Tuesday 28 February 2017

Ravioli Me Away in interview for The Quietus!





"Confrontation and humour in equal measures". The ever-brilliant Ravioli Me Away in interview with Melissa Rakshana Steiner for The Quietus here.

x


Priests London show venue change!

Due to phenomenal demand our Priests show will now take place at Oslo, Hackney.
More tickets have subsequently been made available!

Upset The Rhythm presents...

PRIESTS
Thursday 25 May
OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney, E8 1LL
7.30pm | £8 | https://www.wegottickets.com/event/389169

Original tickets are still valid.


Friday 24 February 2017

XIU XIU - 'Forget' released today! Plus upcoming London shows!

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Hello Friday!

Today we’re thrilled to help shepherd Xiu Xiu’s new album Forget out into the wider world. It’s a total heart-quake of an album and we’re extremely proud to be involved with its release. Forget was produced by John Congleton, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu's own Angela Seo. Plus, it features guest appearances by fabled minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, L.A. Banjee Ball superstar commentator Enyce Smith, Swans guitar virtuoso Kristof Hahn and legendary drag artist and personal hero of Xiu Xiu, Vaginal Davis. Forget is available on LP, CD and digitally in shops worldwide as of today, including from us directly through our webshop.
http://upsettherhythm.bigcartel.com/
 
You can also stream the whole album here via Noisey!

XIU XIU is Shayna Dunkelman, Angela Seo and Jamie "Butch Jenny" Stewart. Starting in isolation in San Jose, California in 2002, Xiu Xiu has relentlessly toured all over the world since. Over the course of 15 7"s, five EPs, six collaboration albums and ten full lengths Xiu Xiu has never shied away from any topic that is honest and meaningful to them. Their songs are about gender dysphoria, suicide, loneliness, the tsunami in Indonesia, the Sanrio character Pandapple, abortion politics, cats, queer life and the individual responsibility of U.S. military. Somehow within all of this, cuteness attempts to find a way to embrace death and horrible emotion. Musically they draw from British post punk and synth pop, modern Western classical, noise and experimental musics, Asian percussion musics, American folk, torch singers, house, techno and 1950s rock n roll. 

Standout track, ‘Wondering’ is one of the catchiest boogie pop gems in the Xiu Xiu catalog, but like much of Forget, it still bears an underlying tension that manifests differently in each piece. From the haunted guitar duet of ‘Petite’, the hilariously fraught lyrics of ‘Get Up’, the advanced industrial boxing match of ‘Jenny GoGo’, or the experimental goth explosion of ‘Faith, Torn Apart’, all the songs, in their own ways, build to a roiling boil of a fate in vanishing. Xiu Xiu will also be playing for us in London this May, check out our show programme for the exactitudes.
About turn, in terms of concerts, we have two more winners on the horizon for you, next week’s Milky Wimpshake show at The Islington celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album and next month’s Wolf Eyes album release party at ExFed with Mumdance and Guttersnipe. Both of those shows are detailed more below, plus this week we announced new shows for Polish experimental cellist Resina, no wave gang Spray Paint and The Rebel, check out our listings for the wheres and whens!


\ \ \ \ \     SATURDAY 4 MARCH     / / / / /



MILKY WIMPSHAKE
‘20th Anniversary Show!’
ROBERT SOTELO
THE PLAN
Saturday 4 March
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT

MILKY WIMPSHAKE are a passionate punk band from Newcastle Upon Tyne. The band formed in the early 1990s as part of the Slampt Underground organisation, a label and arts umbrella that supported many of the best UK DIY acts including The Yummy Fur, Pussycat Trash, Red Monkey and personal favourites Bette Davis & The Balconettes. Milky Wimpshake play love songs for punk rockers, protest tunes, covers of Northern Soul classics, and some new classics of their own. Characterised by Pete Dale’s wry lyrics and playful, direct guitar riffs, Milky Wimpshake are true stalwarts and legends of the underground and have recorded several ‘personal vs political’ albums in recent times for the mighty Fortuna Pop imprint. This show celebrates the 20th anniversary of their 100% brilliant debut album 'Bus Route To Your Heart', times flies!
http://www.microsofa.net/mw/

ROBERT SOTELO intends to channel ‘Ram’-era McCartney without the chops, at once intimate and ambitiously layered pop music garnished in naive sincerity. Attempting to push beyond limited means, towards the absurd and abundant idea that recreating the feel and sound of The Beatles remains paramount an objective, the entire project rests on the uncertainty and confusion of mid-thirties existentialism and the exploration of the individual post-social life. Accompanied by a host of friends this initial performance will use the recorded compositions as a template on which Sotelo may attempt to draw out and utilise the individual merits of each musician to reconfigure and sensualise the jams. Sotelo’s astonishing debut album ‘Cusp’ will be released through Upset The Rhythm later this year.
https://soundcloud.com/robert-sotelo-3

