Author Archives: deebyrne

LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery 15.7.22

For the last gig in this season we welcome this excellent selection of artists…

Rebecca Nash & Dee Byrne
Keyboard and alto saxophone duo explorations.
rebeccanashmusic.com | deebyrnemusic.com

Andrew Lisle solo
Improvised sonic landscapes on drum kit.
www.andrewlisle.com

Dirk Serries/Tullis Rennie/Cath Roberts
Interrogating the acoustic spaces of guitar, trombone and baritone saxophone.
newwaveofjazz.com| tullisrennie.com | cathrobots.co.uk

Join us at HYG: doors 19:30, music at 20:00, and it’s £10 on the door.

LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery 17.6.22

Our second gig of 2022 has arrived! Featuring:

Lara Jones & Dee Byrne
Sonic investigations combining saxophones and live electronics.
larajonesmusic.com | deebyrnemusic.com

Suren Seneviratne solo
Tabletop electronic experiments.
surenseneviratne.com

Gina Southgate & Cath Roberts
Freeform collision of baritone saxophone, objects and bric-a-brac.
artistginasouthgate.com| cathrobots.co.uk

Doors 19:30, music starting 20:00, £10 on the door. Join us!

LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery 20.5.22

LUME is back in 2022: we’re kicking off another season at Hundred Years Gallery with these improvised encounters…

Caroline Kraabel & Khabat Abas
First meeting of this alto saxophone and cello duo.
masskraabel.comkhabatabas.com

Dee Byrne solo
Sonic explorations with saxophone and effects pedals.
deebyrnemusic.com

Alex Bonney & Cath Roberts
Trumpet and baritone saxophone dialogues with electronics.
alexbonney.co.uk | cathrobots.co.uk

Join us back at the gallery! Doors 19:30, music starting 20:00, £10 on the door.

Check out the June and July lineups over on the gig listings page.

LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery 10.12.21

We’ve come to our final gig this season and have a very special evening in store: the album release set for ‘Hold Music’ (Luminous label) by cr-ow-tr-io: Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone), Otto Willberg (double bass) and Tullis Rennie (trombone). First meeting duo set from Elliot Galvin (keyboards) and Dee Byrne (alto saxophone/effects), plus a solo set from Hannah Marshall (cello).

Doors 19:30, music starts at 20:00. £5 or more – pay what you can. Tickets are on sale now – limited capacity of 20. buy tickets

Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, London, E2 8JD. Nearest station: Hoxton (Overground).

Dee Byrne
Dee Byrne is a London-based saxophonist, composer and improviser with an interest in pushing the boundaries of jazz. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. deebyrnemusic.com

Elliot Galvin
Pianist Elliot Galvin is one of the rising stars of UK jazz. A superbly gifted composer and pianist, whose maverick imagination and magpie like ability to blend a disparate world of influences into his own unique musical vision has seen him compared to Django Bates although in truth he sounds like no one except himself. elliotgalvin.com

Hannah Marshall
One of the leading improvising string players in the UK, Hannah Marshall has been active on the free improv scene across Europe for many years. As well as experimenting with approaches to the cello through improvisation, she is a sound designer and co-creates theatre, dance and performance projects. hannahmarshall.net

Tullis Rennie
Tullis Rennie is a composer, improvising trombonist, electronic musician and field recordist. His work has been presented at concerts and festivals across 20 countries, alongside UK national broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM. He is co-founder of Walls On Walls with visual artist Laurie Nouchka, and a member of the Insectotròpics audio-visual collective, based in Barcelona. He curates the multi.modal label with Claudia Molitor. tullisrennie.com

Cath Roberts
Cath Roberts’ work explores free improvisation, composition and the music at their meeting point. Her band Sloth Racket has toured widely and released several albums, and she collaborates with many other artists as an improviser, primarily on baritone saxophone. cathrobots.co.uk

Otto Willberg
Otto Willberg plays and improvises on electric and double basses, and has aspirations of playing other low end instruments too. Like many musicians he often plays in various groups, which all sound different. Otto also maintains the website bootlegspatialrecall.net, a collection of public space reverbs and sporadically releases music via the Heavy Petting label.  ottowillberg.com

LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery 16.11.21

Our autumn series continues on 16th November with another musical feast: a trio set from the Swiss/UK trio of Oli Kuster (modular synthesiser), Cyrill Ferrari (guitar/effects) and Dee Byrne (alto saxophone/effects), celebrating the release of their album ‘Motherboard Pinball’ (Efpi Records). First meeting duo set of Ruth Goller (bass) and Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone), plus a solo set from Will Glaser (drums).

