Thursday 29 January 2026, 7.30pm
GRAIN is a concert series and archiving project for experimental and improvised music, largely happening within South Bermondsey, and programmed / produced by Caius Williams & Theodora Laird.
Through programming and documenting new and adventurous music through collaboration, archiving, workshops, and performances, the project explores the ongoing dialogue between the transience of DIY art spaces and the communities that inhabit them.
Theodora Laird is a vocalist and multidisciplinary artist. Releases under her solo project ‘feeo’ have received critical acclaim. Theodora's practice has involved in tandem with an interest in situating narratives within freely improvised music, specifically through frequent involvement in the GRAIN residency.
Rhodri Davies is immersed in the worlds of improvisation, musical experimentation, composition and contemporary classical performance. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations and has released six solo albums. His regular groups include: HEN OGLEDD, Cranc, Common Objects and a duo with John Butcher. He has worked with the following artists: David Sylvian, Jenny Hval, Derek Bailey, Sofia Jernberg, Lina Lapelyte, Pat Thomas, Simon H Fell and Will Gaines.
For the last ten years Davies has been closely associated with the pioneering composer Eliane Radigue performing seventeen of her pieces. She composed OCCAM I for Davies in 2011, the first in an ongoing series of solo and ensemble pieces for individual instrumentalists in which a performer’s personal performance technique and particular relationship to their instrument function as the compositional material of the piece. New pieces for solo harp have also been composed for him by: Christian Wolff, Carole Finer, Philip Corner, Phill Niblock, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone.
In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on ‘Self-cancellation’, a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award, he was a Chapter Associate Artist (2016-19) and in 2017 he received a Creative Wales Award. He is a co-organiser of the NAWR concert series in Swansea.
Caius Williams is a musician from London who plays the double bass, guitar, and bass guitar. He works in collaboration with others, alongside an ongoing solo project, and often works with improvisation.
Some projects include ‘Crosspiece’ (with Theodora Laird), a duo with guitarist Tara Cunningham, alongside recent performances or collaborations with
Lifetones (Charles Bullen of This Heat), Steve Noble, feeo, Daniel O’Sullivan, Mark Sanders, Sachiko M, Tom Challenger, Maggie Nicols, Mark Wastell, amongst others.
Caius has been running the GRAIN series at Avalon Cafe in Bermondsey for the last 3 years, which is focussed on programming new and adventurous music and nurturing a growing community with cross-scene and cross-generational collaboration.
https://caiuswilliams.bandcamp.com/music
https://www.instagram.com/caiuswilliams_
https://www.youtube.com/@GrainResidency
Rory Salter is a musician, artist and technician living in London. He has published albums under various monikers with Index Clean, TEETH, Zoomin' Night, Alter, TakuRoku, Infant Tree, Bison and amongst others.
His work is formed through experimentations with acoustic & electronic instruments, faulty & functional technologies, cassette tape, feedback and walking; motivated by exploring relationships to environment, work/labour & materials. It is rooted in practice and the forms of documentation and theory that come from that practice. He has performed and worked with Derek Baron, Ecka Mordecai, Russell Walker, Mark Peter Wright, Regan Bowering, Li Song and others
He co-runs the record label and mail-order distribution Infant Tree with artist Ben Victor Waggett and curates a series of concerts in London between Cafe OTO, Dalston and Spanners, Loughborough Junction. He also works as a sound technician.
Theo Guttenplan is a drummer and percussionist from London, playing improvised and other musics. He is also interested in woodworking, crosswords, computers, and football.
Born in Wuhan; based in London. Mainly uses electronics or electro-acoustic instruments for solo and group improvisation – currently focused on exploring the amorphous in different sound spaces.
https://atunnel.net/
https://zhenghao.bandcamp.com/
Mark Wastell is a versatile improvising musician who has played a central role in the British improvised music scene for thirty years. He has performed and recorded extensively and his varied resume includes projects with Derek Bailey, Phil Durrant, John Butcher, Lasse Marhaug, Rhodri Davies, Simon H. Fell, Burkhard Beins, John Tilbury, Mattin, Tony Conrad, Evan Parker, Tim Barnes, Bernhard Günter, Keith Rowe, John Zorn, Peter Kowald, Joachim Nordwall, Otomo Yoshihide, David Toop, Max Eastley, Hugh Davies, Julie Tippetts, Alan Skidmore, Mike Cooper, Chris Abrahams, Stewart Lee, Clive Bell, Arild Andersen, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Maggie Nicols, Will Gaines, Charlotte Keeffe, Thomas Lehn, Thurston Moore and David Sylvian.
