Tuesday 27 October 2026, 7.30pm
An evening with audio mutants from far flung decades and lands. Four sets of anti-radical non-incoherent sounds.
Formed in London in 1981, Hastings of Malawi have spent more than four decades occupying a singular position within British experimental music. They have remained persistently out of step with every movement that has emerged around them, never comfortably belonging to any scene while maintaining a distinctive identity of their own. Emerging at the close of the UK's post-punk and industrial era, the group stood adjacent to, rather than within, the DIY underground. While many contemporaries pursued rhythmic industrial music or noise, Hastings of Malawi developed a practice rooted in neo-Dada, embracing absurdity, chance, interruption and deliberate incoherence. Their recordings reject polish, virtuosity and conventional musical structure in favour of rough-edged sound collages where accident and intention coexist.
Across twelve albums and their recent performances around Europe, their working methods have remained consistent. Low-fidelity recording technology, salvaged instruments, discarded consumer electronics, old records and the telephone have all served as instruments, transmission systems and compositional devices. Dial tones, engaged signals, crossed lines, answering-machine fragments, distant voices, scratched records, glitches and imperfections are folded into performances that treat the breakdowns of communication not as technical failures but as expressive material.
Humour has always sat alongside experimentation. Their work oscillates between the comic and the unsettling, the banal and the enigmatic, inviting listeners into sound worlds that appear chaotic yet reveal an internal logic of association, juxtaposition and disruption. Rather than seeking resolution or clarity, Hastings of Malawi cultivate ambiguity.
Working largely outside established institutions and commercial expectations, the group have built a body of work that has remained resistant to categorisation.
Reviewing one of their albums, The Wire captured the experience succinctly: "Rarely has an album so consistently made me question what the actual fuck is going on."
S. Glass creates live mixes of pre-processed noises, appropriated and found sound, disembodied voices, loops, fragments, and location recordings. Amplified objects and silent backing video add texture to the layers of disorientation. Take your meds before arriving at the venue. For years he attempted to tell people what’s what in the pages of Bananafish (more like “wait, what?” amirite har har). He’s one half of Glands of External Secretion and 1/20th of Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, purveyors both of music that is largely unmusical. A new track for Radiophrenia Scotland is airing at 10pm on 12 September, and he’ll be tending fires that must be tended in Dublin at The Reception Weekend Festival on 15 October.
https://glandsofexternalsecretion.com/
First time collaboration between Zheng Hao, Dylan Nyoukis and Duncan Harrison - The Cooperati - is likely the only abstract sound group boasting members from Wuhan, West Lothian and High Wycombe. Three generations of subterranean efforts in experimental sound culture, one single morass of cracked electronics, cassette tape wheeze, vocal gurnings and turntable abuse.
With the Hobo Sonn moniker now composting gently in the deep green mystery above Bostanj,Murphy has worked with Nimmo on a short trio of Xmas titles for Chocolate Monk (2015-2017) , an under-the-counter disc 'Text-Sound Snowflakes' (2019) and the collaborative LP 'Slow Lightning' on Sham Repro(2020)with Duncan Harrison.A debut 7679 release 'Marjean Wants To Change The Way You Think About Death' will follow soon via the Krim Kram label "
