Steven Page - Union Chapel

Steven Page

Steven Page
Craig Northey
Kevin Fox

10th August 2018
Union Chapel, London, UK
Album: Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt. II (Fresh Baked Goods / Warner Music Canada)

Kevin Fox

Hot on the heels of his induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame singer-songwriter Steven Page introduced his forthcoming album to the freethinkers of London in the spiritual cauldron of the Union Chapel in Islington. This was a night of spikey wit and proud political musicality. Although Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt. II, will be released on Friday, September 14, 2018 fans were rewarded with a preview of this powerful new work.

Ahead of the album’s release, Steven has launched the vitriolic first single, “White Noise,” a naked look at the current political discourse south of the 49th parallel.
Listen/Watch “White Noise” HERE.

Craig Northey

“I grew up in a household where social justice was a fundamental value, and I always believed that it was a fundamental Canadian value as well as a central Jewish one,” says Page. “I’ve watched how the term has been twisted and perverted by the Right over the last several years in an effort to diminish the voices of reason.

Although I grew up politically aware, in a left-leaning household (which, in Canada, was not regarded as anything sinister until the mid-90s and beyond), it wasn’t until I discovered the politically-charged music coming from the UK in the 1970s (the Clash, The Jam) and 1980s during the Miner’s Strike and the Red Wedge movement (Billy Bragg, Style Council, Communards, etc) that I became excited by the power of music and activism. This song pays tribute to that music, and was written in the wake of last year’s events in Charlottesville. The open displays of racism and antisemitism, and the chants of “Jews Will Not Replace Us” made me grab my guitar and tell them I’d be more than glad to replace them.”

Steven Page

Recorded at Fresh baked Woods Studios just outside of Toronto and Vancouver’s Doghouse of Thunder Studio with longtime live bands Odds and The Original Six, and frequent collaborator Craig Northey, Discipline is Page’s fifth solo album and the spiritual follow-up to 2016’s Heal Thyself Pt. I: Instinct. Musically, the album tips its hat to many of Page’s influences including the aforementioned punk rock movement and David Byrne as well as a nod to the Bee Gees and the Zombies.

Sarah Vista - Somers Town Festival

Sarah Vista

Date: 14th July 2018
Venue: Somers Town Festival
Releases: Bandcamp

Camden town’s Spaghetti Western Songstress Sarah Vista and her posse of outlaws arrive in a blood-soaked blaze of bullets, armed with a unique sound inspired by the great western movie soundtracks and dark country classics.

With a series of live bookings already under her gun belt (Nashville, Sweden, Germany, Spain) and a number of original compositions already selected for forthcoming movie soundtracks, Miss Vista and her gang are ones to watch..

Revenge is red hot and blonde, and heading for a town called mediocrity, to wish them hell!

START, or Somers Town and St Pancras Art, has brought an annual street arts festival to this area of London for over 19 years. Fittingly, Somers Town has a pioneering history of arts and community being seen as important as housing: ‘housing is not enough’ meant providing community centres and sculpture as well as new homes after the 1920s slum clearance.

Today’s hugely popular START grew out of a first festival of cultures in 1997, begun to try to bring harmony to the disparate cultures in Somers Town, after racial tensions and a murder of young Richard Everitt. Former festivals featured acts as diverse as Alexis Sayle, Les Dennis from Family Fortunes, performances by the gurkas, Tibetan monks, and the British TaeKwando team, as well as local bands such as the Mighty Caretakers, and Oh!Gunquit, activities like first aid displays, filmmaking, history exhibitions, art workshops, and the ever popular Funfair.

Dom Aversano - Handpan Hero

Dom Aversano

Dom Aversano

Date: 18th July 2018

Venue: A World In London, Resonance FM, London, UK

Album: Geometric (2018)

Hands-On musical healing with Dom Aversano’s handpans on this A World in London! 

Click to listen: https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/a-world-in-london-18th-july-2018/ 

The handpan is one of the newest instruments ever created, and our guest on AWIL this week is a skilled craftsman harnessing its powers. Dom Aversano began music-making in his early teens with a conventional drum kit but soon navigated a course to Indian classical percussion where he’s felt most at home and found intergalactic possibilities. When he discovered the spaceship-like handpan through one of Pete Lockett’s online tutorials, he was instantly drawn towards the aquatic sounds and uncharted territory of this 21st century drum. Dom is a talented composer, visualising rhythm through time and space in his mind, and has boldly gone where no man has gone before, even concocting a complex cello piece, though he doesn’t play any string instruments. Watching Dom’s hands dance lightly across the domes of his handpans is an hypnotic, tactile experience, far out into the galaxy of tranquillity, so when you listen to Dom’s debut E.P. Geometric, close that door, switch off the lights, and chill out!

