Saturday 5 November 2016

Nap Eyes, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Happy Meals, Shopping and Negative Scanner playing in London next week!

Hello there!

I hope you’re having a terrific weekend! Next week, Upset The Rhythm slip stealthily into fifth gear with four amazing shows on the cards for you. Monday sees us head to The Lexington for a breezy, melody-packed affair with Nap Eyes, Robert Sotelo and Lads. Whilst on Wednesday we’re thrilled to have Kara-Lis Coverdale, Happy Meals and Thomas Ragsdale all in town at The Islington for a night of experimental electronics, future-proof pop and composed atmospheres.

Then on Thursday the tempo and volume skyrockets with Shopping, Scrap Brain, Squeakeasy and Molar all testing the roof of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. Prepare for lift off! Last but not least, one week today, i.e. next Saturday, we’ve plotted out an event at The Victoria in Dalston for out-punk harbingers Negative Scanner and Score! It doesn’t get better than that, what a week! We’re surely spoiling you, tickets available for all of those still, read on for everything and more on all those shows…


\\\\\     MONDAY     /////


NAP EYES
ROBERT SOTELO
LADS
Monday 7 November
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

NAP EYES hail from Nova Scotia and make crooked, literate guitar pop refracted through the gray Halifax rain. Recorded live to tape with no overdubs, their songs are equal parts shambling and sophisticated, with one eye on the dirt and one trained on the starry firmament, inhabiting a skewed world where odes to NASA and the Earth's magnetic field coexist easily with lyrics about insomnia and drinking too much. In the world of Nap Eyes, workaday details punctuate (and puncture) cosmic concerns, as songwriter, singer, and rhythm guitarist Nigel Chapman wrestles with air and angels, struggling (and often failing) to reconcile the Romantic rifts, both real and imagined, that define our lives: between chaos and order; solipsism and fellowship; the anxiety of social (dis)orders both big and small; and the various intersections and oppositions of religion, art, and science. It's the sound of being young and alive in the city, a tenuous and impermanent counterpoise of recklessness and anxiety, archness and earnestness. Following last year's reissue of their 2014 debut 'Whine of the Mystic' on Paradise of Bachelors, Nap Eyes released an album of all-new material entitled 'Thought Rock Fish Scale' earlier this year.
https://napeyes.bandcamp.com/

ROBERT SOTELO will make his live debut at this show, interpreting songs honed for his eventual long-player entitled ‘Cusp’. Sotelo intends to channel ‘Ram’-era McCartney without the chops, at once intimate and ambitiously layered pop music garnished in naive sincerity. Attempting to push beyond limited means, towards the absurd and abundant idea that recreating the feel and sound of The Beatles remains paramount an objective, the entire project rests on the uncertainty and confusion of mid-thirties existentialism and the exploration of the individual post-social life. Accompanied by a host of friends this initial performance will use the recorded compositions as a template on which Sotelo may attempt to draw out and utilise the individual merits of each musician to reconfigure and sensualise the jams, with currently unknowable results.
https://soundcloud.com/robert-sotelo-3'

LADS are Sophie, her boyfriend, Arj; her brother, Henry; and his best friend, Wayne. They play noisy pop that generally lasts 2:30. 
https://ladsladslads.bandcamp.com



\\\\\     WEDNESDAY     /////



KARA-LIS COVERDALE
HAPPY MEALS
THOMAS RAGSDALE
Wednesday 9 November
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, N1 0XT

KARA-LIS COVERDALE works in both acoustic and electronic media to create works that "blur the boundary between the human and the electronic machine" (Weird Canada). A classically trained keyboardist who studied composition and musicology, she has held several organist and music director positions across Canada since age 13, most recently as a notable and controversial organist, composer in residence, and director of the MES mixed choir in Montreal. In 2015, her solo debut 'Aftertouches' was named a top album of the year by The Wire, The Quietus, NPR, Adhoc, and others. Coverdale's work has explored music's sacred histories while forging its new, technologically mediated and culturally saturated frontiers: extended harmonic resolutions typical of Baroque keyboard music frame her approach to part writing, which she voices with hybrid keyboards, fractured samples and digitally rendered vocals. Her music appears in films, provocative plays, commercials, and disturbing historical documentaries. She is active in the studio and live as a composer, performer, and collaborator (Tim Hecker, LXV).
http://karalease.tumblr.com/

HAPPY MEALS make spellbinding experimental pop music. Sounding like the work of Saada Bonaire's long-lost slacker offspring, debut album 'Apero' is actually the produce of two Glasgow-based artists, Suzanne Rodden and Lewis Cook, who originally hail from the Scottish borders. Suzanne sings in a unique mix of French and Scottish, occasionally sharing the mic with Lewis over the course of six songs taking the 100% Silk/NNF pop aesthetic and psych-dub freedom of Peaking Lights to a more ambiguous, enchanted headspace. It's all top notch stuff, from the nine minute celestial sashay of 'Crystal Salutation' through the chiming boogie of 'Altered Images' to the blown-out dub-pop of 'The Age Of Love', and the Balearic acid of 'Le Voyage'. Brand new EP, 'Fruit Juice' sees Happy Meals sharpened and expanded, taking their tender experimental beginnings and unabashed pop moments into undiscovered realms glowing with possibility, check it out now through Night School Records.
https://soundcloud.com/nightschool/altered-images

THOMAS RAGSDALE is a Manchester-based composer, melding cinematic electronica with organic, immersive soundscapes. His approach to writing and producing is built around a minimalist framework, choosing to rely heavily on organic instrumentation overlaid with subtle electronic elements, whilst live performances take on a more visceral approach with tense peaks of sound in front of a full live visual show.
 


