Upcoming and Unvetted
1____ Joe Pera - Spring in the Midwest and Rustbelt Tour (£22) The gentler side of American comedy
Strange Brew 16:30 & 19:30
2____ Robomagic Live Presents Connor O'Malley (£19) The absolutely deranged side of American
comedy Strange Brew 19:30
3____ Venus (£10-£20) If I understood the press release right, IMPERMANENCE is forcing George
Monbiot to dance for our amusement Bristol Old Vic 19 :30
4____ Richard Dawson (£21) I’ll kick his arse if he doesn’t play all 41 minutes of The Hermit
St George’s 19:00
_____ PMS Casualty Fundraiser : Giant Swan (DJ) (£10) V. cruel to put this on a weekday
Strange Brew 20:00
5____ Brandon Hill Beer Festival (Until 8th) Ah go on then but this is the last pint
Lime Kiln, Three Tuns, Bag O Nails, Hope & Anchor & Eldon House, From 12:00
_____ Schwet X Freak Jam (£3) Who knows what Dan Johnson’s cooked up for Schwet’s penultimate
gig Strange Brew 19:00
_____ Teachings in Dub - Indica Dubs meets King Original (£8-£18) Dub meets grime
Trinity Centre 22:00
6____ Schwet X (£10-£15) With Schwet and PTS sharing a 10th birthday, we’re team Schwet. They’ll be
sorely missed :’( Strange Brew 17:00
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9____ CDR Artist Talk w/ Sarahsson (FREE)You heard The Horgenaith? There’s lots to unpack
Dareshack 19:00
10___ From the East (£4) People watching in the former Soviet Union Cube Microplex 18:30
_____ Die Verlierer + Rifle (FREE) Catch the end of the German Black Lips set for free
Crofters Rights 19:00
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12___ Hellfire Video Club: Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (£4/£5) Post 60s mood horror
Cube Microplex 20:00
13___ SABOTAGE by NoFit State Circus (£17/£24) (Until 02/06) “Darker, Grittier” circus. Does that
mean the clowns swear? Wilson Street St Pauls BS29HH 16:00
_____ Will and Shirley Pegna – All Terrain Training (£5-£15) 9 dancers tumbling to the Earth’s
rumbling Arnolfini 19:30
_____ BUBBLE: Nikki Nair, Red Rack'em, Nathan Worm (£8-£12) Nikki Nair audio flair
Strange Brew 22:30
14___ Trinity Garden Party 2023 (£3 suggested) It must be sunny by now? RIGHT?!?!
Trinity Centre 12:00
_____ Sylvie + Anna St. Louis + Melotone (£10) Chasing US 70s folk scene nostalgia
Crofters RIghts 19:00
15___ Izzy Spears + ThisisDA + Buffee (£10) Yves Tumour meets Zebra Kats Crofters Rights 19:00
16___ Pavel Milyakov + Richie Culver [LIVE] (£13) Pavel’s so varied it’s hard to know what you’ll be
getting but probs dark ambient electronics Strange Brew 19:00
17___ Puce Mary (PAN)+Jerome (£15)An unsettling swim in seas of industrial noise
Cube Microplex 19:30
18___ Terra Femme (£5/£9) Video essay of Early 20th century amateur travelogues scored by Sarah
Davachi Arnolfini 19:00
_____ Forbidden Worlds Film Festival: Pumpkinhead (£5-£120) The only chance to see it at the cinema
as the rights are a nightmare Bristol Aquarium IMAX 21:00
19___ Beau is Afraid (£5-£11) (Throughout May) Passion project critics hate? Hell yeah
Watershed Times TBC
_____ Forbidden Worlds Film Festival Day 2 (£5-£120) Rural aliens! Airplane high jacking Veterans!
Hulk Hogan cameos! Bristol Aquarium IMAX, From 12:00
_____ Worm Gigs: Meridian Brothers + Conjunto Media Luna (£16.50) Columbian neo-tropicalistas
sending electro-cumbia grooves off kilter Jam Jar 19:00
_____ inklingroom: Osheyack (live), Dj Narciso + more (£10-£15) It MIGHT be possible to catch
Osheyack after Jam Jar, set times pending Dareshack 20:00
20___ Forbidden Worlds Film Festival Day 3 (£5-£120) Wheelers! Apes! Hong Kong Superheroes!