Dom Aversano

18/7/18 – AWIL 175  Online: https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/a-world-in-london-18th-july-2018/ Production & pics by Sofia Gaetani-Morris, Norman Druker, Sophie Darling. This week Rock to Indian Classical with Kedar Sharma on SOAS Radio. Click: https://soasradio.org/music/episodes/awil-269-kedar-sharma  Next week Meklit Hadero at SOAS and Kiranpal Singh meets YOUTH at Resonance. #AWorldinLondon – IN ITS TWELFTH YEAR! Live on Wednesdays 6.30pm Resonance 104.4  www.resonancefm.com & 4pm SOAS Radio  mixlr.com/soasradio  

Sofia Gaetani-Morris

Balladeste - Free & boundless

Tara Franks

Balladeste

Preetha Narayanan - violin

Tara Franks  - cello

Date: 13th June 2018

Venue: A World in London, Resonance FM, London, UK

Album: Relic (2017)

Spiritual string duo Balladeste on this A World in London! 

Click to listen:https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/a-world-in-london-13th-june-2018/ 

Preetha Narayanan

Synchronicity takes on a new meaning when hearing Balladeste’s circle of trust, strings, and sound. Where South Indian violinist Preetha Narayanan begins, British cellist Tara Franks ends, except there isn’t a beginning or ending and we get blissfully immersed in their circular empathy. Both women are classically trained, but now  running free & boundless, having forged a unique partnership over ten years, weaving in and out of each other’s voices as musicians and composers.  They converse fluidly from string to string, undulating through time and space, drawing listeners inside their melodic boudoir, and  melting the universe into a single entity. Balladeste’s debut album Relic is available on Bandcamp and iTunes now, plus a CD of devotional songs is already in the pipeline as a follow up. Listen out for that as it’ll be sung via violin and cello through one perfect voice called Balladeste. www.balladeste.co.uk

Franks senior and junior

13/6/18 – AWIL 170  Online: https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/a-world-in-london-13th-june-2018/ Production & pics by Sofia Gaetani-Morris, Norman Druker, Sophie Darling, and sketches by Alban Low. This week on SOAS Radio #SoundsLikeLondon singer/songwriters Bryde & Karima Francis. Click: https://soasradio.org/music/episodes/awil-264-bryde-karima-francis  Next week Eliza Shaddad at SOAS and Kabantu at Resonance. #AWorldinLondon – IN ITS TWELFTH YEAR! Live on Wednesdays 6.30pm Resonance 104.4  www.resonancefm.com & 4pm SOAS Radio  mixlr.com/soasradio 

Gazpacho - Tufnell Park Dome, London

Jan Henrik Ohme

Gazpacho

Jan Henrik Ohme - vocals

Thomas Andersen - keyboards, programming

Jon-Arne Vilbo - guitars

Mikael Krømer  - violin, mandolin

Kristian Torp - bass

Robert Risberget Johansen - drums & percussion

Kristian Torp

Date: 28th May 2018

Venue: The Tufnell Park Dome

Album: Soyuz (2018)

Future:

23/06/2018 – NO – Oslo, John Dee 

30/06/2018 – ESP – Barcelona, Be Prog! My Friend Festival

Robert Risberget Johansen

Norwegian Art-rock progressive outfit Gazpacho showcase a brand-new album Soyuz at the vibrant Tufnell Park Dome.

Known for their distinctive art rock that balances tense and beautiful arrangements, sinister and soulful melodic lines, Gazpacho's Soyuz furthers their experimental output.  A band who are used to seizing headlines with bizarre stories, including The Independent (UK) branding Molok as "An album that could destroy the world", Gazpacho have a holistic approach to the album writing process, imbuing each with a captivating concept. 

Thomas Andersen

The themes of Soyuz were born from the idea of how beautiful moments pass and cannot be “saved for later”, so within Soyuz are interconnected tales of people and lives “frozen in time”. Taking inspiration from a multitude of eras and subject matters, including the doomed Russian space capsule Soyuz and its iconic captain Komarov; the Tibetan Buddhist funeral practice in “Sky Burial”; the inclusion of the oldest recording of the human voice from 1860 and the Hans Christian Andersen inspired “Emperor Bespoke”.

