Part Chimp
Irk
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Sunday 18th November, 7.30pm
Having mostly laid dormant since 2009, London noise-rock titans Part Chimpfinally returned in 2017 with a new album Iv, released via Rock Action.
Ivfollows three acclaimed studio albums, a live record, compilations and split singles and EPs alongside artists including Torche and Hey Colossus, sharing stages along with the way with the likes of Melvins, Deerhoof, Harvey Milk and Isis, as well as headlining last year’s Raw Power Festival.
Since their formation in 2000, Part Chimp have carved their own place in the archives of heavy music, with their fuzz-laden seismic rock. With Iv, the band have recorded their most precise piece of work to date, perfectly balancing crushing and intense riffs with undeniable melodies.
With nods to boundary pushing artists from the 60s to the present - from MC5 and Sabbath, to Big Business, Earth and Harvey Milk - it’s clear Part Chimp are not content to simply be labelled as one of the UK’s loudest bands. In everything the band create, songcraft is as important as the volume at which is played. This has never been more true than now.
Press:
"Iv proves, if proving was needed, that Part Chimp are masters of us all”
The Quietus
"This isn't a return to form, merely a continuation of an already extremely high one”
Drowned In Sound
“A must hear for fan of glorious, horrible noise”
Classic Rock
Tickets for this show are £8 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue, Jumbo Records, Crash Records and online from here.
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Holy Moly & The Crackers
w/ The Buffalo Skinners
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Friday 23rd November, 7.30pm
w/ The Buffalo Skinners
The Deaf Institute, Manchester
Saturday 24th November, 7.30pm
w/ Dan Webster Band
The Crescent, York
Sunday 25th November, 7.30pm
We're dead chuffed to be helping our Geordie buddies on their biggest ever UK headline tour in the autumn with shows in Leeds, Manchester and York
Leeds >> Last tickets
Manchester - **SOLD OUT**
York - **SOLD OUT**
Watch / Watch / Watch
Newcastle’s Holy Moly & The Crackers are one of the country’s hardest working bands.
You might call that a cliche, but how many others can you name that have covered the thousands of miles and played the amount of shows that HM&TC have, in just two years? Oh, and they’ve managed to write, record and release a critically-acclaimed album and start their own record label in that time too.
Lead singers Conrad Bird and Ruth Patterson met when they were teenagers in 2008 and Ruth was in the midst of adapting to a diagnosis of chronic arthritis. Ruth, at one stage cited for an orchestral career on the violin, had not played for two years. But, encouraged by their mutual passion for music, she battled through the new limitations to relearn her instrument and discovered a love and skill for singing.
Not long after the couple met costume designer and accordion player Rosie Bristow they started to perform Irish, American and Balkan folk songs together at open mics and dive bars. They were cutting their teeth, learning the ropes.
By 2015 the trio had moved to Newcastle and met jazz/funk bass player, Jamie Shields, and Tommy Evans - who would give Keith Moon a run for his money - on drums. The gang began to blend their love of the folk tradition with a contemporary rock sound, influenced by a wide range of artists - from Cold War Kids to Gogol Bordello and Jack White.
Since then the bombastic folk rockers have been on what seems like a never-ending tour,; playing over 300 shows, 60 festivals (including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party, Wilderness, Boomtown and Bestival) and tearing through trips around Italy, the Netherlands, France, Portugal and Germany. Wowing their raucous and ever-expanding fan-base with instrument-swapping, squeezebox-growling, fiddle-shredding, brass-howling hoe-downs, the group have been able to hone a sound that is organic and invigorating - forged in the sweat and heat of the live show.
In 2017 Holy Moly & The Crackers stepped up a gear. They signed a deal with Wipe Out Music Publishing and, working with producer Matt Terry at the legendary rock studio VADA, recorded and released Salem - a record that’s been described as “a new kind of sonic madness” by music magazine and long time supporters, Narc.
