For the Café OTO Projects Promoters and Artists Fund, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Miles of Smiles is extremely proud to present a very special pair of interlinked shows exploring the mercurial nature of the British outsider/ experimental impulse as it filters through the pastoral, idyllic & individual (Andrew Chalk and Matthew Shaw on Saturday 18 January), and the urban, industrial and collective (Vibracathedral Orchestra and Blood Stereo on Saturday 8 February).

VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA

Vibracathedral Orchestra are the totemic ensemble of contemporary British outsider music. Their chimerical DNA spans from beatific Labour-club raga to full-on face-flaying West Riding Kraut-out, whilst the core membership and elastic supporting cast that has realised this wayward vision is an unrivalled who’s who of the UK audio underground. This very rare performance, Vibracathedral Orchestra’s Café OTO debut, will be the band’s first London show since 2007 and is seriously not to be missed.



Formed in the late 1990s by Mick Flower, Neil Campbell and Julian Bradley, the ‘classic’ line-up was soon completed with the addition of Bridget Hayden and Adam Davenport. Across a subsequent, flaming trail of visionary releases for VHF, Eclipse, Important, Textile and others, the principal quintet was sporadically augmented by fellow travelers like Richard Youngs, Matthew Bower and John Clyde-Evans, as well as by kindred spirits from the New Weird America such as Chris Corsano, Pete Nolan (Magik Markers) and Tom Greenwood (Jackie-O Motherf****r).

The central unit subsequently uncoiled between 2004 and 2006, with first Bradley, and then Hayden and Campbell, all departing; Bradley re-joined Flower and Davenport in Brighton in 2008 for a ferocious finale at the Colour Out of Space festival. Since then the individual members have remained prolific, but as a group Vibracathedral Orchestra have lain dormant - a bloodied battalion slumbering in a sonic Caerleon or Valhalla, awaiting the clarion-call to re-enter the fray.



This invocation duly came last month, when the band re-formed to collaborate with New York-based audiovisual artist Andrew Lampert across two interlinked performances in Bradford and Leeds. This very rare performance, Vibracathedral Orchestra’s Café OTO debut, will be the band’s first London show since 2007 and is seriously not to be missed.

www.last.fm/music/Vibracathedral+Orchestra
www.vhfrecords.com/catalog/102.htm

BLOOD STEREO

Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance are Blood Stereo. Both Nyoukis and Constance are rightly venerated as catalysts and superconnectors within the UK counterculture through a diverse range of groups and projects including Prick Decay, The Polly Shang Kuan Band, Ceylon Mange, the Chocolate Monk label and Brighton’s Colour Out of Space festival.

As a duo, the pair mercilessly deploy feral, atavistic vocalisations alongside hissing, rumbling tape-loops and electronics. Through this they establish a perfect high-concept/low art convergence, an intense and disorienting swirl which wreaths the synapses like the coiling, blackened, wordless squalls of our deep anxieties and desires oozing through bare, cracked windows, out of wardrobes and from beneath beds to flood and freeze the mind in the middle of the night.



www.chocolatemonk.co.uk/bloodstereo.htm
bloodstereo.bandcamp.com


This performance was funded through the OTO Projects Promoters and Artists Fund set up to support the creation and delivery of new live events with UK-based musicians. This fund was made possible with support from the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.



www.jerwoodcharitablefoundation.org