AK Patterson are a three-piece formed in Brighton after lead singer Alex, an art-school graduate found fellow bandmates Alfie and Nat on the festival circuit in 2015. With comparisons to the visceral attack of PJ Harvey, the feral cabaret of Nick Cave and the post-modern jazz grooves of GoGo Penguin, AK Patterson are a whirlwind of contrasts.

The multi-instrumentalists flavour the warmth of their organic instrumentation with electronic experimentation in the shape of mood-setting field recordings and subtle synths.

In 2018, the band worked with award-winning producer Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Marika Hackman, Nick Mulvey) on their debut EP, Shadows. Following its release, they were invited to support Alt-J on tour culminating in two shows at the Royal Albert Hall. They subsequently embarked on their first headline tour in 2019 appearing at London’s Oslo. Festival appearances include Latitude, Boardmasters, Victorious, The Great Escape, Live at Leeds, and Blue Balls (Switzerland).

The band’s versatility has led to multiple collaborations, including the scoring of a short film, Adira’s Dream which has won numerous awards at festivals in the last year.

On 4th September 2020, AK Patterson released a brand new track in the shape of ‘Out of the Steel Works’. It features on their forthcoming EP Mettle, again produced by Charlie Andrew, and will be released on 15th January 2021.

Men, I Can Save You

by Jayde Adams (A Work In Progress for you and for me.)

Multi award winning Bristolian comedian and actress, Jayde Adams’ first stand up special was released on Amazon Prime in 2020 to worldwide acclaim. She was longlisted for an Emmy and has amassed a staggering 80 million views across social media.  

Jayde is the co-host of the BAFTA nominated series Snackmasters and Netflix smash hit, Crazy Delicious. She also stars in Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (Amazon Prime) and Sophie Willan’s BAFTA winning TV series Alma’s Not Normal. 

It’s 2021, change is always hard and what better person is there to lead the men, selflessly by the hand into the new world than TV’s Jayde Adams. 

Men, I Can Save You

by Jayde Adams (A Work In Progress for you and for me.)

Multi award winning Bristolian comedian and actress, Jayde Adams’ first stand up special was released on Amazon Prime in 2020 to worldwide acclaim. She was longlisted for an Emmy and has amassed a staggering 80 million views across social media.  

Jayde is the co-host of the BAFTA nominated series Snackmasters and Netflix smash hit, Crazy Delicious. She also stars in Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (Amazon Prime) and Sophie Willan’s BAFTA winning TV series Alma’s Not Normal. 

It’s 2021, change is always hard and what better person is there to lead the men, selflessly by the hand into the new world than TV’s Jayde Adams. 

Douglas Dare

Milkteeth

DOORS 7.30

Gig 8pm

English songsmith Douglas Dare returns with his third and most stripped back studio album to date, Milkteeth, released on 21 February 2020 with Erased Tapes. Produced by Mike Lindsay — founding member of Tunng and one half of LUMP with Laura Marling — in his studio in Margate in just twelve days, Milkteeth sees Douglas become confident and comfortable enough with his own identity to reflect on both the joys and pains of youth. In doing so, he has established himself as a serious 21st century singer-songwriter with an enduring lyrical poise and elegant minimalist sound.

Douglas Dare grew up on a farm as the youngest member of a large extended family, where he was often found in his own private world, dancing in his mother’s pink ballet dress. “Only now do I feel free to express my inner child again, and am giving myself permission to play dress up,” says Dare of Milkteeth’s cover shot, in which he wears soft makeup and is draped with layers of white linen, acting the part of a Greek muse. “I never felt like I fit in. I was different, odd. I wanted to dance and sing and dress up and on a small farm in rural Dorset that really stuck out.”

Where previously he has been known as a piano player, for Milkteeth Dare picked up a new instrument, the autoharp, and as soon as he sat down with it, songs poured out – he wrote the album’s first single Silly Games, in under an hour. “Instinctual feelings about childhood and innocence were the catalyst,” he explains. “Then with the autoharp, it all just clicked – I could see the album laid out ahead of me.”

Milkteeth opens with I Am Free, which loops piano and lyrics in an intimate dance, comparing the seemingly inexorable freedom of childhood to flying. The Playground is a song Dare says he’s wanted to write for years, about a yearning for childhood innocence and simplicity. WhileRed Arrows tells a story of vulnerability, of craving parental comfort, The Joy In Sarah’s Eyes is a Jeff Buckley-esque ballad for a new generation. In Heavenly Bodies there is an unhurried darkness that nods to Leonard Cohen’s songwriting, and is also the first time Dare has played the guitar on record. The melodies on Milkteeth are deliberately simple; Dare wanted it to feel familiar right from the first listen. In between these songs sit instrumental pieces – The Piano Room, The Stairwell, The Window – named for the spots they were recorded in, moments for stillness and reflection.

