November 2011 - Mouth 4 Rusty makes its first vinyl record, Utrophia moves, lots of other stuff happens
Shortly after I last wrote, I cut my little folk project Mouth 4 Rusty back from a six-piece to a duo for a number of reasons. It was perhaps unusual timing, as we were in the middle of our second residency at The Gladstone in Borough. In the end, I played the second of the three shows alone, and then reunited with Emma to play the third, in September. It was at the most recent Glad show that we met Ted Riederer, who runs an art project called Never Records. Basically it's a mock-up record shop that he's been touring with. All the records there are one-offs, he records acts in the back, cuts two copies, one for the artist and one to keep in the shop, which acts as a library, people can come in and listen to whatever record they like. Cool idea.
So one night we went down to the shop/studio, and cut our first record, a duo version of 'A Letter Home'. The room sounded GOOD, all curved edges. I sang into a baby blue, Em into an RE20, a matched pair of room mics above front of us, 421 on the body of the guitar, earthworks something or other at the 12th. First full take was the keeper. Then Ted cut the record while we waited. Really interesting seeing the record actually being cut and how the lathe works. You can hear it here.
Since then Emma and I have been reworking a few of the older songs to work for just the two of us, and I've been writing new material for future sets.
We've also been working on other recordings, including finishing up the songs and their sequence for the 'Good Men Now' album, which also features cellist Sarah, violinist Natalie and double bassist James from the old line-up. As well as these recordings, Chiara Goldsmith has laid down some beautiful vocals alongside Emma and I for a couple of new songs.
June and July were big months for all of us at the arts collective Utrophia. With just three weeks left at our old space, we finally signed on the line for a brand new space that has taken us to the High Street. Weeks of work ensued. Helena and I got in there early to start with the filling and painting, Ben Meschko and Steve put up some walls that defined the project space and made a another artists studio, and Jono, Sam and I painted them. I put some cement in the floor with a little help from Ben Cummins, Jono sketched out the sign, and Sam bloody well painted it. Jono took some of the more spikey elements out from the ceiling, and Steve and I sealed the floor. Andrew Kerr began putting up the walls for his shop, and our 'permaculture dudes', Jim and Tom built their office just behind it.
All the while, Pippa Johnson was working her magic on the windows, a beautiful leaf motif (and that rhymes), while passers by gradually watched the beauty unfold over a couple of weeks. Then the big reveal into the project space, when the bottom section of Pippa's whitewash was whipped off and we opened our doors for 'This Is It', a follow-up and expansion on our Tanners Hill closing show, 'That's It?'. The opening night was pretty magical, so much good feeling, and we felt very welcomed to the High Street. There was some beautiful work in the show, and we made some new friends too.
A couple of weeks later, Andrew Kerr opened his shop, Extra Bones, on the other window of our new building, selling homemade artwork, comics, zines, objects and so on. He also has a trading post to swap your creations, and he's been running workshops and doing events of his own from the shop as well. Meanwhile, Ben Cummins and Helena organised the CWM festival 2011, a more stripped-back affair where all the attendees were participants. I was sad not to have attended, too much going on with the new Utrophia space, but all reports say it went very well and fed a lot of imaginations for next year.
The next exhibition at the project space, 'The Deptford Machine', was a real treat. Inventor/artist Ben Parry used unwanted items from the junk market and local traders and created a highly detailed machine with them. It's hard to fully describe, but you can see it in action here..
A week or so into the show, two afternoons of performances took place, with music composed with the machine in mind. Ben Cummins, Russell Bond and I took the opportunity to come up with something for it, a mixture of piano, clarinet, drums, metal bins and performance art.
I rounded off that show by backing up Rozi Plain on percussion, melodica and backing vocals at her set at Lunch Music at Utrophia. Highly enjoyable. Utrophia has now entered into its 'Various' programme, three weeks of short exhibitions and workshops. We still couldn't be more delighted to be on the High Street. Meanwhile, I've also been recording Karen Barnes, who both Patrick Lyons (Resonance FM/PH7 radio) have both found ourselves describing as 'a female Tom Waits'. I'm mixing the songs we recorded at the moment. Very good stuff.
June 2011 - It's been a few months since we spoke
Having played mostly solo during the first few months of the year, Mouth 4 Rusty reconvened as a group and started rehearsing with new drummer, Tomas Garcia in late February. You can see how working Tomas has moved things on at our first show with him at The Gladstone, Borough, on Sunday 5th June, where we'll be playing between Oliver Talkes and Swines. This show is the first part of a three-date residency at The Glad, followed by 17th July and 4th September, which are both Sundays.