Doors 19:30, music starts at 20:00. £5 or more – pay what you can. Tickets are on sale now – limited capacity of 20. buy tickets

Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, London, E2 8JD. Nearest station: Hoxton (Overground).

Dee Byrne
Dee Byrne is a London-based saxophonist, composer and improviser with an interest in pushing the boundaries of jazz. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. deebyrnemusic.com

Cyrill Ferrari
Inspired by scientific methods, mathematics and physics, Cyrill Ferrari constantly explores new musical frameworks by questioningthe standard role of the guitar with a focus on sound and amplication. Using different pickups and few effects, he amplifies the guitar as a whole object and explores new sounds hidden within the instrument. He is mainly active as co-leader of the projects OORT CLOUD, Leib and Alarcón/Ferrari, and as a sideman with various projects. cyrillferrari.com

Ruth Goller
Hailed by the Guardian for her “thunderous bass-guitar hooks”, Ruth Goller is a bassist, vocalist, composer, environmentalist and now solo artist. Goller helped lay the foundation for the UK’s jazz renaissance, from her years on stage with Acoustic Ladyland and Melt Yourself Down, to more recently Let Spin and Vula Viel, whilst performing and recording with the likes of Shabaka Hutchings, Mercury-Award nominee Kit Downes, Sam Amidon, Bojan Z, Marc Ribot, Rokia Traoré, and Paul McCartney. ruthgoller.com

Will Glaser
London based drummer Will Glaser is a highly in demand sideman to a vast array of the British Jazz scene. His influences draw eclectically from across jazz history, improvised music and anywhere else, from Baby Dodds to Milford Graves, Max Roach to Paul Motian, Roy Haynes to Joey Baron or Ed Blackwell to John Bonham. Will can be heard playing anything from traditional Jazz, in straight ahead settings to improvised music or avant rock. willglaserdrums.com

Oli Kuster
Bern-based pianist, keyboardist and composer Oli Kuster has realised various projects in the field of tension between jazz and electro. With his band Menschmaschine Kuster provided jazz interpretations of Kraftwerk songs in 2011. His work with synthesisers is also reflected in the pop project AEIOU. He has also composed music for film and released three albums as bandleader for the Oli Kuster Kombo. olikuster.ch

Cath Roberts
Cath Roberts’ work explores free improvisation, composition and the music at their meeting point. Her band Sloth Racket has toured widely and released several albums, and she collaborates with many other artists as an improviser, primarily on baritone saxophone. cathrobots.co.uk

LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery 21.10.21

We’re excited to be kicking off our autumn season on 21st October with two duo sets: Colin Webster (saxophone) with John Macedo (electronics), and the first meeting of Chris Williams and Dee Byrne (both saxophone and effects). Plus a solo set from Cath Roberts (electronics).

Places are limited so email info@hundredyearsgallery.com to reserve a seat. Doors 7.30pm, music starts at 8pm. Tickets are £5.

Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, London, E2 8JD. Nearest station: Hoxton (Overground).

Dee Byrne
Dee Byrne is a London-based saxophonist, composer and improviser with an interest in pushing the boundaries of jazz. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. deebyrnemusic.com

John Macedo
John Macedo has incorporated everything from acoustic instruments and environmental sound to analogue and computer synthesis into his work. His approach explores connections and relationships, revealing the hidden potential in sounds, environments and technologies-often in intimate, immersive and intuitive ways. johnmacedo.co.uk

Cath Roberts
Cath Roberts’ work explores free improvisation, composition and the music at their meeting point. Her band Sloth Racket has toured widely and released several albums, and she collaborates with many other artists as an improviser, primarily on baritone saxophone. cathrobots.co.uk

Colin Webster
London based saxophonist Colin Webster is quickly establishing himself on the European avant garde scene. Collaborating with some of the key figures in improvised and experimental music, Webster is known for working from extreme sonic palettes  – from minimal to maximal, constantly pushing boundaries. webstology.wordpress.com

Chris Williams
Alto player Chris Williams is perhaps best known as a member of Mercury-nominated powerhouse Led Bib. An in-demand musician on the UK scene and beyond, he plays in many other groups including Madwort Saxophone Quartet, Metamorphic and Let Spin.

LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery in July & August 2021

WE’RE BACK! We’re excited to announce a new LUME mini-series at Hundred Years Gallery on 15th July and 12th August. Looking back at our gig archive, our last gig there was on 1st December 2017…

Places are limited, so email info@hundredyearsgallery.com to reserve a seat. Doors 7.30pm, music starts at 8pm. Tickets are £5.

Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, London, E2 8JD. Nearest station: Hoxton (Overground).

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15th July 2021

Cath Roberts
Cath Roberts’ work explores free improvisation, composition and the music at their meeting point. Her band Sloth Racket has toured widely and released several albums, and she collaborates with many other artists as an improviser, primarily on baritone saxophone. cathrobots.co.uk

Sam Andreae
Sam Andreae is an artist working in the area of free improvisation. “Andreae delves into an impressive vocabulary of skilfully controlled overtones, rapid keypad flutters and fragile harmonics, glistening like filaments held up to the light.” Daniel Spicer, The Wire (2015) samandreae.com

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Graham Dunning
Graham Dunning’s work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He also makes visual work, video and installations relating to these themes. grahamdunning.com

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Deemer + 1
Dee Byrne is a London-based saxophonist, composer and improviser with an interest in pushing the boundaries of jazz. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. deebyrnemusic.com

Merijn Royaards is a sound artist guided by convoluted movements through music, art and architecture. The interaction between space and sound in cities with a history/present of conflict has been a recurring theme in his multi-media work. merijnroyaards.com

Johnny Hunter is a northern UK-based drummer and composer who comes from a background of both the avant-garde and more mainstream jazz. Johnny leads a number of his own projects from quartet to large ensemble, all of which showcase his fast-developing compositional practice. johnnyhuntermusic.com

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12th August 2021

Cath Roberts
Cath Roberts’ work explores free improvisation, composition and the music at their meeting point. Her band Sloth Racket has toured widely and released several albums, and she collaborates with many other artists as an improviser, primarily on baritone saxophone. cathrobots.co.uk

Benedict Taylor
Benedict Taylor is a British avant-garde violist, violinist and composer. He is a leading figure within the area of contemporary string performance, at the forefront of the British & European classical and new music world. benedicttaylor.bandcamp.com

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Tom Ward
Tom Ward is a musician, composer and computer programmer from Yorkshire, currently based in London. His primary instrument remains the saxophone, but in recent years he has increasingly focused on bass clarinet and flutes. madwort.co.uk

Charlotte Keeffe
Charlotte Keeffe’s unique approach and passion for jazz, experimental and freely improvised music sees her performing regularly as a soloist and as part of a variety of different ensembles, including her own quartet. charlottekeeffe.com

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Dee Byrne
Dee Byrne is a London-based saxophonist, composer and improviser with an interest in pushing the boundaries of jazz. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. deebyrnemusic.com

Olie Brice
Olie Brice is an improvising double bassist from London. He leads two bands – a quintet that plays his original compositions and a freely improvising trio featuring Tobias Delius and Mark Sanders. He has also worked with musicians including Paul Dunmall, Tony Malaby, Steve Swell, Achim Kaufmann, Alex Ward and Ingrid Laubrock. oliebrice.com

Andrew Lisle
Andrew Lisle is a drummer working in the field of jazz and improvised music. He strives to create music within the avant-garde, pushing the limits of what is possible on the drums (technically and musically) while drawing influence from the jazz tradition. andrewlisle.com

13th March 2019: Entropi/Sloth Racket at Kings Place

LUME is thrilled to announce an Entropi/Sloth Racket double bill at Kings Place on 13th March. It’s part of the Venus Unwrapped series, which throws a spotlight on female composers and is a great opportunity for LUME co-founders Cath Roberts and Dee Byrne to showcase their projects in such an amazing venue. This performance at Kings Place marks the start of exciting LUME plans in the pipeline for later on this year. Cath and Dee have spent 2018 concentrating on their own musical projects and are pleased to share the stage with their bands for this special occasion! Cath’s band Sloth Racket will be coming fresh from a recording of their next album, to be released on Luminous in September. Dee’s band Entropi will perform a few recently penned compositions as well as material from their previous albums.

Grab your tickets to this one-off event!

