Club Integral London presents…

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The Provincials

Manu Louis

at Iklectic Arts, London Waterloo, Thursday 23rd January 2020, starting 8pm

cost £10/7.50 -tickets on the door

The Provincials

are a dark folk duo comprising Polly Perry (formerly of Polly and the Billets Doux), and author and guitarist Seb Hunter. They have just released their second, highly acclaimed album The Dark Ages.Drawing on English folk, experimental rock and ambient music they have created a sound that shifts through the gears across the album, recalling at different times Polly Harvey, Bert Jansch, Popul Vuh and Nick Drake.”Drawing from jazz, rock and folk Provincials cast a spell, conjuring a resonant, hypnotic soundworld recalling Pentangle, These New Puritans, Talk Talk and David Lynch’s film soundtracks.”

Folk Radio

“Meandering along a path that stretches from the Norman church dotted shingly shoreline of the southeast coast of Romney to a revenge-soaked Iberia, The Provincials conjure up a lamentable present. Perhaps we are indeed doomed. Perhaps these are the end days or the darkness before the light. Whatever the truth, this diaphanous duo has articulated such augurs with a gauze-y, beautiful veneer worth savouring and improved no end since their last album.”

David Valvona, Monolith Cocktail

Manu Louis

Manu Louis

A review of Manu Louis’ latest album “Cream Machine”

“Sometimes, the beauty of art lies within the things you can’t grip or comprehend. Sometimes, music which plays with both familiar elements and progressive, experimental ideas can reach this special beauty with the tensions those two contrasts provide.

It’s kind of a struggle sometimes, but if the artist can strike the right balance, there is symbiosis to achieve. Belgian-born and now Berlin-resident Manu Louis is such an artist. ” Everything is noise (U.K.)

‘Kermesse Machine’ is a mountain of plastic glasses in the streets the morning after, a tropical digital marching band, a guy giving all he’s got at Karaoke because there’s nowhere left to sing, a gypsy virtuoso playing synth with a trumpet sound.Since 2015, he has performed solo more than 80 times everywhere in Europe and Asia accompanied by a crowd of electronic instruments and video projections.Manu also composes and performs for/with the 30-piece Orchestra Vivo and Fanfares. His past projects include Funk Sinatra and The Music for Gardens.

Club Integral Midlands Branch presents

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Jit Jive Duo

Rise Kagona, founder and lead guitarist of the world famous Zimbabwean band The Bhundu Boys, is now resident in Edinburgh, and has been performing in the UK with percussionist Andy Cooke as Jit Jive Duo.
Rise composes and performs his own music, and many of his songs were hits in Zimbabwe and became popular in the UK thanks to DJs John Peel and Andy Kershaw. His music doesn’t compromise – it is high quality hard-hitting African dance music guaranteed to make an audience smile and dance!

“sunny, intricate guitar lines whose easy sparkle belie formidable technical prowess” (Scotsman)

Fourth Page

Formed in 2010 almost by accident on a sunny Spring afternoon in Surrey, the improvised song work of Fourth Page has drawn comparisons from Schubert to David Sylvian, Scott Walker, Talk Talk and John Martyn, but in truth they sound like no-one but themselves. Their latest album ‘The Forest from Above’ was released on Leo Records and the band recently headlined a gig at Cafe Oto held in celebration of the label’s 40th anniversary.

“I thought it was perhaps the sort of song cycle Schubert might have written if he’d been around today.
The anguish of Winterreise with its chinks of light…” (Fiona Talkington, Late Junction, BBC Radio 3)

Anna Palmer

Singing songs at the piano, Anna Palmer of wonder-band Dorcha, is making a rare solo appearance at the Midlands Branch. We lucky!

Hard Time Soft Time DJs


DJ Kali Louise (‘Melody and Concrete’ on Brum Radio) and Hamish from The Nature Centre join us to play top notch tunes between the liveness.

Ubuntu Bakery & Foods

Purveyors of the most delicious nosh, Ubuntu Bakery &
Foods will be with us once again, selling the very finest
vetkoek, loved by near and far. Bring your cash!

