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Hello all!
The day has arrived… to try a bit of Dog Chocolate. The group’s fourth album So Inspired, So Done In bounds into the world today.
Dog Chocolate’s music overflows with energy and ideas. They’re
still manic, hilarious, and apposite, but this time Dog Chocolate
investigate their internal landscapes with empathy, exploring bigger,
existential questions. Thematically, a lot of ground is covered, with
songs boasting subject matter as diverse as artistic inspiration,
burnout, bronze age living conditions, work, anti-work, and human-plant
relations.
Recorded and mixed by POZI's Toby Burroughs and mastered by Sofia Lopes, So Inspired, So Done In
charts a puzzling epoch in the band's collective life, marked by major
life changes, losses and shifts, colouring the band's trademark kinetic,
anxious outbursts with a contemplative glaze.
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‘Fun is Always Brilliant’
state Dog Chocolate with their new single! But is it really? No one
welcomes the fun police. Well… Dog Chocolate have an uncanny knack of
making (actually) great music, that is packed with humour, stories and
profound insights.
They do all this with a
great big spoonful of jest, yet it never sidesteps into silly. Dog
Chocolate have a realism and bite that roots everything in direct
experience of our often-preposterous world. They do all this whilst
embracing the collective joy that should be playing in a band.
Dog Chocolate are always brilliant.
So Inspired, So Done In
is out now digitally, and is also available as a limited edition LP
accompanied by poster & lyric book from all the best shops,
including our own webstore here.
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Dog Chocolate are celebrating
this momentous occasion with two album launch parties too, tonight in
London and tomorrow in Oxford:
27/01 - Paper Dress Vintage, London *
28/01 - Truck Store, Oxford *
* w/ The Plan + Rattle
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“A Shouty good time” - Brooklyn Vegan
“The
London band bold enough to call themselves Dog Chocolate resurrect the
classic UTR DIY sound of a group where you can hear exactly how
they’ve put their referential/daft songs together.” - Loud & Quiet
“ a barking mad release of raucous math punk” - NARC
“It’s
a furious bit of angular guitar lines dancing around the verses..
Crawling through the speakers like vines, the guitars scratch at our
ears, each round amplified by a burst of drum hits that set up the
chorus. Back and forth the song goes, much like man’s back and forth
with nature..” - Austin Town Hall
"Because here’s a band
that’s clearly ingested all the necessary Fall/Maps/Ubu/Wire, and
churned out not more of the same, but something original and skewed and
unexpected." - Dusted
“Dog Chocolate has created a fun
and energetic song that fits in the pop punk genre, if barely. It's
always good to see a band transform and add to a genre that has mostly
remained stagnant for two decades.” - If It’s Too Loud
“Dog
Chocolate give us a quirky, beepy and guitary track, then turn thrashy
with a straightforward Northern vocal, it’s decent lo-fi punk, short
and the end is suitably odd… it’s got that Half Man Half Biscuit vibe
and a great name for a band.” - Fighting Boredom
“...sounding
somewhere between Stump, The Pop Group and Alternative TV,
socio-political bite leavened with humour but with no desire to be
friendly.” - The Arts Desk
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On to Upset The Rhythm's live music programme now!
Huge
thanks to all of you for coming out to see Cindy and Yellow Swans
recently in London, both were tremendous, we hope you enjoyed them too.
Below you will find details of our upcoming events for Keiji Haino (ICA, March 17th) and for Bill Orcutt too (Bush Hall, April 13th). Looking forward to both of those!
Rich Dawson's
'Delight is Right' all-dayer at the Barbican on March 22nd is now sold
out. However, June 6th will see us head to the Horse Hospital for a
special 8-hour free performance from Rich's other going concern, the
wonk-pop trip that is Hen Ogledd. Just turn up on the day!
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Upset The Rhythm presents...
KEIJI HAINO Tuesday 17 March ICA, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH 7.30pm | £25 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/V8e7432de701KEIJI HAINO
was born in Chiba, Japan on May 3, 1952. Inspired by Antonin Artaud, he
aimed for the theater, but an encounter with The Doors stimulated him
into music, where he has examined and absorbed a wide range of
expressions from the early blues, especially Blind Lemon Jefferson, or
European medieval music to popular songs across the world. In 1970, he
joined a group Lost Aaraaf named after Edgar Allan Poe’s poem as a
vocalist. Meanwhile, he started to work on home recordings and learned
the guitar and percussion autodidactically. In 1978, Haino formed a rock
band Fushitsusha, and since 1988, after a recuperation period from 1983
to 1987, he has been internationally active in various forms including
solo, groups such as Fushitsusha, Nijiumu, Aihiyo, Vajra, Sanhedrin,
Seijaku, Nazoranai or The Hardy Rocks and DJ as “experimental mixture,”
as well as in collaboration with artists from different backgrounds,
drawing the performance of the guitar, percussion, hurdy gurdy, string
instruments, wind instruments, local instruments from across the world
and DJ gears to the extreme through idiosyncratic techniques. Haino has
released more than 200 recordings and performed live at least 2,000
times. In March 2026 Japan, Haino will present two exclusive
performances in Europe on polygonola, a metal-flat polygonal instrument,
based on the 2nd dimensional vibration theory, built by Naoki Skura.