Stallone! Canal chases! Bristol Aquarium IMAX, From 10:30
21___ Forbidden Worlds Film Festival Day 4 (£5-£120) Pirates! Martians! Kung fu cops! Infanticide!
Bristol Aquarium IMAX, From 11:00
_____ (mystery) VORE (tecks) (£5) Who needs a stage when you have a toilet Cube Microplex 19:30
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23___ Complete Snake/ MXLX/ Conqueror Worm/ Gluehorse (£4/£5) Ruff & ready ear bleeders
Exchange basement 19:00
24___ Yleiset Syyt (Helsinki) and Jarada (Tel Aviv) (£10) Fast hard punk is good exercise
Exchange 19:30
25___ FORGE by Rachel Mars (PWYC) (Until 27th) Durational memorial welding Unit 15, Time slots vary
_____ The Room: 20th Anniversary Screening (£7-£15) Can’t do it again but u should
Watershed 17:30,20:00
26___ Full Time(£5-£11)(Until 01/06)Shit public transport meets Safdie-level anxiety
Watershed 17:00ish
_____ Alice Zawadzki + Hatis Noit (£10+)Noit melds vocal styles into something original
St George’s 19:30
_____ KYYBERWALL + Holsten + YOKEL + Nate Ka$h +++ (£5) Cold hard drawn out breaks Cosies 22:00
27___ Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse (£5-£11) Exuberantly daft stop motion magic Watershed 18:00
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30___ The Melvins (£25) 14 year old me is trying to persuade me I can afford that Exchange 19:00
31___ The Jam Jar Presents: BCUC (£20) (Also on 30th) Also a Bit pricy but it is very funky
Jam Jar 19:30
Robin Foster @ Cafe Kino (17/04)
Placing safety-gloved hands into containers filled with assorted everyday objects, Robin Foster rummages. To be more precise, he Rummages with a capital R —Rummaging, for Foster, is a sound practice that embraces the noisy musical potential of objects.
It is, first and foremost, very funny. It looks like someone trying desperately to find something, but bent absurdly out of shape. Impractically chaotic, the action goes on far, far too long, as if somewhere along the way the task itself became much more interesting than the goal of finding anything; a means without an end. There’s a commitment to the hopelessly silly that I love, but framed in the most serious manner possible (Foster’s website includes a manifesto of Rummaging, and he’s currently pursuing a PhD on the topic).
Physicality is important, too - hunched over these boxes on the floor, Foster commits intense energy to the task. For the most part we don’t see the drama inside the container, except when force propels objects momentarily into view, mid-rapture like flying fish, often escaping their container, occasionally gathered up hastily and returned to the swarm but otherwise sacrificed as collateral loss. Alongside the silliness, there’s a palpable feeling of violence.
I wondered at first if the act wouldn’t have a short shelf life for viewers — a bit that tires quickly after its novelty wears off, especially as Foster eschews any intentional aspects of composition (the goal is consistent movement to facilitate collisions that are entirely chance-based). This isn’t entirely adhered to in the performance I see — there is an element of choice in the occasional switching between three containers, each of different sizes and material qualities (a plastic crate filled with small metal objects vs a cardboard box filled with shoes), and eventually combining the contents of the boxes into one.
But even without these intentional changes, the continuous sound of rattling/rustling/thudding/ clattering/clinking objects contains within it huge amounts of variation at a granular level. I experience these fleeting micro-events even as they accumulate as a homogenous mass, a dual perspective that makes for pleasurable listening.
More than anything, the experience is totalising — there’s a sense that you’re not so much doing the listening as the sound is being done to you, as if we were also objects being excited into collisions with each other. We are in a continuum with Foster and with the objects, a system of human and non-human forces bound together by a complex field of interdependencies and agencies which the political theorist Jane Bennett would term ‘vital materiality’. It feels that there is no escape until Foster makes one of the few intentional decisions permitted — to stop the action.
