AMOR concert line-up revealed!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

AMOR
THE GOLDEN FILTER
ALEXIS TAYLOR (DJ SET)

Friday 1 February

New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay Warehouse District, N4 1DN

7.30pm | £7 | https://link.dice.fm/amor-utr

AMOR is a quartet based largely in Glasgow, consisting of Richard Youngs, Luke Fowler, Michael Francis Duch and Paul Thomson. AMOR is a master-class in blissful, searching, avant-disco fuelled by telepathic ensemble playing and an untouchable, higher joy. Though a young grouping, AMOR's members have separate exceptional histories in modern music. Richard Youngs has a 140+ long discography covering any number of musics often invented by Youngs himself, while Luke Fowler is an award winning film-maker and visual artist, as well as an electronic musician in his own right. Paul Thomson is a drummer and percussionist with Franz Ferdinand and The Yummy Fur and Michael Francis Duch is a double bassist based in Norway with deep roots in the world of improvisation and minimalist composition. Most important, however, is that AMOR is the sound of a band, as one.

Collectively, AMOR strike a balance between hefty, bass-thick kicks and crisp percussion, an elastic double bass that lends bounce and class to the groove and floating piano chords recalling a warped take on Philadelphia International Records or a version of Can decimating the disco charts of late 70s USA. Steeped in de-constructivist disco practices similar to Arthur Russell yet fully immersed in a higher love, never forsaking movement and joy for ego, AMOR's embrace of the avant garde and the simplicity of feeling brings forth light. While at times the focal point, Richard Youngs' vocals are immeshed in the mix, a plaintive, cosmic call and response with the outside. AMOR's debut album, titled 'Sinking Into A Miracle',  was released in December via Night School Records, who also released the group's previous couple of stupendous EPs.
https://amor-glasgow.bandcamp.com/

THE GOLDEN FILTER is the communal guise of Penelope Trappes & Stephen Hindman. Part art project, part electronic experimentation, part disco party, The Golden Filter were born in 2008 in NYC as a disruption to the pop music status quo. Now based in London & firmly welcomed into the Optimo Music family, with releases set for 2019 on Dischi Auotunno and their own 4GN3S imprint.  Their raw, minimal wave live sets and audio creations push the limits of accessible analogue beat-heavy soundscaping & angular vocals.
http://www.thegoldenfilter.com/

ALEXIS TAYLOR is a solo artist, DJ and frontman of Hot Chip and About Group. His brilliant, recent album, ‘Beautiful Thing’, was released last year on Domino. Alexis will be performing a DJ set throughout the night for this this event.
https://www.facebook.com/alexistaylorsoloofficial/

Big Joanie - February show announced!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

BIG JOANIE
SECRET POWER
Friday 15 February
HQI, The Rotunda, Wood Lane, White City Place, London, W12 7TP
(3 min walk from White City tube up Wood Lane. Off the Main Street behind the green gates)
7.30pm | £7 | https://link.dice.fm/big-joanie-hqi

BIG JOANIE are a black feminist punk band. They're like The Ronettes filtered through 80s DIY and riot grrrl, with a sprinkling of dashikis. Big Joanie formed in the summer of 2013 to play at First Timers (a gig where every band plays their set for the first time) at the close of the year. In 2014 they self-released their 4-track EP 'Sistah Punk', and in the years following went on to tour the UK and Europe supporting acts such as The Ex, Parquet Courts, Downtown Boys, Shopping and more. In November 2018 they released their debut album 'Sistahs,' a bold record covering topics of friendship, frustration, resistance and sisterhood. Big Joanie formed not only to make music, but to create a continuum for punks of colour by paying homage to their forebears. By presenting a powerful vision of black womanhood they hope to encourage young punks of colour to get involved in making music and claiming their space in the scene. And with the release of 'Sistahs', acclaimed by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and more, Big Joanie are set to spread their mission even further.
https://bigjoanie.bandcamp.com/

SECRET POWER are Jessica Ashman (guitar and vocals), Peter Lam (drums) and Summer Scott (keyboard and vocals). Combining a love of post-punk with R&B girl group harmonies, lots of reverb and wavy alt soul, the group have been quietly but assuredly making themselves known in the D.I.Y punk scene of London for the past year. The group’s incarnation came out of the First Timers scene of D.I.Y Space For London in 2017 and started with a duo. After a few Facebook shout-outs, the group re-formed with new members and became a trio. Since then, Secret Power have been playing in and around London and Brighton, playing events such as Decolonise Fest 2018 and Synth Punk Fest 2018. Secret Power will be releasing their debut self-titled EP in February 2019, with For The Sake of Tapes, as well as supporting Big Joanie on their upcoming UK tour.
https://www.facebook.com/secretpowerband/

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Upset The Rhythm: 2018!

