Pikacyu-Makoto tomorrow, Spray Paint & Wolf Eyes solo sets next week!

Evening everyone! Upset The Rhythm have three choice concerts coming up in the next week for you. Tomorrow we disembark at The Islington for an evening of top-drawer soundwaves courtesy of Japanese cosmic peace/love duo Pikacyu-Makoto. With their respective bands (Afrirampo and Acid Mother’s Temple), Pikacyu and Makoto are well versed in climbing out of chaos and noise into blissful space tones, united as one they harness such extremes and press further towards the walls. We released their stunning new album ‘Galaxilympics’ this week so it’s wonderful to have them play London around the same time.

Joining Pikacyu-Makoto on stage tomorrow we are also lucky to have Teleplasmiste; masters of the horizon drone and radiant tonal acre. Tickets for this show will cost £7.50 on the door from 7.30pm, see you there!

Onwards to Tuesday night this time at The Lexington we’re besides ourselves to welcome back Spray Paint, a band with so much intent that you can almost see sparks flying out between the guitars and drums as they pile into each other. The Rebel and Home Entertainment provide suitably sardonic support performances too, let’s the modern mordant. Tickets will be £7 on the door for that one too, please do come early.

Last but far from least, next Thursday we find ourselves back at The Islington on Tolpuddle St in Angel with Wolf Eyes throwing down some decisive solo sets. Expect tumbling tape delay, vigorous reeds and some harmonized dread from John R. Olson, Nate Young’s Regression and Crazy Jim. Read on for further info and ticket links to all three of those epic events.

This week Upset The Rhythm also announced our 100th release. To mark this unimaginable milestone we’ll be releasing on September 15th the debut 7” EP from Olympia, WA’s Gen Pop, a new band erupting from the frenetic bedrock of Vexx. Have a listen now to caustic closing track ‘Dear Jackie’, you won’t be disappointed! Gen Pop’s debut 7” is available to pre-order now.

Our full programme of events follows, including our newly added concert for AMOR next month. Zoning into a collective hive-mind of telepathic disco extravagance this Glasgow-orbiting quartet comprise Richard Youngs, Luke Fowler, Paul Thompson and Michael Francis Duch. One for the diary then! Let’s leave you with this mysterious transmission from the enigmatic John Maus, we’ll be announcing some live actions from John and his live band (yes, live band!) very soon.

Upset The Rhythm presents… PIKACYU-MAKOTO TELEPLASMISTE Saturday 12 August The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 |TICKETS PIKACYU-MAKOTO is an alliance between two figureheads of underground Japanese psych/pop, the musically promiscuous Kawabata Makoto (most famous for his leadership of the legendary Acid Mothers Temple), and Afrirampo's Pikacyu. Pikacyu's drums pummel, jitter, crash and stumble, but steadfastly refuse to groove. She layers her voice several times, competing with pitch-shifted versions of herself whilst Makoto attacks his guitar, cloaking himself in reverb to produce a wall-of-sound, alternating between melody and noise. No strangers to one another, the pair have not only gigged together with their respective bands but also recorded together, when these two outfits temporarily fused in 2005 to become Acid Mothers Afrirampo (releasing an album of the same name). Now they have distilled their collaboration, all other players being stripped away to leave the core of Pikacyu's manic drums and pop vocal, and Makoto's schizoid guitar conjurings. Brand new album 'Galaxilympics' is out now on Upset The Rhythm on LP and CD. https://soundcloud.com/upset-the-rhythm/pikacyu-makoto-galaxilympics TELEPLASMISTE is Mark O Pilkington (Raagnagrok, Urthona) and Michael J York (Coil, Cyclobe). The duo blur vintage synthesis and contemporary electronics with acoustic pipes to create a transcendent reverie that exists on a wavelength beyond both retro fetishism and modern-day machinations. Heavy ambience and otherworldly atmospherics marry here amidst an aura of epiphanic radiance. Previous performances have taken place in churches and crypts, and at Farnborough Wind Tunnel, in which the resonant frequencies of the space were combined with frequencies believed to have certain physiological effects. https://teleplasmiste.bandcamp.com/

