Category Archives: zines

Sightlines and light-maps: exhibition at Project DIVFUSE

I’m very happy to announce Sightlines and light-maps, an exhibition with live improvised music to (belatedly) celebrate the launch of Setlist zine vol. 4! Taking place over the weekend of 6th, 7th and 8th September at Project DIVFUSE in East London, the exhibition will focus on the two image-based Setlist zines, volumes 2 and 4, with work by Sam Andreae, Old Bort, Angela Guyton, Bell Lungs
, Kim Macari, Khabat Abas, Sophie Cooper, Hannah McCann, Livia Garcia, Tullis Rennie and Benedict Taylor. To date only seen as tiny printed pages, artists’ contributions will be enlarged to (comparatively) huge sizes and projected onto the walls. Responding to the visuals with improvised live sets will be members of improvising large ensemble ONe_ Orchestra NEw and Setlist artists.

Project DIVFUSE is a fantastic micro-artspace run by Livia Garcia (herself one of the artists who contributed to Setlist 4, as you’ll have seen above). After being involved in the zine project, Livia offered up the space to host a launch event, and we’ve ended up with a whole weekend! It’s going to be great to see everyone’s artwork in projection-form, and copies of the zines will be on sale.

Entry to the exhibition is free, and it will be open on:

Friday 6th September 17:00-19:00
Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th September 14:30-16:00

Across the weekend there will be a cluster of live performances:

Friday 6th September
19:00 – Benedict Taylor (viola) and Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone)

Saturday 7th September
16:30 – Barbie Mukoda (solo flutes)
18:00 – Caroline Kraabel (alto saxophone) and John Edwards (double bass)

Sunday 8th September
16:30 – Sue Lynch (solo saxophone)
18:00 – Kate Carr (electronics) and Cath Roberts (electronics)

Tickets for the live sets are £7, or £12 to attend two performances. There are only 8 spaces available for each set! Head to the Project DIVFUSE website to reserve your place.

SETLIST 4!

Out today is Setlist 4! The final installment in my Setlist series of mini-zines as tools for improvisation. For this zine we return to the visual realm, with a theme of (miniature) maps. Once again a great bunch of artists said yes to this and have risen to the challenge, so in Setlist 4 you’ll find work by:

Khabat Abas
Sophie Cooper
Hannah McCann
Livia Garcia
Tullis Rennie
Benedict Taylor

All the zines have been printed by the excellent Footprint Workers’ Co-op in Leeds, and this one is no exception. This time I went with a super nice teal ink, and the A7 mini-zines are riso-printed on recycled paper as usual. I’m really pleased with how they came out; the dark teal colour brings a nice high-constrast quality that works great for images – whereas with text-based zines like Setlist 1 and 3 I was able to get away with some light/bright colour inks.

Setlist 4 is available now from my web shop, which I’ve finally given a name: Ink-Paper-Sound. This was the name of the launch event I put together at Cafe Oto for Setlist 3, and I liked it so much I wanted it to stick around.

Although this is the last Setlist zine (probably), Ink-Paper-Sound is just getting started as a project. With that in mind, also out today is ‘A skeleton/some bones’, a double-sided graphic score zine by me! Fold it yourself, or get me to do it, and play the two structures either in booklet form or flat. Here’s my attempt to photograph it, which was actually quite tricky…

Out today: Setlist 3!

The third installment of my Setlist zine project is out today! For Setlist 3 I asked four of my favourite artists from the improvised/experimental music world to send me a question. As before, the texts are intended as starting points for improvisation, and I love what people came up with! The zine features work from:

honor ash
Laura Cole
Caroline Kraabel
Han-earl Park

As per the others, these zines are A7 riso-printed booklets on recycled paper, printed and assembled by the amazing Footprint Workers Co-op in Leeds. This time I went for neon pink ink – a decision I’m very happy with!

Copies are available from my webshop – or you could wait until the launch event next Tuesday 19th March at Cafe Oto! Either way, hope you enjoy it, and if you use it for a performance I’d love to hear about it.

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…

Setlist zine volume 2 out today!

The second installment of my Setlist zine series is now available! After the first volume focussed on four-word micro-texts, for this one the brief was images. Any visual material was welcome, so long as it didn’t include any words at all. A fantastic group of artists are on board for this zine:

Sam Andreae
Old Bort
Angela Guyton
Bell Lungs

Kim Macari

It’s been a great process assembling the work into the zine format; quite different from the text-based one, bringing up different considerations to take into account when dealing with other people’s visual work and making sure it looks good. I went with a darker ink colour for this one, to give the images more definition, and I’m pleased with my choice of purple. After thinking about paper colour options for a while, I ended up sticking with the same as volume one in order to give maximum ink-paper contrast.

You can pick up a copy from my webshop, and hopefully this volume will also start to appear in physical-world shops too as I find stockists for the zine project.

If you do get hold of a zine – whichever volume – and use it in a performance, I’d love to hear about it! Do drop me a line as I’m interested to know what the zines end up doing….

 

Setlist zine update

Quick post to update you on the progress of my Setlist zine project. I’ve been working on volume 2 over the past few weeks and just sent it over to Footprint to print yesterday! Very exciting. More about this soon, but suffice to say that it features work by another brilliant bunch of artists…

Meanwhile, Setlist volume 1 is slowly making its way into physical places where you can buy it! Stockists as of this post are:

– TACO, London
– Hundred Years Gallery, London (of course!)
– Rare Mags, Stockport

It feels great to see it out there and I have a list of other places to approach. If you’re not in Stockport or London, you can buy a copy direct from my webshop. And hold tight for volume 2…I’m hoping it will be ready by mid-December, all being well.

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!

Zine project: SETLIST

As part of going deeper into printmaking this year, I’ve been working on a DIY publishing project over the summer. The results are available today, and I’m super happy with how it came out!

Setlist is an anthology of words by artists from the worlds of improvised and experimental music. I invited five people to write a four-word provocation/title/agitation/starting point for an improvising group or solo performer, and wrote one myself too. Together they form a handy pocket-sized guide containing what could be the theme for your next improv set, the setlist for your band’s next gig, the lyrics for your new album, the score for your orchestra’s next concert, the text of your next work email…the possibilities are endless. I had a lot of fun thinking about layout and design, and making some incidental artwork for between the micro-texts.

There are contributions from:

David Birchall
Dee Byrne
Kate Carr
Graham Dunning
Anton Hunter
plus one by me.

It’s a 20-page A7 mini-zine, riso-printed in orange ink on recycled paper and card by Footprint Workers Co-op in Leeds. I love Footprint and have worked with them for quite a few years on Sloth Racket posters, flyers, the Organising Space album cover and the companion zine to Dismantle Yourself.

In order to get Setlist out there into the world I’ve started a webshop on Big Cartel. My plan is to populate it with more zines and other print experiments, but in the mean time you can head over there to order your copy of the zine!