Mikael Krømer

Recorded at Krypton Planet & St. Croix Fredrikstad in Norway, engineered by Thomas Andersen, Kristian Torp and Mikael Kroemer, mixed by John Rausch and mastered by Sonovo Mastering's Thor Legvold. The artwork, designed by painter Antonio Seijas, is inspired by Russian Cold War colours and fonts from the Soyuz One flight era.

Jon-Arne Vilbo

The Art of the Violin with Alban Low

Alice Barron

AWIL Violin Special
Alban Low
Alice Barron
Richard Jones

Date: 6th June 2018
Venue: A World in London, Resonance FM, London, UK
Chapbook: London Violins (p.2018, Sampson Low, ISBN 978-1-910578-77-3)


Genius artist Alban Low presents his wonderful new London Violins project on this A World in London!
Click to listen: https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/a-world-in-london-6th-june-2018/ 

Richard Jones

For two years, Alban Low has been capturing some of our finest guests on AWIL with his pen, adding an extra luscious string to our bow and gifting bands with unique, bespoke portraits of themselves in action. It’s bowed strings that form the centre-piece for his brilliant new chapbook, London Violins, an illustrated summit of eminent musicians matching Alban’s visual virtuosity with their violins, and amongst his gallery of stars you’ll find Irish fiddler James Patrick Gavin, Indian-fusion maestro Robert Atchison, klezmer queen Olga Baron, and live on this show, iyatra Quartet’s Alice Barron and Balagan Cafe Band’s Richard Jones . In recognition of Alban’s outstanding talent, the world renowned Yehudi Menuhin School commissioned him to create an exhibition featuring some of the most prominent British violinists, working in the Jazz & World sector,  and that project has now blossomed into the first of a series of compact, colourful chapbooks, bringing art together with music, vibrant and accessible for all.  Alban’s artist eye harmonises perfectly with the musician’s ear, and his lightning one-line sketches are rich in fluidity and spontaneity, simultaneously expressing music in motion through art. Alban says, ‘‘I like the challenge of trying to represent movement on the static page, and yet you still want it to dance before your eyes. You want to hear the music in the lines .’’ With a swish of the pen,  a pluck of the strings, and a stroke of genius, hear from the brilliant mind behind London Violins on this AWIL, and the man we are so proud & privileged to have as our radio show artist-in-residence. London Violins will be stored at the British Library and at other fine institutions but grab a copy for yourself here: https://sampsonlow.co/2018/06/04/london-violins-2018-dj-ritu-and-alban-low/  

6/6/18 – AWIL 169  Online: https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/a-world-in-london-6th-june-2018/ Production & pics by Sofia Gaetani-Morris, Norman Druker, Sophie Darling, and sketches by Alban Low. This week on SOAS Radio Djanan Turan. Click: https://soasradio.org/music/episodes/awil-263-djanan-turan  Next week Sounds Like London at SOAS and Balladeste at Resonance. #AWorldinLondon – IN ITS TWELFTH YEAR! Live on Wednesdays 6.30pm Resonance 104.4  www.resonancefm.com & 4pm SOAS Radio  mixlr.com/soasradio

AKA George - Blazing Youth

AKA George

Date: 30th May 2018
Venue: Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen, London, UK
Listen: Stone Cold Classic

AKA George is an artist to watch. He was thrust into the spotlight after his innovative cover of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky turned the heads of Nile Rodgers and Pharrell Williams, with Pharrell hailing him a ‘genius’, a glowing endorsement that piqued the interest of many Record Labels.

However, for AKA George, the time scale of these events meant he simply could not work the way he wanted to, and he felt that his music was suffering as a result of this. He turned away two labels that were vying for his signature, and instead vowed to work at his own pace, and to retain his integrity as an artist and performer.

His latest releases, Stone Cold Classic, and BLAZING really showcase his musical prowess, and what perhaps sets George apart is the fact that he is such a multi-instrumentalist: as well as a top vocalist, he is a pianist, guitarist, and drummer, to name a few. As a standard bearer of the Vlogger generation he blurs the barriers between kitsch, eccentric, bold and outrageous in a way that is buoyantly reflective of everything we love in great showmen of the past and everything glorious about the fearlessness of today’s youth.