Design

by Naomi Oppenheim
http://n-oppenheim.co.uk/

Pete Um, The Nature Centre, Fourth Page

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Friday 29th November Iklectic Arts Waterloo London SE1

starts 8pm cost £10/7.5

Pete Um

Sectionable Cambridge pop-surrealist Pete Um is a world unto himself but also a standard-bearer for the kind of heroic DIY befuddlement and unflinching self-analysis that Deep Freeze Mice, Mick Hobbs, Robert Storey and the Homosexuals minted. Um’s sprawling catalogue is a beast that can’t be tamed or reasoned with, but it’s endlessly rewarding: time and time again he nails that going-mad-in-the-potting-shed-ness that is the historic, and perhaps eternal, English condition – what it is, indeed, to be a little bit ‘Fucked In The Head’ (as the title of one of the songs here has it). Where so much contemporary stuff in this vein sounds hopelessly mannered and contrived and untouched by actual real-world experience of being on the outside of ANYTHING, As You Were sounds fully free and unforced, hopelessly alienated from the thing we call society and GLAD of it, and even at its most demented and disorderly your man sounds like he’s wrenching everything he possibly can out of his primitive keyboard-and-mic set-up cos it’s all he’s bloody well got, not cos he’s self-consciously imposing limitations on himself. While the influence of 80s UK squat-whimsy looms large, we’re reminded too of the synth-fuelled early-noughts art-spazz of the The Soft Pink Truth and Safety Scissors, and, more than anything or one, R. Stevie Moore – unexpectedly powerful and unforgettable songs emerging unexpectedly out of awkward, enervating loops and the more obviously pranky vignettes. ‘The Director’ is my song of the year so far, NO WORD OF A LIE: a warped, wistful sequel to Patrick Selinger’s ‘Businessman’. And ‘Ed Sheeran’ is a casual takedown of the wee guitar-slinging eunuch, sure, but it’s also a long hard truthful stare at the plight of a more marginal musician: “When I was a kiddie / I wanted to be a star / I play in local venues / I guess I didn’t get that far / I don’t want no fame / It ain’t strictly pleasure / but I still gotta do it…”

“I am in danger of becoming a self-styled ‘Um Evangelist’, telling anyone who will listen about Cambridge’s Don Van Vliet, the East Anglian Brian Wilson.” Connor Brown, Nervous Conditions.

https://peteum.bandcamp.com/track/just-like-kurt

The Nature Centre

Birmingham-based The Nature Centre creates three-minute pop songs, stuffed with ideas like a suitcase packed too late. The band plays like nobody is watching, quoting freely from flowery psych, faded art rock cassettes, scratchy punk and arena weirdos. Expect banjos, bleeps and skronky rhythms, woven through tunes that bring to mind The Slits, Family Fodder and the best bits of Brum.

” …wonderfully discordant, complex and slightly absurd.” Nordic Music review

“…The kind of fololoppy pop that Syd Barrett might make if he headed up a harmony girl group under the influence.” Unorthodox Paradox

Breakfast Time

Nordic Music Review

Fourth Page

are Charlie Beresford – guitar and voice, Carolyn Hume – piano/keyboards, Peter Marsh – bass, and Paul May – drums. Formed in 2010 almost by accident, their stretched, atmospheric and entirely improvised songs have drawn comparisons to Schubert, David Sylvian, Talk Talk, Patty Waters and John Martyn. After a break of some four years to work on other projects, the band are back together, this time with a more plugged in format. A fourth Fourth Page album is planned for 2017.

‘Fourth Page takes improvised music to exciting places it hasn’t really been before’ – All About Jazz

“I thought it was perhaps the sort of song cycle Schubert might have written if he’d been around today. The anguish of Winterreise with its chinks of light…” – Fiona Talkington, Late Junction, BBC Radio 3

http://www.4thpage.com

https://fourthpage.bandcamp.com/album/august-2012

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO

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Club Integral Midlands Branch, Kushikatsu Records and Riot Season Records present the renowned ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. at The Edge, home of Friction Arts in Birmingham.

Acid Mothers Temple Official
Join the renowned masters of otherworldly improvisation psych as we move through space, time and other dimensions.

