Hello You. Very excited to announce the return of The New Obsolescents, the tape loop and turntable trio I share with my two dear chums Chris Weaver and Strictly Kev aka DJ Food. Last seen providing a ‘spooky racket’ at the Levitation Festival in Whitby a couple of years ago (my memory for dates is growing increasingly hazy), for our next trick we’re hitting the coast and heading on down to Hastings on Sunday 7th April for The first in a series of events celebrating ten years of the Hastings record shop Wow And Flutter. This is a live, improvised performance/rehearsal/jam session conducted in-store during which we’re hoping to lay some of the groundwork for our long overdue second album, so if you’re in the area, do come down to cheer us along (and naturally indulge in some digging in the crates). Plus we’ll be displaying some unique test versions of the sleeves for our sold-out-in-five-minutes 2021 debut LP for Castles In Space, The Superceded Sounds Of The New Obsolescents. If you remember the album came in a choice of five sleeve designs hand-printed on the very last available consignment of mirrorboard card stock, so this might be the last time they ever appear in public…
The following week Howlround will return to the ever-dependable Boundary Condition in its new home at East London’s plantroom. It’s the usual fantastically diverse line-up and features star turns from old friends and new, including Blanca Regina & Pierre Bouvier, Dirar Kalash, B E O R H T A, Yamen Mekdad, Billy Pleasant & A’Bear, Gyorgy Ono and Cerpintxt & Ruben.
Or as the press release rather more elegantly puts it, a hybrid of audiovisual live sets & immersive projections; extreme plunderphonics, sonic archaeology, contemporary folk, unequal temperaments, ritual subjects, visceral subterranean chants, freejazz improv, radiophonic interdisciplinary composition, tape disintegration, anti-ambient, and percussive non-music in a post-industrialist glass factory. Are you sold yet? I know I am! Tickets available here.
Finally, just wanted to share this short clip from last month of my Howlround performance at Manifest:IO Berlin with multimedia artist Kunal Singh providing visuals on the most enormous 22m video wall behind me. It was a pleasure collaborating with him and thanks so much to Harshini and the team for inviting me to play. Just a short clip on Kunal’s Instagram for now, but hopefully more will follow in due course. Make sure you give him a follow – and photographer Yu Ling Cheng as well!
Robin The Fog 