What a year 2018 has been! 12 releases from Upset The Rhythm made for our busiest 365 yet. Thank you so much for all your support, it really means the world to us. You make all this possible. What an honour it is to work with these legends too: Sauna Youth, The Green Child, Rattle, Vital Idles, No Babies, Dog Chocolate, Terry, Guttersnipe, Apostille, School Damage, Bamboo and Primo! 2019 is already glowing with promise, let’s look to the future as its only just begun!

Merry times to all,

UTR

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Still House Plants in London this Thursday! Plus new album from Xiu Xiu!

Hello there! Our final show of the year is at hand and what a replete sensation it’s set to be. This Thursday we’re hosting Still House Plants at Servant Jazz Quarters to celebrate the release of their debut album ‘Long Play’ on Bison Records. Described deftly in this month’s WIRE magazine as a “strategic collision of visual art, improv and pop”, the experimental trio from Glasgow make emotionally-charged songs that race, stretch and twist the rock format into new, expansive horizons. Their approach is disciplined and considered, the result is always a thorough head-rush.   We’re lucky to have American composer / performer Ashley Paul and Glasgow’s Ailie Ormston both playing this concert too, so expect free-form radiance and scrambling sonics aplenty. Tickets will be available on the door from 7.30pm, with live music sounding out from 8.20pm, read on for the full write-up!

Since we last caught up, Upset The Rhythm announced a brand new album by Xiu Xiu for this coming February. Xiu Xiu is the conduit for the uncompromising and unnervingly personal musical works of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie Stewart, accompanied for this album by Thor Harris, Jordan Geiger and Angela Seo.   ‘Girl with Basket of Fruit’ was produced by Xiu Xiu’s Angela Seo and Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and proves a rowdier, more stylistically splenetic offering than previous efforts. The album features the usual eye-catching list of collaborators including Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), Devin Hoff and Haitian percussionists Emmanuel Obi and Ayo Okafor. Here’s the first opportunity to listen to what they came up with. ‘Scisssssssors’ is the opening video from the record:

‘Girl with Basket of Fruit’ is available to pre-order now on limited purple/black/white marbled vinyl and on also on CD through our webshop here.   We’ve also announced a London show for Xiu Xiu next March 26th at Islington Assembly Hall to celebrate the album’s release. Tickets on sale now, check our listings for links.

Now it’s properly December are your eyes full of tinsel and fire yet? Well don’t worry we’ve got the perfect festive jumpstart for you! Upset The Rhythm just released a double A-side single by Bamboo suffused with the magical spirit of the season. Available now on all the most digital of platforms, the Xmas themed double header features a deeply resounding cover of Greg Lake’s classic ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’, alongside a reworked version of their ‘Stay Another Day’ (East 17, as if you didn’t know) smash from last year!   Let’s all hope we get the Xmas we deserve, stream ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ now.