Upset The Rhythm presents… SPRAY PAINT THE REBEL HOME ENTERTAINMENT Tuesday 15 August The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS SPRAY PAINT are a no wave punk outfit from Austin, Texas. Spray Paint's buzz-sawing guitars run headlong through labyrinthine tunnels of reverb, chased down by some wildly brain-bashing drums. All three members of Spray Paint sing too, helping create an uncontrollable sense of fervour as they jostle for the words. They work up a tone of paranoia amid the jagged rhythms, locking into a motoric groove that's impossible to escape from, offset with stormy blasts of distortion. Since forming in 2012, Spray Paint have released six LPs and 7"s through SS-Records, Goner, Upset The Rhythm and Monofonus Press. They've wasted no time with hitting the road either, touring the US many times, with their friends Protomartyr and The Rebel.  https://spraypaint.bandcamp.com/ THE REBEL is prolific London outsider Ben Wallers; a charismatic lone wolf in a cowboy hat or trilby and a tie whose electrified howls are too idiosyncratic to be broken down into market-oriented terms. It is difficult to sketch a thumbnail summary of a musician who has amassed a vast and unwieldy discography under a variety of names and genres: the most widely acclaimed is probably the Country Teasers, but he also moonlights as, or in, the Rebel, the Company, the Male Nurse, the Beale, the Stallion, the Black Poodle and Skills on Ampex, across folk, country, garage, post-punk, no wave and electronic pop. In the main part The Rebel is centred around twisted Casio drones, clanging guitar and some defiantly deadpan vocals, all thrown in the pan and pressure-cooked in Wallers' mind. Wallers has amassed a near-unquantifiable discography over the past 20 years, from scores of more or less "official" LPs, EPs and 7"s to seemingly endless self-released cassettes.  https://vimeo.com/113318818 HOME ENTERTAINMENT find themselves at the intersection where avant garde experimentalism meets garage rock music. Drawing upon a palate of literary, artistic and sonic influences, Home Entertainment create primal, unrefined walls of sound adorned with jagged shards of English low life lyricism. Their debut, cassette garnered praise from The Quietus describing them as "a weird mix of Sebadoh's crumbling charm, Les Rallizes Denudes' noisy squall, and the blues pop grooves of ZZ Top".  https://homeentertainment.bandcamp.com/

Upset The Rhythm presents… Wolf Eyes in solo mode... JOHN R. OLSON NATE YOUNG’S REGRESSION CRAZY JIM Thursday 17 August The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS JOHN R. OLSON aka Inzane Johnny of Wolf Eyes and American Tapes will be treating us to a solo slice from his mind platter, featuring reeds and modulations galore. As a part of Wolf Eyes, Olson is responsible for augmenting the USA's longest-running homemade, primitive, electronic, poetry & radical vibes trio. They don't just release albums they launch scotched, taped nuclear audio fronts on humanity. Earlier this year saw them release their new album ‘Undertow’ packed full of what Olson does best; unnerving dread meets genuine freedom vibes that shiver their way through the dark ambience of it all. http://www.wolfeyes.net/main.html REGRESSION is the solo project of Nate Young, a founding member of seminal Detroit noise band Wolf Eyes. More recently he's been honing an equally distinctive solo sound that blends myriad sources from musique concrète, vintage film atmospherics, layered synths and archive library recordings into something thrillingly intense. Summoning up crushingly ominous crepuscular soundscapes and synth-washed phantasmagoria, Young undercuts the brutalism of Wolf Eyes with the kind of ambient dread that conjures images of lost horror soundtracks from the 70's. Minimal analogue synth violence is punctuated by thunder cracks of metal percussion ala the early Akita/Null Merzbow duets, massively doomy beat hypnotics and an atmosphere that's somewhere between the most apocalyptic Throbbing Gristle recordings, Coil's Musick To Play In The Dark, The Conet Project and your favourite Kraut kosmonaut. Young's most recent album 'Blinding Confusion' (out on NNA Tapes) has the feel of a kind of post-synth electro-acoustic ritual, albeit tied-in with a visionary compositional aesthetic that is a couple of miles beyond your average weird-beard in a basement non-vibe. https://soundcloud.com/nate-young CRAZY JIM aka James ‘Crazy Jim’ Baljo, is proof that not every side-project of Wolf Eyes results in noise. Veering towards the sweet and ambient, Crazy Jim uses only guitars to build huge waves of tonic abstraction. Nate Young credits Crazy Jim as "the first person to coin the term INZANE and plays and lives accordingly", look out for some sweet folk-tuned bliss and tape delay guitar gloop. https://soundcloud.com/inzaneazylum

