Category Archives: CDs!

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

New Luminous website and mailing list

In recent months we’ve found ourselves posting on this blog about new releases on the LUME offshoot label, Luminous. No longer! The label now has a shiny new website all of its own. On there you can read about all the releases on the label so far (including the new Deemer + 1 album coming next month), and information about the artists.

There is also a new mailing list for the label, so do sign up if you’d like to be kept updated on future releases and label-related activities….

Two projects for September

LUME is on hiatus this Autumn while Cath and Dee are working hard on other projects. Two of these are particularly relevant this month, so here’s the lowdown…

Entropi Moment Frozen album launch

The eagerly-anticipated second album from Entropi, Moment Frozen, is released this month on Whirlwind Recordings. To celebrate the release, Dee is taking the band on a UK tour including a special album release show at Kings Place on Friday 29th September. It promises to be a lovely evening and a great chance to hear the band playing their new album on home turf. Tickets are moving fast, so we advise getting yours as soon as you can: they’re available from the Kings Place website.

LUME regulars will know that Entropi explores a narrative of life-pondering, space-gazing and risk-taking through Dee’s striking compositions. Juggling order and chaos, composed material and improvisation, the group takes listeners on a journey with compelling group interplay, strong themes, dark grooves and interweaving melodic textures. Joining Dee in the band are four fantastic musicians, all of whom are in demand on the UK scene and beyond. It makes for a heavyweight lineup:

Dee Byrne alto saxophone
Andre Canniere trumpet
Rebecca Nash keyboard
Matt Fisher drums
Olie Brice bass

This gig will be something of a LUME social, so we’d love it if you can join us. Make sure you’re part of it by buying your tickets now!

Favourite Animals large ensemble album crowdfunder

While Dee is releasing and touring a new album this month, Cath is in the midst of the production of her own. Favourite Animals, the ten piece group originally formed for Cath’s residency at Lancaster Jazz Festival last year, went into the studio this August with Alex Bonney. They spent three days working at City, Uinversity of London – thanks to trombonist Tullis Rennie who works as a lecturer there – and recorded new versions of all the music from the Lancaster commission.

Favourite Animals is an extended version of Cath’s regular band Sloth Racket. The ten piece version adds woodwind and brass, and just generally more improvisers:

Graham South – trumpet
Tullis Rennie – trombone
Julie Kjær – flute/bass clarinet
Tom Ward – flute/bass clarinet
Dee Byrne – alto saxophone
Sam Andreae – tenor saxophone
Cath Roberts – baritone saxophone
Anton Hunter – guitar
Seth Bennett – bass
Johnny Hunter – drums

With a set of great takes waiting patiently on a hard drive, the next stage is raising the money to get the album out there. Cath is running a crowdfunding campaign this month to cover the musicians and engineers’ fees, the mixing and mastering, and the production of physical CD albums. The plan is to release the album on Luminous this December, to coincide with Favourite Animals’ joint tour with Article XI. With your help, we can finish the Luminous year with our most ambitious release to date! Check out the campaign page for more info about the project, photos from the session, and lots of backer perks to get your hands on…

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and keep any eye on the LUME social media channels through the month for more about these projects and some extremely exciting giveaways…

8th May @ The Vortex: Sloth Racket (album launch) & ELDA

A double bill of touring bands this month, as Cath Roberts launches her Sloth Racket album ‘Triptych’ and Andrew Woodhead brings his improvising trio ELDA from Birmingham.

Sloth Racket

Sloth Racket is a quintet of UK improvisers led by baritone saxophonist Cath Roberts, with Anton Hunter (Beats & Pieces Big Band, Article XI) on guitar, Sam Andreae (Trio Riot, Silence Blossoms) on tenor saxophone, Seth Bennett (Metamorphic, En Bas Quartet) on bass and Johnny Hunter (Nat Birchall, Johnny Hunter Quartet) on drums. The group play Cath’s compositions, in the form of frameworks for improvisation: combining composed fragments with graphic notation to explore the balance between freedom and structure. In November 2015 they gathered to record at Limefield Studio in Manchester with John Ellis (Cinematic Orchestra) engineering. The resulting session, on a cold and rainy evening fuelled by coffee and pizza, produced three substantial tracks that range across musical territories from fiery free jazz, to minimal improv textures, to deep grooves. The album ‘Triptych’ is released in May 2016 on the Luminous label.

Cath Roberts baritone saxophone
Sam Andreae tenor saxophone
Anton Hunter guitar
Seth Bennett bass
Johnny Hunter drums

ELDA

Andrew Woodhead’s latest project ELDA is a collaboration with Norwegian vocalist Kari Eskild Havenstrøm (Trondheim Voices, Kristoffer Lo) and trumpeter Aaron Diaz (The Destroyers, Sid Peacock), mixing acoustic sounds with live electronics and soundscapes. Andrew and Kari met on a musical exchange between Trondheim and Birmingham at the 2013 Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and formed this trio with Aaron to continue their collaboration and explore their shared musical interests.

Andrew Woodhead keyboard/electronics
Aaron Diaz trumpet/electronics
Kari Eskild Havenstrøm vocals/FX

16th January, 2pm @ Electric Knife: Hannah Marshall & Kordik Lucas

We’re back! Happy New Year everyone. To kick things off for 2016, we’re taking LUME to a new space: the excellent Electric Knife record shop in Kentish Town. Electric Knife specialises in avant garde, noise, and experimental music and its owner Thanasis stocks a fantastic range of CDs, vinyl, cassettes, books and more. The shop occasionally turns into an intimate venue for in-store gigs, and we’re really exciting to be hosting one this January. Be warned: this gig is in the afternoon! The music will start at 2pm, so make sure you leave yourself some time to browse the shelves before we welcome:

Hannah Marshall
Improvising cellist Hannah Marshall is a formidable force on the UK scene and beyond. She regularly collaborates with such (fellow) luminaries of improvised music as Veryan Weston, Alison Blunt, Terry Day, Alex Ward, Rachel Musson and Dominic Lash, and has also played with Evan Parker, Luc Ex and Fred Frith. Hannah has appeared at LUME before in various different groups, but for today’s gig we’re excited to say that she will be performing a solo set.

Kordik Lucas
Last year we were lucky enough to host a set by trombone and analogue synthesiser duo Kordik Lucas, and we couldn’t wait to ask them back. They have been playing together for several years, as well as running Earshots Recordings together, a label releasing improvised music and field recordings. ‘The juicy sounds of the Vostok synth wiggle with squelchy non- classical balls of trombone fluff,’ said the Next Festival in Bratislava, and we have to agree…

Ed Lucas trombone

Daniel Kordik Vostok synthesiser

Please join us for this special afternoon of improvised music in London’s finest tiny record shop! Suggested donation: one Bank of England note of your choice.

Electric Knife Records, 16b Fortress Road, Kentish Town, NW5 2EU.