I returned to Oslo in March, to play another solo set at Sound of Mu, performing 'There's Just No Pleasing Me', 'Fire Signs', 'Harrison', 'Russell Square', 'A Wall of Wooden Doors', 'Good Men Now', 'A Letter Home' and 'What's An Open Soul To Do?'. I was joined once again by Viviana Vega on harmony vocals and whistling for three of the songs. It was a lovely evening, with a bigger crowd than I expected, probably partly due to a lovely little article on Norway's smug.no, which gave this rather sweet quote:
"Remember to bring a thermos of oozing hot chai tea, a lump of hash, blanket, slippers and bamsemums. This is going to get cosy!"
The first 15 people through the door got a free copy of our 'Time Over Money' EP, which went down very well. It was a shame I hadn't taken more with me.
Following that, I had the pleasure of playing on a bill with Laetitja Sadier from Stereolab, at Concert for Japan at The Others, Stoke Newington, organised by Justin from Now, another highlight. I also got to play a couple of short sets at the wonderful and now sadly defunct 'Let's All Hang Together', a shop by day, an old-style music and performance club by night. I also had a perfect evening in the basement there, playing drums alongside Russell Bond, one of my team mates from performance quartet Blue Bag. Russ and I have also been drumming on the streets again, including a great street party where we played along to a local sound system as big as a truck.
Recording with Mouth 4 Rusty has been going well, we now have three mixes in the can and a couple more almost there, with just a few bits and pieces of tracking left to do on some of the others. Joining us on a song each are Anna Francis (accordian) and Nathan Trier (piano), who we're very grateful to for their time and energy. All the reverb and echo on the recordings comes once again courtesy of a large-ish warehouse/gallery space. Mouth 4 Rusty, forever keeping it real. We're hoping to get these recordings out sometime over the summer. In the meantime, there's a new solo recording or two on our myspace player. See you at The Glad.
February 2011 - By;Alarm Festival, Oslo, Norway; Second Resonance 104.4FM session
I had a wonderful time at the By;Alarm festival in Oslo. The festival took in three venues over three days: Mir, Podium and Sound of Mu, where I was sound engineering. Personal highlights included a stomping, joyous set from Magnus Moriarty, the throat-singing of Torgeir Vassvik and the perfect deep pop of Children and Corpse Playing in the Streets.
Without the usual Mouth 4 Rusty line-up by my side, I played most of my set solo, joined for a song each by Viviana Vega (Koppen/Hanny) on harmony vocal and Microkorg and Marie Therese Borgersen Kvamme (Hanny) on harmony vocal. Many many thanks to both of them. Mouth 4 Rusty's next venture out into the world is once again over the airwaves, when we return as a full quintet for our second session on Resonance 104.4FM on Friday 11th March at 10pm. Tune in!
January 2011 - New video and forthcoming shows
I started making this around the time we released our 'Time Over Money' EP back in March '10, so it's an old song now, but it was good to get the video finished. The letters are shadows that I filmed a few months ago, originally there was loads of shadow stuff, letters, people playing instruments, some 'movement', but I gradually cut most of it out, leaving just the occasional blink-and-you'll-miss-it frames of the people doing shadowy things.
The colour footage I found in a back street just up the road one summery day while I was out with friends. We came across a patch of land where it looked like they just ripped the building right out of the ground and left half of what was in it, which was reels of film in different formats and some older digital media. I grabbed a miniDV tape, took it home and found it had footage of people editing film, some of it really nicely shot. The rain had obviously screwed with it a fair bit, but that kind of added it to it for me.
It's a bit schizophrenic, but I like that kind of editing sometimes. iMovie as ever, still not got any further with Final Cut than staring blankly at it.
Mouth 4 Rusty are playing our next show at Club Fandango at The Bull and Gate in Kentish Town on Tuesday 25th January, fans of free stuff, beware, it's £6/5 on the door, should be a good show though, and we have a song in the set we've never played before. Following that I'll be performing a solo set at Sound of Mu, in Oslo on Saturday 19th February as part of the by;alarm festival. If you're nearby come down, it's a lovely little venue, bar and gallery.
We've been asked to come back to play a second session on Resonance 104.4FM, which is likely to be in March. We've not gotten hold of a full-quality recording of our last session in December yet, but I'll post it when we have.
Have a lovely January.
November 2010 - Forthcoming shows, recent footage and Resonance 104.4FM.