One fo these performances will take place at the ICA on March 17th. https://keijihaino.bandcamp.com“Keiji
Haino towers over the Japanese underground: his colossally heavy guitar
excursions inspired a whole generation of psychedelic rockers, but his
omnivorous musical appetites have also seen him collaborate with jazz
musicians, branch out into DJing, and play an entire gamelan orchestra
single-handedly. There's no knowing what to expect from a Haino gig” - Time Out Tokyo“Keiji
Haino lives among the class of improvisers who roam so far from what we
usually call form -meaning, basically, rules - that they make you
question whether what they’re doing is music.”
- New York Times |
Upset The Rhythm presents… BILL ORCUTT
ALEXANDER TUCKERMonday 13 April Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Rd, Shepherds Bush, London W12 7LJ 7.30pm | £18 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/U67bfce667c6BILL ORCUTT
is a guitarist and composer. He has been described as “thrillingly
original” (Will Ainsley, Bandcamp Daily) as "a go-for-broke guitar
improviser," (Ben Ratliff, New York Times) “creating a new language”
(Marc Masters, Pitchfork) whose playing would "make Derek Bailey do a
double-take" (Lars Gotrich, NPR). Orcutt tours actively, appearing at
festivals worldwide, including Rewire (The Hague), Presences
Electronique (Paris), Jazz em Agosto (Lisbon), Goner Fest (Memphis),
Musique Actuelle (Victoriaville), Big Ears (Knoxville), Music Unlimited
(Wels), Le Guess Who? (Utrecht), Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou
(Paris), Unsound (Krakow), a Maida Vale session for BBC 3 (London) and a
Tiny Desk concert for NPR. 2025 saw Orcutt release ‘Another
Perfect Day’, his first solo electric guitar record since 2017’s
eponymous Bill Orcutt. While that eight-year gap might not seem like a
ton of time on the cosmic scale, it nonetheless represents a busy
half-decade plus for Orcutt projects: a raft of improv collaborations,
an acclaimed run of chopped and looped albums on Fake Estates, and the
collision of Orcutt’s computer and guitar music on Music For Four
Guitars and last year’s How to Rescue Things, both on Palilalia. The
undeniable alchemy of those latter mashups inspired not only a wider
appreciation of Orcutt-as-composer, but also the resurrection of
Orcutt-as-bandleader, as the Bill Orcutt Quartet hit the road in support
of Four Guitars, Orcutt’s first work with a proper score. ‘Another
Perfect Day’ sees Orcutt building tension with short phrases, repeated
with slight variability until it seems like they’ll never stop, finally
slamming into a fresh line like the dawning valley at the crest of the
mountain pass. It’s an affirmation that Orcutt is above all a lead
player - angular runs scaling the heavens, ricocheting back to ground
zero before climbing again. https://billorcutt.bandcamp.com/ALEXANDER TUCKER
returns to the guitar, after spending the last few years focusing on
his modular experimental techno guise MICROCORPS. Since the early 2000s
Tucker has released solo guitar and cello based albums on Thrill Jockey
Records, Subtext, and ATP Recordings, blending songs, electronics,
strings, vocals and extended techniques. Creating music that sits
between structured song writing, composition, drone and noise, Tucker is
also a prolific collaborator, with projects that include tape-loop duo
Imbogodom, and electronic pop with Grumbling Fur and Charlemagne
Palestine. More recent live collaborations include work with Lasse
Marhaug, Kenichi Iwasa, and Elvin Brandhi. 2026 sees Tucker
melding his past work with acoustic guitar, and his present explorations
with modular synth systems and electronics, processing minimal steel
string guitar into unrecognisable sonic forms through improvisation,
synthesis and electronic manipulation. Tucker’s investigations into
electroacoustic and music concrete composition has led him to seek out
ways to warp, stretch and mangle this own guitar playing beyond its
original form, revelling in the sheer pleasure of transforming sound and
creating imaginary and unspoken spaces. https://alexandertucker.bandcamp.com/music |
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