THE PLAN harness unruly beats and stamp sweet vocal harmonies all over them. Post-punk in origins but evolving and revolving, its members have previously appeared in bands like Wetdog, Private Trousers and Vic Goddard's Subway Sect, and all live by the sea in sunny Southend.
https://theplan1.bandcamp.com/



\ \ \ \ \     FRIDAY 24 MARCH     / / / / /



WOLF EYES - ‘Undertow’ Album launch
MUMDANCE
GUTTERSNIPE
Friday 24 March
EXFED, Unit 4, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN

WOLF EYES are the USA's longest-running homemade, primitive, electronic, poetry & radical vibes trio. They don't just release albums they launch scotched, taped nuclear audio fronts on humanity. Wolf Eyes dropped a behemoth of a record last year with 'I Am A Problem: Mind In Pieces' on Jack White's Third Man Records, but this time they are switching things up in more ways than one for their forthcoming 'Undertow' album. The Detroit dark ambient sculptors are launching a new imprint called Lower Floor Music, and the album will be the first release on the label. The first foray into the new album is the title track, which is self-described as a "sea-bottom R&B sound lurch" featuring ambient synth and haunting spoken vocals. This show acts as an official album launch, celebrating the release of 'Undertow' into the world.

MUMDANCE has built a reputation as one of the world's most inventive DJs and producers, drawing from sounds from across the world but always putting his own unique spin on them. His early days as a producer saw him collaborate with big names from both Europe (Brodinski, Jammer, Skepta) and further afield, such as Mexican legend Toy Selectah, Brazilian groups Bondo Do Role and Banda Uo, and later Egyptian mahraganat icon Sadat. In 2013, following a two-year hiatus from original music, Mumdance released his most critically acclaimed music to date. His 2013 mixtape Twists & Turns was named FACT Magazine's best album of the year, while his collaborations with Novelist, 'Take Time' and '1 Sec' (released on legendary label XL Recordings), mark two of the biggest anthems from grime's recent revival, and topped end of year charts from Resident Advisor, Mixmag, FACT, Dummy, Noisey and more. Recently Mumdance has also launched Different Circles, his record label with Logos that specialises in 'weightless' - an already-influential combination of grime, techno, ambient music, sound design and more, and collaborated with artists such as Micachu, Pinch, AJ Tracey and Nozinja. For this performance Mumdance will present a new set of modular synth workouts.

GUTTERSNIPE are a Leeds drums/guitar duo who dive straight into a cauldron of hellish improv-skronk, paint-stripping abstract noise and nightmarishly deconstructed sonic catharsis – imagine the esoteric mayhem of Angel Blood combined with the venue-destroying psychic power of early Boredoms and Naked City, and you ain’t even close. Comprising the duo of Xylocopa Violacea and Bdallophytum, if Guttersnipe don’t blow away your cobwebs, nothing will.


Hope you have a fantastic weekend!
Thanks for reading, all the best!
UPSET THE RHYTHM
x




\\\\\  UPSET THE RHYTHM   /////
/////  UPCOMING    SHOWS   \\\\\

MILKY WIMPSHAKE
‘20th Anniversary Show!’
ROBERT SOTELO
THE PLAN
Saturday 4 March
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT

WOLF EYES - ‘Undertow’ Album launch
MUMDANCE
GUTTERSNIPE
Friday 24 March
EXFED, Unit 4, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN

MARY OCHER
BAMBOO
MOONBOW
Thursday 5 April
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT

RAT COLUMNS
Wednesday 19 April
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

OOIOO
Thursday 20 April
Kamio, 3 Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3JL

DANIEL BACHMAN
JAKE XERXES FUSSELL
Monday 1 May
Cafe OTO, 22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, E8 3DL

EX-CULT
Wednesday 3 May
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

IAN WILLIAM CRAIG
RESINA
Monday 8 May
OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney, E8 1LL

XIU XIU
Monday 22 May
Kamio, 3 Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3JL

PRIESTS
Thursday 25 May
The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Rd, Dalston, E8 3AS

NOTS
Wednesday 7 June
Cafe OTO, 22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, E8 3DL

SPRAY PAINT
THE REBEL
Tuesday 15 August
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

DEERHOOF
LE TON MITÉ
Monday 4 September
Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PQ
NB. This is the new date for February’s postponed event, original tickets remain valid.