Catch you tomorrow, thanks for reading! Upset The Rhythm x

UPSET THE RHYTHM UPCOMING SHOWS

PIKACYU-MAKOTO TELEPLASMISTE Saturday 12 August The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £7.50 | TICKETS SPRAY PAINT THE REBEL HOME ENTERTAINMENT Tuesday 15 August The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £7 | TICKETS Wolf Eyes in solo mode... JOHN R. OLSON NATE YOUNG’S REGRESSION CRAZY JIM Thursday 17 August The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS WARM DIGITS Friday 25 August The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £8 | TICKETS NAP EYES H. GRIMACE GARDEN CENTRE Thursday 31 August Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 44 Pollard Row, Bethnal Green, London, E2 6NB 7:30pm | £8 | TICKETS LARAAJI (Performing two sets with an interval) Saturday 2 September The Tin Tabernacle 12-16 Cambridge Avenue, Kilburn, London, NW6 5BA UK | Map 7pm | £12.50 | TICKETS DEERHOOF LE TON MITÉ ROBERT SOTELO Monday 4 September Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PQ 7.30pm |  £14 | TICKETS NB. This is the new date for February’s postponed event, original tickets remain valid. LOWTIDE Tuesday 5 September The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £5 | TICKETS ROBERT SOTELO - ‘Cusp’ album launch! CLEMENTINE MARCH POZI Friday 8 September New River Studios, 199 Eade Rd, Manor House, London, N4 1DN 7.30pm | £5.00 | TICKETS AMOR MIDDEX UPSET THE RHYTHM DJs Sunday 17 September The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle St, Angel, London, N1 0XT 7.30pm | £6 | TICKETS SHANNON AND THE CLAMS TV CRIME Monday 9 October Tufnell Park Dome, 178 Junction Road, Tufnell Park, London, N19 5QQ 7.30pm | £12 | TICKETS PRIESTS DOWNTOWN BOYS BIG JOANIE Wednesday 18 October Tufnell Park Dome, 178 Junction Road, Tufnell Park, London, N19 5QQ 7.30pm | £12 | TICKETS SHOPPING GAUCHE Friday 10 November Kamio, 3 Rivington Street , London, EC2A 3JL 8pm - 2am | £9 | TICKETS MOUNT EERIE Monday 13 November Tuesday 14 November St John on Bethnal Green 200 Cambridge Heath Rd, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9PA 7.30pm | £15 | TICKETS PROTOMARTYR SAUNA YOUTH BOMBER JACKETS Tuesday 14 November Tufnell Park Dome, 178 Junction Road, Tufnell Park, London, N19 5QQ 7.30pm | £12 | TICKETS FUTURE ISLANDS Monday 20 November - SOLD OUT Tuesday 21 November - SOLD OUT Wednesday 22 November In collaboration with Parallel Lines O2 Academy Brixton, 211 Stockwell Rd, Brixton, London SW9 9SL 7pm | TICKETS  RICHARD DAWSON (Live band show) Wednesday 20 December Islington Assembly Hall, Upper Street, Islington, London, N1 2UD 7pm | £15 | TICKETS