Out today is Ten Years of Live Sloths, an epic one hour and forty minutes-long live album with a track from each year of Sloth Racket’s existence! As part of our birthday celebrations this year I dug deep into the band’s archives and put together this selection. Recorded live all around the UK (and, in 2020 and 2021, over the internet) these tracks are a previously-unheard mix of unreleased material and live versions of material from our studio albums, lovingly excavated and served up in a freshly-mastered package for your listening pleasure….
Category Archives: releases
Tullis Rennie ‘Safe Operating Space’ album release and tour dates
I’m out and about this week with the live band for Tullis Rennie’s ‘Safe Operating Space’ project. We had a fantastic night in Hastings on Saturday and we’re looking forward to bringing the music to London on Thursday – tickets for our early show at the Vortex are on sale now from the venue website. Between now and then we’re also playing a showcase set at Bristol Beacon, then this coming weekend Tullis heads up to Manchester and Glasgow for two solo A/V shows. If any of the dates are near you, I highly recommend checking this project out. Tullis’ music is great and the combination of electronic and acoustic spaces is fresh and exciting.
The Safe Operating Space album is out now on Efpi Records:
Ripsaw Catfish – Office Hours EP
Anton and I spontaneously released a new Ripsaw Catfish EP a few weeks ago! Office Hours is a series of tracks recorded in Anton’s, well, office. Originally intended just as private documents of a play together, we liked them so much we decided to put them ‘out there’. Add a photo of what was on my own desk, and the release was done. Hope you enjoy!
Synth gets festive
Last year I was invited to record a Christmas carol for Corey Mwamba’s Freeness show on BBC Radio 3. I had just got the Lyra-8 synth about a week ago, and the result of those two things convenging was a fun session messing about with mashing samples of me singing a carol through the synth’s external input and seeing what happened. I remembered about the track today – so it’s now up on Bandcamp! Pay what you want, or not, for some pretty dark and mangled festive cheer….
November/December 2023: BRÅK returns, MoonMot touring, and more…
A relatively busy Autumn is underway for me, with a few different projects active between now and the end of the year.
MoonMot tours
MoonMot is touring in November (UK) and December (Switzerland) to mark the release of the band’s second album ‘350 Million Herring’ (named after a Brexit-themed Johnny Hunter composition…). We’ll be out and about in the North of England first, then doing a few nights in Switzerland to finish. I’m leaving the band at the end of the year, so these will be my last tours! You can check where to catch us over on my gigs page, and see more about the band on the MoonMot website. Herring artwork below…
BRÅK winter season
Tom, Colin and I are back at waterintobeer starting at the end of November, with lots of great guests joining us for duo improvs. Full list tba, but I’ll be joined by Kate Carr (25th November), Emily Shapiro (16th December) and Andrew Lisle (20th January)…save the dates!
Ripsaw Catfish in Manchester
Also at the end of November, Ripsaw Catfish will ride again, appearing at David Birchall’s excellent Curious Ear series in Manchester. The autumn season is packed full of brilliant artists, so it’s well worth checking out who’s playing over on the Curious Ear site. Anton and I will be doing a guitar and Lyra-8 set for this gig too – a first! Come and hear the results at the Peer Hat, 27th November.
As well as those, I’ll be playing a duo set with Dee at a gig organised by Phil Durrant next week (Friday 3rd November at Hundred Years Gallery – update: I’ve had to pull out of this due to illness) and am looking forward to playing for the first time at the Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses (!) as part of their Avant Garden series, in a trio with Tom Ward and Panos Ghikas (19th November).
And somewhere in there I’ll be working behind the scenes on volume 2 of the Setlist zine!
Carapace now up on Ripsaw Catfish Bandcamp site
We’ve just published the newest Ripsaw Catfish album, Carapace, on the band’s own BC site. The album came out last year on Raw Tonk, and you can now support the band by grabbing your copy from us direct! See embed below…
I’m also pretty pleased with the new site header I bashed out while uploading the album last night, featuring a very distorted and blown-up part of Colin’s album artwork for Carapace:
Summer duo gigs with Dee Byrne – and TAPE!
This summer Dee and I are playing a cluster of gigs as a duo, in London, Bristol and Antwerp! We’re working on acoustic saxophone improvisations as well as a new electronic version of the duo with me on Lyra-8 synthesiser and Dee processing her sax with effects pedals, which we’ll do at BRÅK for the first time and then record.
24th June – BRÅK at waterintobeer, Brockley, London
26th June – Cafe Kino, Bristol with Clarkson/Grigg/Hill and Carnivorous Plants
28th June – Flim Flam at Ryan’s Bar, Stoke Newington, London
25th August – Summer Bummer Festival in Antwerp, Belgium
To mark the occasion, our 2020 duo album Disembark! is now available as a cassette….you can grab one from Luminous, or from the merch table at one of the gigs. I’m very happy with how these prints came out – most of them are the product of a very hot day in the studio, when my printing got slightly freeform and chaotic, and it’s led to some rad results. Every individual case is different and will be shipped randomly!
Colin Webster Large Ensemble – First Meeting
Out now on Raw Tonk is First Meeting, the debut release from Colin Webster’s new large ensemble. Featuring an array of great improvisers – it’s a pleasure to be a part of it. The recording is from our gig last year at Cafe Oto. Have a listen….
It’s out!
Organising Space is out today. ‘A superbly conceived and executed release,’ said Andy Hamilton in the WIre magazine!
Organising Space by Sloth Racket available to pre-order today!
You can pre-order Organising Space starting today! Help me to know how many CD copies I need to make up by ordering yours right now, ready for the release day on 7th October. 
You can also listen to the first track from the album, ‘Not This Time’, in advance of the release day:
The sleeves were risograph-printed by Footprint Workers Co-op in Leeds, who also did our zines for the Dismantle Yourself album in 2019. I love the way they turned out!