Thursday 23 February 2017

New show announced for Spray Paint & The Rebel!


Upset The Rhythm presents…

SPRAY PAINT
THE REBEL
Tuesday 15 August
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

SPRAY PAINT are a no wave punk outfit from Austin, Texas made up of Chris Stephenson (drums/vocals), Cory Plump (guitar/vocals) and George Dishner (guitar/vocals). Spray Paint’s buzz-sawing guitars run headlong through labyrinthine tunnels of reverb, chased down by some wildly brain-bashing drums. All three members of Spray Paint sing too, helping create an uncontrollable sense of fervour as they jostle for the words. They work up a tone of paranoia amid the jagged rhythms, locking into a motoric groove that’s impossible to escape from, offset with stormy blasts of distortion. Since forming in 2012, Spray Paint have released six LPs and 7”s through SS-Records, Goner, Upset The Rhythm and Monofonus Press. They’ve wasted no time with hitting the road either, touring the US many times, with their friends Protomartyr and The Rebel.

THE REBEL is prolific London outsider Ben Wallers; a charismatic lone wolf in a cowboy hat or trilby and a tie whose electrified howls are too idiosyncratic to be broken down into market-oriented terms. It is difficult to sketch a thumbnail summary of a musician who has amassed a vast and unwieldy discography under a variety of names and genres: the most widely acclaimed is probably the Country Teasers, but he also moonlights as, or in, the Rebel, the Company, the Male Nurse, the Beale, the Stallion, the Black Poodle and Skills on Ampex, across folk, country, garage, post-punk, no wave and electronic pop. In the main part The Rebel is centred around twisted Casio drones, clanging guitar and some defiantly deadpan vocals, all thrown in the pan and pressure-cooked in Wallers' mind. Wallers has amassed a near-unquantifiable discography over the past 20 years, from scores of more or less “official” LPs, EPs and 7”s to seemingly endless self-released cassettes.

Wolf Eyes, Mumdance & Guttersnipe in London next month!


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WOLF EYES - ‘Undertow’ Album launch
MUMDANCE
GUTTERSNIPE
Friday 24 March
EXFED, Unit 4, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN

WOLF EYES are the USA's longest-running homemade, primitive, electronic, poetry & radical vibes trio. They don't just release albums they launch scotched, taped nuclear audio fronts on humanity. Wolf Eyes dropped a behemoth of a record last year with 'I Am A Problem: Mind In Pieces' on Jack White's Third Man Records, but this time they are switching things up in more ways than one for their forthcoming 'Undertow' album. The Detroit dark ambient sculptors are launching a new imprint called Lower Floor Music, and the album will be the first release on the label. The first foray into the new album is the title track, which is self-described as a "sea-bottom R&B sound lurch" featuring ambient synth and haunting spoken vocals. This show acts as an official album launch, celebrating the release of 'Undertow' into the world.

MUMDANCE has built a reputation as one of the world’s most inventive DJs and producers, drawing from sounds from across the world but always putting his own unique spin on them. His early days as a producer saw him collaborate with big names from both Europe (Brodinski, Jammer, Skepta) and further afield, such as Mexican legend Toy Selectah, Brazilian groups Bondo Do Role and Banda Uó, and later Egyptian mahraganat icon Sadat. In 2013, following a two-year hiatus from original music, Mumdance released his most critically acclaimed music to date. His 2013 mixtape Twists & Turns was named FACT Magazine’s best album of the year, while his collaborations with Novelist, ‘Take Time’ and ‘1 Sec’ (released on legendary label XL Recordings), mark two of the biggest anthems from grime's recent revival, and topped end of year charts from Resident Advisor, Mixmag, FACT, Dummy, Noisey and more. Recently Mumdance has also launched Different Circles, his record label with Logos that specialises in ‘weightless’ - an already-influential combination of grime, techno, ambient music, sound design and more, and collaborated with artists such as Micachu, Pinch, AJ Tracey and Nozinja. For this performance Mumdance will present a new set of modular synth workouts.
https://soundcloud.com/mumdance

GUTTERSNIPE are a Leeds drums/guitar duo who dive straight into a cauldron of hellish improv-skronk, paint-stripping abstract noise and nightmarishly deconstructed sonic catharsis – imagine the esoteric mayhem of Angel Blood combined with the venue-destroying psychic power of early Boredoms and Naked City, and you ain’t even close. Comprising the duo of Xylocopa Violacea and Bdallophytum, if Guttersnipe don’t blow away your cobwebs, nothing will.