The album has taken them to new heights, and has seen the band’s idiosyncratic blend of folk and contemporary rock playlisted across Spotify, clocking up close to a million streams in the process*, as well as receiving rotation on BBC Radio and RadioX. The album’s hooky rabble-rousing lead single ‘Cold Comfort Lane’ has been featured internationally on adverts and TV shows, including E4’s ‘Tattoo Artist Of The Year’.
Now it is 2018. 22-year-old Nick Tyler has joined on guitar. Classically trained but influenced by psychedelic and DIY punk in equal measure, he is the final piece of the multifarious puzzle that is Holy Moly & The Crackers - the final Cracker, as it were.
This year HM&TC will release two stand-alone singles, recorded by Matt Terry and mixed by Dan Austin (Pixies), and back the songs up with with major international festival appearances, including a main-stage appearance at Beautiful Days and Colours Of Ostravia in the Czech Republic, before embarking on their biggest UK headline tour to date in November.
They will also head back into the studio to record their next album and continue their relationship with Matt and Dan, both of whom use dynamic formulas combining tight, pop sensibility with the naturalism of garage rock and folk/roots.
The last two years have been a whirlwind and you might think that it’s time to take a breather. But HM&TC are not that kind of band. The road is their home and they’ve got their foot to the floor.
Press
“One of Newcastle’s finest bands have upped the game on their new album”
The Crack
“This is one of the most original sounding albums doing the rounds at the moment”
God Is In The TV Zine
“A cauldron of swirling dark rock potions”
R2 Magazine
“Turn it on and turn it up. This one’s a rager”
No Depression (USA)
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Vashti Bunyan
Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Monday 26th November, 7.30pm
The British song-writer Vashti Bunyan was discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham in 1965. She recorded a single for Decca (written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards) – ‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’ - which was mostly unheard in its own day.
Further recordings of her own songs were similarly un-noticed. Vashti then walked away from London for a life on the road with a horse, a wagon, a dog and a boyfriend, heading for some islands off the west coast of Scotland where their friend Donovan intended to create an artists’ colony.
Along the way she wrote the songs that would become her album ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ – produced by Joe Boyd and released in 1970.
Again her music found no audience and so Vashti left the music industry behind altogether and instead made a life bringing up children and – as she now calls it – ‘living on wit’.
Rediscovered in 2000 after the re-release of ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ (which became a cult classic that made #53 in the Observer Music monthly’s ‘top 100 British albums of all time’) - she started to write music again. After a gap of 35 years her second album ‘Lookaftering’ was produced by Max Richter, released in 2005 and this time received a lot of attention and much critical praise.
Vashti then started to tour for the first time ever and performed in the UK, USA, Australia, Japan, Singapore and all over Europe.
In October 2014 her third album ‘Heartleap’ was released by FatCat in the UK and DiCristina in the USA. It was written, played, edited, arranged and recorded largely by Vashti herself in her Edinburgh home studio over the past 7 years.
Tickets for this show are £22.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Jumbo Records and Crash Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Drahla
The Crescent, York
Friday 30th November, 7.30pm
Blending wiry post-punk with unpredictable art-rock, Drahla have established themselves as a formidable and distinctive band across their two sold out 7” singles and the ‘Third Article’ EP. So far they have earned support from a litany of radio shows, magazines and tastemakers, including the likes of BBC 6 Music, DIY, and Loud & Quiet. Formed in late 2015, Drahla quickly found their identity in Yorkshire’s fertile music scene with their minimal yet robust bass-heavy sound. Their reputation as a fervent live act is ever-growing, typified by them being asked to share stages with the likes of Parquet Courts, The Cribs, Buzzcocks, Dream Wife, Menace Beach and more.
Website / Watch / Watch / Listen
Drahla’s most recent release, the ‘Third Article’ EP, Produced by Hookworms’ MJ, was released at the end of last year on the band’s own Blank Ad label. Drahla followed the release with their first European tour, supporting Metz and the trio will be joining Ought on their UK tour in April. The band are currently working on new material for release later this year.