Here’s a bit about the bands:

Sloth Racket

Sloth Racket is a band of UK improvisers led by baritone saxophonist Cath Roberts, with Sam Andreae on alto saxophone, Anton Hunter on guitar,  Seth Bennett on bass and Johnny Hunter on drums. They play Cath’s compositions, combining written fragments with graphic notation to explore the balance between freedom and structure. The results are always different, and so far have ranged across musical territories taking in fiery free jazz, minimal improv textures and heavy riffs.

The band formed in 2015 when Jazz North East invited Cath to present a new project at Gateshead International Jazz Festival. Everyone agreed this had to be more than just a one-off, and they went on to appear at London Jazz Festival, Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival and LUME Festival, as well as doing four UK tours so far. Sloth Racket’s third studio album A Glorious Monster is out on the Luminous label.

‘Lurching between riff and abstraction…maintains an elegant balance between emergent melody and the wilder activity at its fringes’ The Wire

‘Consider this an important contribution to the debate about spontaneity versus form.’ ★★★★ Jazzwise

Photo credit: Agata Urbaniak

Entropi

Entropi has been steadily developing its own dynamic band sound since its beginnings in 2010. Placing a high importance on improvisation, Dee Byrne’s compositions allow breathing space for depth of communication and interaction between the band members. Juggling order and chaos, composition and improvisation, the group takes listeners on a journey with compelling group interplay, strong themes, open-ended improvisation, dark grooves and interweaving melodic textures.

The ensemble comprises bandleader and alto saxophonist Dee Byrne, trumpeter Andre Canniere, keyboardist Rebecca Nash, drummer Matt Fisher and bassist Olie Brice. Having performed live together for some time, the band has achieved a striking empathy and freedom to take risks. Entropi’s second album Moment Frozen was released on Whirlwind Recordings in September 2017. Their performance at Marsden Jazz Festival in October 2018 was broadcast on Radio 3’s Jazz Now programme on Christmas Eve.

‘Intense, muscular jazz voyage.’ ★★★★ The Guardian

‘Byrne’s second album possesses both maturity and complexity but crucially it’s imbued with its own cohesive energy.’ ★★★★ All About Jazz

Photo credit: Carl Hyde

LUME Lab Project Blog #3: Craig Scott

The next LUME Lab is almost upon us, and this month’s artist is Leeds-based experimental guitarist Craig Scott of the excellent Wasp Millionaire Records. You can reserve your place at his performance on 19th April at IKLECTIK, by purchasing an advance ticket from the Luminous Bandcamp site. Craig has been away working on his music at a retreat in the Yorkshire Dales, and writes:

First of all I would like to say thank you to LUME for this opportunity; having the funding to take the time out to write music for a specific purpose is not something I get to do very often.

I chose to write this new set of material for the Gastric Band, which is the same group of musicians that have been performing my Lobotomy material live. The band also consists of the entirety of Shatner’s Bassoon – a band that I have been making music with for a long time now- with the addition of ‘psychedelic father of two’ Sam Bell on percussion.

Oliver Dover clarinets / saxophones
Michael Bardon standing upright on electric bass
Johnny Richards keyboards
Joost Hendrickx drums
Sam Bell percussion
Myself guitar and electronics.

I spent the majority of January writing for this commission. I started off with making a list of considerations as to what I consider the strengths/possibilities/identifying characteristics of both my recorded/studio work under the Lobotomy name and of this band (as a unit and individuals). I tried to keep all the individual parts as simple as possible and always trying to make the sum of the parts to something more complex for the purposes of both ease of rehearsal and to make all the material as malleable as possible for elaboration through improvisation.

Some of the aspects of the music that I wanted to exploit included:

  • Simplicity in individual parts.
  • Large scale forms developing very slowly, material being slowly revealed and re-contextualised. (It was a blues all along!)
  • Space/lack of markers and its ambiguity to create false assumptions for the listener.
  • Microtonal melodic material and its relationship to tempered contexts.
  • Balance of duality and unity in time feel and weighting
  • For the mind and the booty.
  • An awareness and consideration of the different performers unique interpretation/ individual rationalisations of the material based on their different musical backgrounds.
  • Emphasis of the importance/impact of relative silence
  • Exploiting the joys of functional harmony!
  • Tri/bitonality.
  • Enducing trance like states.
  • The line between symmetrical melodic structures and diatonic structures in a tempered context.
  • Extended palette using live processing/ sampling, pre recorded samples and custom made Nord sample patches.

