A quick post to make you aware of the just-announced Sloth Racket album launch at Cafe Oto on 10th October! Tickets are on sale now for this special night – our first gig at Oto – where we’ll celebrate the release of our next album. The as-yet-untitled album is currently in progress and I’m very happy with the direction it’s going…
(Also pleased with the new collage-y image above that I put together for this gig!)
Now available from Dirk Serries’ New Wave Of Jazz label is TRANSLUCENCE, a trio album from Tullis Rennie, Dirk and myself.
Recorded in Brussels in January 2020, the session followed our first trio performance at Sound In Motion’s 2019 Summer Bummer festival in Antwerp. Of course, soon after the recording it became impossible to travel or play live for a long while, but the trio now has some plans for live playing in the UK next month:
15 July – at LUME | Hundred Years Gallery, London
16 July – at Two Ship | The Nest, Hastings
I’ll add more info to this post soon, along with a link for UK physical orders of the CD.
It’s out there: you can now listen to and pre-order Carapace from Raw Tonk. Check it out!
It’s been five years (!) since the release of the second Ripsaw Catfish album Namazu, so Anton and I are pretty excited that our third one will be coming out later this month! Recorded last September in Manchester, then mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney, Carapace sees us add my electronics to the mix and take the duo in a new direction. We’re very happy that it will be released on Raw Tonk again too. You can pre-order the album from Friday 10th June and it’s out on Friday 24th June. My flyer for this features Colin Webster’s awesome linocut album artwork, which will appear on the sleeves in hand-printed form.
To coincide with the release we’re going out on a mini-tour, with three live dates in the UK:
18th June – BRÅK @ waterintobeer, Brockley, London | 19:00, £5 or more
We’re launching the album in the beer shop! It seemed fitting considering that the label boss and 50% of the band are involved in running the gig. Info about BRÅK is on our website, and you can find out how to get to the shop on the wib site.
26th June – Soundhunt @ Thrive, Cambridge | 19:00, £5
Another new series here run by Dominic Lash and N.O Moore, who we’ll be sharing the bill with. The gig is happening at Thrive, a great vegan cafe within walking distance of the station. More venue info on the Thrive site.
19th July – Chance Meeting @ NIAMOS, Hulme, Manchester | 19:30, £9/£6 unwaged
In our other home city we’ll be playing at this brand new night, sharing the bill with THRAA. All the info you need can be found on the Chance Meeting site, where you can also follow a link to buy tickets for the gig.
Looking forward to getting out there with this band again!
cr-ow-tr-io will be out and about late this month, with dates in Manchester and London. In Manchester we’re playing at the fantastic Curious Ear series on Saturday 21st May. The workshop and gig are happening at the Ascension Church, Hulme: you can find all the details on the Curious Ear site, and on their gorgeous poster below…
Then on Thursday 26th May the trio will play at City, University of London, for an exciting occasion: the first London performance of my piece And then the next thing you know. We will be hanging my giant, fragmented graphic score in the performance space at City and responding to it in this new setting. Tickets are free for this, but you need to reserve a place as there are limited spots available. It will be great to take this project out for a second performance: I’m expecting the shape of the score, the atmosphere and the music to all be totally different to the original hcmf// gig (photo below). I’m looking forward to revisiting it all with Tullis and Otto.
I have also printed up a new batch of our trio release ‘Hold Music’ for these gigs, so it’s a good chance to grab a copy in the neon paint colour of your choice!
//
Also…
Between those two gigs I’m playing a trio set with Chris Corsano and Alan Wilkinson at Cafe Oto! Our set on Monday 23rd May is part of Chris’ four-day residency, which I was super happy to be invited to be a part of.
After an epic admin session, Dee and I have just announced a new batch of LUME dates at Hundred Years Gallery, starting next month. All the info is on the LUME site, but the season looks like this:
20th May 2022
Caroline Kraabel & Khabat Abas
Dee Byrne solo
Alex Bonney & Cath Roberts
17th June 2022
Lara Jones & Dee Byrne
Suren Seneviratne solo
Gina Southgate & Cath Roberts
15th July 2022
Rebecca Nash & Dee Byrne
Andrew Lisle solo
Dirk Serries/Tullis Rennie/Cath Roberts
My sets are all the re-starting of projects that have been dormant since the pre-pandemic times, so I’m looking forward to playing with Alex, Gina, and the Dirk/Tullis trio again – it’s been too long!
We made some nice new flyers for the online promo too, using parts of photos from last season’s gigs…
Sloth Racket are playing three gigs in April before we go into the studio to record a new album. You can catch us in Newcastle, Sheffield and Nottingham.
Jazz North East are organising the Newcastle gig, and tickets are on sale here.
More info about the Sheffield gig organised by Jazz At The Lescar here.
Tickets are on sale for the Nottingham gig from Jazz Steps here.
Looking forward to this mini-tour – our first gigs with the full lineup since September 2019!
Just announced: a new batch of gigs at the beer shop! Looking forward to these collaborations…
Out on 25th March and available to pre-order today is Conduits. This duo recording with Olie took place over JackTrip during lockdown, and we’re super happy that Relative Pitch Records wanted to release it.
You can pre-order the CD or digital album from today. If you’re ordering a physical copy from the UK you can buy it from us on Olie’s Bandcamp site rather than from the label in the US, to avoid prohibitive shipping costs.
Thanks to Kevin Reilly from Relative Pitch for putting this out! The cover photo is by Olie.
In early January I made an improvised electronics piece for one side of this tape release on Graham Dunning’s label Fractal Meat Cuts. It was a really nice process and I’m very happy to be sharing the release with Suren Seneviratne. My piece uses a sample of Anton Hunter from a Ripsaw Catfish gig last year, plus the sound of the floppy disk drive on my old 2002 laptop…
Head to the Fractal Meat Bandcamp to get your hands on a tape or DL!