We always love playing the Gladstone in Borough, as shown above from our last set there, and we're back there on 28th November, this time playing as a six-piece group with our new percussionist. Following that, we'll be live on Resonance 104.4FM on Friday December 3rd, performing a couple of songs live and playing a couple of recordings we've made recently but not put to CD yet. Tune in to Patrick Lyon's Neutral Zone at 10pm to hear the show.
September 2010 - CWM Festival footage and generally lovely shows.
We had a lovely CWM festival, personally one of my favourites ever, there's a little bit of footage above of us playing 'A Wall of Wooden Doors' on the closing Sunday of the event. It was definitely a nice show to welcome in Jimmy on double bass. We followed it a week later with a wonderful return to our new favourite venue, The Gladstone in Borough, where we supported Ben Folke Thomas. A really lovely, relaxed show, and we can't wait to get back there again. Footage of that to follow soon.
August 2010 - The CWM Festival, Utrophia events, Mouth 4 Rusty shows and line-up changes
Another couple of months, another bunch of great Mouth 4 Rusty shows, like the above slot at Rough Trade's event at Notting Hill Arts Club. This was our last show with Steve Molyneux, who's been playing percussion with us since the halloween show last October, many thanks to Steve for all his work since then, we've had some great shows and his presence has been another positive force in getting our little band off the ground. So with me back to playing drums with my feet, we've finally added a much-desired double bass player to our ranks. Jimmy Hitchins' first show with us will be at Utrophia's 6th CWM Festival in Wales at the end of the month (more on that in just a second), then we're back in London on September 5th for our return to The Gladstone in Borough, our new favourite venue. Expect a new song or two.
Utrophia's CWM festival 2010 in Wales is just a couple of weeks away, with some great acts booked and more confirming by the day, we're looking at around 22 performances from a variety of awesome creative people. You can find details and book tickets here. The run-up to the festival sees two great events down at Utrophia HQ, first off we have a long-anticipated Exploding Cinema night, with films made on disposable and lo-fi media and a bike maintenance workshop, that's on the 14th August. Following that we have the guys from Clinic coming down for an all-dayer o the 21st August, starting with a screen-printing workshop, followed by poets and artwork, and live bands and DJs in the evening. It's going to be a goody, more details on both of those events here.
June 2010 - We Came Here To Save You and more Mouth 4 Rusty shows
It's been a fantastic couple of months since I last wrote. Utrophia has seen some wonderful shows, including the comedic post-apocalyptic '2020' by Michael O'Mahony and Katie Horwich's 'Page Three Girls', which has garnered attention from the likes of The Observer, The Guardian, Fat Quarter, The Sun, Sky and the BBC. The Left Side of the Barn space at Utrophia that I put my heart into creating late last year has had some incredible events, including two We Came Here To Save You music nights, co-curated with Melody Wood, which has brought us such wonderful acts as Nadine Khouri, Nicky Francis and The Quill, The Leano and a magical acoustic set from Now amongst others. You can hear some of the fruits of their labours in the barn on Utrophia's myspace page. The space also hosted this year's World Oceans Day event, curated by Angela Last, a musical jam session tribute to the seas inspired by oceanic and underwater footage, with sea shanties thrown in. A great night.
Meanwhile, Mouth 4 Rusty has been playing around town and getting some new songs together, ready to record over the summer. A show in Camden at the end of April saw my old friend Fiona Stewart (who sang back-up on a couple of tracks of our EP) back in the country, so post-gig Emma, Fiona and I played a few songs for a gleeful crowd at a vegan cafe open-mic night, which was a particular delight. M4R's next few shows see us visit The Old Queen's Head in Islington on 20th June, We Came Here To Save You's third event at Utrophia on 2nd July and The Glad in Borough on the 4th.
Lastly, my work as a soundguy has lead me to see a great number of really good bands and acts, some of which Utrophia will be approaching to play at our 6th festival in Wales later this year. Time to get booking..
April 2010 - Mouth 4 Rusty's first EP, gig photos, upcoming shows, R&B and We Came Here To Save You
Mouth 4 Rusty released our first EP, Time Over Money', into the world on 26th March at our Jam Circus gig in Brockley. Featuring four songs ('There's Just No Pleasing Me', 'A Wall of Wooden Doors', 'Good Men Now' and 'Joyful Under Water'), the EP comes hand-printed on 100% recycled cardboard, making every copy is a little different.