Tickets for this show are £6 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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The Burning Hell
Dead Flowers (solo)
Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
Sunday 2nd December, 7.30pm
The Burning Hell is the alter-ego of Canadian songwriter Mathias Kom, and the band has been on the road in one form or another since 2007, playing everywhere from the chaos of Glastonbury to the loneliness of the Arctic Circle, popping up in bars, festival tents, living rooms, abandoned bunkers, and a mental asylum in rural France along the way. Musically, the lineup and sound of the Burning Hell has been ever-changing, running the gamut from introspective folk to hyperactive rock and roll. This means both that no two Burning Hell records sound alike, and that the band can adapt to its surroundings like a karma of anthropomorphic chameleons, taking the audience on a supermarket-cart ride through hooky, upbeat pop songs, dark ballads about pet euthanasia, and anthems for barbarians, economic conferences, and love.
Website / Watch / Watch
‘Kom’s writing is a breath of fresh air, and I can think of few songwriters I’d rather spend the apocalypse with…’
Folk Radio UK
‘The wordy songsmith behind Canadian quintet The Burning Hell, Mathias Kom has a dry wit and sharp eye that elevate indie-rock tunes into offbeat storytelling treats.’
Uncut Magazine
‘Those who love The Burning Hell really love them, and can't wait to share their respect for creative driving force Mathias Kom's hyper-literate, warm, and witty stories...Kom’s rapid fire lyrics contain deep emotional depth and wide narrative breadth while keeping a common touch.’
The Digital Fix
Tickets for this show are £9 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Lætitia Sadier Source Ensemble
Marker Starling + Alisia Casper
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Wednesday 16th January, 7.30pm
Lætitia Sadier Source Ensemble
Laetitia Sadier and her Source Ensemble [Emma, Nina and Xavier] are heading back out on the road to promote their Drag City released album 'Finding Me Finding You’.
‘With its crashing together of narcotic pop, serialism and motorik rock, Find Me Finding You is in a similar mould to Sadier’s compatriot Pierre Henry’s concrète pop nugget Psyche Rock. Or, closer to home, Stereolab.’
8/10, The Wire
‘Throwing down a persuasive gauntlet, opener Undying Love For Humanity is all breezy percussion, percolating synths, chiming vibraphones and complex, wordless backing vocal arrangements--a sunny, tropicalia-like setting for Sadier's typically liquid delivery of lyrics.’
4/5, Mojo Magazine
Marker Starling
After recording and performing for many years under the name of Mantler, Toronto’s Chris A. Cummings changed his band name to Marker Starling in 2012. A solo performer for much of his career, Cummings was frequently seen playing Melancholy Party Jams on a Wurltizer electric piano, with drum machine accompaniment.
Cummings has collaborated with the German band Von Spar, contributing vocals and lyrics to four songs on their album STREET LIFE. His song “Deep Background” was recorded by Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and appears on her most recent solo record FIND ME FINDING YOU.
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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The Wave Pictures
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Monday 21st January, 7.30pm
The Wave Pictures return with the promised second album of the year, Look Inside Your Heart - a warm, joyous record celebrating friendship, happiness and drunken party times. Like the first album they released this year, the more contemplative Brushes With Happiness, this one was recorded late at night whilst inebriated back at the tiny Booze Cube Studio in Stoke Newington, live to reel-to-reel tape with no computers of any kind. The album is peppered with giggles and chatter, which adds a sense of spontaneity and place.
You can hear the first fruits of the new album here!
Praise for Brushes With Happiness:
‘Dreamlike, bluesy and unique.’
The Guardian
‘A hushed, spectral delight.’
Uncut Magazine
‘As his Tom Verlaine guitar tones drip forth like liquid gold, you can't help falling ever deeper beneath this record's spell.’
