Thursday 12 July 2018, 7.30pm
‘Medieval, experimental, freakish, sexy and spiritual: Trembling Bells’ new album is a folk-rock triumph.’ – THE QUIETUS
Glasgow-based TREMBLING BELLS are a psych folk phenomenon seeking to reanimate the psychic landscapes of Great Britain and relocate them to some vague, mythic land where basic human crises are encountered and conquered
Their debut album Carbeth was album of the month in Uncut, Observer and Rolling Stone magazines and their music and live performance has earned praise from artists as diverse as Paul Weller, Stewart Lee and Joe Boyd. They have played with some of the most influential and innovative musicians of the last 50 years, including the Incredible String Band, Kaleidoscope and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, with whom the band recorded the 2012 collaborative album The Marble Downs.
Trembling Bells have toured extensively around UK, Europe, North and South America. The past few years have seen the band go from success to success, becoming a huge festival draw in the process. They released a new album Dungeness in March 2018, their first full-length issue since 2015’s Sovereign Self. Adventurous and dynamic, fusing dark psychedelic expansiveness with joyous folk salutations, it is the sound of a band on top of their game.
The Left Outsides are Mark Nicholas (guitars, piano, drums and voice) and Alison Cotton (harmonium, viola and voice), a husband and wife duo based in London and whose atmospheric, hypnotic songs echo Nico's icy European folk, pastoral psychedelia and chilly English fields at dawn.
Last year’s There Is A Place drew deservedly huge critical acclaim, including headliners Trembling Bells’ Alex Neilson who, in awarding it four stars for Record Collector, reckoned the duo “merge dissonant, ritualistic drone with the narcotic fug of shoegaze and the bucolic swoon of folk rock - and that's just the first three tracks of their excellent new album”.
The follow-up album, their fifth, entitled All That Remains, is released on Cardinal Fuzz (UK) and Feeding Tube (US) in April of this year and in May, The Left Outsides tour the UK with Robyn Hitchcock.
Alison and Mark can often be heard on Radio 6 Music for whom they have recorded sessions for Stewart Maconie’s Freak Zone.
“Hard to pin down with any certitude, the music created by The Left Outsides varies from track to track and even moment to moment. Alison Cotton's vocals, harmonium and viola blend with Mark Nicholas's voice, bass, guitar, piano and drums in ways that recall everything from Kendra Smith and David Roback's drony duo, Opal, to PJ Harvey covering an old Blondie tune as a dirge”. – Byron Coley (The Wire/Feeding Tube Records)