Upset The Rhythm & Bison Records presents…   STILL HOUSE PLANTS ASHLEY PAUL AILIE ORMSTON Thursday 13 December Servant Jazz Quarters, 10A Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   STILL HOUSE PLANTS are an experimental three-piece from Glasgow. This December they’ll return to London in support of the release of their debut LP, 'Long Play' (Bison Records). Combining visual strategies, free improvisation, garage and punk, Still House Plants build melodic hierarchies scaffolded around ambiguities and intimacy. Fresh from being selected for the Cafe OTO x Jerwood Foundation Artistic Development fund, and following two sold out tapes on Glasgow label GLARC,  'Long Play' collects the group's raw guitar-drum-vocal palette and stretches it to include violin, piano and home recording. Ranging from seconds-long to seven:minute:somethings, the album coagulates to form a heady meld of rudimentary phrases, kinetic repetition and malleable samples. Experimental songwriting is rarely so forthcoming, emotive, or approachable. Still House Plants have also been artists-in-residence for the CCA/AC Projects Music Residency and at The Pipe Factory. The trio have performed internationally too, touring with Mette Rasmussen to perform at Ultra Eczema's 20th Anniversary, Fasching Jazz Club with Rasmussen and Richard Dawson, as well as at KRAAK festival. https://bison-records.bandcamp.com/releases ASHLEY PAUL is an American composer/performer whose intuitive process integrates free form song structures with a focused approach to sound and clatter. A complexity of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared strings, bells and percussion create a delicate palette, uniquely her own. Her solo albums have received critical acclaim being chosen in The Wire: Top 50 Albums of 2013, Pitchfork’s “The Out Door” best experimental sounds of 2013, number one on Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Tongue Top Ten” in Arthur Magazine. Paul’s recent LP on Slip, ’Lost In Shadows’,  is a bewitching, expansive, deeply personal excavation of recent motherhood, told through songs dissolving and re-crystallising at the threshold of free improvisation. At the LP's heart is Paul's mercurial multi-instrumental style, which renders the primal wails, clunks, and twangs of clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and guitar uncannily melodic, alchemised by frank, vulnerable vocals. The deft negotiation of the fragile and the coruscating evidenced on Paul's 'Line The Clouds' (2013) and 'Heat Source' (2014) has now reached a kind of hesitant sublime. https://slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/lost-in-shadows     AILIE ORMSTON is an artist from Glasgow who attempts to convey a form of a contemporary condition through music and visual means. She recently performed with Still House Plants in Glasgow and Bradford, so it's great news that she can make the trip down to London for this show too. Ailie will be working with material from her new record. 'The Sedate / Tony Soprano Fashion Inspo' - co-written alongside one drum machine and one synth and presented with live visuals which embrace elements of chance and coincidence. Ailie explains further, "The Sedate / Tony Soprano Fashion Inspo" is a group of compositions; each track is a chef white. Part of the same team, but a representation of multiplicity within music making, and as oneself making music. When I feel that I'm losing it, I remind myself that I prefer to use my KeepCup without it's lid anyway. 'The Sedate / Tony Soprano Fashion Inspo' is out soon through 50% PURE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqxTf9ToC-E

Thank you for reading and of course for your time! See you on Thursday and until then… Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

STILL HOUSE PLANTS ASHLEY PAUL AILIE ORMSTON Thursday 13 December Servant Jazz Quarters, 10A Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   THE STALLION:   ‘THE DARK SIDE OF THE WALL’ TRIPLE ALBUM LAUNCH! EVANGELINE LING OF AUDIOBOOKS (DJ SET) Friday 18 January Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette St, Hackney Central, London, E9 6NU 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   AIR WAVES Thursday 31 January The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 | TICKETS   AMOR Friday 1 February New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay Warehouse District, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   MÉSANGE Thursday 7 February The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   KRISTIN HERSH With ROB AHLERS (drums) & FRED ABONG (bass) Sunday 10 March & Tuesday 12 March Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherd's Bush, London, W12 7LJ 7.30pm | £25 | TICKETS MARCH 10 /  TICKETS MARCH 12   THE SHIFTERS COOL GREENHOUSE Thursday 14 March The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS   DAVID NANCE GROUP Monday 25 March The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, London, E8 2EB 8pm | £7 | TICKETS   XIU XIU (Jamie Stewart, Thor Harris & Jordan Gieger) JOHN BENCE Tuesday 26 March Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, Islington, London, N1 2UD 7pm | £13.50 | TICKETS   Upset The Rhythm 15th anniversary label party! SAUNA YOUTH TRASH KIT GUTTERSNIPE VITAL IDLES RATTLE DOG CHOCOLATE Wednesday 27 March Tufnell Park Dome, 2A Dartmouth Park Hill, London, NW5 1HL 5.30pm - 11pm | £10 | TICKETS

BAMBOO - Xmas single surprise!

Are your eyes full of tinsel and fire yet? Well don’t worry we’ve got the perfect festive jump start for you! Today we’re releasing a surprise double A-side single by Bamboo suffused with the magical spirit of the season. Available now on all the most digital of platforms, the Xmas themed double header features a deeply resounding cover of Greg Lake’s classic ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’, alongside a reworked version of their ‘Stay Another Day’ (East 17, as if you didn’t know) smash from last year! Let’s all hope we get the Xmas we deserve, stream ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ now.



