Category Archives: zines

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!