Category Archives: LUME

December gigs and AAO hcmf// project

December is upon us, and having just finished a big project (of which more later), it already feels like my 2022 is over – but in fact I have a few nice gigs in London this month. A quick rundown…

Sunday 4 December – with Christoph Gallio, Dominic Lash and Andrew Lisle at Hundred Years Gallery

Swiss saxophonist Christoph Gallio has spent a chunk of time based in London this year, and I was very happy to be asked to join him for this afternoon set at the gallery. With a heavyweight Lash/Lisle rhythm section! More info on the HYG website.

Friday 9 December – new live electronics duo with Bill Thompson at LUME

Also at HYG is the last LUME gig of 2022, next Friday. My set will be the debut performance of a new live electronics collaboration with sound artist Bill Thompson. I’ve just added a Lyra-8 analogue synthesiser to my live electronics setup (see above – the huge one), and this will be the first time I’ve taken it out on a gig. Bill and I had a great session together earlier this week so I’m looking forward to playing again.

Saturday 10 December – Jason Yarde benefit gig, Cafe Oto and The Vortex

Fantastic saxophone player Jason Yarde is recovering from a stroke. For this benefit gig, Orphy Robinson has assembled a cast of characters from across the London improv scene for an afternoon improvised music relay. Players will move between Cafe Oto and The Vortex in freeform ensembles. More info and link soon…

Saturday 17 December – BRÅK Christmas Special with Charles Hayward

My last gig of the year is the BRÅK festive special. We’ll be at waterintobeer for a festive night of improv, and my duo partner is formidable drummer Charles Hayward! Tom will be joined by Sam Andreae, and Matt Cargill of Sly & The Family Drone with play a duo set with Colin. It promises to be a special night!

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Australian Art Orchestra hcmf// ‘Fresh Water – Salt Water’ project in Melbourne and Huddersfield

Over the last few months I’ve had the privilege of being involved in a pretty amazing international collaborative project with the Australian Art Orchestra. Co-produced by AAO and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Fresh Water – Salt Water is a new work centred around the music of Yolŋu songmen Daniel and David Wilfred, with guest UK artists Mandhira De Saram and myself along with AAO musicians Martin Ng, Helen Svoboda, Aviva Endean and Peter Knight. In early November Mandhira and I travelled to Melbourne, where the ensemble worked together to devise the new music. We then performed the piece at Melbourne Recital Centre (above), before recovening in the UK later in the month to present it at Bates Mill in Huddersfield for hcmf//. It’s been an incredible and very creatively stimulating experience! There’s a lot to process. I loved working with everyone and hope it can lead to more collaboration in the future. In the mean time you can read more about the project and the artists on the AAO website.

New LUME dates

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…

LUME IS BACK.

It’s been a while! LUME is back, putting on gigs again in London. Our first outing is a pair of dates at Hundred Years Gallery, where we haven’t hosted a gig since December 2017. Three sets of improvised music in July and August, featuring a whole bunch of our favourite people…

Places are limited, so email the venue to reserve your place (pay on the door when you arrive).

More about the artists can be found on the LUME website, where you’ll also find a refreshed archive of all our gigs and projects since 2013. It was amazing to go through it all while working on the site….quite a list of stuff.

Two more live recordings emerge

My work on the new live recordings Bandcamp site is continuing, and there are now two more sets up there.

First up, a trio set with Corey Mwamba and Olie Brice. This is from a LUME gig at The Vortex in April 2016, when we played opposite Dave Kane’s quartet. Who recorded it is a mystery, but I *think* it was me with my Zoom recorder. Going through these old files is reminding me of the importance of proper labelling…

Also up on the site is a duo set with Benedict Taylor. This is from the Horse Improv Club in 2018, recorded at IKLECTIK by Jeff at Saint Austral Sound. A short set with an abrupt ending!

Hope you enjoy these. Everything I publish on the site is a ‘name your price’ download, and the money will be split equally between me and the other musicians on the tracks. So if you’re in a position to support artists, please consider buying a copy.

More coming soon…follow on Bandcamp or keep an eye on this blog for info.

LUME on The Hello/Goodbye Show

On Saturday 21st December, LUME has been invited to take over Dexter Bentley’s Hello/Goodbye Show on Resonance FM! Dee and I have both appeared on the show before (Sloth Racket played a live set in 2018), and we’re looking forward to filling a whole episode with LUME-related shenanigans. We’ll be playing some tasty tracks and talking about LUME projects, plus there will be a live set from Ti/om (Tom Ward and Tim Fairhall) and one from Dee and me as a duo.

Tune in from 12 noon until 1.30pm to hear what we’ve got up our sleeves…

LUME back on the Barbican freestage

This Sunday 23rd November sees the return of LUME to the Barbican Centre! As part of London Jazz Festival 2019 we’re presenting two trio sets starting at 5pm:

Rachel Musson, Andrew Lisle and Cath Roberts: the second outing of our new double-sax trio.

Deemer + 1: Dee Byrne’s long-running duo with sound artist Merijn Royaards is joined by special guest Johnny Hunter.

It will be great to play there again: we had such a great day doing the LUME Freestage in 2015 (which you can read about in the archives).  Join us in the foyer for some fresh improvised music!

Afterwards I’ll be heading straight down to Brockley for the November BRÅK, where I’m playing duo with Johnny Hunter. The full lineup is on our website…why not round off your day with some beer shop-based improv?

Sloth Racket and Entropi at Kings Place

Sloth Racket is sharing the bill with Dee Byrne’s excellent band Entropi for the first time on Wednesday 13th March, for a special LUME double bill concert at Kings Place. LUME has been taking some time off since our second festival in summer 2017, so it will be great to host our first event in a while at a totally new venue for us.



Blurts/Growls, Live At LUME Vol. 3 and Noon: 22nd Century

A cluster of new releases have appeared over the past month or so, while this blog has been concentrating on Sloth Racket activities, so here they are in one post.

First up, I’m really pleased to have collobarated with Tullis Rennie on Blurts/Growls, an album compiled from our live trombone/baritone sax improvisations at Cafe Oto Project Space and Free Range in Canterbury late last year. We spent some time together cutting up the music into shortish tracks, making it more of a ‘studio’ type project, although it’s assembled from live recordings. The album came out on Luminous as half of a special LUME Festival double release, and Tullis was even cool with me doing some white goods themed cover art…

The other half of the festival release was the third volume of the Live At LUME fundraiser album series. This edition is a selection of live recordings from the LUME Lab gigs we put on at IKLECTIK in the first half of this year, with tracks from ensembles led by Julie Kjær, Craig Scott and Anton Hunter. All proceeds from sales of these albums go towards future LUME activities: it makes a big difference for us that there’s a small stream of extra income we can use to supplement any project funding we’re able to secure. Have a listen to the ace new music by  Julie, Craig and Anton below.

Finally, Tullis and I appear again on Noon: 22nd Century, a new cassette from the Zero Wave label. The album is two live sets by Far Rainbow with guests: one one side Colin Webster and me, and Tullis and me on the other (me me me!). The set with Tullis is from the same Free Range gig that we took some of the Blurts/Growls material from, so there’s a nice connection between the two albums. The tape has super cool artwork by Emily Mary Barnett (who plays drums in Far Rainbow).