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Xiu Xiu - Girl with Basket of Fruit

Today, Xiu Xiu are sharing the first single from Girl with Basket of Fruit, their new album coming February 8th via Upset The Rhythm. Girl with Basket of Fruit is imbued with the agitation, tension, sorrow and anger that has permeated the daily lives of so many over the last few years. It was produced by Xiu Xiu’s Angela Seo and Greg Saunier of Deerhoof. Xiu Xiu is Thor Harris, Jordan Geiger, Angela Seo, and Jamie "Butch Jenny" Stewart.

Accompanying the single, 'Scisssssssors', is the first act of a three part video series, co-directed by the band’s own Angela Seo, to be released surrounding the album. Featuring Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo as well as Ron Athey, Elliot Reed and others, the themes and references of the series include ritual, mythology, mundane and divergent belief, film, music, and resurrected motifs from preceding Xiu Xiu videos.

'Girl with Basket of Fruit' is available to pre-order now on purple/white/black marbled vinyl and CD here: http://upsettherhythm.bigcartel.com/

Xiu Xiu is the conduit for the uncompromising and unnervingly personal musical works of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie Stewart, plus a roll call of collaborators both in studio and onstage..  Streaming forth a ceaseless torrent of releases, side projects, art offerings and extensive international touring since 2002, Xiu Xiu's music has veered from damaged avant-pop to artfully orchestrated rock, squalls of black-hearted noise and most bases around and between, ever served with a bruising honesty and intensity that has ripped out the hearts of a legion of obsessive listeners.

Latest Xiu Xiu album 'Girl with Basket of Fruit' (out Feb 2019) is a rowdier, yet more stylistically splenetic offering than 2017's 'Forget', with the usual eye-catching list of collaborators this time including Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), Devin Hoff and Haitian percussionists Emmanuel Obi and Ayo Okafor.

 

It could be handfuls of reds

It could be turning Caravaggio’s Boy with Basket of Fruit to face the wall

It could be a commission by the Guggenheim entitled Deforms the Unborn 

It could be the demon Vetis, whose friends call Him The Life Promiser 

It could be that in 1918 a pregnant Mary Turner was hung upside down from a tree by a lynch mob while they cut out her fetus & that this could happen today, as it did then, without consequences for whitey

It could be handfuls of natural pearls

It could be collaborations with master Haitian drummers 

It could be doing the wrong thing together forever

It could be long lists of how The Devil’s acts towards children before, during & after their possession 

It could be short lists of produce, insects & imagined blues musicians 

It could be handfuls of an insane 9 year old's feces smushed on the lunch table

It could be a psychedelic Chicago house song about a pig & about your parents 

It could be your dad’s new husband gave you his boyhood viola

It could be a collaboration with master Yoruba drummers

It could be handfuls of cactus spines & a poison dart

It could be your sister has cancer & they keep chopping parts of her body off

It could be a conscripted arco bass piece that was a dedication to Turkish feminists

It could be Jack Smith has a film called Normal Love

It could be scisssssssors, air conditioner tubes, glasses of ice & seashells

It could be handfuls of hot pink Make Noise 1/8th inch audio cables 

It could be that Nature is making it clear to us that we deserve it and that we are making it clear to Her that we are ready, ready to go

It could be a short novel called The Rhythm Section Talked about Drugs, The Horn Players Talked about Ass & The Strings Talked about Money 

It could be improvised vocals by Elliot Reed & orchestrated vocals by Eugene Robinson

It could be that European religious paintings of male martyrs depict them surrounded by chubby, adoring angels, everyone’s tearful mothers & converted sex workers dutifully sponging out their holy & shallow wounds 

It could be that European religious paintings of female martyrs depict them with their nipples being torn off, throats branded & their naked torsos flayed while they are totally alone aside from the men torturing them 

It could be handfuls of Diamanda Galás & Roy Orbison action figures 

It could be that despite the confusion of this life, people who can still truthfully call themselves human try to push through 2019’s collecting horror

It could be slowed down & fuzzed out field recordings of disappearing frogs

It could be flat purple & black or glossy black & purple

It could be mescal in a bottle & baby on a boob, hair dyed blonde for nobody, nobody move

