Wednesday 2 December 2020, 7pm

LIVE STREAM: NEXT Festival: Graham Lambkin + Still House Plants

No Longer Available

The event will be streamed on the NEXT Festival website. The stream is free but if you would like to donate to Cafe OTO to help see us through the current situation, you can do so here.

Founded 2000 in Bratislava, the NEXT Festival of advance music is an annual celebration of exploratory music and sound art – from electronic experiments through free-form improvisation to audio visual projects, it brings together artists that are pushing the boundaries of music.

Since 2015 NEXT Festival is bringing to Cafe OTO artists from East Europe and those who performed at previous editions. This year, the festival will be different, reaching far beyond its physical spaces in Bratislava and London. Due to lockdown restrictions in UK, the NEXT Festival concerts at Café OTO will be streamed via specially designed virtual reality environment.

For more information about the festival, please visit: www.nextfestival.sk

Graham Lambkin

Graham Lambkin

Graham Lambkin (b. 1973) is a London based multidisciplinary artist and publisher whose work embraces audio, visual and text-based concerns. Lambkin was a founding member of the seminal English underground group The Shadow Ring who between 1992-2002 explored the possibilities of fusing amateur folk music, cracked electronics and surreal wordplay into a unique and unsettling hybrid that continues to exert an influence today. Following the dissolution of The Shadow Ring Lambkin embarked on a run of critically acclaimed solo recordings including Salmon Run (2007), Amateur Doubles (2011) and Community (2016) as well as a series of collaborative projects with the likes of Joe McPhee, Keith Rowe, Moniek Darge, Michael Pisaro and Áine O'Dwyer. Lambkin was also the founder of the Kye label who between 2001-2016 published over 60 new audio works by artists as diverse of Philip Corner, Gabi Losoncy, Vanessa Rossetto and Malcolm Goldstein as well as significant archival collections by Anton Heyboer, Moniek Darge, Joe McPhee and Henning Christiansen.

As a performer Lambkin has appeared internationally, presenting work at venues such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, The Kitchen, NY, New Museum Brooklyn, NY, CALarts, CA, Sibelius Museum, Turku, I.C.A. London, Cafe OTO, London, Arts Centre, Melbourne and Fylkingen, Stockholm.

Lambkin's visual art explores the metamorphic properties of the drawing medium in which the abstract and the figurative perpetually shape-shift across contrasting visual planes, thereby undermining the expected categories of image content. These works have been exhibited internationally in five solo shows to date, most recently Time Runs Through the Darkest Hour at Blank Forms, NY. Lambkin has seen eight volumes of visual/text based work published to date, chiefly through Penultimate Press, Berlin/London, and has also produced graphic work for a range of artists including The Dead C, Harry Pussy, Splintered and Double Leopards.

Lambkin's much anticipated new release Aphorisms (2023) has just been published via Blank Forms, following their archival 4xLP boxset Solos (2021), and looks ahead to the extensive 12CD box/book anthologising the complete works of The Shadow Ring later this year. In addition Lambkin is readying for the release of Gondolas 2CD (2023), a collaboration with James Rushford via Erstwhile.

Still House Plants

STILL HOUSE PLANTS ARE A UK GROUP MADE UP OF JESSICA HICKIE-KALLENBACH, FINLAY CLARK, AND DAVID KENNEDY. 

FROM A BARE BONES SET UP OF GUITAR, DRUMS AND VOCALS THEY CREATE FRACTIOUS AND SHARP MUSIC WITH A MELTING POP HEART. BRIDGING ELEMENTS OF SAMPLING, SLOW CORE, AND REPETITION THE TRIO HAVE DEVELOPED A SOUND THAT CONSTANTLY BREAKS APART AND FUSES TOGETHER AGAIN.

THEIR SECOND LP, FAST EDIT, RELEASED ON BLANK FORMS AND BISON, WAS WRITTEN AIDED BY MOBILE PHONES, DICTAPHONES, LAPTOP RECORDINGS, CONVERSATIONS, AND LIVE SHOWS, BLENDING FIDELITIES AND AURAL SPACES. THINGS SIT ON TOP OF EACH OTHER, FALL OVER ONE ANOTHER, OR CLICK INTO PLACE, WITH HEARTS ON SLEEVES AND SPIRITS IN MOTION.

NOTABLE SHOWS INCLUDE EMPTY GALLERY (HONG KONG), HYPERLOCAL FESTIVAL (WITH NTS/BRITISH COUNCIL, BUENOS AIRES), VARIOUS DIY SPACES IN SANTIAGO DE CHILE, AND A SIX-MONTH RESIDENCY AT CAFE OTO AS RECIPIENTS OF THE OTO PROJECTS UK ARTISTS RESIDENCY FUND, (SUPPORTED BY JERWOOD ARTS).  2021-2022 SEES THE TRIO TOURING EUROPE, NORTH AMERICA, AS WELL AS SHOWS IN MEXICO AND JAPAN.

THE GROUP ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON THEIR THIRD STUDIO ALBUM.