Evicshen @ Crofters Rights (17/04)
It’s been a busy April, in the past fortnight I’ve seen 31 musical acts, 32 if you count seeing Evicshen twice. Despite being knackered the repeat felt necessary after seeing Victoria Shen’s (get it, E-Vic-Shen) phenomenal piece for 12 turntables with Mariam Rezaei, and Maria Chavez at Rewire festival. In turntablism much of the fun comes from the tactile discovery of the cacophony’s sources, but Shen’s sound felt elusive in the mix, and her punky performative antics out of place in The Hague’s prestigious national theatre. Thankfully, my hopes that her solo set would draw out her style were warranted.
Touring as an experimental artist must be bizarre, less than a week after a prime spot in a national theatre, Shen was beaten out of Crofter’s main room by a local band’s EP launch. However, rather than faze her, she seemed in her element. After all, dingy side rooms and basements are the natural home of noise and mould alike.
And a noise gig this was. After Rewire, I had expected the turntables to be the centrepiece again. Instead, we were treated to a variety of homemade noisemakers. These included Evicshen’s patented portable turntables & fingernail needles, her various metal mouthpieces that turn the sounds of the body into a crunching post-human car wreck of jutting metal, and her mic’d springs used for bowing out industrial squeals. (Sadly there wasn’t enough room for the whip!)
Noise is a hugely important part of music for me but mostly as a tool to introduce a chaos that better speaks to how deafening life is than anything controlled could. Merzbow and Haino are fine, but I want a performance. That’s why Evicshen was hands down the best noise gig I’ve ever been to and probably my gig of the year so far.
She took the stage with her dragging the flimsy table provided around the room, standing on tables, swinging from rafters, eyes rolling back while the crowd visibly shook with feeling from the effect of the breaking down of both eardrums and the space between performer and audience. The effect was an overwhelming communal feeling of oh fuck. At one point a spring came loose and smacked someone in the face, their responding whoop is about an apt summary as I can think of.
Sacred Harp @ Redcliffe Methodist Church (18/04)
A simple arpeggio, a shared note, a sudden explosion of four-part harmony that feels just a little rough, and wild, and overwhelming. The beginning of Holly Herndon’s 2019 song Frontier may be distorted by electronics, but at its core it is part of a 200-year-old tradition; Sacred Harp, a type of a cappella American folk music.
After Herndon’s album came out, I became a little obsessed. I was overjoyed to sign up to a beginner’s workshop of the Bristol Sacred Harp group… at the end of March 2020. Merely 3 years later and I finally got a second chance to go along.
After a short introductory workshop on rhythm (part of a series in preparation for an all-day singing on the 13th May) the session carried on like every other Sacred Harp meeting. We sat in a square (a part on each side), as in turn different members chose one of the 573 songs from the book which gives Sacred Harp its name. We sang through the tune using the names of the four shapes of the notes (fa, so, la, and mi), then again with the words.
What makes Sacred Harp so special is there is no rehearsal – no teaching of the melody, no taking it in steps, no going back to correct a bum note. You just sing, and sing loudly, the ethos being that making some noise is halfway to making the right noise. It makes each short song thrilling – eyes darting between the notes, the words, and the leader, listening to follow the more confident singers around you, while trying to remember what sound a triangle is. I had to suppress the urge to give a little whoop after each final note.
It felt like a perfect antidote for the Seeing Things Fatigue I was feeling. I get a moment occasionally where I’m watching something and think ‘I know this is fantastic, but I’m not feeling it. I wish I was more in the moment.’ Here there is no way not to be in it, to be immersed in the soaring, layered sound, to lean in as the leader signals a repeat, to barrel headlong through wrong notes and mixed-up words, drawn along by everyone around you. A chance to be right at the centre of things.
Spotted in Bristol
A man dinging his bike bell at a very nonchalant crow in the road, kissing his teeth and muttering “that bird…”
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6ish year old kid, emphatically: "I think radioactive spiders should be in caves!"
Dad, unemphatically: "okay."
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Customer: “So what’s in this punch?”
Punch seller, merry on his own supply: “Nourishments”
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“He stopped to help an injured animal by the side of the road only to realise it was a mangled toupee”
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We are three housemates in Bristol, and we go to see lots of music / theatre / dance / art / film / comedy etc. It’s usually stuff at the margins of these forms, where more is shared between them than distinguishes them. This is a zine of events in the next month that we think we might go to, and reviews of events from the past month that we liked. It is: inexhaustive, biased, of debatable trustworthiness. This is a picture of us.