Wednesday 22 February 2017

Resina to perform at our Ian William Craig show in May!

Very pleased to announce that Resina will be also performing at our Ian William Craig show at OSLO on May 8th!



Resina is the alias of Karolina Rec, a cellist and composer based in Warsaw, Poland.
 
Born 1982, Karolina graduated from the Music Academy in Gdansk and the University of Gdansk. Active in Poland’s independent music scene since the late ’00s, she was co-founder / collaborator of some of Poland’s most influential alternative bands: Kings of Caramel, Cieslak and Princess, Nathalie And The Loners, Anthony Chorale and more. She has featured on numerous album releases and soundtracks (including the Oscar-nominated ‘Rabbit a la Berlin’), and has been the author of a dozen music productions for theatre.  A compulsive live artist, Karolina’s style is primarily characterized by personal language of improvisation and alternative approach to melody. She has collaborated with Scott McCloud, Paul Brody, Piotr Kurek, Coldair, Scianka and many other artists.
Resina was signed to 130701 in February 2016, having sent in a hugely impressive demo. Her self-titled debut album is a result of experiments with cello and simple electronic tools – sometimes close to the form of song; sometimes based more on powerful, intuitive impressions but always marked by the desire to use non-obvious characteristics of the instrument. It is set for release later in 2016.

Upset The Rhythm presents…
IAN WILLIAM CRAIG
RESINA
Monday 8 May
OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney, E8 1LL
7.30pm | £10 | TICKETS

Tuesday 21 February 2017

STREAM Xiu Xiu's new album 'Forget', out Friday!

















You can stream our forthcoming Xiu Xiu album entitled 'Forget' through Noisey now! 
Out this Friday!


x

Tuesday 14 February 2017

Jamie Stewart & Lawrence English tonight in London! Spinning Coin & Sacred Paws this Friday!

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Morning all!

Tonight we’re very honoured to host HEXA; a duo made up of Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and observant, Australian composer Lawrence English. They will be performing a specially commissioned soundtrack to David Lynch’s celebrated Factory Photographs. Taking place at The Forge in Camden the performance will be heavily immersive with projections and meticulously honed walls of sound and clustered clouds of cymbal. The endlessly inventive Graham Dunning will also be debuting a set of music based around his recent Aggregate composition. Tickets will be available on the door from 7.30pm

That’s not us done for the week though as on Friday we’re back at The Islington hosting Sacred Paws and Spinning Coin as they whirl around the UK on their joint headline tour. Expect cascading guitar pop galore with moments of afrobeat adventuring and post punk propulsion. Now that’s what I call alliteration! Life Drawings will open the show too, full details on both events can be read in more detail below.

Also today, we’re announcing new concerts for sound artist, award-winning printmaker and classically-trained vocalist Ian William Craig and Memphis-based punk cyclone Ex-Cult. Full details on both of those forthcoming events in May can be found in our listing section that concludes our newsletter. Tickets now onsale!


\ \ \ \ \     TONIGHT     / / / / /



HEXA: FACTORY PHOTOGRAPHS
(Jamie Stewart & Lawrence English sonic response to David Lynch’s photography)
GRAHAM DUNNING (Aggregate performance)
Wednesday 15 February
The Forge, 3-7 Delancey St, Camden, London, NW1 7NL

HEXA is a project by Australian composer and artist Lawrence English and Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart exploring the physicality of sound and its abilities to infiltrate, abrade and occupy the body. Premiered at the David Lynch: Between Two Worlds retrospective at GOMA museum in Brisbane, Australia in April 2015, HEXA is a sonic response to Lynch’s Factory Photographs, a collection of images Lynch took of disused factories and the ruins of industry in the USA, Poland, Germany and the UK. Using the factory photographs as both a literal and metaphoric source, their performance draws root from the texture of Lynch’s images, the imagined and actual spaces, and the spectral histories contained within them. The effect is like “cascading low frequency pulses and tectonic plates of sound, suspended in cavernous cathedral-like spaces.” When asked recently about his decades’ long interest in photographing factories in various states of disuse, David Lynch remarked “I grew up in the north-west of America where there are no factories at all, just woods and farms. But my mother was from Brooklyn, so when I was little we used to go there and I got a taste for a certain kind of architecture and a feeling for machines and smoke and fear. To me, the ideal factory location has no real nature, except winter-dead black trees and oil-soaked earth. Time disappears when I'm shooting in a factory, it's really beautiful.” HEXA's album is out now on the Room40 label.
http://lawrenceenglish.com/
http://www.xiuxiu.org/