It could be handfuls of that you just have to stop being a wuss & deal with it

It could be…

XIU XIU - 2019 EUROPEAN TOUR DATES 

05/03/2019 Prague (CZ), Studio Hrdinu

https://www.studiohrdinu.cz/

06/03/2019 Lodz (PL), DOM

https://www.facebook.com/klubDOM/

07/03/2019 Warsaw (PL), Hydrozagadka

https://www.hydrozagadka.waw.pl

08/03/2019 Krakow (PL), Klub RE

http://www.klubre.pl/

10/03/2019 Vienna (AT), Chelsea

https://ntry.at/xiuxium?l=de

11/03/2019 Leipzig (DE), UT Connewitz

https://utconnewitz.de/

12/03/2019 Hamburg (DE), Elbphilharmonie

https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/en/

13/03/2019 Berlin (DE), Berghain Kantine

https://www.facebook.com/KantineamBerghain/

20/03/2019 Ancona (Osimo) (IT) Loop Live Club

https://www.facebook.com/loopliveclub/

21/03/2019 Milan (IT), Oibho

http://www.associazioneohibo.it/wordpress/

22/03/2019 Bologna (IT), Covo

http://www.boxerticket.it/ 

23/03/2019 Winterthur (CH), Gaswerk

https://www.gaswerk.ch/

26/03/2019 London (UK), Islington Assembly Hall

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/457380

27/03/2019 Brussels (BE), Beursschouwberg

https://beursschouwburg.be/en/

28/03/2019 Lille (FR) Cave Aux Poetes

https://www.caveauxpoetes.com/

30/03/2019 Utrecht (NL), Tivoli Vredenburg

https://www.tivolivredenburg.nl/agenda/xiu-xiu-30-03-2019/

01/04/2019 Copenhagen (DK), Vega

https://vega.dk

02/04/2019 Stockholm (SE), Fasching

http://www.fasching.se/

04/04/2019 Helsinki (FI), Kuudes Linja

http://www.kuudeslinja.com/ 

05/04/2019 Tallinn (EE), Sveta Bar

https://sveta.ee/

06/04/2019 Riga (LV), Gertrudes Ielas Teatris 

www.git.lv

08/04/2019 Kiev (UA), Closer

https://concert.ua/ru/booking/xiu-xiu

09/04/2019 Lviv (UA), Picasso
https://concert.ua/ru/booking/xiu-xiu-lviv

 

XIU XIU - London concert announced for next March!

Upset The Rhythm presents…

XIU XIU
Tuesday 26 March
Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, Islington, London, N1 2UD
7pm | £13.50 | https://link.dice.fm/xiu-xiu-iah

XIU XIU is the conduit for the uncompromising and unnervingly personal musical works of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie Stewart, plus a roll call of collaborators both in studio and onstage. Streaming forth a ceaseless torrent of releases, side projects, art offerings and extensive international touring since 2002, Xiu Xiu's music has veered from damaged avant-pop to artfully orchestrated rock, squalls of black-hearted noise and most bases around and between, ever served with a bruising honesty and intensity that has ripped out the hearts of a legion of obsessive listeners.

Newly announced  Xiu Xiu album, 'Girl with Basket of Fruit' (out Feb 8th on Upset The Rhythm), is a rowdier, yet more stylistically splenetic offering than 2017's 'Forget', with the usual eye-catching list of collaborators this time including Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), Devin Hoff and Haitian percussionists Emmanuel Obi and Ayo Okafor. For this live operation in London Xiu Xiu will manifest in the form of Jamie Stewart, Thor Harris (best known for his percussion work in Swans) and Jordan Gieger (Minus Story/Shearwater).
http://xiuxiu.org/

Eric Chenaux in London tomorrow, OTO Xmas fair this Sunday and Still House Plants next week!

Morning everyone! Thank you for coming out recently to see Hen Ogledd and Mary Lattimore, what a great pair of shows they were? We must’ve been going through a harp phase! That ends tomorrow though as we have the magnetic Eric Chenaux in town, a musician so alchemical with his craft that his love-struck guitar epics sound like the heavens cracking open, sad trumpets on high, with Eric’s incomparable swoon drifting throughout. It’s set to be an exemplary evening of balladeering from the experimental fringes, with the offbeat musings of Robert Sotelo and band opening the show too. This event will take place at The Islington, with live music kicking off from 8.30pm, tickets on the door from 7.30pm, see you there!

Read on for all the details of tomorrow’s concert, along with the full story on next week’s special team-up with Bison Records at Servant Jazz Quarters featuring live sets from Glasgow’s Still House Plants and the wondrous Ashley Paul. We’ve also added new shows from avant-disco vendors Amor and sturm and drang duo Mésange to our listings section for February too.

