Category Archives: zines

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!