GRAHAM DUNNING is self-taught as an artist and musician having studied neither discipline academically. His live work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He also creates visual work, video and installations drawing on these themes. Graham has performed solo and in ensembles across the UK, and Europe, and exhibited installations in the UK, New Zealand and USA. He teaches Experimental Sound Art at the Mary Ward Centre in London and also gives various independent workshops. He has released through Entr’acte, Seagrave, Tombed Visions and more. For this show Graham will be performing a live set based around his recent solo composition ‘Aggregate’, based on a visual score, using the resonances of rooms within now-empty brutalist towerblock, Balfron Tower, alongside record crackle and analogue synth.
https://grahamdunning.com/



\ \ \ \ \     FRIDAY     / / / / /



SPINNING COIN
SACRED PAWS
LIFE DRAWINGS
Friday 17 February
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT
7.30pm | £6 | http://www.wegottickets.com/event/387070

SPINNING COIN are a fiercely independent rock group from Glasgow, something you could probably guess by listening to any of their songs. Their roots are all over the place but a simple love of playing together in their rehearsal space, and almost never turning down shows, has seen them coalesce a winning group sound in almost no time at all.  Drummer Chris White is part of the Winning Sperm Party collective, who document of a world of shadowy Glasgow music running all the way from the Glasgow Music Collective to Fuzzkill Records today. Where Spinning Coin branch out from things is in their cascading melodicism topped with some amazing shredding.  This connects into a slightly different Glasgow music scene more associated with Orange Juice, Teenage Fanclub, and of course The Pastels, who released their debut 7” through their Geographic Music imprint.  Both songs are home-recorded but show off the group’s easy flair for getting things to sound right without trying too hard, both are bittersweet, both are beautiful. 
https://soundcloud.com/spinning-coin

SACRED PAWS are a fantastic, intuitive dream punk duo, comprising Eilidh of Golden Grrls and Skeleton Bob on drums, and Rachel from Trash Kit and Shopping on guitar. Raw Soweto high-life riffs and rolling Afrobeat grooves are filtered through post-punk sass and ramshackle K Records charm. It’s an utterly joyous sound, the duo trading giddy melodies and righteous chants over febrile rhythms and chunky, infectious riffage. Rock Action are releasing the band’s debut album ‘Strike A Match’ on January 27th! This record follows their wonderful EP, and was produced by Tony Doogan and Sacred Paws at Castle Doom, Glasgow before being mastered by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road Studios.
https://soundcloud.com/rock-action-records/sacredpaws-everyday 

LIFE DRAWINGS are an un-googleable band of tip-top artrockers using lo-fi vocals, low key guitars, catchy bass bits, cheap keyboards, a drums and advanced admin for songs almost exclusively inspired by Country Teasers and The Fall.


Thanks for your time, see you later!
UPSET THE RHYTHM
x




\\\\\  UPSET THE RHYTHM   /////
/////  UPCOMING    SHOWS   \\\\\

HEXA: FACTORY PHOTOGRAPHS
(Jamie Stewart & Lawrence English sonic response to David Lynch’s photography)
GRAHAM DUNNING (Aggregate performance)
Wednesday 15 February
The Forge, 3-7 Delancey St, Camden, London, NW1 7NL

SPINNING COIN
SACRED PAWS
LIFE DRAWINGS
Friday 17 February
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT
7.30pm | £6 | http://www.wegottickets.com/event/387070

MILKY WIMPSHAKE
‘20th Anniversary Show!’
ROBERT SOTELO
THE PLAN
Saturday 4 March
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT

WOLF EYES - ‘Undertow’ Album launch
MUMDANCE
GUTTERSNIPE
Friday 24 March
EXFED, Unit 4, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN

MARY OCHER
BAMBOO
MOONBOW
Thursday 5 April
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT

RAT COLUMNS
Wednesday 19 April
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

OOIOO
Thursday 20 April
Kamio, 3 Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3JL

DANIEL BACHMAN
JAKE XERXES FUSSELL
Monday 1 May
Cafe OTO, 22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, E8 3DL

EX-CULT
Wednesday 3 May
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

IAN WILLIAM CRAIG
Monday 8 May
OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney, E8 1LL

XIU XIU
Monday 22 May
Kamio, 3 Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3JL

PRIESTS
Thursday 25 May
The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Rd, Dalston, E8 3AS

NOTS
Wednesday 7 June
Cafe OTO, 22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, E8 3DL

DEERHOOF
LE TON MITÉ
Monday 4 September
Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PQ
NB. This is the new date for February’s postponed event, original tickets remain valid.