The sprawling universe of that is Acid Mothers Temple was formed in 1995 by Kawabata Makoto. Originally titled the Acid Mothers Temple soul-collective and encompassing musicians, dancers, artists, farmers, channellers, ex-yakuza, mermaid researchers and professional vagrants, the collective has always had at its core a dedication to improvised music. Now with a history of over two decades, and a discography of over one hundred releases, which is not to mention the numerous solo and side-project releases which encompass everything from drone, acid-folk, acapella, to minimalist composition, the group show no signs of relenting in the pace of their creative energy.

“Each pulsating, echo-drenched disco-rock groove excels the one before, ending in a collective instrumental howl: AMT are hot, sweaty cool sonic wizards” – The Guardian (5 stars)

http://acidmothers.com/

https://riotseasonrecords.bandcamp.com/album/reverse-of-rebirth-in-universe

Kamura Obscura Electro
One of Tokyo’s most emotive and inventive singers, part of the women’s liberation movement, giving birth to the first Japanese feminist punk band, Mizutama Shobodan (Polkadot Fire Brigade), Japanese agit-prop feminist pioneers. They toured Japan and released two albums, the second of which, Manten ni Akai Hanabira (Red Petals Full in the Sky) was produced by Fred Frith. Kamura Obscura explores vocal experimentation, composition and improvisation incorporating enka, chanson and Japanese punk into original electronic and acoustic soundworlds. For this gig, Andrea Rocca, a human oscillator from sound wonderland of Baby Microbe Recording Studio, joins.

“Synthesised melodies shift the atmosphere from B movie horror, past new age ambient and on to playful children’s song. Her second last composition is a Macedonian Lullaby, the melody of which is fused with lyrics from Japanese cradle song. As if to emphasise the music’s playfulness, the Iklectik house cat Toni wanders into the venue and walks around stage as Kamura performs” – The Wire, 2018

https://linearobsessional.bandcamp.com/album/speleology-kamura-obscura-live

http://www.andrearocca.com

Andrea Rocca Music

Haq123
Heavy Metal Brummie power trio “supercharged on Haribo”. Featuring Millie aged 9 on vocals. Zac aged 11 on drums and Dave aged well over 18 on bass.

DJ sseeaann rrooee
Photographer and musician who Lives in Stroud from whence he runs his record store Sound Records Stroud – specialising in unusual and rare items. For tonight’s event expect a selection of Japanese and experimental sounds.

The finest eats from Albert at Ubuntu Foods and refreshments will also be available.

Advance tickets £12.50 + booking fee

https://www.wegottickets.com/event/478496

and remember remember the thirteenths!

Club Integral Midlands Branch Friday 19th April 2019

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This will be a special evening at Club Integral Midlands Branch, with three live acts reuniting / reforming / returning to play for us at The Edge in Birmingham.

£5 tickets available now: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/468428

Kenny Process Team

Kenny Process Team are long-time favourites of CIMB, whose music has been described as a ‘joyful mélange, influenced by everything from ragtime to Beefheart to Congolese soukous’.

After the sudden passing of guitarist and composer Simon King last year, member of Kenny Process Team and founder of Club Integral, Vacilando ’68 recordings are honouring him by releasing a remastered vinyl version of the classic cassette-only release, ‘Trav’lin’ Light With… Kenny Process Team’. To promote the release KPT are embarking on a tour of UK at select venues, starting with Birmingham. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear them live.

Twenty five years is an unusually long time between albums, but nothing is ever straightforward with Kenny Process Team. Their magnificent 1994 debut, “Surfin’ With…” was recorded as a three-piece, with guitarist Kev Plummer, bassist Matt Armstrong and drummer Dave Ross occupying the three corners of a perpetually skewed triangle. Shortly after its release they were joined on guitar by Simon King, who brought with him a rhythmic energy, a new palette of tonal colours and a dominating stage presence. Their wonderful performances oscillated between thunderous urgency and intricate delicacy; this mono cassette recording of a 1996 show captures that incarnation of the band at their very best. 

