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 Upset The Rhythm presents… RICH(ARD) DAWSON GOOD SAD HAPPY BAD Wednesday 30 April The Clapham Grand, 21-25 St John's Hill, Clapham, London, SW11 1TT 7pm | £30 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ed6edd247a05 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. Rich will be performing with Andrew Cheetam on drums for this show! https://richarddawson.net/ GOOD SAD HAPPY BAD is a band composed of CJ Calderwood, Marc Pell, Mica Levi, and Raisa Khan. Their whimsical kraut punk and art rock experiments, brimming with mantras and cycles and nervous lullabies, bring the listener into wobbly landscapes and toward spiraling epiphanies. Their second album, All Kinds of Days (2024), a follow up to their 2020 debut, Shades, deepens the band’s collaborative approach, building on instrumental improvisations that each member reworks with vocal contributions, creating a dynamic, shared storytelling experience. Throughout the album, the four musicians frequently unite in lush, layered choruses, and meandering guitars that add a communal resonance. All Kinds of Days delves into themes of loss, grief, recovery, healing, keeping a house together, and the challenges of parenthood, all set against a moody, intricate soundscape. Listeners are pulled through eerie guitar lines, spoken word, ghostly woodwinds, and gritty electronic textures, all disguised within a framework of an unconventional “band” sound. Beneath these atmospheric layers lies a rhythmic foundation of drums and nuanced melodies that lend drive and an unsettling beauty to the album’s sound. https://good-sad-happy-bad.bandcamp.com/ |
 Upset The Rhythm presents…
NAP EYES ELIZA NIEMI Wednesday 7 May The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, London, N1 9JB 7.30pm | £13 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/p590cef01f9d NAP EYES still bring to mind the bucolic ennui of the Silver Jews and Daniel Johnston’s jittery naïveté, but the sheen and maturity they boast lends a wide-angle appeal. Nap Eyes’ metamorphic fifth long-player collects a cache of nine fascinating songs recorded over the four years since their last album. ‘The Neon Gate’ reveals classic touchstones (the uneasy interplay of physics and philosophy, perambulatory meditations, self-interrogating soliloquies, apertures of surreality, video games), but also evidence of divergent impulses toward nonlinear abstraction and longform improvisational composition (resulting in their most discursive, deconstructed, and deliquescent songs to date) and narrative and lyric formality, imparting the sense that Nap Eyes have transmuted, as has their understanding of what a song is, what it can do, where it might go. https://napeyes.bandcamp.com/ ELIZA NIEMI is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter currently based in Toronto. On her new album Progress Bakery (out now on Tin Angel), Eliza knows to leave some questions alone – to let juxtaposition and tension be the proof. She playfully slip-slides through words and sounds and images, delighting in surprise, skimming ideas like stones cast across clear water, touching down briefly with uncommon grace. https://elizaniemi.bandcamp.com/album/progress-bakery |
 Upset The Rhythm presents…
MOHAMMAD SYFKHAN SACRED PAWS Saturday 17 May OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney Central, E8 1LL 7pm-10pm | £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, out now 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. |
 Upset The Rhythm presents…
QUINIE - 'Forefowk, Mind Me' album launch SOUND OF YELL HARRY GORSKI BROWN Friday 30 May St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, King's Cross, NW1 1UL 7.30pm | £10 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/hf599383b2db QUINIE will release her her third album ‘Forefowk, Mind Me’ with Upset The Rhythm on May 24th 2025. This show is the album launch. The record is largely sung in Scots language, one of Scotland’s three official languages along with Gaelic and English. “Scots gives me a way of expressing myself which is connected directly with the landscapes I love. It brings the songs alive and it is a fascinating language. The name of the record is in Scots - Forefowk means the people who came before, or ancestors. When we say ‘mind me,’ we can mean a few things- remind, remember, watch over or care for me. The record explores how tradition needs to be constantly reconnected with, built upon, looked after, and shared.” Quinie sings with a style inspired by Scottish Traveller singers. “I began singing unaccompanied Scots Song in 2015 after hearing Scots Traveller singer Sheila Stewart on the radio. Over the years I have met Traveller friends who taught me that settled people sharing these songs could contribute to raising awareness. Scottish Travellers are marginalised and discriminated against in modern Scotland, despite being custodians of so many of our important traditions. So I started to perform them and tell this story. From there I built on my repertoire and started writing my own songs”. To develop this record, Quinie travelled across Argyll with her Horse. They went on a pilgrimage of sorts through the ancient landscapes of the West of Scotland to explore the interconnected relationships between people, ancestors, animals, and place. The album’s vinyl release is accompanied by a book and film, documenting this unusual research process. ‘Forefowk, Mind Me’ was recorded in August 2024 at The Big Shed in Highland Perthshire with support from Creative Scotland. Quinie is accompanied by an ensemble of musicians: Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (viola), Oliver Pitt (duduk, bouzouki, percussion), Harry Górski-Brown (small pipes, violin), and Stevie Jones (double bass, recording, and mixing). Each of these artists brings their own distinctive voice, bridging contemporary experimental practice with worlds of traditional and early music. https://www.quinie.co.uk/ SOUND OF YELL is the solo project of Glasgow based musician, sound designer and producer, Stevie Jones. At times fronting an all acoustic collective of exploratory string and woodwind arrangements, in this instance Stevie will play solo fingerstyle steel string guitar, accompanied by tapes and synth. A serial collaborator, Stevie also plays with the New String Collective, Alasdair Roberts and Arab Strap (and of course, Quinie) and co-directs radio-art festival Radiophrenia. https://soundofyell.wordpress.com/ HARRY GORSKI-BROWN is a Glasgow-based multi-instrumentalist known for his innovative blend of electroacoustic and small pipes. In 2024, he released a tape with Glasgow label GLARC, Durt Dronemaker After Dreamboats, featuring settings of traditional Gàidhlig songs for voice, small pipes, and electronics. |