Mojo Magazine
Tickets for this show are £11 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Mark Wynn
The Crescent, York
Saturday 2nd February, 7.30pm
Mark Wynn is undoubtably a one-off. Thank fuck. Whether he be ragging his guitar, delivering a dead-pan rant, dancing along to classic rock on his mobile cassette player, dancing around to himself playing on his mobile cassette recorder, draping himself over a wheelie bin, dancing around a mop bucket or humping a monitor speaker - a Mark Wynn show is generally an unforgettable experience. It’s not for every day though.
Regardless of the chosen delivery, Wynn’s social commentary monologues and self-deprecating life-stories are perceptive and memorable. Satirical in part, his songs are witty in a dry, nonchalant, Yorkshire kind of way. A heart-warming, lo-fi poet pushing the boundaries of taking the piss.
Website / Watch / Watch / Watch
Tickets for this show are £5.00 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Laura Veirs
Sam Amidon
The Crescent, York
Wednesday 6th February, 7.30pm
A prolific songwriter for nearly twenty years, Laura Veirs proves the depth of her musical skill on her tenth solo album, The Lookout. Here is a batch of inimitable, churning, exquisite folk-pop songs; a concept album about the fragility of precious things. Produced by Grammy-nominated Tucker Martine, Veirs’ longtime collaborator, The Lookout is a soundtrack for turbulent times, full of allusions to protectors: the camper stoking a watch fire, a mother tending her children, a sailor in a crows nest and a lightning rod channelling energy.
Website / Watch / Watch
“The Lookout is about the need to pay attention to the fleeting beauty of life and to not be complacent; it’s about the importance of looking out for each other,” says Veirs. “I’m addressing what’s happening around me with the chaos of post-election America, the racial divides in our country, and a personal reckoning with the realities of midlife: I have friends who’ve died; I struggle with how to balance life as an artist with parenting young children.”
Written and produced on the heels of Veirs’ acclaimed album with Neko Case and kd Lang (case/lang/veirs), The Lookout integrates the fluency of collaboration with Veirs’ notorious work ethic. The twelve songs on the album are the result of a years’ worth of daily writing in her attic studio in Portland, Oregon.
“Twenty years ago when I was just starting out with my punk band, it never occurred to me to write five versions of a song,” says Veirs. “I’ve learned to see how malleable lyrics and melodies can be. I have more tools as a musician so I write many versions of songs until I find the right fit.” Such range is demonstrated on the operatic vocals of “The Meadow” and the intricate finger picking on “Watch Fire.” “The Lookout,” the album’s title track, is an ecstatic anthem to trusted relationships.
The Lookout draws on the talents of a time-tested crew of musicians: Karl Blau, Steve Moore, Eli Moore, Eyvind Kang and Martine. Says Veirs, “These guys are a good hang, ego-free and wonderful players who just want to serve the songs.” Sufjan Stevens and Jim James provide guest vocals.
For Martine, who fell, almost two decades ago, for Veirs’ unique sound after listening to a tape cassette she’d sent him in the mail, this album reflects a bar that keeps getting raised. Both familiar and strange, The Lookout gets better with repeated listens, warming to the skin like a cherished saddlebag, critical for the journey ahead.
Tickets for this show are £17.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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A Prom Night With...
Her's
The Fulford Arms, York
Thursday 14th February, 7.30pm
As outsiders from sleepy coastal towns several countries apart, Stephen Fitzpatrick from Barrow in Furness and Norwegian Audun Laading met for the first time in Liverpool as students. The pair bonded over a love of peculiar, sardonic humour and wide eyed observations. Dream-pop outfit Her’s is the natural extension to the solitary decoding of the cultures they grew up in. Together they create 80s indie influenced songs with nods to Orange Juice and the capriciousness of Ariel Pink-ish pop.