“Bundle”, the album opener, establishes the blueprint. Ross and Armstrong, the most imaginative of rhythm sections, build Escher-like structures for the band to play on, ever-shifting and indefinable. Plummer’s arresting and evocative themes are chased backwards and forwards by King, occasionally becoming caught in his grasp before triumphantly wriggling free.

This joyful mélange, influenced by everything from ragtime to Beefheart to Congolese soukous, has great immediacy while remaining curiously enigmatic. “Fantastic Four” sounds like the catchiest tune imaginable, but can you hum it? The unexpected semitonal shifts of “Tug” add an eerie element to an otherwise tranquil lullaby. “The Romans” and “Open Sesame”, reprised from the debut album, are delivered with an effortless flourish, while the baffling twists of “The Song We Don’t Like” see the band trapped in a maze of their own construction. 

The concert ends with “Tantrum”, where King cuts loose with the most improbable and yet somehow perfect lead guitar lines, while his bandmates offer their support with an insistent, one-legged rhythm. And then it’s all over. A great many concerts are recorded on the off-chance; very few stand up to repeated listening. This, however, is a true masterpiece. 

Rhodri Marsden

http://www.kevinplummer.com

Inclementine

What do you call an orange in the snow? Risen from the depths like a dazzling seed loaf, the founding fledglings of Inclementine (the gone-but-not-forgotten reprobates of non-pop) reunite at Club Integral Midlands to show us what they’ve learned in their years apart. Expect old and new from their post-sorrowful milieu… a tribute to beautifully wasted afternoons in the Capetonian Sun and stoic strolls thru fox-addled neighbourhoods. Expect strings, piano, bass, musical bows and three-part harmony.

https://inclementine.bandcamp.com/

The Happy Couple

who first met on the bus replacement service from Mile End Tube station to Leyton 21 years ago, express their love for the Norfolk idyll they’ve made their home. Expect peaceful duets for lap steel guitar and overtone instruments as they bring sounds of a rural Broadland to our industrial Midlands lounge.

https://happycouplebroadlandexotica.bandcamp.com/

https://happycoupleisland.co.uk/

Ubuntu Bakery and Foods

And the delicious Ubuntu Bakery & Foods will be with us once again, feeding us the very finest vetkoek, loved by near and far.

Poster design by Naomi Oppenheim at http://n-oppenheim.co.uk

Please note, The Edge is a cash-only venue.

Kenny Process team, Howie Reeve & The Happy Couple

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at Iklectic Waterloo Saturday 20th April from 8pm

Kenny Process Team

After the passing away of guitarist/ composer Simon King last year, Vacilando ’68 recordings are honouring him by releasing a remastered vinyl version of the classic cassette only release, “Trav’lin’ light With… Kenny Process Team”. To promote the release KPT are embarking on a tour of UK at select venues.

Confirmed dates as follows

19th April  Club Integral Midlands Branch

20th April Club Integral Iklectik London

2nd June North Norfolf Sonic Arts Collective (With Eugene Chadbourne)

15th June Resonance fm The Hello Goodbye Show and The Newsagents

18th October Café Oto – Resonance FM fundraiser

For several years this instrumental combo was active out of its London base. The intricate guitar-centered themes were largely composed by Kev Plummer, who would then teach the pieces phrase by phrase to bassist Matt Armstrong. The trio was completed by a drummer who figured out a way to play with sticks that had been shaved in half lengthwise, the result of attempts to play more quietly when the group’s rehearsals aroused frequent complaints from the neighbors.

“Bundle”, the album opener, establishes the blueprint. Ross and Armstrong, the most imaginative of rhythm sections, build Escher-like structures for the band to play on, ever-shifting and indefinable. Plummer’s arresting and evocative themes are chased backwards and forwards by King, occasionally becoming caught in his grasp before triumphantly wriggling free.

This joyful mélange, influenced by everything from ragtime to Beefheart to Congolese soukous, has great immediacy while remaining curiously enigmatic. “Fantastic Four” sounds like the catchiest tune imaginable, but can you hum it? The unexpected semitonal shifts of “Tug” add an eerie element to an otherwise tranquil lullaby. “The Romans” and “Open Sesame”, reprised from the debut album, are delivered with an effortless flourish, while the baffling twists of “The Song We Don’t Like” see the band trapped in a maze of their own construction. 