Recording-wise, some of it was recorded with Simon Nelson in the Left Side of the Barn space at Utrophia, while much of it was recorded in my little studio in SE London. I then used the Utrophia project space as a reverb chamber to add real live reverberation to the recordings using a powered monitor and a lovely little russian microphone, an Oktava MK012. The mixture of the ambience of the barn and the reverb chamber meant that absolutely no fake reverbs were used on the recordings. It actually really helped mixing to be using real spaces for reverb, it means the instruments are all sitting in the same room, which provides a sort of audio base for things to sit on. It was really good to hear the songs have some extra life breathed into them. More on reverb chambers here.
We had a lovely time at Jam Circus (as you can see below) and the guys and gals that run it are ridiculously nice. It also marked our first show with our new harmony vocalist, Emma Davis who joined us at the beginning of the year after Katie sadly departed to concentrate on her myriad other projects. Needless to say, Emma did us proud.
Our next couple of shows come in quick succession, on Thursday 8th April we'll be at King's Cross Social Club with The No Sorrows and Stephen Cracknell from The Memory Band, and then at Monkey Chews with all the people on the flyer below on the 14th. Yes, they spelt our name wrong, but at least they got our myspace url right..
'We Came Here To Save You' is Utrophia's monthly folk night to be held in the Left Side of the Barn space that I spent the start of the winter overhauling. Starting on May 7th and continuing on the first Friday of every month, Melody Wood and myself will be bringing you some wonderful music, spoken word and other creative endeavours. Details on all the acts coming soon.
Lastly, I forgot to mention this in my last post, but back in January a few of my friends and I started learning some R&B covers, culminating in our seven-piece R&B covers band, 'Club Club', which performed its first show at the beginning of February to celebrate a few birthdays. Video below, I'm on drums, enjoy..
22nd February 2010 - Next Mouth 4 Rusty gig
15th January 2010: Mouth 4 Rusty gig footage from The Slaughtered Lamb
5th December 2009: Mouth 4 Rusty gig footage, Kate Tempest in the Left Side of the Barn and a re-cut Pretty Wise Moves video
Above is a clip of Mouth 4 Rusty playing our encore version of 'There's Just No Pleasing Me' at The World's End in Finsbury Park, for the weekly 'In Thursdays W.E Trust' night. We started the set with the slow, brooding original and finished up with this more animated version. It was a good night, and our first set as a quintet (our new cellist Sarah is behind Katie at the start of the clip). I particularly enjoyed Mariam Razak's 'Turns Out I Was In A Forest' and Chris Bond's 'Keeping On', both of which I'd been playing on their myspace players in the week before the gig. Mouth 4 Rusty's next gig is at The Slaughtered Lamb in Farringdon on 10th December.
A couple of weeks ago I re-cut the Pretty Wise Moves video I made back in April with Morgan Peckosh and his flatland BMX skills. The original video had a solo demo of the song as the soundtrack, which I replaced with the longer trio recording of the song we made in Utrophia's Left Side of the Barn' space with Simon Nelson in October and redited the video to fit with the new audio recording. Here it is..
On the subject of the Left Side of the Barn, the space I've been renovating at Utrophia had its inaugural performance on 26th November, when poet and rapper Kate Tempest recorded a spoken word performance in front of an invited audience. Around half of Kate's 'Broken Herd' record was recorded that night. The album comes in a box with a book of illustrated poetry, a sheet of temporary Tempest-themed tattoos and a feather which you can use as a quill. It'll be a limited run of 300 and the launch is on Wednesday 9th December from 9pm at the Pure Groove record store and gallery. If you've not heard Kate before, check her out on youtube, it'll be well worth it.
14th November 2009: New recordings, upcoming shows and now we are five
Last week I finished mixing three of the recordings Mouth 4 Rusty made as a trio on October 17th with Simon Nelson engineering. Simon did a grand job, we used lots of ambient micing, which really brought the sound to life. There's almost no extra reverb on the recordings and I think they have a real depth while maintaining the intimacy I like on M4R songs. You can hear 'Pretty Wise Moves', 'Good Men Now' and 'A Wall of Wooden Doors' over on our myspace page and judge for yourself.
(Apologies, this next section of text was lost in a whirlwind of a data screw-up, it almost definitely mentioned Sarah Glayzer joining M4R as cellist and forthcoming M4R shows at the time, and there were probably photos or flyers or something, but who can be sure?)
1st November 2009 - Mouth 4 Rusty Halloween gig footage
Here's a bit of footage from Mouth 4 Rusty's set on halloween night at the Utrophia project space, for the closing party of'The Disciples of Lucas Cranach' exhibition which has been running for the past two weeks. Also playing were 'Compost Meant Us', a trio comprising two members of 'Shimmy Rivers and and Canal', who sadly broke up earlier this year.
