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.
 
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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/
 

Thank you 2024!

Upset The Rhythm had a bumper year! We released eight diverting new records by The Pheromoans, Marcel Wave, Earth Ball, Parsnip, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Normil Hawaiians, Robert Sotelo & Mary Currie and The Green Child. We also organised a tremendous 44 concerts, which we hope you found absorbing.

Giant thanks to all the artists involved and to all of YOU for supporting us through our many endeavours in music both live and recorded.

Let’s make 2025 our best year yet!
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Myriam Gendron - London date announced!

 

Beyond thrilled to have Myriam Gendron playing a special show for us next April at Grand Junction! Tickets now on sale, ooh!
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MYRIAM GENDRON
Monday 7 April
Grand Junction, Rowington Cl, London W2 5TF
7.30pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/B9332cba32bb

MYRIAM GENDRON is a Montreal-based songwriter, guitarist and singer. Mayday is the third LP by Gendron, it follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, Not So Deep As A Well (2014) and Ma délire – Songs of love, lost & found (2021). Prior to her debut album, Myriam's primary musical focus was busking in Paris Metro stations, performing the songs of Leonard Cohen and others, accompanying herself on guitar. Through her day job, working at a Montreal bookstore, Myriam discovered the poems of American writer, Dorothy Parker, who was better known for her cutting wit than her verse. Inspired by Parker's words, Myriam wrote music to accompany a suite of them, then recorded the results in her bedroom. These recordings were issued as her debut LP, and continue to delight listeners who discover them, with their freshness, clarity and humor. After a brief hiatus, Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), recording the 2LP, Ma délire, which combines traditional and original songs (largely in French) with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano. Mayday is an even more syncretic fusion of these elements. Most of the songs are original, in both English and French, and blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. Additional players this time include drummer Jim White (Dirty Three), guitarist Marisa Anderson, Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie (a fellow fan of trad/avant dynamism), Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba (whose horn actually gets the final “word”). Mayday is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. Beautiful work.

https://myriamgendron.bandcamp.com/

 

 

 

Wolf Eyes in London next April!

 

 

 

Upset The Rhythm presents...

WOLF EYES
Thursday 10 April
The Underworld, 174 Camden High St, London, NW1 9DL
7pm | £15 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/qa5f170d34a7

WOLF EYES have spent 26 years fusing together DIY electronics with the avant-garde sensibilities of Fluxus and the granite of dreary Midwestern life. Their new album 'Dreams In Splattered Lines' is a surreal dreamscape of disorienting sound collages, where hit songs are transformed into terrariums of sonic flora and decimated fauna. As if pulled from a fever dream, the surrealists of the 1960s converge with alien electronic blues musicians in an underworld of mystery. The air is thick with car wash radio white noise, crackling and fizzing like a toxic elixir, spoken word poetry transmissions as absurd and cryptic phrases. Each corroded aural environment is a microcosm of chaos, honed to razor-sharp precision. Swept away in a whirlwind of thirteen perplexing narratives, each one an unpredictable journey through subterranean worlds, a sonic trip of reality folded into itself.
 
Wolf Eyes have released three albums recently ‘Dreams In Splattered Lines' was preceded by the compilation of collaborations 'Presents Difficult Messages', and the band followed this up with the release of 'Wolf Eyes w/ Spykes', bringing a much sought after early release to vinyl for the first time, documenting a recording session pivotal to the ongoing development of the group’s sound. Alongside this has been the usual steady stream of lathe cuts, side hustles, art and inzanity. A new LP is due out soon charting Wolf Eyes’ recent recordings with Anthony Braxton too, look out!

https://wolfeyes.xyz/ 

Bill MacKay added to Six Organs lineup!

Very pleased to say our Six Organs of Admittance show on March 27th has blossomed into a Drag City showcase with the addition of the magnificent Bill MacKay to the lineup!

 

Upset The Rhythm presents...

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

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/

Callahan & Witscher - London - Feb 14th!

Romantic times! We have a new show lined-up on Feb 14th with Callahan & Witscher!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

CALLAHAN & WITSCHER
Friday 14 February
The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, 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/album/think-differently