The concert ends with “Tantrum”, where King cuts loose with the most improbable and yet somehow perfect lead guitar lines, while his bandmates offer their support with an insistent, one-legged rhythm. And then it’s all over. A great many concerts are recorded on the off-chance; very few stand up to repeated listening. This, however, is a true masterpiece. 

Rhodri Marsden

Howie Reeve

https://howiereeve.bandcamp.com

New album ‘Not So Secret Garden’ out now on Red Wig (Germany) and Mon Cul (France).
Solo acoustic bass and singing; third album, ‘smaller, now’ (February 2016) is a joint release with The Audacious Art Experiment (UK) and Red Wig (Germany).
7″ of bass duets with Minutemen/Stooges legend Mike Watt was released in September 2015.

“As inventive and playful as it is richly emotional…his approach to bass is beautifully expressive, melodic and thoughtful, but also takes in flamenco-style flourishes, charging post-punk grooves, choppy, percussive passages and one surprisingly violent bout of chaos.”
(Matt Evans, The List)

“Life affirming…fragile, funny, oozing with empathy and above all fantastic songcraft.”
James T McKay (The Cosmic Dead)

“Unplugged-punk genius Howie Reeve is a linchpin in Glasgow’s DIY community…a breathtaking bass player.”
(Nicola Meighan, The Herald)

“Howie Reeve is a unique and singular figure in the current British underground. Having spent over 20 years playing in a number of key Glasgow bands, since 2012 he has been performing solo on acoustic bass guitar, delivering a fragmented and dexterous music that takes in post-punk, avant-folk and free jazz. Increasingly turning to songwriting, he further engages audiences with cryptic, intimate and unsettling lyrics. Resolutely DIY in his approach to music, he lives in Glasgow but appears to be perpetually on tour, whether in the UK, Europe or Japan.” (Chris Joynes)

The Happy Couple

http://www.happycoupleisland.co.uk

HAPPY COUPLE
The Happy Couple are Judith Goodman on strings and David Ross on Jew’s Harp and Mouthbow. They are truly a happy couple, who first met on the bus replacement service from Mile End Tube station to Leyton 21 years ago. The pair live at the southernmost tip of Epping Forest, where they like to spend much of their time, weather permitting, playing music to the birds and trees.

http://www.happycoupleisland.co.uk

Club Integral at Iklektic Friday 8th March 2019

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Ask The White is Isobel Blank (Ant Lion, Isobi, Vestfalia), artist and songwriter, and Simone Lanari (Ant Lion, Walden Waltz, Sycamore Age), producer and composer.

Their first album together “Sum and subtraction” has been released on the 12th October 2018 on LP by Ammiratore Omonimo Records (AOR), a label created and managed in Rome by vonneumann. The album will then be released on CD in Japan in 2019 for Athor Harmonics, Kenichi Mori’s label and music production studio based in Tokyo.

Their music is deeply rooted in the folk tradition, but at the same time is open to the wildest contamination, offering a sophisticated sonic palette. Ask The White’s songs are marked by dense and minimal guitar fingerpicking, intertwined with electronics and electroacoustic elements. Intimate lyrical melodies cyclically evolve into two voices harmonies, as arrangements expand and develop dynamically creating extremely pleasurable gems.

 

PsychoYogi

The music is a diverse mixture of instrumental colours, melodies, and words. The songs present social and political critique alongside personal moments and moods. In the words of Mike O’Toole (Beat Magazine) “Their sound is unparalleled and cannot be categorised. It is a rejection of docile adherence to a single musical style”. PsychoYogi are based in london and have been together for around three years with the current line up, which includes, Chris Ramsing, Guitar and vocals, Chris Sansom, Bass and vocals and Arnold Lane, Drums. The music is both challenging and accessible and is influenced by many musicians and composers including Frank Zappa, King Crimson, XTC, Captain Beefheart, Gentle Giant, Bach, Bartok and many more.

Check out their latest album Accident Prone here:

https://psychoyogi.bandcamp.com/album/accident-prone

https://www.psychoyogi.com/

Tickets are £7.00 or £5.00 concessions

Starts 8:00pm