This was the first time we'd played as a four-piece, with Steve Molyneux playing floor tom, hi-hat and cymbal, giving me the freedom of my feet again. The song in the clip is 'What's An Open Soul To Do?', which we played as the second part of a medley with 'Pretty Wise Moves'. It looks like we have gigs lined up for November and December, I'll post dates when I have them. Happy halloween.
19th October 2009 - Barn renovations, Mouth 4 Rusty recording session, a Marching Band film and a Monolators remix
I've been doing some renovation work on one side of the Utrophia barn for a while, it's going to be a nice dark space for smaller, quieter music events and projects, theatre rehearsals, puppet shows, projections etc. I'm edging towards the finishing line with it now (just have some more shelving units to paint, the floor and a few bits of guttering to work on) and I thought it'd be a nice space for Mouth 4 Rusty to do some recordings in.
So on 17th October, my friend Simon Nelson came over with some portable recording gear and we worked on seven songs as a trio. For those as geeky as Simon and I, we used 414s on the violin, accordian, melodica and Katie's vocals, 319 on my vocals and guitar, 201 on kick (which I swapped out for a floor tom after a couple of takes), a pair of MK012s for stereo ambient micing, and a 219 as a mono room mic to fill the gaps. I can't recall what we used on the hi-hat, something of Simon's. Simon's mixing at the moment, I'll post some of the songs on our myspace page when they're done.
In the meantime, Mouth 4 Rusty's next gig will be at the closing show for The Disciples of Lucas Cranach exhibition at Utrophia on halloween, 31st October. Free entry for all good people, so come down!
On 4th October, Utrophia's Marching Band did a 40 minute march for a friend's mum's 60th birthday across Brockley and Deptford, ending with a party at the Utrophia project space. It gave me a great opportunity to film them, and ruin my calf muscles for two days after running across town, setting up shots that captured them from all kinds of angles.
Lastly, I remixed a Monolators track, 'We Fell Dead', from their 2006 LP, 'Our Tears Have Wings', which they've posted on their blog. I stuck to my method of only using the original tracks and processing and editing them as opposed to adding beats, samples and sounds, resulting in 'Krautrock Blues is Dead', have a listen here.
28th September 2009 - Zeppelins, dance, film, and more Mouth 4 Rusty
Above is a little bit of Mouth 4 Rusty's set in front of the zeppelin for the closing night of Emily Paige Short's 'Sail 'O Tin Town' installation at Utrophia on 25th September. Plagued by cold and flu, we fought on regardless; the set featured a new song 'A Wall of Wooden Doors', and also marked the first use of Katie's accordian playing, which worked beautifully.
One night a few weeks ago, there was a fire in the yard at the back of our building. It seemed to start in a recycling cart, spreading from there when the bottom of the cart burned thorough, dropping fire onto the ground. I don't know what was on the ground to catch alight, but before long the fire had spread to a car, blowing up the petrol tank. It became a big fire, making the firefighters who arrived look like toy soldiers. Eventually the fire was put out. Nobody was hurt, only the car was seriously damaged and the fire didn't touch our building. Gavin Housley filmed the scene and handed the footage over to me, which I made into the video below..
I also performed with Cat Westwood (Blue Bag) at the Folkus festival, providing improvised music on acoustic guitar for Cat's Butoh, which began with her gathering people up in red string and leading them to where we would perform. It was an interesting performance, I knew that as Cat moved around, she wouldn't always be able to hear me, so I watched her constantly and played to her tempo rather than suggesting my own. If any photographs or footage turn up, I'll post them here.
I've also found myself tinkering again with the Rigsby Smith record, 'Home Made' that I started late last year, and the accompanying videos. I got a fair bit of stuff done over a couple of days a few weeks ago, it was good to hear again and felt good to be working on.
..and so to the autumn, it's been a very busy summer.
7th September 2009 - Mouth 4 Rusty live band, festivals, new songs
The video above is from Mouth 4 Rusty's set as a duo at Utrophia's Cwmback Festival in Wales (28th-30th August),
which Jono Allen and I booked the bands for.
Joining me on harmony vocals and melodica was Katie Weatherall, co-organiser of the monthly Kit and Cutter folk night at the Deptford Arms, SE8.