This Sunday, we’re taking part in Café OTO’s Xmas Fair which is a free all-day event (starting from noon) heavy on the mulled wine, mince pies and record / book stalls. We’ll be selling our records, cds, shirts and associated sundries at some bargainous prices throughout the day, before handing over to the OTO Xmas choir and Pat Thomas in the evening! Strange Attractor, Alter, Bison, Penultimate Press, Fitzcarraldo Editions, The White Review, Wire magazine and many more are also represented. Certainly going to be a good one, drop by and say hello!

OK, onto some excited 2019 news next… this coming March, Upset The Rhythm will be marking our 15th anniversary with a label showcase tour around Britain. Representing a lot of our current UK roster, the tour will see the likes of DIY punk progressives Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles and Dog Chocolate perform alongside hypnotic drum and voice duo Rattle and Guttersnipe, a group from Leeds who shredded their tonal territory into euphoria this year with their debut album. Within the last fifteen years UTR has organised over 1500 live events in London and racked up a back catalogue you’d have to ask a friend to help carry, 115 titles at point of writing. All about the 15! The big XV! Here are the dates! Wed 27th March - LONDON - The Dome Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Rattle, Guttersnipe, Dog Chocolate Thu 28th March - GLASGOW - CCA Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Robert Sotelo, Rattle Fri 29th March - LEEDS - Brudenell Social Club Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Rattle, Guttersnipe Sat 30th March - MANCHESTER - White Hotel Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Vital Idles, Guttersnipe, Robert Sotelo Sunday 31st March - CARDIFF - Clwb Ifor Bach Sauna Youth, Trash Kit, Robert Sotelo, Rattle

Right! Now it’s time to soundtrack the rest of your week next! Episode 10 of our Upset The Rhythm radio show for CAMP is now uploaded into the interwebs. 120 minutes of our favourite tracks (including Red Channel, Jon Hassell, Errant Monks and Mauve Sideshow), plenty of chatter, plus recent live recordings from Rattle, Mary Lattimore and Terry, listen up!

Upset The Rhythm presents… ERIC CHENAUX ROBERT SOTELO Wednesday 5 December The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS ERIC CHENAUX makes conceptual music that’s not meant to sound conceptual. He operates among various ‘traditions’ but perhaps most broadly, Chenaux’s records grapple with the relationship between improvisation and structure in very particular, unique, idiosyncratic ways – and quite without irony or cynicism, through love. Because fundamentally, Chenaux writes love songs, which he sings in a voice honeyed and clear, while his guitar gently bends, frazzes, chortles, diverges and decomposes. This juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice. As a solo artist, Chenaux’s improvisation methods are in certain literal ways solipsistic: as a singer-songwriter, he plays his guitar around and against his voice, challenging easy notions of harmony/harmoniousness, improvising ‘with himself’ in pursuit of surprising himself (and his listeners) as he unfurls ribbons of voice and instrument often to the point of seeming independence, all the better to capture­­ – and be captured by – unforeseen, intimate moments of interdependence: a definition of freedom, as a profoundly intentional state of openness, presence and play. Even within avant-garde currents of folk and jazz balladry, Eric Chenaux feels like an outlier. Yet his music remains wonderfully warm, generous and fundamentally accessible in spite of its irrefutable iconoclasm. While the constitutive elements of Chenaux’s solo work in recent years might suggest some underlying devotion to asceticism, the opposite is much more true: his musical reveries resist, critique and counteract austerity (in all its forms) in a joyful abandonment to the improvised space where playfulness and light-heartedness are taken seriously, and where love is invoked and expressed, without reductive or facile sentimentalism, in a full, nuanced, clear-eyed suspension/rejection of the cynical life. Slowly Paradise (on Constellation Records) is Eric Chenaux’s most recent solo record – a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. It is arguably Chenaux’s most assured and essential solo work, expanding upon the critical acclaim his previous releases Guitar & Voice and Skullsplitter have rightly garnered. http://cstrecords.com/eric-chenaux/  ROBERT SOTELO is the nom de plume of Andrew Doig, a 36 year old serial musician originally from Peterborough, UK. Andrew's middle name is Robert, whilst Sotelo is his mother's maiden name. Sotelo's verdant world of sound is at once intimate, choosing to build songs up from ambitious layers of instrumentation into miniature psych pop overtures of genuine sincerity of feeling. Very much grounded in that particular forward-facing strain of mid-60s rock that edged towards psych, Sotelo's music owes as much to Davies and McCartney's unashamed belief in melody as it does to the uncertainty and confusion that comes with mid-thirties existentialism. Debut album ‘Cusp' (Upset The Rhythm) was an album that explored the individual in a post-social life era, with Sotelo starting the project initially as an attempt to re-engage with the people he used to know, without relying on nostalgia as a common bond. From this worthy spark of a plan, he's created something grand and compelling, a vast tapestry of songs that stand up and sound afresh. Check out his exquisite recent cassette ‘Botanical’ on Nicey Music too. https://robertsotelo.bandcamp.com/

