MoonMot album available to pre-order

Happy new year! A quick post as I ease myself into 2020 after a break from the internet. I’ve updated my gigs page with my dates for January to March and it’s dominated by MoonMot: the Swiss/UK sextet is back on the road in February and March, touring in the UK and mainland Europe as well as releasing its debut album ‘Going Down The Well’ on 14th February via Swiss label Unit Records. In the mean time, you can have a listen to a couple of tracks and pre-order the album (in LP, CD and digital form) on the MoonMot Bandcamp site.

LUME on The Hello/Goodbye Show

On Saturday 21st December, LUME has been invited to take over Dexter Bentley’s Hello/Goodbye Show on Resonance FM! Dee and I have both appeared on the show before (Sloth Racket played a live set in 2018), and we’re looking forward to filling a whole episode with LUME-related shenanigans. We’ll be playing some tasty tracks and talking about LUME projects, plus there will be a live set from Ti/om (Tom Ward and Tim Fairhall) and one from Dee and me as a duo.

Tune in from 12 noon until 1.30pm to hear what we’ve got up our sleeves…

Trio date and BRÅK Festive Special

A lovely couple of mid-December gigs coming up. On Friday 13th December it’s the return of my trio with Otto Willberg and Tullis Rennie, this time at Hundred Years Gallery:And then the next night, Saturday 14th December, it’s the last BRÅK of 2019 at waterintobeer! With a host of Yuletide guests….

Come one, come all, to hear some improvised music this festive season…

LUME back on the Barbican freestage

This Sunday 23rd November sees the return of LUME to the Barbican Centre! As part of London Jazz Festival 2019 we’re presenting two trio sets starting at 5pm:

Rachel Musson, Andrew Lisle and Cath Roberts: the second outing of our new double-sax trio.

Deemer + 1: Dee Byrne’s long-running duo with sound artist Merijn Royaards is joined by special guest Johnny Hunter.

It will be great to play there again: we had such a great day doing the LUME Freestage in 2015 (which you can read about in the archives).  Join us in the foyer for some fresh improvised music!

Afterwards I’ll be heading straight down to Brockley for the November BRÅK, where I’m playing duo with Johnny Hunter. The full lineup is on our website…why not round off your day with some beer shop-based improv?

IMPETUS GROUP

At Hundred Years Gallery on Sunday 17th November: the first meeting of Dirk Serries’ new ensemble IMPETUS GROUP. Dirk has been inspired to put this group together by Derek Bailey’s Company group, Iskra 1903 and John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble. It’s a great lineup that I’m happy to be a part of:

Saxophones : Alan Wilkinson, Cath Roberts, Martin Clarke
Bass Clarinet/Flute : Tom Ward
Trumpet : Charlotte Keeffe
Acoustic Guitars : Daniel Thompson, Dirk Serries
Double Bass : Otto Willberg
Cello : Hannah Marshall
Viola : Benedict Taylor

It’s an afternoon gig, with doors at 3.30pm. More info about the concert is on the HYG site, and you can read more about Dirk’s projects on the website of his label A New Wave Of Jazz.

FREENESS

Tonight on BCC Radio 3 at midnight, the first episode of a brand new improvised music programme called ‘Freeness’ will be broadcast. It’s presented by my good friend and formidable improviser, writer (of music and text) and organiser Corey Mwamba. This is pretty exciting!

Sloth Racket’s ‘We Decide What’s Next’ will be played on the show, along with me talking about the track. Constructing coherent sentences about my own work was harder than I expected, but I’m sure whatever I said has been edited into something that makes sense and it’s an honour to be part of the first episode.

With the axing and reducing of various programmes over the past few years, this feels like a really positive step by the BBC and I hope it’s the beginning of a new era of improvised music on the radio.

There’s an open call for submissions too: Corey and the Reduced Listening team who make the show have created an email address where artists can send in their music, so if you have some tracks you reckon would fit and you’d like played, send them over to freeness @ reducedlistening.co.uk.

I’m looking forward to tuning in and discovering some new music!

Two nice gigs this week

Quick post about two nice gigs coming up this week, both of which have lovely flyers.

On Tuesday 1st October I’m playing a trio set with Steve Noble and Otto Willberg at SET, Dalston. Otto has organised this gig and there’s a duo of Yoni Silver and Sharon Gal on the other side of the bill…should be an excellent evening.

Then on Saturday 5th October I’m playing at another SET space, this time their project space in Lewisham. I’ll be in duo with Charlotte Keeffe, as part of the first ever edition of the s10c series, organised by Sam Andreae and Mio Ebisu. Two other sets full of lovely people at this gig, plus an exhibition of Mio’s paintings, and food!

Release day!

The new Sloth Racket album is released today! You can now stream the whole album on Bandcamp, and order CDs and zines to be shipped straight away. Check it out!