Category Archives: Sloth Racket

Sloth Racket + Anthropods double bill tour!

Announcing an exciting project for next month: Sloth Racket will be going on tour with Vienna-based band Anthropods! I’ve been working with Mark Holub for several months behind the scenes on this, first trying to persuade UK promoters that they want to book a double bill (harder than you might think), then writing and submitting an ultimately-unsuccessful funding application to Arts Council England.

Despite the lack of UK funding support, the tour is able to go ahead thanks to Anthropods getting a grant from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport. Without that we wouldn’t be able to bring the band over and make this cross-border European collaboration happen, so we’re very grateful. It’s a tough landscape out there at the moment in terms of making projects happen in the UK, and even with the Austrian support the tour as a whole is on an incredibly tight budget. But! It’s happening and we’re super stoked about that.

The bands will visit four cities:

17th April: Sheffield! Hosted by long-time Sloth Racket supporters Jazz At The Lescar.

18th April: Canterbury! Hosted by the awesome long-running series Free Range.

19th April: London! Hosted by essential improv scene haunt Hundred Years Gallery.

20th April: Norwich! Hosted by fresh new artist-run DIY space Ambition’s Graveyard.

If you’re local to London or Norwich, you can support the tour by buying tickets in advance. Obviously we love people showing up and paying on the door – don’t let me stop you! – but getting your tickets in advance helps ease our budget-frazzled minds and gives us an idea of how the tour finances might end up when it’s all done. This makes us happy. Plus, they’re a little bit cheaper than on the door. So if you plan on coming out to see us in those cities, head over to our London tickets page or the Norwich tickets page!

For Sheffield, you can contact Jazz At The Lescar to buy tickets by following the link on their site, and in Canterbury it’s free entry (because it’s Free Range!).

Finance realness aside, I really am excited to take the band out for a run of consecutive dates again. It’s going to be great to share the bill with Anthropods and hear how the two bands’ music evolves as we move through the tour. Hope to see you out there. Plus, I’m pretty pleased with the wonky 3-D text I drew for the tour poster.

Ending this post with a nice new photo of Sloth Racket by Jonathan Crabb, taken at my Ink-Paper-Sound night at Cafe Oto last week. Thanks to everyone who came out to that; I had a fantastic time. It was brilliant to celebrate the zine project with a packed house!

Ink-Paper-Sound: Setlist 3 zine launch at Cafe Oto

I’ve put together a special night at Cafe Oto next month, to celebrate the third edition of the Setlist zine series! On Tuesday 19th March a great bunch of improvisers – all of whom are involved in the project as contributors – will play sets using material from the zines. We will have two new trios assembled especially for the event, a set from Sloth Racket, and projections of some of the zine artwork. There will be copies of the brand new hot-off-the-press Setlist volume three, which features another super nice lineup of contributors to be announced shortly. The trios on the night will be:

Khabat Abas / Dee Byrne / Bell Lungs

David Birchall / Kate Carr / Tullis Rennie

Sloth Racket will play a set using zine material mashed through some of my compositions from the band’s repertoire so far!

Most likely the night will focus on the first two zines, meaning that the music will take as its starting points text and visual contributions by some of the following: Kim Macari, Bell Lungs, Anton Hunter, Angela Guyton, Graham Dunning, Kate Carr, Dee Byrne, Old Bort, David Birchall and Sam Andreae.

Tickets are on sale from the Cafe Oto website now!

And you can grab your copies of the first two zines from my webshop…

Sloth Racket March dates

Two dates coming up for Sloth Racket next month! We’re heading to Manchester on 2nd March to play at David Birchall’s great Curious Ear series, part of a cluster of relaxed afternoon shows he’s putting on at St Margaret’s Church. Then on 19th March we’re in London for a set at a special evening I’m putting together at Cafe Oto, about which there will be more information very soon…

Special edition covers for Sloth Racket albums

I’ve started renting a studio space this year to focus on my printmaking work, which I’m happy to say has been leading to a lot of inky experiments. Up on the Sloth Racket Bandcamp site now are some fresh 2023 covers for a couple of our albums. Both are editions of 10.

May I introduce the Shapeshifters 2023 rhubarb and custard edition…

…and the blue eyed monster edition of A Glorious Monster!

More print experiments to follow.

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!

New Sloth Racket album! Live dates in October!

The fifth studio album by Sloth Racket is out next month on Luminous! Recorded in April at Lightship 95 in London, then mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney, Organising Space will be available to pre-order from 23rd September as a digital album and CD. The physical format features a risograph-printed sleeve designed by me and printed up by Footprint Workers Co-op in Leeds. We’re all really happy with how the album has turned out, and I can’t wait to send it out into the world.

The band are out and about to celebrate the album with three live dates, including an album launch at Cafe Oto on 10th October. Tickets are on sale for all three dates: links can be found on the Sloths website. Join us…

Two more Sloth Racket October dates announced

The cluster of gigs around the Sloth Racket album release in October is taking shape, with dates recently announced in Brighton and Glasgow! Tickets are on sale for both of those, along with the Cafe Oto date. So the current status is:

10 October – London: Cafe Oto (buy tickets)

11 October – Brighton: Safehouse @ The Rose Hill (buy tickets)

15 October – Glasgow: Pop Mutations Festival (buy tickets)

More tba all being well, but I’m already looking forward to this excellent trio of gigs! Brilliant poster for Pop Mutations below.

At some point there will be a Sloth Racket tour poster that pulls this thing together too!