Katie and I started the set by leading a small procession of people from the bar, clapping our hands and encouraging them to do the same, so we'd have the rhythm for the first song when we got to the stage. Of course, people sped up a little and by the time we got to the beautiful pine forest stage area and begun 'What's An Open Soul?',
we were playing a pretty rapid version, which worked just fine as it turned out, and Katie played a mean melodica break, far faster than we'd ever rehearsed.
As well as guitar and vocals I've taken to playing a kick drum and hi-hat with my feet and Katie is taking on some percussion parts,
it's early days, and the percussion is very much still playing a simple, supporting role so far.
Four days after we returned to London, Utrophia had a Cwmdown event at Shunt in London Bridge,
where Mouth 4 Rusty played its first gig as a trio, with Natalie Sedgwick
(previously of Sixtoes and Shadow Orchestra) joining us on violin.
Personal highlights of both events were playing drums for John Bisett alongside the much respected
James Dunn, and watching Thrulk, who I found while perusing myspace and excitedly asked to come and play at The Cwmback. By the time we got to Wales, I'd listened to some of their songs so much that I found myself dancing through some very cool time changes.
You can see some clips of other Cwmback performances, including Thrulk, below..
Since last writing, I've also added a couple of new songs to the Mouth 4 Rusty myspace page:
'What's An Open Soul To Do?' and more recently, 'A Wall of Wooden Doors',
which I wrote in a little shed in Wales while we were setting up the Cwmback festival.
I recorded a humming vocal and guitar version of the song in the shed on Alex Wendt's (Klex) portable recorder,
which he later used as part of his audio/visual set at the festival. Both songs are so far just simple demos without
Katie or Natalie, but we hope to record sometime in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, our next show is at the closing event for Emily Paige Short's Sail 'O Tin-Town installation, which features an amazing wooden zeppelin set on grass, with a beautiful wooden walkway from which to view the zeppelin from, evoking photos of the majesty of early zeppelins at air shows at the turn of the 20th century.
Lastly, I've been busy curating a section of Sanford's FolkUs Festival, which takes place at the housing co-op on 19th September.
The film section of the festival as a whole is being curated by Sanford's Anna Babini, who is keeping a blog about it here. I'll also be performing alongside Blue Bag's Cat Westwood to provide a folk-orientated dance and music performance at the festival.
July is for street performing
July was a month of street performing for Blue Bag. We took drums, guitars, melodicas and a battery-powered mini-marshall stack with a microphone attached, that we used as a megaphone and spread what we hope was some form of joy to the people who saw us. As well as impromptu performances in Central and South East London, we also took to rehearsing publicly, in parks and in Ha'Penny Hatch, a commuter cut-through by the river, as seen above. All of this culminated in our two performances at Southwark Playhouse, London, on July 23rd.
14th June 2009 - Blue Bag, Mouth 4 Rusty, flatland BMX, hula dancing and more..
Been another interesting few months. The videos above are both from my new little folk project, Mouth 4 Rusty. I'd started coming up with some lyrics and vocal melodies while working on the new Rigsby Smith record in December, and in February, I finally wrote a song-song again. After that I found I was writing a few songs and enjoying it again for the first time in 12 years, so it seemed a good path to follow for a while. There are four of us now and we're working towards live sets in the near future. In the meantime, you can hear more early Mouth 4 Rusty offerings here .
I have to thank Nom Kinnear King for her wonderful hula dancing in the 'Joyful Under Water' video; and Morgan Peckosh for his awesome flatland BMX skills in 'Pretty Wise Moves'. I'm so pleased with the way both videos turned out.
I also started some movement and sound work with Russell Bond this year, which lead to the formation of 'Blue Bag', now a quartet of movement, sound and visual artists, completed by Cat Westwood and Riccardo Attanasio. Our first performance will be at Southwark Playhouse on 23rd July. Flyer below, and here's our press shot as well..
We've also had some great shows at Utrophia, from the surrealist portraiture of the aforementioned Nom Kinnear King to the performance art festival of 'Long Did I Build You'; from the enchanting 'Visit The Cryptic Lagoon' installation to Chicago's rocking Icy Demons, who played at the project space in May.
With everything else going on, the new Rigs record, 'Home Made' has been neglected of late, but all the pieces are written and most are arranged and part-recorded, so I'm sure some slow and steady work on that will mean it appears in the world at some point.
In the meantime, I covered a Now song, 'With It' for their AMC is One compilation, created to celebrate the one year of anniversary of Now's A Music Club, in Stoke Newington. You can listen to it here. Now haven't recorded their version of it yet, but there's a couple of videos of us playing the song live, back when I was playing drums for them, below..
