The A Band

"The importance of The A-Band to the UK rock underground is commensurate with the explosive impact that groups like AMM, SME or The People Band had on the free jazz and Improv set. An ever-fluctuating group of artists, dole boys, punk conceptualists and record collectors, they were the first UK ensemble to anchor a free drone music in the muscle and scorchof the most high-energy rock, while keeping it as untutored as the most elemental folk." The Wire.

Their line-up for this show may or may not include the following members: Stream Angel, Tim Barker, Neil Campbell, Jean-Emmanuel Dubois, Vince Earimal, Andrea Fletcher, Andrew Fletcher, Sticky Foster, Ginge, Stewart Greenwood, Dave Higginson, Mick Horton, Billy MacLennan Irvine, David Large, Neil Lent, Niggle, Neal Pates, Jim Plaistow, Barry Rothery, Sarah, Isabel Scott-Plumber, Stewart Walden, Dave Walters, Sharen Woodward, Richard Youngs.

Mudboy

Mudboy makes and recreates old circuit bent church organs, customising and retrofitting old keyboards for his own nefarious means. Then he plays rich music that hints at psychedelia and drones on them, mixing in field recordings, noise and complementary sounds, and even the odd drum sound that sounds like he’s been let loose on Aphex Twin circa Ambient Works 85-92’s drum machine. At times it sounds like a primitive electronica, far abstracted from the hyper-beats of so-called “IDM”, and reclaimed for the contemplative and wide-eyed explorers and discoverers of new territories and new states of mind.

Often it’s reminiscent of Florian Fricke robbed of his Popol Vuh, but reinvested with a different meditative strategy, playing alone in a field. On Mudboy’s website there are pictures of him performing outdoors from within some kind of bubble, rendering any image of him as hazy and undefined. This is a rich image for the music he has created – warm soft passages of keyboard massage and manipulation that are both lyrical and filling. In these circumstances, any other instrumentation would be wholly extraneous.