Category Archives: Touring

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!

Summer duo gigs with Dee Byrne – and TAPE!

This summer Dee and I are playing a cluster of gigs as a duo, in London, Bristol and Antwerp! We’re working on acoustic saxophone improvisations as well as a new electronic version of the duo with me on Lyra-8 synthesiser and Dee processing her sax with effects pedals, which we’ll do at BRÅK for the first time and then record.

24th JuneBRÅK at waterintobeer, Brockley, London

26th JuneCafe Kino, Bristol with Clarkson/Grigg/Hill and Carnivorous Plants

28th JuneFlim Flam at Ryan’s Bar, Stoke Newington, London

25th AugustSummer Bummer Festival in Antwerp, Belgium

To mark the occasion, our 2020 duo album Disembark! is now available as a cassette….you can grab one from Luminous, or from the merch table at one of the gigs. I’m very happy with how these prints came out – most of them are the product of a very hot day in the studio, when my printing got slightly freeform and chaotic, and it’s led to some rad results. Every individual case is different and will be shipped randomly!

 

December gigs and AAO hcmf// project

December is upon us, and having just finished a big project (of which more later), it already feels like my 2022 is over – but in fact I have a few nice gigs in London this month. A quick rundown…

Sunday 4 December – with Christoph Gallio, Dominic Lash and Andrew Lisle at Hundred Years Gallery

Swiss saxophonist Christoph Gallio has spent a chunk of time based in London this year, and I was very happy to be asked to join him for this afternoon set at the gallery. With a heavyweight Lash/Lisle rhythm section! More info on the HYG website.

Friday 9 December – new live electronics duo with Bill Thompson at LUME

Also at HYG is the last LUME gig of 2022, next Friday. My set will be the debut performance of a new live electronics collaboration with sound artist Bill Thompson. I’ve just added a Lyra-8 analogue synthesiser to my live electronics setup (see above – the huge one), and this will be the first time I’ve taken it out on a gig. Bill and I had a great session together earlier this week so I’m looking forward to playing again.

Saturday 10 December – Jason Yarde benefit gig, Cafe Oto and The Vortex

Fantastic saxophone player Jason Yarde is recovering from a stroke. For this benefit gig, Orphy Robinson has assembled a cast of characters from across the London improv scene for an afternoon improvised music relay. Players will move between Cafe Oto and The Vortex in freeform ensembles. More info and link soon…

Saturday 17 December – BRÅK Christmas Special with Charles Hayward

My last gig of the year is the BRÅK festive special. We’ll be at waterintobeer for a festive night of improv, and my duo partner is formidable drummer Charles Hayward! Tom will be joined by Sam Andreae, and Matt Cargill of Sly & The Family Drone with play a duo set with Colin. It promises to be a special night!

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Australian Art Orchestra hcmf// ‘Fresh Water – Salt Water’ project in Melbourne and Huddersfield

Over the last few months I’ve had the privilege of being involved in a pretty amazing international collaborative project with the Australian Art Orchestra. Co-produced by AAO and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Fresh Water – Salt Water is a new work centred around the music of Yolŋu songmen Daniel and David Wilfred, with guest UK artists Mandhira De Saram and myself along with AAO musicians Martin Ng, Helen Svoboda, Aviva Endean and Peter Knight. In early November Mandhira and I travelled to Melbourne, where the ensemble worked together to devise the new music. We then performed the piece at Melbourne Recital Centre (above), before recovening in the UK later in the month to present it at Bates Mill in Huddersfield for hcmf//. It’s been an incredible and very creatively stimulating experience! There’s a lot to process. I loved working with everyone and hope it can lead to more collaboration in the future. In the mean time you can read more about the project and the artists on the AAO website.

New Sloth Racket album! Live dates in October!

The fifth studio album by Sloth Racket is out next month on Luminous! Recorded in April at Lightship 95 in London, then mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney, Organising Space will be available to pre-order from 23rd September as a digital album and CD. The physical format features a risograph-printed sleeve designed by me and printed up by Footprint Workers Co-op in Leeds. We’re all really happy with how the album has turned out, and I can’t wait to send it out into the world.