Marking his arrival in 2014 with the release of his acclaimed debut Whelm and establishing his musical dexterity on the much darker follow up Aforger in 2016, Dare’s star keeps growing. In 2017 he was asked to contribute a re-interpretation of Dance Me to the End of Love to the Leonard Cohen exhibition A Crack in Everything at the Contemporary Art Museum of Montréal, currently showing at The Jewish Museum in New York before opening at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco in September 2020. He was invited by Robert Smith to perform at his Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in 2018, followed by the David Lynch-curated Manchester International Festival alongside Anna Calvi in 2019.

Dare’s music speaks of his own experiences of universal themes like love, loss, and childhood. Perhaps most importantly, his music gives a voice and a sanctuary to anyone who’s ever felt unusual or out of place. Whether he’s singing of the pain of those in the Magdalene Laundries as on Whelm, describing coming out to his parents on Aforger, or processing his own childhood isolation on Milkteeth, Dare has a graceful honesty and an abiding clarity of vision in his simple and distinctive sound.

Clementine Blue & Lim Orion join forces for an ambient, experimental pop night at the Tom Thumb Theatre. Expect loops, analogue synthesisers, saxophone and very special guests for a night of improvisation.

Amorphous Sounds

Amorphous Sounds is a newly established independent label founded by Luisa Gerstein (Deep Throat Choir) and Anika Mottershaw (Bella Union Records).  The label has its roots in the choir, and the collaborative practices amongst its many artists, which have evolved over the years, culminating in the groups most recent album, In Order to Know You.  The label is here to champion the most exciting music to be coming out the collective, and foster future collaborations from with and without the choir.

Amorphous Sounds made a strong debut release in 2020 with The Swarm, an experimental, richly harmonic and polyphonic vocal concept album, following the narrative of a swarming bee-hive (Heloise Tunstall-Behrens & Auclair).  There have since been numerous singles and remixes, and the label will be working closely with Auclair, Blood Moon Project, and Nouria Bah on releasing exciting new work in 2022.
The Amorphous Buds series, in collaboration with Voices Unwrapped and Arts Cool, celebrates the labels beginnings.  We invite cherished artists not only to perform on carefully curated line-ups, but to collaborate on a piece of music to perform, and release on the label.  We are excited to be working with Laura Groves, Fran Lobo, Blood Moon Project, Auclair, Miryam Solomon, Evadney, Deep Throat Choir, and Nouria Bah on this series.

Auclair

Auclair is a British-Rwandan music and sound artist. Her work explores rhythm, voice and electronica – treating everyday life like new mythologies and taking an embodied approach to exploring ideas with sound.

Her versatility has lead to a wide range of projects and collaborations including: live rework / scoring of Afro-Brazilian classic Black Orpheus with Charlie Dark; Beck’s Song Reader Live; multi-sensory concert for blindfolded audience The Sensory Score; choral sound piece about bees, The Swarm; musique concrète series made from recordings of buildings, Four Points Talk; In Waves for the Roundhouse Choir; Dawn Chorus Live exploring birdsong with Marcus Coates; community multi-arts residency Co-Create; and more recently working with pioneering Rwandan drum ensemble Ingoma Nshya. Her latest pieces are a Zeitgeist commission for The Riot Ensemble, Munganyinka is a Transformer, which premiered at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2020, and Ruzunguzungu, commissioned by ISSUE Project Room in New York for their With Womens Work series.

She is also a member of Deep Throat Choir and vocal ensembles The Quorum and Blood Moon Project.

Miryam Solomon

All voices are unique, but some really stand apart.  Whether it be the tone of a person’s phrasing and delivery, sometimes a voice catches you and gets under your skin.  Miryam Solomon is one of those people.

A London-based artist by way of Sweden and Eritrea, her work is underpinned by her love for rhythms, vocal interplay and story telling, and has been championed by the likes of Jamie Cullum and Moses Boyd.

Romance, her debut EP for the South London label Albert’s Favourites, is at its heart a sonic exploration of storytelling, painting vivid and evocative worlds that are beautiful, playful and intriguing.

Unexpected turns and sounds, interlocking rhythms and voice, weave together a journey through different moods and colours that set the scene for stories to unfold.

There’s a magic and honesty in its simplicity, in working with the dignity of each element, as exemplified by Ben Marc’s production.  Repeating rhythms and phrases take on new meaning with each listen, always guided by Solomon’s voice and its offer of intimacy and intricacy.

Evadney

Growing up in the UK in a Caribbean family, Evadney’s sound has been shaped from his love of bold artists like Bjork, Kate Bush and Grace Jones, and later studying the likes of John Cale, Stockhausen and Musique concrete during his MA in Music Composition at Goldsmiths University. Debuting two stunning EPs of poetic electronic-pop odysseys on Black Acre Records, Evadney captured his own outsider experience. Led by his unique vocals, the politics of sexuality, identity and Evadney’s intersectionality are played out across cinematic pieces of work.

Lunatraktors return to the Tom Thumb Theatre to celebrate the madness and magic of Yule with some dark and twisted carols.

Limited numbers and negative COVID test required.