Wednesday 4 August 2021, 7.30pm
**Afraid to announce that due to illness Merlin Nova is unable to join us on Wednesday for the Daniel O'Sullivan residency. In her place, 'No Show', the duo of brothers Louis and Harry Stevenson Miller, will be stepping in.**
"The music of Daniel O'Sullivan plays like a haunted jukebox." - Wire
"A multi-dimensional artist that successfully soundtracks our profoundly confusing 21st century" - Prog
"O'Sullivan's dreampop mantras casually open up portals into other dimensions" - Uncut
Daniel O'Sullivan is a composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer living and working in South West London and has been contributing a vibrant, chameleonic brew to the music landscape since the late 1990's. He has achieved international acclaim writing, recording and performing both solo and with a myriad of celebrated groups including Grumbling Fur, Ulver, Sunn O))), Guapo, Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses, Laniakea, Miracle, Æthenor and This Is Not This Heat.
DOS collages a wide range of musical disciplines and has collaborated with a number of artists including several live performances and recordings with 'continuous music' pioneer Charlemagne Palestine and large scale surround sound/AV installations with Turner prize-nominee Mark Titchner. As well as playing and recording several albums with Norwegian experimental metal group Ulver and occasionally donning the robe with Sunn O))), O'Sullivan has been at the core of the wildly successful reincarnation of This Heat as a live entity.
Whether solo or in his varied collaborative projects, O’Sullivan’s work is strikingly dense and allusive, alive with enticing sonic diversions, hypnotic syncopation and highly ornamented song-craft. Both lyrically and within the intricately knitted arrangements, traditional forms are reshaped into transcendent pocket symphonies. Both intimate and alien, archetypal and atypical, joyous and melancholic, the aperture of O’Sullivan’s music is wide open and light streams in.
Merlin Nova is sound, song and movement. Her work is conceptual and merges her music and theatrical background. At the moment she is asking questions and runs a play group for adults called the Players' Circle. Nova released her ‘creepy, funny and all out terrifying’ (The Wire) debut album BOO! (2020) and her energetic choral EP Big Heart, long time love (2021). She has worked with Slow Dance, NTS, Young Turks, Café Oto and BBC Radio 6 Late Junction and has performed across the UK and Europe.
https://www.instagram.com/_merlinnova_
https://www.merlin-nova.com
Secluded Bronte - Richard Thomas, Adam Bohman, Jonathan Bohman - formed in London and launched in New York City in 2002. They released their first album, Secluded In Jersey City, on the Pogus label.
Secluded Bronte resist classification. They've been compared to This Heat, Wire, The Specials, John Zorn, Jean-Luc Godard, Ennio Morricone, Talk Talk, The Residents, The Fall, John Cage and Sun Ra. They sound like none of those artists. They sound a bit like some of them. But those artists sound like other artists too. Secluded Bronte have made radio dramas, performed sketches and plays and made visual art. Currently they're working on a feature film as writers, actors, producers and composers. Therefore trying to classify them is a waste of time, the only thing you can conclude is that elusivity is the aspect that best defines Secluded Bronte. But, if you really need a summary then a long time fan, the comedian Stewart Lee, has probably come up with the best appraisal so far:
“People who hate my stand-up often deny it even constitutes ‘comedy’. Doubtless many would wonder if the work of the veteran improvisatory trio Secluded Bronte should be considered ‘music’. Instruments may be involved, perhaps furniture, maybe even words, or all three in a chance collision of calculated heterogeneity.” - Stewart Lee.
https://fforddallan.bandcamp.com
