Out today: Creatures of Tooth

Out today: the first release by Creatures of Tooth! This is the duo of Tom Ward on bass clarinet and me on the Lyra-8 senthesiser. We played a set together last year at Lewisham Arthouse, then recently went into the studio for the next stage of the project. Mixed and mastered by Martin Clarke, the two resulting tracks see us stretch out and explore this acoustic/electronic combination of instruments. The recording is out today on Madwort Recordings, as a cassette and digital album.


I’m very pleased with the cassette sleeves, the design of which Tom and I worked on together and which feature a photograph of Tom’s printed in bright orange riso print. This was part of my ongoing explorations at London Centre for Book Arts as a studio member, and was a nice challenge. I drew up a template for the sleeves, printed them up and then cut them (with help!) using the LCBA guillotine. Having cut a lot of sleeves for previous releases one by one, by hand, using a knife, over many hours, I found this process pretty game-changing!

Trio gig at Moers Festival

Rehearsals are underway this week for an exciting trip to Moers Festival! I was very happy to be invited to bring a trio to perform as part of the hcmf// ‘X perimental N counters’ night at the festival on Friday 6th June. The set will be a first-time collaboration between Kate Carr, Iris Colomb and me, and we had a really great first rehearsal yesterday so I’m pretty excited about it! Info is over on the Moers Festival website.

Quartz Sand set at light.box ‘Eyre’ album launch

Coming up on Friday 9th May at Hundred Year’s Gallery is the third gig of my collaboration with amazing sound artist Kate Carr. Our duo Quartz Sand is i due to release an album on Kate’s label Flaming Pines this Autumn. In the mean time we’re very happy to have been invited to play at the launch of light.box and Tom Challenger’s new release ‘Eyre’, out on Bead Records. Head to the HYG website listing for info.

Horse Improv Club with The Remote Viewers

Quick post about an impending gig! I’m at the Horse Improv Club on Thursday 17th April, joining The Remote Viewers on Lyra-8. This is a fun group for me, getting to interact with two saxes (Adrian Northover and Dave Petts) and bass (John Edwards) on my synth.

Please note the venue change for this gig, which will be at Living Space near Waterloo. Tickets can be bought in advance over on the Horse tickests page.

ATTNTYK in Surrey, and CUEE end of year concert

A couple of notable gigs coming up this month that I felt warranted a blog post, weirdly both happening in universities…

And then the next thing you know with Tullis Rennie at INTRASPECT VII

Over the past couple of months, Tullis Rennie and I have been working together to develop a new iteration of our duo practice. It’s been a while since Blurts/Growls came out in 2017 (!), and although we’ve worked together loads since then it hasn’t been in duo format. The catalyst for this new chapter was an invitation to be part of INTRASPECT VII, a concert series at University of Surrey organised by Bill Thompson. Bill was keen to bring my 2021 hcmf//project And then the next thing you know to Surrey, and rather than repeating it exactly as it was then, I decided to create a totally reworked version for this performance, collaborating with Tullis.
In the studio in Hastings, earlier in March

Whereas in 2021 the cardboard fragmented score object was suspended from the ceiling and was not interacted with by the players, this time I wanted to make it a changing, shifting structure that we can alter. So there will still be hanging elements, alongside new standing elements and smaller parts that we can add or remove from the main structures. Working with the physical objects will be part of what we’re doing on stage, alongside electronic and acoustic sound-making. It will basically be, as Tullis said in one of our rehearsals, a giant playground…trombone, saxophone, electronic instruments, and a table of small objects/instruments will all be available. If this sounds like the kind of thing you’d like to see and hear unfolding live in front of you, the gig is happening on Thursday 3rd April in PATS Studio One at the University of Surrey and tickets are free.

Work in progress table structure

CUEE end of year concert 2025

It seems unbelievable that another year has passed, but coming up the week after the Surrey gig is the final concert of my current cohort of students at the City St Georges Experimental Ensemble! On Wednesday 9th April we’ll be descending on the Performance Space at City with guest artist Iris Colomb, and sharing the bill with the Field Recording Ensemble led by Kate Carr. The students have been exploring new sonic territories this year and it promises to be an exciting night of improvisation, collaboration and…experimental room layouts?! Free tickets are available on the university website, and you can also catch Iris and me playing duo at BRÅK on Saturday 12th April.

My collage for the CUEE/FR gig listing

Sloth Racket Ten Years shirts!

They’re here….fresh new Sloth Racket shirts, the next phase of our birthday celebrations! Features a giant, fire-breathing sloth climbing over a cityscape that includes buildings from almost all* the places band members have lived since we formed: London, Dundee, Shipley, Stockport and Berlin…plus the Tyne Bridge as our first ever gig was in Gateshead.

Grab yours from our Bandcamp now! Other colours available…

*Not sure how this happened, but I forgot Manchester!

Great night at Robyn’s Rocket

I had an excellent time last week at Robyn’s Rocket – this chirpy photo encapsulates the mood of the whole night! I was invited to join Mikey Chestnutt (right) and host Robyn Steward (left) for a trio set, which was good fun and traversed some suitably sci-fi sonic territories. Robyn’s Rocket is an inspiring project; playing there gave me a lot of food for thought about inclusivity at gigs – you can read about the work Robyn and the team do on the Robyn’s Rocket site.

(Photo by Siân O’Connor)

Solo set at Sonics Hastings

I’m heading down to the seaside in March to play a solo set at Sonics Hastings! Looking forward to revisiting my solo electronics setup and checking out some rad local sounds. The festival runs across the whole weekend and includes a long form collective improvisation on the Sunday afternoon – have a look at the rest of the lineup over on the festival site…