A disparate collection of subliminal musical influences probably include Joseph Shillinger, Sanjo, Gagaku, The Melvins, Thelonious Monk, Maurice Ravel, Captain Beefheart, Trevor Wishart, Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Bela Bartok, Gnawa, Shellac, Seben, Lazaro Ros, Maquam, Blues for dads. (Make of that what you will, but it probably gives a clearer picture of what the music actually sounds like than all the pomp above.)

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to transfer some of the aesthetic and functions of the post production techniques that have become part of my palette working on the recorded Lobotomy material to a live setting. This manifested itself both in how I wrote for the band and in the development of a new live sampling and processing setup.

I’ve been wanting to do this for some time now. A while ago my dear friend and long term partner in crimes against music Oliver Dover found a broken mixing desk in a skip outside a school he was working at. I managed to get it working again: recycling/making/repurposing/bending old audio gear has become quite a large part of the Lobotomy aesthetic. So, paired with some of my home-made microphones, circuit bent cassette and reel to reel delays and some samplers I had a setup that I could use live which greatly extending the palette of the band and gave me some sort of illusion of control over the band in more macro sense.

Alongside the four new pieces I wrote specifically for this, I also decided to include one of the pieces I had written and recorded for the new Lobotomy EP that I’m currently working on. (Coming soon!)

Between conceiving the pieces throughout January and rehearsing them in late March they started to feel more and more like a fictitious fairytale I had told myself about possible musical situations. So, it was very satisfying to finally actually hear the pieces vibrating the air molecules around me when the rehearsal residency rolled round!

We spent the first week of March together in relative isolation in a farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales, rehearsing and recording this new material. It is becoming rarer and rarer nowadays to have the luxury of this amount of  dedicated time to rehearse new material with a group. For this opportunity I am most grateful. It really gave us time to work into the material and explore the different ideas and ways of  implementing the pre conceived material.

Having the ability to record the whole residency (the first time I’ve had the chance to hear my home-made microphone setup in action!) and the distance this provides – being able to listen from an outside view – has also been very useful in determining changes that need to be made to the pieces especially when it comes to decisions being made regarding form on a macro scale.

I am very much looking forward to performing this new material for the first on the 19th of April at IKLECTIK, I hope you can join us! (Tickets here)

I’d also like to say thank you once again to Cath and Dee at LUME for giving me this opportunity!

6th March @ The Vortex: Tom Ward/Adam Fairhall/Olie Brice/Andrew Lisle & Øyeblikk

For our next gig at the Vortex we are excited to present two new collaborations! Come and hear some fresh new original and improvised music…

Tom Ward/Adam Fairhall/Olie Brice/Andrew Lisle

The debut performance of a new group featuring four highly creative improvisers who have appeared at LUME in other projects, but have never played all together. Tom Ward and Adam Fairhall had their names drawn out of the hat at our randomised free improvisation night last Summer, and following this initial encounter (a toy piano and bass clarinet duo) they decided to get a band together. The quartet will play new music by the bandmembers, starting from a few common reference points. The band will employ a flexible approach to harmony and form, including investigating negative harmony and stretching out with extended improvisations. Influences include the Greg Osby ‘Banned In New York’ album with Jason Moran, the ‘Monk’s Casino’ album with Alexander von Schlippenbach and Rudi Mahall, and Fieldwork with Steve Lehman, Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey.

Tom Ward alto sax, bass clarinet, flute
Adam Fairhall piano
Olie Brice double bass
Andrew Lisle drums

LUME (by Montse Gallego) Adam Fairhall Tom Ward

Øyeblikk

Dee Byrne and Ed Riches met in 2008 and have collaborated in various projects such as improvising sextet Zonica (Gareth Lockrane, Xantone Blacq, Elliot Galvin, Tom McCredie, Pat Davey) and more recently as an improvising duo using electronics. Tonight they will be joined by drummer/percussionist Matt Fisher who plays in Dee’s band Entropi. Øyeblikk (‘moment’ in Norwegian) describes the ethos of the project: a spontaneous narrative of soundscapes, riffs and themes taking the listener on a cosmic, sonic adventure. The title Øyeblikk is a nod to the fact that both Ed and Dee have a connection with Scandinavia, Dee lived in Stockholm for seven years and Ed spent a part of his childhood in Norway.

Dee Byrne alto saxophone/electronics
Ed Riches guitar/electronics
Matt Fisher drums/percussion

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 14.23.48  

As usual, doors are at 7.30pm and the music will start at around 8pm. Tickets are on sale now from the Vortex website.