Saturday 28 June 2025, 7.30pm
Excited to host a debut UK show for The Double - the duo of Jim White and Emmett Kelly!
"Can you dance and meditate at the same time? Talking to one of The Double before a Brooklyn gig in the summer of 2014, I was told they were going to play a “dance piece.” I wasn’t sure how to take that, since neither member is particularly known for dance music or dance accompaniment, but it slowly began to make sense as I watched their stunning set. The music struck an odd balance between perpetual motion and perpetual stasis: the drummer, Jim White (Dirty Three, Venom P Stinger), maintained a modified Bo Diddley beat, switching between the snare and the toms after long stretches on each, while the guitarist, Emmett Kelly (Cairo Gang, Ty Segall & the Muggers), stuck steadfastly to an E chord (or mainly the e’s and b’s of an E chord, to be more accurate). They took the underpinning of countless rock and roll songs—the rhythm section--and decisively moved it to the foreground. It soon became clear that this wasn’t going to be the average concert of discrete songs or pieces--so the question then became how long they would sustain the groove for.
Maybe you have to see The Double live to fully appreciate what they do, maybe you have to dance to their music in order to fulfill its true intent…or maybe this album is a definitive statement of what they’re all about. The Double’s music is both mesmerizing and propelling, allowing for potential mental and physical stimulation. These guys eradicate the proverbial mind-body split with little more than strings, sticks, and skins." - Alan Licht
Charles Hayward is an English drummer/singer/composer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with early European improv group Mal Dean's Amazing Band and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in Quiet Sun as well as a short stint with Gong. Since the late 80's he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations including Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith), Monkey Puzzle Trio, Albert Newton (with Pat Thomas and John Edwards) and This Is Not This Heat which toured the UK, Europe, USA and Japan between 2016-2019 performing expanded versions of This Heat’s oeuvre to unfaltering critical acclaim. Hayward’s latest group, Abstract Concrete, formed from London players from a diversity of European underground scenes, released it’s self-titled debut album in November 2023.
30 MINUTE SNARE DRUM ROLL takes a rudimental drum technique and extends this elemental sound out beyond itself into an undulating line that pirouettes and spirals through acoustic space, changing density, pressure and volume. The pencilled, monochromatic sound suggests more than itself; time is the frame.
