Thursday 30 June 2022, 8pm
ABSTRACT CONCRETE is another big step for UK underground heavyweight Charles Hayward on his music journey (This Heat, Camberwell Now, Quiet Sun, Massacre).
ABSTRACT CONCRETE is music which spans a wide emotional landscape focussed on connection and communication using a genre fluid sound world of song, groove and fire with all the lyrical intensity the world demands right now.
Language: abstract/concrete, subject, verb, object.
ABSTRACT CONCRETE brings together some of the most exciting and forward-thinking young London players from a diversity of European underground scenes.
Agathe Max plays viola with the band but is best known as a collaborative violinist and composer with soundtracks for films, theatre and dance and performs solo throughout the UK and Europe.
Roberto Sassi plays electric guitar and electronics. His music world spans techno funk collective Snorkel through to large scale project London Improvisers Orchestra and music and sound design for video, dance and theatre.
Yoni Silver plays keyboards. On the album he extends group arrangements with clarinets and alto saxophone. His work ranges from the song minimalism of Ashley Paul through to the spectral Hyperion Ensemble.
Otto Willberg plays electric bass and double bass, explores the between zones, locks the groove down tight and wild. As part of Sound and Music’s initiative New Voices 2019, Otto created the site Bootleg Spatial Recall, a public sourced archive.
Charles Hayward plays drums and sings, bringing his intense energy to the group, questioning everything, making and sharing.
ABSTRACT CONCRETE sound is now, sound is here
Charles Hayward is an English drummer/singer/composer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with early European improv group Mal Dean's Amazing Band and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in Quiet Sun as well as a short stint with Gong. Since the late 80's he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations, including Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith), Monkey Puzzle Trio and Albert Newton (with Pat Thomas and John Edwards). The project This Is Not This Heat has recently completed a 3 year series of performances in UK, Europe, US and Japan.
Throughout a nearly 50 year career Charles has developed idiosyncratic attitudes and insights into a wide range of soundwork, spanning improvisation, song, sound as sound, using order and chaos as creative energies. He curates a six monthly series of performances, workshops and installation called Charles Hayward Presents on behalf of Lewisham Arthouse for Albany Theatre. Recent releases include ‘Objects of Desire’ cassette on Blank Editions and the piano centred song cycle ‘Begin Anywhere’ on Klanggalerie & God Unknown Records.
“As impassioned and animated offstage as behind his massive drumkit, Charles Hayward radiates a genuine intensity. He first came to wide attention as drummer with the highly influential This Heat as the embers of Post-Punk simmered off into wilder experimental tangents. He has released a dozen solo and colaborative albums, and puts on rare solo live shows which pull the raw muscular percussion at the heart of Rock into new shapes with devastatingly powerful results.” – Freq
"Telepathic magic……. Hayward is one of the most life-affirming people who stalks this dark globe." - SOUND PROJECTOR
Graduate in Electroacoustic Composition, violinist Agathe Max, besides her collaborations with KURO, Mésange, Papivores… works on different projects including music and sound design for documentaries, animated movies, short movies, theater, contemporary dance and art exhibitions/sound installations. After training in classical music for 1O years, she graduated at the Bourgoin-Jallieu School of Music, France, in 1995. Later on, she was exposed to improvised music and to the experimental scene. Inspired by a world both enchanting and draped in darkness, she has developed a wide range of sound textures, unique and melodious, creating unconventional and magnetic musical pieces reflecting a personality in constant search of rareness in music.
“Agathe Max delivers a drone to keep the earth turning on its axis, with a keen and romantic sense of swing. Everything you need to have a good time” – Jonathan Kane.
Bass-clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist Yoni Silver’s activities include hyper-spectral adventures with Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble; a bass clarinet and percussion duo with Steve Noble; a bass clarinet/violin and possessed vocals duo with Sharon Gal; Denis D’or with Grundik Kasyansky and Tom Wheatley; bass clarinet and drums duo with Crystabel Riley, and solo performances on amplified bass clarinet.
He has appeared on labels such as Creative Sources, Confront Recordings, Wasted Capital, Chocolate Monk and Edition Modern.
Otto Willberg plays various bass instruments and lives in London. Live, Otto performs unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. Strangely abstracted funk and fusion, a blend of the abstruse and immediate. silky smooth, luxurious, odd and compelling, "like listening to Eberhard Weber through a drainpipe”.
Otto is often heard on acoustic and electric bass with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete//This Heat), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort.
He has a solo record called ’The Leisure Principle’ out on Oren Ambarchi's the Black Truffle label. 6 unashamedly melodic & profoundly strange workouts for heavily filtered bass harmonica & electric bass!
Roberto Sassi is a London-based guitarist, composer and improviser.
Originally from Italy, Roberto started playing, recording and touring with bands such as CARDOSANTO, ANATROFOBIA and MGZ & LE SIGNORE.
Since he moved to London in 2007, he has been playing with VOLE, SNORKEL, FOREBRACE, ENSEMBLE PROGRESIVO and other projects (DEATH DRAG, The CHOLMONDELEYS & The FEATHERSTONEHAUGHS and GLENN BRANCA ORCHESTRA)
In his 25 years’ practice he has been developing a musical language that has brought his guitar playing from the noise rock beginnings to working within experimental music and free improvisation.
He has been a regular member of the LONDON IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA from 2009 to 2013 and, as an improviser, he has worked with several musicians including Roland Ramanan, Ricardo Tejero, Pat Thomas, Alex Ward, Steve Beresford, Steve Noble, Alan Wilkinson, Rachel Musson, Terry Day, John Russell, Xabier Iriondo, Claudio Lugo, Marcio Mattos and Javier Carmona..
Alongside his performing activity he has also worked as sound designer for video installations and dance.