Website / Watch / Watch
Tickets for this show are £7 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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The Orielles
The Crescent, York
Tuesday 26th February, 7.30pm
2018 has been some year for The Oreilles. Having started it as one of the most talked about new band’s in the U.K. thanks to a salvo of singles the previous year for Heavenly Recordings - Sugar Tastes Like Salt, I Only Bought It For The Bottle and Let Your Dogtooth Grow - 2018 saw them deliver on the hype thanks to a much acclaimed debut album, Silver Dollar Moment in February and their breathtaking live show which saw them sell-out increasingly large venues across the U.K and play festivals from Latitude to Camp Bestival and End of the Road.
Website / Watch / Listen
Made up of sisters Sidonie B and Esmé Dee Hand Halford and their best friend Henry Carlyle Wade, they grabbed attention thanks to the spatial-funk of their album that in part recalled both ESG and fellow north-west pioneers A Certain Ratio and marked them out as a band willing and able to explore the more interesting musical corners.
And now, having recruited a new member, Alex Stephens, on keyboards, they return with two stunning new tracks to show how far they’ve come – Bobbi’s Second World is the young sound of West Yorkshire filtered via Lagos while their Peggy Gou cover, It Makes You Forget (itgehane) is testament to the ease with which they are able to musically take on anything and make it their own. To coincide, the band has also announced a number of new tour dates.
Talking about the tacks, the band said:
Bobbi's Second World, written with the addition of a new member on keys, exhibits an explosion of new sounds and ideas that came to fruition after a long summer of playing festivals and taking inspiration from music that made us dance. It centres around the story of a cat named Bobbi who, in order to become a lady, has to experience the extremities of two complex and differing realities- situated in her front and back gardens respectively. The eccentric instrumentation, influenced by northern soul, post-punk and funk music, matches the quirkiness of the lyrics to create a song that concerns a young cats maturity whilst displaying a certain maturity in the music itself. After noticing a passion for songs that make us emotional; want to dance and quite literally 'forget', we decided to cover one of Peggy Gou's latest floor fillers, 'Itgehane aka It Makes You Forget' hoping that we could evoke the aforementioned qualities of music within other listeners!
The end of the year sees them play their biggest London show to date at Heaven plus an already sold-out homecoming show at the Hebden Bridge Trades Club just before Christmas. Following that, the band embark on tour in Feb-March with tickets on sale Friday, 9th November.
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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James Chance & Les Contortions
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Thursday 14th March, 7.30pm
A key figure in No Wave, Chance has been playing a combination of improvisational jazz-like music and punk in the New York music scene since the late 1970s, in such bands as Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance and the Contortions, James White and the Blacks, The Flaming Demonics, James Chance & the Sardonic Symphonics, James Chance and Terminal City, and James Chance and Les Contortions. His music can be described as combining the freeform playing of Ornette Coleman with the solid funk rhythm of James Brown, though filtered through a punk rock lens.
Website / Watch
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Kristin Hersh
w/ Rob Ahlers (50 Foot Wave)
+ Fred Abong (Throwing Muses)
Left Bank, Leeds
Thursday 21st March, 7.30pm
St. Philips Church, Salford
Friday 22nd March, 7.30pm
Kristin Hersh will be touring the UK in Spring 2019 with Rob Ahlers (50 Foot Wave) on drums and Fred Abong (Throwing Muses, Belly) on bass.
“Sometimes the most subversive thing I can do musically is adhere to standard song structure, sometimes the creepiest chords are the ones we’ve heard before, twisted into different shapes, and sometimes a story is lived a thousand times before we can ride it like a roller coaster. Nothing wholly unfamiliar is gonna make you look twice. When you can describe a record as being “deceptively” anything, you’re hinting at the sociopathic nature of music. Something I love. Imagine truly buying your own sunshine and charm, but also your darkness and violence; the two sides of your psychology showing each other off in relief. Songs can do that...we can’t, really. Darkness we’ve seen. Dark sunshine? Still cool.
