[Modern Ritual] is a collective of musicians and writers, the core group and guests are below.
CORE GROUP
Laura Cannell
Based in rural East Anglia, Laura Cannell’s work draws on the emotional influences of the landscape and the sometimes dissonant chords of early and medieval music. With deconstructed bow and the extraordinary sound of double recorder, Laura performs a collection of semi-composed, semi-improvised pieces from the edge of England which seek to dissolve borders, move away from formal structure and to re- imagine a sonic landscape unrestricted by time or origin. www.lauracannell.co.uk
Jennifer Lucy Allan
Jennifer Lucy Allan is a writer and researcher interested in the links between weather, sound and our sense of place. She is currently working on a PhD at CRiSAP on the social and cultural history of the foghorn. She runs the reissues label Arc Light Editions with James Ginzburg, and is a writer for The Wire, The Guardian and others.
jenniferlucyallan.tumblr.com
Charles Hayward
Charles Hayward is an English drummer and was a founding member of the experimental rock group This Heat. He also played with Mal Dean’s Amazing Band, Radar Favourites, Dolphin Logic, and gigged and recorded with old schoolfriend and “Pooh and the Ostrich Feather” member Phil Manzanera in the group Quiet Sun project as well as a short stint with Gong. On one occasion he also played drums for the anarchist punk band Crass.
www.facebook.com/charleshayward.official/
Hoofus
Hoofus uses drifting oscillators, cryptic rhythm and tactile interaction between performer and machines to create music of wayward eerie wonder. Drawing on rustic, alienation and the reclamation of the manmade by nature, Hoofus explores the uncanny beauty of the intangible and occult seeping through into our post-industrial world. www.hoofus.com
Luke Turner
Luke Turner is a writer and editor based in London. In 2008 he co-founded The Quietus, an online magazine devoted to music, arts and popular culture within the context of contemporary society. Turner is currently curating a series of live events as part of Hull City Of Culture 2017’s commemoration of the radical art collective COUM and as a journalist, he has contributed to The Guardian, Dazed & Confused, Vice, the BBC, NME, Q, Mojo, Monocle, Nowness and the SomeSuch journal, among other publications in the UK and beyond. Aside from his cultural writing, Turner writes regularly on landscape, place, memory and self for the Caught By The River online magazine, including a regular column on Epping Forest. This writing is also forming the basis for a forthcoming book on urban forests, family, ritual, death and sexuality against the context of Western decline and environmental destruction.
NEW PERFORMERS in 2019
Polly Wright is a performer whose work is largely inspired by the ghosts of memory and nostalgia, landscape and literature. She has produced music for film, poetry, dance and immersive theatre. She lives and works in Suffolk and is currently working on a film installation and a performance piece in an Eel catcher’s hut.
Osita is the new solo project of Nina Bosnic. Nina is a visual and sound artist who explores recorded textures, spoken word, field recordings and visual elements to create situational performance embedded with abstract narrative. Nina also performs and records as part of Paper Dollhouse. The piece at Walpole Old Chapel will be a site-specific performance in response to living close to the chapel.
PREVIOUS GUEST PERFORMERS
Sarah Angliss (cafe Oto)
Sarah Angliss is a composer, performer, sound historian and robotic artist. Sarah’s work reflects her lifelong fascination with electronics, ancient music, faded variety acts and machines. Though her music, performance and writing, she explores the uncanny properties of technology, revealing resonances between European folklore and early notions of electricity and sound.
www.sarahangliss.com
Andie Brown (The Union Chapel)
London born and bred, Andie began playing music as a bass player in her teens, working with a number of bands over the course of the following two decades. In 2007 Andie began performing and recording as a solo artist with glass and electronics under the name These Feathers Have Plumes. Elsewhere, Andie has enjoyed collaborating with a diverse range of artists including Sophie Cooper, Joincey, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, Kelly Jayne Jones, Phil Julian, Piotr Kurek and Adam Bohman but most often with Sharon Gal in the duo Mami Wata. Andie has recently relocated to West Yorkshire where she is currently undertaking a Masters by Research in Music at the University of Huddersfield.
andiebrownsound.com
Laura Cannell & Andre Bosman (The Union Chapel)
Laura Cannell & André Bosman perform improvised experimental fiddle music with a focus on exploring the interweaving sounds and textures of their instruments. Through the use of extended techniques, distortion, feedback and space, they create a unified and untamed music of emotive otherness.
www.lcab.co.uk
Ex-Easter Island Head (Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, FON Festival Cumbria, Hull Freedom Festival)
A UK based ensemble composing and performing music for solid-body electric guitar, percussion and other instruments.
www.exeasterislandhead.com
Rhodri Davies (NAWR BBC Studios)
Rhodri Davies was born in 1971 in Aberystwyth, Wales and now lives in Gateshead in the northeast of England. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice and fire harp installations. He has released four solo albums: Trem, Over Shadows, Wound Response and An Air Swept Clean of All Distance.
www.rhodridavies.com
Pete Flood (Cafe Oto London)
Best known as drummer and writer with Bellowhead, Pete’s pedigree is long and tangential, taking in jazz, Algerian rai, post-rock, electronic, Japanese folk music and classical music. Educated at Musician’s Institute, Los Angeles, and Goldsmith’s College, London, his musicianship is informed by a wide-ranging and eclectic set of interests, a love of learning, and an irrepressible experimental streak.
www.facebook.com/Pete-Flood
MODERN RITUAL 