The Ripsaw Catfish album ‘For The Benefit Of The Tape’ is now available to stream and pre-order from Raw Tonk Records! Have a listen:
Anton and I are now looking forward to getting stuck into our next Catfish project, a collaborative tour called ‘Shoaling’. We’ll be playing with lots of musicians around the UK starting November 18th….more info (and flyer!) on this to come soon.
Quick post to say that a Ripsaw Catfish release is on its way! ‘For The Benefit Of The Tape’ will be out on Colin Webster’s excellent Raw Tonk Records on November 3rd. I’ve done some seriously lo-fi artwork for the sleeve (see below) and Angela Guyton has designed a fantastic band logo which I’ll post soon (it only exists as a stamp at the moment, ready to be applied to the sleeves I’m about to make!). More on this to follow…
See you there? Advance tickets for October 5th are available from the Vortex website, and the Manchester Freedom Principle gig on October 7th is £5 on the door.
Exciting news: the Quadraceratops album is now available for pre-order from Efpi Records! It will be released on October 6th, but you can place your order now for download and/or CD versions. I did the album artwork using linocut printmaking and I’m really pleased with how they came out:
I think my living room will be looking like this for a while…
Last week I spent a very enjoyable day playing through Corey Mwamba’s new work ‘new dark art’ as part of a special Eb sax quartet we put together. The lineup was a Madwort/Saxoctopus hybrid: Chris Williams and Tom Ward on altos, with Colin Webster and me on baritones. Corey was documenting the session as it forms part of his MRes in composition, so here’s a video:
We’re looking forward to more activity with this music and the quartet!
Just a quick post to say thanks for coming, if you were at either of the Anton Hunter ‘Article XI’ gigs. We had a fantastic time and both performances went really well! We just need to sit back and wait for Anton to organise the world tour now. Both gigs were recorded, so hopefully those will see the light of day fairly soon…in the mean time here are a few photos:
The rehearsal shot…(by Peter Fay)
The group shot…(by Peter Fay)
The Manchester gig… (by Peter Fay in challenging lighting!).
The London gig… (by Cara Courage – and there are lots of other great shots from the gig on her Flickr page)
Next on the horizon for me is the launch of ‘LUME Presents…’ at the Vortex this Sunday. Looking forward to that! See below for the full listings on a new lovely poster from Peter Beatty:
After a really nice gig at Fusebox in Leeds with Ripsaw Catfish last week, I’m now looking ahead to the next project on the horizon: playing in Anton Hunter’s brand new band ‘Article XI’. We’re performing at the Manchester Jazz Festival on 24th July, and the Vortex in London on 27th July.
The lineup is:
Anton Hunter / guitar, electronics
Graham South, Nick Walters / trumpets
Mette Rasmussen / alto saxophone
Sam Andreae, Simon Prince / tenor saxophones
Cath Roberts / baritone saxophone
Seth Bennett, Richard Foote / trombones
Eero Tikkanen / bass
Johnny Hunter / drums
Anton has written a set of new music for the group, and at the first rehearsal a couple of weeks ago it was sounding great. Plus, it’s a lovely bunch of people. I’m very happy to be involved!
I’m also looking forward to checking out the rest of the festival while I’m up there. Should be an enjoyable week…
Quick post about an upcoming gig this Friday, 4th July. Ripsaw Catfish are heading to Leeds to play at Fusebox. It will be our first time at this long-running night – the programme is always fantastic so it was really nice to be asked. We will be in a double bill with Backyard Chassis, a trio of Adam Fairhall, Johnny Hunter and Corey Mwamba…very much looking forward to hearing them!
In other Catfish news, we did a recording last weekend in Sam’s Basement, Macclesfield, so hopefully that will see the light of day in the next few months. We’re also working on putting our ‘Shoaling’ tour together for late November/early December, and I’ll post about that once it’s all sorted. In the mean time, here’s a recording from our February gig at Fizzle (at the Lamp Tarvern) in Birmingham. See you in Leeds!
Just a quick post with a piece of exciting news: Dee and I heard last week that LUME is one of the recipients of the 2014 Jazz Services/PRSF Jazz Promoters Award! This is great for us as it will ease the financial pressure a bit, helping us keep the night going into 2015. We’re currently in the middle of booking our Autumn 2014 season of gigs, and it’s already looking pretty sweet. Massive thanks to both organisations for supporting original and improvised music at Long White Cloud and beyond…
…speaking of which, if you’re free this Thursday, I’m playing in a trio with Olie Brice and Corey Mwamba! See below post for details…
I just booked in what promises to be a nice gig with a brand new group. It will be a trio with Corey Mwamba (vibraphone, small instruments), Olie Brice (bass) and me on bari. This combination hasn’t played together before so it should be fun! One of the reasons for setting up LUME was to have a platform for trying out new things, and this is one. Come and hear the results on June 12th at Long White Cloud.
I made a photo mashup for the LUME promo…could be worse…