I usually play all the instruments on my solo records - essentially the sound of having no friends - but sociopaths can’t realize their potential without people to work out their grievances on and this record is a freakin’ sociopath. So I invited my friends to the party I wanted to hear. Not a live record but an alive record.
Because a lot of live records don’t sound live, just poorly recorded. And self-conscious musicians can’t let fly. I wanted to recreate the impact of a show. Unpretentious, with a muscular song body running through the room. This entailed seriously messing with both extremes of the sonic spectrum: the fundamentals (basics, rhythm section, roots) but also with the detail (percussion, high end, effects). These two strata asked to sound eccentric: atonal and arhythmic. So when the song body runs through the room, it’s not wholly unfamiliar, just dressed oddly enough to make you look twice. Dark sunshine, still cool. Hopefully, anyway.
My friends helped me make a nice party noise, a goofy sociopath. Everyone who stopped by the studio was asked to make some noise and they pretty much did. A party that lasted for a few years, it’s only now dying down. A friend called this morning asking when the bus was leaving. A rickety, squealy, squeaky bus...none of us want to miss it.”
Kristin Hersh, July 2018
Watch / Listen / Listen
Throwing Muses’ lynchpin, Kristin Hersh’s prolific career has seen her heralded queen of the alternative release. Her tenth studio album, ‘Possible Dust Clouds’ is a highly personalised sociopathic gem delivered as a futuristic rewriting of how music works, a melodious breeze with a tail wind of venomous din.
Enveloping the juxtaposition of the concept of ‘dark sunshine’, a brooding solo record created with friends to expand her off-kilter sonic vision; a squally, squeaky mix of discordant beauty.
Feedback and phasing gyrate from simply strummed normality, imagine Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine cranking up a Dylan couplet.
‘Possible Dust Clouds’ is a glorious return to form for one of alternative rock’s true innovators.
‘She's still as powerful a presence as she ever was.’
Pitchfork
‘The prodigious output and commitment to quality is pretty staggering, but then Kristin Hersh is a very, very special musician.’
The Quietus
‘Throwing Muses became a byword for college-rock feminism in the late 80s, largely because of Hersh’s uncompromising impressionist poetry of emotional anguish, subjugated womanhood and mental illness.’
The Guardian
Tickets for these shows are £20 in advance.
You can get tickets for Manchester here and for Leeds here.
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Steve Gunn
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Sunday 7th April, 7.30pm
Deaf Institute, Manchester
Monday 8th April, 7.30pm
Returning with with a brand new album for Matador, one of our faves, trippy-folk-rock and experimental guitarist Steve Gunn returns to two amazing venues with his band.
Website / Watch / Listen
For over a decade, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gunn has been one the American music’s most pivotal figures - conjuring immersive and psychedelic sonic landscapes both live and on record, releasing revered solo albums ranking high on in-the-know end of year lists, alongside exploratory collaborations with artists as diverse as Mike Cooper, Kurt Vile, and Michael Chapman (whose most recent studio album he produced). Gunn is known for telling other people's stories, but on his breakthrough fourth album, The Unseen In Between, he explores his own emotional landscapes with his most complex, fully realized songs to date. The lyrics evoke voyages, tempests (actual and emotional), and a rich cast of characters met along the way -- the work of an artist finding a place of calm in the midst of a storm. Produced by frequent collaborator James Elkington and engineered by Daniel Schlett, the immaculately recorded Unseen forces a reassessment of Gunn’s standing in the pantheon of the era’s great songwriters.
Getting to The Unseen In Between itself was not easy for Gunn. In the summer of 2016, Gunn released Eyes On The Lines, his winning and elliptical debut for Matador. It should have been a triumphant moment, but exactly two weeks later, Gunn’s father and namesake died following a two-year struggle with cancer. During his sickness, he and his son had connected as never before, listening to one another’s experiences and understanding one another’s perspectives; they became not father and son but real friends.
