Tuesday 17 October 2023, 7.30pm
PHEW is an avant-garde vocalist, electronics innovator and post-punk artist. Phew was a founding member of the legendary Japanese punk band Aunt Sally. After the band’s breakup in 1979, she continued her career as a solo artist, releasing a collaborative single with Ryuichi Sakamoto in 1980, and her first solo album, ‘Phew’, with Conny Plank, Holger Czukay of CAN, and Jaki Liebezeit in 1981. In 1992, her third album, ‘Our Likeness’, was released on MUTE (recently reissued), again at Conny’s studio, with Jaki Liebezeit of CAN, Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten, and Chrislo Haas of DAF. Since the beginning of the 2010s, she has released a series of works that combine voice and electronic music, and has gained international recognition as a forward facing electronic artist. She has also released collaborative works with Ana da Silva (Raincoats), Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms) and others. Phew's expansive ‘Vertical Jamming’ was released on vinyl for the first time via Disciples last year, whilst Mute recently released her stunning record ‘New Decade’; a stark, haunted album, populated by voices that intone empty pleasantries in English and Japanese, against a backdrop of fractured, dubbed-out electronics.
https://phewjapan.bandcamp.com/music
ALISON COTTON is a viola player based in London working in composition and improvisation. Her debut album ’All Is Quiet at the Ancient Theatre’ was released in 2018 firstly on cassette on Bloxham Tapes, followed by a vinyl release on Cardinal Fuzz (UK) and Feeding Tube (USA). In July 2019 her longform piece, ‘Behind the Spiderweb Gates’ was released on the Australian label, Longform Editions. As well as the viola, she uses an array of other instruments (her voice, harmonium, percussion, recorder, omnichord, shruti box and piano) to create long, haunting folk drones. Cotton’s new album ‘The Portrait You Painted of Me’, is a 6-track record – her first for Rocket Recordings. ‘Mumurations Over the Moor’ is a wordless piece of layered vocals, drifting like fog towards a sunset over the green undulations of North East England. ‘The Last Wooden Ship’ evokes the shipyards of Sunderland, laced with piano and percussion events, while her voice calls out like a siren urging listeners to a rocky demise.
https://alisoncotton-uk.bandcamp.com
ME LOST ME delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully weave together disparate genres, drawing influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music. In 2023 Me Lost Me released the critically regarded album 'RPG' and toured extensively in support of the release. On Me Lost Me's fourth full-length, This Material Moment - released this June through Upset the Rhythm - she has created an "emotionally raw" album, her most honest and vulnerable yet. Me Lost Me presents sound reaching in opposite directions, straddling time towards the archaic and timeless traditions of folktales, and towards the possible and potential futures of pastoral Britain and the world at large. This is an album which uses words as a material, a playful tool for experimentation, full of metaphor, abstraction and analogies. Jayne affirms, "it has softness and anger, humour, hope and despair, intensity of feeling in all directions expressed as textures, objects, places."
Chiara Lee & Freddie Murphy are two artists and curators based in Torino, Italy. With the moniker Father Murphy they released a series of concept albums and performed extensively across the world. Their DJ sets often include avant church music, droney soundscapes, atmospheric noise, sound sketches, cracklings electronics and left-field beats.
https://murphy---lee.tumblr.com/
