Side B, showcasing a collaborative summit at London’s Café OTO on May 21, 2024. This recording features pivotal UK improv luminary Steve Beresford on piano and free-jazz phenomenon Chris Corsano on drums.
 
These two pulse-quickening sets make a fine addition to the Earth Ball discography and demonstrate how intuitive and inventive the group are when they keep cresting the moment. This is ‘Actual Earth Music’, sharing Earth Ball in their element as they conjure sound from the unknowing ether. ‘Actual Earth Music - Volume 1 & 2’ will be released on Upset The Rhythm on March 7th digitally and as a limited 180g black vinyl pressing. Both are available to pre-order now!

Buffet Lunch's 'Perfect Hit!'

Well, I never! Art-pop amblers Buffet Lunch have embarked on their blue period. Released today, new single ‘Blue Chairs, Blue Floors, Blue Folders’ is the first track to sally forth from their forthcoming album ‘Perfect Hit!’, out on April 4th through Upset The Rhythm.
 
Comprised of musicians based in Glasgow, Edinburgh and (sometimes) Newcastle, Buffet Lunch craft ramshackle odysseys of observational charm. Always catchy, often profound. Buffet Lunch have been previously described as a band that create 'a hodgepodge of noises’, and who are 'lyrically ridiculous'. Both claims are strongly denied by the group.
 

 

 

‘Blue Chairs, Blue Floors, Blue Folders’ is a deceptively carefree track, with its lengthy Shadows’ style intro, it is packed with anticipation, it revels in waiting, enjoying the mundane surroundings that often accompany monumental changes. This defines the modus operandi for a whole album of curious turns; a record that sees the band focus on more overtly personal themes like ancestry and becoming a parent, without neglecting the flawed Presbyterians and conker champions of the subconscious. ‘Perfect Hit!’ is built from bricks, ideas and plots, melodies and hooks, each stacked upon the other. It is available to pre-order now on 180g yellow vinyl from all the best shops and our very own website here.
 
UTR
x

Evil Sword - London date for April!

Playing live (or perhaps undead) in London this April... EVIL SWORD! New show announced!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

EVIL SWORD
Saturday 5 April
New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1DN
7.30pm | £8 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/B1970de44fb0

EVIL SWORD are Kate Ferencz and Ben Furgal from Philadelphia, USA. Their chaotic live shows combine elements of noise, cryptic metal overtones, performance art, and gallows humor and feature macabre props, flashing lights, stage sets and costumes. There are hardly any instruments in this group, but they make such a racket you’d never know it. The bass and the percussion sound like they’re having a great time, telling each other jokes. Then the words come in and it all locks together in these strange, hypnotic rhythms. I just listen to the stories and laugh and cry and get scared and wonder what they were ever thinking. 

Recent album ‘Basket Fever’ (Magic Pictures, 2023) features electrocuted bells, backwards parts, rusty horns; I’m pretty sure I even heard a clarinet in there somewhere. There’s this one part where it all seems to come back around, where they took some gang vocals from the very first demo they ever recorded and slowed it way down. When they first started; I thought they were some goofy kids making music about the end of the world, back when that seemed a little further away, like it was going to be fun. They were all laughing and making these funny ghost sounds, but now everyone’s older and the ghosts are real, a great whoosh of bygone spirits and cold air. It’s bone chilling. There’s plenty to be upset about, but it’s not really an Evil Sword song until that grimace has been twisted up into a smile.

https://evilsword.bandcamp.com/album/basket-fever

Rattle and Ritual

 

Rattle return today with their hypnotic cascade of a new single 'Ritual'! 'Ritual' is a song of summoning, a waltz pulled out of the earth, a swirling mist and a spell spoken into a mirror.

Available now digitally and featuring on the duo's forthcoming album 'Encircle', out Feb 28th on Upset The Rhythm. Pink vinyl, black vinyl and CDs all available to pre-order from UTR and all the best shops.
 

New date added for Rich Dawson! April 30th

We've added a new date at The Clapham Grand for Rich in April! On sale from Friday at 10am.

 

 

Upset The Rhythm presents…

RICH(ARD) DAWSON
Tuesday 29 April & Wednesday 30 April
The Clapham Grand, 21-25 St John's Hill, Clapham, London, SW11 1TT
7pm | £30 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/richard-dawson & https://link.dice.fm/ed6edd247a05
(New tickets for April 30th on sale on Friday 24 January at 10am)

RICH(ARD) 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 at this concert in the intimate, beautiful setting of The Clapham Grand.

 
https://richarddawson.net/