This experience yielded the emotional centerpiece of the album. “Stonehurst Cowboy” is a duet for Gunn’s raw acoustic guitar and spare basslines by Bob Dylan's musical director Tony Garnier, whose featured throughout the album. The song distills the lessons Gunn learned from his father and it is a solemn but tender remembrance, a tribute to his father’s reputation as a tough, wise, and witty guy from far west Philadelphia.
A sense of musical renewal and emotional complexity fits the new songs perfectly; “Luciano” seems to be about the chemistry between a bodega owner and his cat, an unspoken romance of gentle obedience and quiet gestures. But Gunn peers below the relationship’s surface and wonders about the owner's lonely future once the cat is gone, a devastating meditation wrapped in soft strings. And then there’s “Vagabond,” Gunn’s graceful attempt to humanize a rich cast of characters whose lives have gone astray, wanderers who live outside of society’s modern safety net, who pursue “a crooked dream” in spite of what the world expects. Supported by the perfect harmonies of Meg Baird, Gunn finds something lovely in the unloved.
Inspired by contemporary artist Walter De Maria’s Dia Art Foundation-affiliated installation of 400 stainless steel poles atop the high desert of New Mexico, “Lightning Field” considers what we get out of art when it doesn’t work, when lightning does not light up the night for visitors. Opener “New Moon" may begin in the mode of a deep track from Astral Weeks or Fred Neil, with its upright bass and sparse tremolo guitar. But during the song’s final minutes, strings double the melody, and then the guitar rushes headlong, pulling ahead in a wave of ecstatic deliverance. It is a brief but liberating solo, an instant release of tension from the fraught scene Gunn has built, complemented by one of his most arresting vocal performances.
In a final contrast, “Morning is Mended” is an acoustic beauty so resplendent it ranks alongside Sandy Denny or Jackson C. Frank. Buoyed by a melody that sparkles like sunlight on still water, Gunn acknowledges the hardships around him, the feeling of being a “nothing sky,” and then moves forward into the world, walking tall into the fresh morning. The song is an apt encapsulation of The Unseen In Between, a gorgeously empathetic record that attempts to recognize the worries of the world and offer some timely assurance. It is a revelatory and redemptive set, offering the balm of understanding at a time when that seems in very short supply.
Tickets for these shows are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets for Manchester here and for Leeds here.
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Terry Riley
& Gyan Riley
Riley Smith Hall, Leeds University Union
Friday 12th April, 7.30pm
It’s possibly hard to do justice in words to the influence of Terry Riley on so much adventurous music that has emerged over the past half century. Take his legendary In C, a simple piece of musical genius that still resonates as loudly in impact today and perhaps achieving more widespread influence than ever currently since its first recorded appearance in 1968. Add in his sublime minimalist keyboard recordings such as Shri Camel and A Rainbow In Curved Air, his early tape work, his collaborations with Pandit Pran Nath, John Cale, La Monte Young.
Terry will perform in a duo with his son Gyan, who has a growing discography of his own that includes releases on labels such as John Zorn’s Tzadik and has worked with Zakir Hussian, Dawn Upshaw and many others.
Tickets for this show are £25 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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Sunday 7th April, 7.30pm
Deaf Institute, Manchester
Monday 8th April, 7.30pm
Returning with with a brand new album for Matador, one of our faves, trippy-folk-rock and experimental guitarist Steve Gunn returns to two amazing venues with his band.
Website / Watch / Listen
For over a decade, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gunn has been one the American music’s most pivotal figures - conjuring immersive and psychedelic sonic landscapes both live and on record, releasing revered solo albums ranking high on in-the-know end of year lists, alongside exploratory collaborations with artists as diverse as Mike Cooper, Kurt Vile, and Michael Chapman (whose most recent studio album he produced). Gunn is known for telling other people's stories, but on his breakthrough fourth album, The Unseen In Between, he explores his own emotional landscapes with his most complex, fully realized songs to date. The lyrics evoke voyages, tempests (actual and emotional), and a rich cast of characters met along the way -- the work of an artist finding a place of calm in the midst of a storm. Produced by frequent collaborator James Elkington and engineered by Daniel Schlett, the immaculately recorded Unseen forces a reassessment of Gunn’s standing in the pantheon of the era’s great songwriters.