\\\\\     THURSDAY     /////

SHOPPING
SCRAP BRAIN
SQUEAKEASY
MOLAR
Thursday 10 November
Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 44 Pollard Row, Bethnal Green, E2 6NB
7:30pm | £8 |
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/374130

SHOPPING are propulsive bass lines, primitive disco-not-disco drums and guitar lines sharp as broken glass. The band was formed in 2012 by members Rachel Aggs (guitar), Billy Easter (bass) and Andrew Milk (drums), who've all done time in a plethora of notable UK DIY bands including Trash Kit and Wet Dog. They pull from a well of 70's post-punk with a voraciousness seldom seen these days, bringing to mind the jagged aggression of Gang of Four, the voracious yelp of The Slits and the dance inducing thrust of Delta 5 . Their debut LP ‘Consumer Complaints’ was released November 2013 in the UK via MILK records and quickly sold out its first pressing. A US re-issue of  ‘Consumer Complaints’ came out last year via Fat Cat records, followed up by their excellent second album ‘Why Choose?’ The band are tirelessly committed to taking their sound to new audiences and spreading the Shopping gospel, securing impressive gigs along the way including main support for ESG and Gang Of Four as well as a BBC 6 Music session for Marc Riley. They have toured in the UK and throughout Europe numerous times over the last few years and recently toured the USA with also awesome Gauche.

SCRAP BRAIN play primitive hardcore punk, kind of almost whacked-out Flipper style with a real noisy/no wave dissonant tone. The lyrics are fantastically sarcastic and barbed, a particular favourite being the couplet "M'lady me, I'll murder you", which may provoke a smirk or wry smile, but is absolutely not a joke. Their demo tape is available through all good stockists of unhappy hardcore and also via pay-what-you-want download here: https://scrapbrainhc.bandcamp.com/album/demo

SQUEAKEASY play sexy tutti frutti jams from the town that brought you the Magna Carta. The songs are dense and have lots of words and different bits in them so are good if you have a short attention span. Sounds
a bit like Sonic 2 and Earthbound with more squeaking. Their debut album is out now on Crumb Cabin, check it!

MOLAR are an incredible all grrrl punk band that sound like No Ditching and Bratmobile and PUNXXX. Based in London but from all over the world, they have a demo tape and a split 7” with Pale Kids available to listen to now! https://molartheband.bandcamp.com/



\\\\\     SATURDAY     /////


NEGATIVE SCANNER
SCORE
Saturday 12 November
The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Rd, Dalston, E8 3AS

NEGATIVE SCANNER are a Chicago post-punk quartet formed in 2012 by Rebecca Valeriano-Flores (guitar, vocals), Tom Cassling (drums), Matt Revers (guitar), & Nick Beaudoin (bass) in the wake of the breakup of Flores & Cassling's previous band 'Tyler Jon Tyler'. A fierce live unit, they honed their chops on Chicago's robust DIY scene, propelled by the rhythm section's dialed-in hive-mind & the twin guitar attack of Revers & Flores, whose powerful voice delivers her lyrics with passion & conviction. The band has previously released two 7-inch singles in 2014 - the first on Trouble In Mind & second on Tall-Pat Records. Negative Scanner excel at creating tension, which sets them apart from similarly zipped-up post-punk acts. Their fast and barbed eponymous debut LP (also on Trouble In Mind) is a potent demonstration of how tension is most rewarding when it snaps.
https://negativescanner.bandcamp.com/

SCORE make blown-out energetic no wave/anarcho noise; all the right amounts of harsh, sassy structure, bile and beauty. Members of Woolf, Dregs and Cop come together in a gritty torrent of rawboned hardcore bratpunk, primitive and pounding, searing and surging. Demo imminent, no link yet!



See you down the front, thanks as always for your time!
UPSET THE RHYTHM
x




\\\\\  UPSET THE RHYTHM   /////
/////  UPCOMING    SHOWS   \\\\\
   
NAP EYES
ROBERT SOTELO
LADS
Monday 7 November
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, N1 9JB

KARA-LIS COVERDALE
HAPPY MEALS
THOMAS RAGSDALE
Wednesday 9 November
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, N1 0XT
7.30pm | £7 | http://www.wegottickets.com/event/373659   

SHOPPING
SCRAP BRAIN
SQUEAKEASY
MOLAR
Thursday 10 November
Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 44 Pollard Row, Bethnal Green, E2 6NB
7:30pm | £8 |
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/374130

NEGATIVE SCANNER
SCORE
Saturday 12 November
The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Rd, Dalston, E8 3AS

HORSE LORDS
PRIMORDIAL SOUP
MIDDEX
Monday 14 November
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, N1 9JB

TIM PRESLEY
(White Fence)
THE WHARVES
ALEX DINGLEY
Saturday 19 November
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, Angel, N1 9JB
7.30pm | £10 |
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/374378

An Evening With…
KRISTIN HERSH (Second night added due to popular demand!)
Wednesday 23 November
St John on Bethnal Green, 200 Cambridge Heath Rd, London, E2 9PA

An Evening With…
KRISTIN HERSH
Thursday 24 November
St John on Bethnal Green, 200 Cambridge Heath Rd, London, E2 9PA
7.30pm | £20 | SOLD OUT

Upset The Rhythm Xmas Party featuring…
APOSTILLE
BLOOD SPORT
GUTTERSNIPE
RAVIOLI ME AWAY
RATTLE
Saturday 17 December
Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 44 Pollard Row, Bethnal Green, E2 6NB


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