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 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. |
 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. 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.
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