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 various solo projects, and often works with improvisation and explorations of resonance and perception.
He is in the collaborative groups ‘Crosspiece’ (with Theodora Laird), ‘Argia’ (with Tara Cunningham & Theo Guttenplan). He also works as guitarist/bassist for feeo, alongside lots of other varied work as a supporting musician, both in studio and touring internationally. Some recent collaborators include Steve Noble, Tom Challenger, Charles Bullen, Jack Dove, Zheng Hao, Maggie Nicols, Mark Wastell, Rory Salter, Regan Bowering, Sachiko M, Mark Sanders, and others
Caius has also been organising ‘GRAIN’ since 2022: a concert series and label, focussed on programming new and adventurous music
https://caiuswilliams.bandcamp.com
Rory Salter is based in London, working mostly with sound and performance, as a musician and sound technician. Recordings are available via Index Clean, TEETH, Research Laboratories, Zoomin' Night & others. A new album 'a sky cold as clay' is out now on Infant Tree.
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. Mostly uses electronics or electro-acoustic instruments for solo and group improvisation, while other times also makes unpleasant computer dance music. Enjoys gritty and gnarly textures as well as delicate, amorphous qualities in different sound and space.
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.