The band are out and about to celebrate the album with three live dates, including an album launch at Cafe Oto on 10th October. Tickets are on sale for all three dates: links can be found on the Sloths website. Join us…

Two more Sloth Racket October dates announced

The cluster of gigs around the Sloth Racket album release in October is taking shape, with dates recently announced in Brighton and Glasgow! Tickets are on sale for both of those, along with the Cafe Oto date. So the current status is:

10 October – London: Cafe Oto (buy tickets)

11 October – Brighton: Safehouse @ The Rose Hill (buy tickets)

15 October – Glasgow: Pop Mutations Festival (buy tickets)

More tba all being well, but I’m already looking forward to this excellent trio of gigs! Brilliant poster for Pop Mutations below.

At some point there will be a Sloth Racket tour poster that pulls this thing together too!

 

Sloth Racket at Cafe Oto this October

A quick post to make you aware of the just-announced Sloth Racket album launch at Cafe Oto on 10th October! Tickets are on sale now for this special night – our first gig at Oto – where we’ll celebrate the release of our next album. The as-yet-untitled album is currently in progress and I’m very happy with the direction it’s going…

(Also pleased with the new collage-y image above that I put together for this gig!)

Ripsaw Catfish new album and live dates

It’s been five years (!) since the release of the second Ripsaw Catfish album Namazu, so Anton and I are pretty excited that our third one will be coming out later this month! Recorded last September in Manchester, then mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney, Carapace sees us add my electronics to the mix and take the duo in a new direction. We’re very happy that it will be released on Raw Tonk again too. You can pre-order the album from Friday 10th June and it’s out on Friday 24th June. My flyer for this features Colin Webster’s awesome linocut album artwork, which will appear on the sleeves in hand-printed form.

To coincide with the release we’re going out on a mini-tour, with three live dates in the UK:

18th June – BRÅK @ waterintobeer, Brockley, London | 19:00, £5 or more
We’re launching the album in the beer shop! It seemed fitting considering that the label boss and 50% of the band are involved in running the gig. Info about BRÅK is on our website, and you can find out how to get to the shop on the wib site.

26th June – Soundhunt @ Thrive, Cambridge | 19:00, £5
Another new series here run by Dominic Lash and N.O Moore, who we’ll be sharing the bill with. The gig is happening at Thrive, a great vegan cafe within walking distance of the station. More venue info on the Thrive site.

19th July – Chance Meeting @ NIAMOS, Hulme, Manchester | 19:30, £9/£6 unwaged
In our other home city we’ll be playing at this brand new night, sharing the bill with THRAA. All the info you need can be found on the Chance Meeting site, where you can also follow a link to buy tickets for the gig.

Looking forward to getting out there with this band again!

Sloth Racket live dates in April

Sloth Racket are playing three gigs in April before we go into the studio to record a new album. You can catch us in Newcastle, Sheffield and Nottingham.

Jazz North East are organising the Newcastle gig, and tickets are on sale here.

More info about the Sheffield gig organised by Jazz At The Lescar here.

Tickets are on sale for the Nottingham gig from Jazz Steps here.

Looking forward to this mini-tour – our first gigs with the full lineup since September 2019!

Out today! Exabout: Live in Ramsgate

A new Sloth Racket live album is released today on Luminous! Obviously 2020 hasn’t quite gone as we’d planned, and so instead of touring this year we are putting out this lovely recording from our 2019 tour.


It’s the full set from our gig at Arco Barco in Ramsgate, hosted by our friends Extra Normal Records. This was a really great night at a brilliant quirky seafront venue (accessed via a ladder!), where we shared the bill with Evan Parker playing a solo set. Anton Hunter was on recording duties and Alex Bonney has mixed it for this special live release.

The album is a digital-only release, our first one ever and mainly to keep costs down during these ‘times’. However, I had always planned to do new Sloth Racket shirts in 2020, and even with no tour I’ve gone ahead and got them made. There are three colours to choose from and a brand new scribbly logo design. The shirts are organic cotton, printed with eco-friendly inks by I Dress Myself in Frome. I’m really happy with how they came out – they are really soft and the print quality is excellent. The mockup image below shows the colours – head to the Bandcamp page for a size guide.

Hope you enjoy the music! I enjoyed listening through last year’s tour in the process of making it. Here’s to the slothtours of the future…