Upset The Rhythm & Bison Records presents… STILL HOUSE PLANTS ASHLEY PAUL Thursday 13 December Servant Jazz Quarters, 10A Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS STILL HOUSE PLANTS are an experimental three-piece from Glasgow. This December they’ll return to London in support of the release of their debut LP, 'Long Play' (Bison Records). Combining visual strategies, free improvisation, garage and punk, Still House Plants build melodic hierarchies scaffolded around ambiguities and intimacy. Fresh from being selected for the Cafe OTO x Jerwood Foundation Artistic Development fund, and following two sold out tapes on Glasgow label GLARC,  'Long Play' collects the group's raw guitar-drum-vocal palette and stretches it to include violin, piano and home recording. Ranging from seconds-long to seven:minute:somethings, the album coagulates to form a heady meld of rudimentary phrases, kinetic repetition and malleable samples. Experimental songwriting is rarely so forthcoming, emotive, or approachable. Still House Plants have also been artists-in-residence for the CCA/AC Projects Music Residency and at The Pipe Factory. The trio have performed internationally too, touring with Mette Rasmussen to perform at Ultra Eczema's 20th Anniversary, Fasching Jazz Club with Rasmussen and Richard Dawson, as well as at KRAAK festival. https://bison-records.bandcamp.com/releases ASHLEY PAUL is an American composer/performer whose intuitive process integrates free form song structures with a focused approach to sound and clatter. A complexity of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared strings, bells and percussion create a delicate palette, uniquely her own. Her solo albums have received critical acclaim being chosen in The Wire: Top 50 Albums of 2013, Pitchfork’s “The Out Door” best experimental sounds of 2013, number one on Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Tongue Top Ten” in Arthur Magazine. Paul’s recent LP on Slip, ’Lost In Shadows’,  is a bewitching, expansive, deeply personal excavation of recent motherhood, told through songs dissolving and re-crystallising at the threshold of free improvisation. At the LP's heart is Paul's mercurial multi-instrumental style, which renders the primal wails, clunks, and twangs of clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and guitar uncannily melodic, alchemised by frank, vulnerable vocals. The deft negotiation of the fragile and the coruscating evidenced on Paul's 'Line The Clouds' (2013) and 'Heat Source' (2014) has now reached a kind of hesitant sublime. https://slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/lost-in-shadows

Thanks as always for your time and attention! See you tomorrow at the show. Upset The Rhythm

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

ERIC CHENAUX ROBERT SOTELO Wednesday 5 December The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS STILL HOUSE PLANTS ASHLEY PAUL Thursday 13 December Servant Jazz Quarters, 10A Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS THE STALLION: ‘THE DARK SIDE OF THE WALL’ TRIPLE ALBUM LAUNCH! Friday 18 January Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette St, Hackney Central, London, E9 6NU 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS AIR WAVES Thursday 31 January The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 | TICKETS AMOR Friday 1 February New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Harringay Warehouse District, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS MÉSANGE Thursday 7 February The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS KRISTIN HERSH With ROB AHLERS (drums) & FRED ABONG (bass) Sunday 10 March & Tuesday 12 March Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherd's Bush, London, W12 7LJ 7.30pm | £25 | TICKETS MARCH 10 /  TICKETS MARCH 12 THE SHIFTERS COOL GREENHOUSE Thursday 14 March The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS DAVID NANCE GROUP Monday 25 March The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, London, E8 2EB 8pm | £7 | TICKETS Upset The Rhythm 15th anniversary label party! SAUNA YOUTH TRASH KIT GUTTERSNIPE VITAL IDLES RATTLE DOG CHOCOLATE Wednesday 27 March Tufnell Park Dome, 2A Dartmouth Park Hill, London, NW5 1HL 5.30pm - 11pm | £10 | TICKETS