Over the past few months I have spent a lot of time putting together a new project with my drummer friend Dan Paton. We’re launching a live music night in the basement of The Albany, Great Portland St. Every last Tuesday of the month, we will host an exciting double bill of our favourite music from a range of genres, kicking off on May 28th with Raevennan Husbandes & Babelfish. The night will be called Collisions, and our promoter duo name is In League With Robots. The acts for May through to August have all confirmed, and you can check out the listings on the website….see you at the Albany!
Category Archives: News
MSQ and Spill Kit
I’ve just heard that we have a Madwort Sax Quartet gig booked in for June 5th: a double bill with Chris Dowding’s band Spill Kit, at Ryan’s Bar in Stoke Newington. Get it in the diary! Should be a nice gig…
‘Hooloovoo’ liner notes
Last year, I was commissioned by the brass quintet Mardi Brass to write a piece for their upcoming album ‘Something New’. The album will be the last in their ‘Something’ series (can you guess what the other records are called?), and will focus on new compositions/arrangements written especially for this project.
I sent over my offering in Autumn, and was excited to hear in February that it has been recorded! The piece is called ‘Hooloovoo’, after a creature from ‘The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy’: it’s a tribute to the late HHGTTG author Douglas Adams, who would have been 60 in 2012. Mardi Brass asked me to write some liner notes/blurb about my contribution, which resulted in the following:
Hooloovoo
In 2012, when I wrote this piece, the late author Douglas Adams would have celebrated his 60th birthday. The occasion was marked with a gig at the Hammersmith Apollo, and when I was asked to write something for Mardi Brass I thought straight away of a ‘blue’ connection that would allow me to make my own tribute. Adams wrote what was probably the most important non-trilogy of books in my childhood, ‘The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy’ series (there are in fact five novels in the ‘trilogy’). I spent many hours happily lost in the fantastical universe of the HHGTTG, with its array of absurd, wonderful characters and places. This is a universe where humans are the lab-rats in a giant experiment presided over by mice, where a cupcake wired to a person’s head can provide a sudden crushing vision of her own insignificance in the cosmos. It is the home of the ‘Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster’, a cocktail the effects of which are described as ‘like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick’.
One of the inhabitants of the HHGTTG universe is the Hooloovoo. Admittedly, it has a small walk-on part at the beginning of the fist book, but it’s a fascinating creature nonetheless: a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue. The Hooloovoo is part of the team responsible for building the starship ‘Heart of Gold’, and we encounter it at the launch ceremony for the ship, ‘temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism’ for the occasion. This is the scene I was attempting to evoke with the piece: the bustling atmosphere of the opening ceremony, with interjections by its attendees, hailing from various corners of the galaxy. I tried to make the music shape-shift like its namesake, and culminate in the triumphant unveiling of the ‘Heart of Gold’, a ship that becomes an important centre for the novels and, indeed, an important character in them. The Hooloovoo stands by, a splendid vision of blue, as the starship prepares to embark upon what will become, unbeknownst to the reader at this point, one hell of a voyage. All hail Douglas Adams, the architect of this universe and, as is said of one of the HHGTTG main characters Ford Prefect, ‘a frood who really knew where his towel was’.
More info on the release of the album when I know more…I’m looking forward to hearing the recording!
Edit: I just read that yesterday (11th March 2013) would have been DA’s 61st birthday, which makes this an accidentally timely post.
Jazz In The Round!
I’ve just confirmed an exciting Quadraceratops gig: Jazz In The Round at the Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone on 24th June. We’ll be one of three bands appearing at the June edition of this monthly gig presented by Jazz on 3’s Jez Nelson. More info to follow!
Buttonceratops
Dino Radio
Happy New Year!
More 2013 news: I’ve just confirmed that Quadraceratops will be playing live on the radio at the end of this month! It’s true. We’ll be on Dom Servini’s show on Colourful Radio, Tuesday January 29th sometime between 7 and 10pm. Hear the larks ensue as we cram the whole band into the studio for a live session…
2013 gigs…
Some write-ups of November and Decemberly activity to come soon, hopefully produced during fireside mulled-wine based blogging sessions. For now, a quick update about next year – 2013 – which it seems is just around the corner.
On February 8th Quadraceratops will be playing at the Hackney Cut, a new venue by the canal near Hackney Wick. This might be a double bill too…more info soon. Then on March 24th we’re heading to the Salisbury on Green Lanes, where the Madwort Sax Quartet had a lovely gig in September.
Should be fun!
Madwort Sax Quartet Mini Tour
I’m a bit out of touch with online stuff at the moment due to house moving chaos, so there will be more comprehensive posts to come soon, but in the mean time this is what’s coming up next week….
Madwort Sax Quartet Mini Tour!
Part One: The Midlands:
2nd December – One Note Sunday, The Flowerpot, Derby
Part Two: The North:
4th December – Freedom Principle, Sandbar, Manchester
This will be lots of fun. We’ll be playing Tom Ward’s original music (including new stuff not even played at the band’s first gig!) and doing some group improv too. In Manchester we’re sharing the bill with the Anton Hunter Trio.
See you there!
Quadraceratops in November
Tomorrow, we re-group to start rehearsing for the upcoming November gigs. It should be larks and I just wrote a big round-robin email to spread the word. You probably know all this, but it reads:
Hello everyone,
Hope you’re all well. Welcome to the second ever Quadraceratops mailing list email, here to let you know about our upcoming activities in November. We have two London dates:
London Jazz Festival @ Jazz Cafe, 17th November
First up, I’m excited to say that we’re part of the London Jazz Festival this year! On Saturday 17th November, Quadraceratops will support Get The Blessing at the Jazz Cafe, Camden. We’re looking forward to playing at this top venue, and it should be a lovely night – also featuring DJ Dom Servini (Wah Wah 45s). There’s more info and tickets at the Jazz Cafe’s website and the Jazz Festival’s website….plus, I’ve heard on the grapevine that there will be some sort of cheap ticket list, so drop me a reply if you’d like to know more about that. It promises to be a lot of fun and we’d love to see you there.
Jazz @ The Waterline, 22nd November
When we’ve calmed down after all the festival excitement, we’ll be playing at the Waterline bar in Dalston on Thursday 22nd November. This will be a more intimate, chilled affair and our two sets will hopefully include some new material that I’m currently working on. If you can’t make it to the Jazz Cafe or (ideally) you can and you’d like to hear more of us, come down and say hello: we’ll be starting at about 8.30pm.
You might notice at the these gigs that the band looks slightly different – I’ve got a special November line up as a couple of the Quadraceratopsians have other commitments this month, so you’ll be hearing Chris Snead (trumpet), Andrew Woolf (tenor sax) and Jason Simpson (bass) guesting at one or both gigs. Tom Ward will be wielding the baritone sax too. Thanks guys!
If you’d like to receive these kind of emails from me in the future, drop me a line on hello[at]cathrobertsmusic.co.uk. Some day there will be a ‘sign up to the mailing list’ type link, but I’m kind of saving it for a rainy day.
See you out there…
The Jeff Chambers Variable n-tet
I had a lot of fun yesterday at a rehearsal of the Jeff Chambers Variable n-tet, a big band playing Jeff’s music. The band has been on hiatus for a few years, and I was happy to be invited to rehearse with this new 2012 incarnation. It features a lot of lovely musicians including friends I haven’t seen for a while – plus I met some new faces too. With sunlight streaming in through the Vortex windows, the rehearsal looked a bit like this (check Tom Ward’s handknit in the foreground – nice)…
The band put a record out in 2006, and you can investigate that further plus find out about Jeff and the group at his website. More activity to follow soon….