Getting to The Unseen In Between itself was not easy for Gunn. In the summer of 2016, Gunn released Eyes On The Lines, his winning and elliptical debut for Matador. It should have been a triumphant moment, but exactly two weeks later, Gunn’s father and namesake died following a two-year struggle with cancer. During his sickness, he and his son had connected as never before, listening to one another’s experiences and understanding one another’s perspectives; they became not father and son but real friends.
This experience yielded the emotional centerpiece of the album. “Stonehurst Cowboy” is a duet for Gunn’s raw acoustic guitar and spare basslines by Bob Dylan's musical director Tony Garnier, whose featured throughout the album. The song distills the lessons Gunn learned from his father and it is a solemn but tender remembrance, a tribute to his father’s reputation as a tough, wise, and witty guy from far west Philadelphia.
A sense of musical renewal and emotional complexity fits the new songs perfectly; “Luciano” seems to be about the chemistry between a bodega owner and his cat, an unspoken romance of gentle obedience and quiet gestures. But Gunn peers below the relationship’s surface and wonders about the owner's lonely future once the cat is gone, a devastating meditation wrapped in soft strings. And then there’s “Vagabond,” Gunn’s graceful attempt to humanize a rich cast of characters whose lives have gone astray, wanderers who live outside of society’s modern safety net, who pursue “a crooked dream” in spite of what the world expects. Supported by the perfect harmonies of Meg Baird, Gunn finds something lovely in the unloved.
Inspired by contemporary artist Walter De Maria’s Dia Art Foundation-affiliated installation of 400 stainless steel poles atop the high desert of New Mexico, “Lightning Field” considers what we get out of art when it doesn’t work, when lightning does not light up the night for visitors. Opener “New Moon" may begin in the mode of a deep track from Astral Weeks or Fred Neil, with its upright bass and sparse tremolo guitar. But during the song’s final minutes, strings double the melody, and then the guitar rushes headlong, pulling ahead in a wave of ecstatic deliverance. It is a brief but liberating solo, an instant release of tension from the fraught scene Gunn has built, complemented by one of his most arresting vocal performances.
In a final contrast, “Morning is Mended” is an acoustic beauty so resplendent it ranks alongside Sandy Denny or Jackson C. Frank. Buoyed by a melody that sparkles like sunlight on still water, Gunn acknowledges the hardships around him, the feeling of being a “nothing sky,” and then moves forward into the world, walking tall into the fresh morning. The song is an apt encapsulation of The Unseen In Between, a gorgeously empathetic record that attempts to recognize the worries of the world and offer some timely assurance. It is a revelatory and redemptive set, offering the balm of understanding at a time when that seems in very short supply.
Tickets for these shows are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets for Manchester here and for Leeds here.
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Terry Riley
& Gyan Riley
Riley Smith Hall, Leeds University Union
Friday 12th April, 7.30pm
It’s possibly hard to do justice in words to the influence of Terry Riley on so much adventurous music that has emerged over the past half century. Take his legendary In C, a simple piece of musical genius that still resonates as loudly in impact today and perhaps achieving more widespread influence than ever currently since its first recorded appearance in 1968. Add in his sublime minimalist keyboard recordings such as Shri Camel and A Rainbow In Curved Air, his early tape work, his collaborations with Pandit Pran Nath, John Cale, La Monte Young.
Terry will perform in a duo with his son Gyan, who has a growing discography of his own that includes releases on labels such as John Zorn’s Tzadik and has worked with Zakir Hussian, Dawn Upshaw and many others.
Tickets for this show are £25 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from here.
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