Sky Needle – a crew from Brisbane, Melbourne and Kyogle who make music only using their own home-made and found instruments – are set to play a pair of shows this week in London, alongside several other names from the Australian noise/experimental underground. These shows, which take place tonight – Tuesday 10th September – and tomorrow, Wednesday 11th, are part of the band’s first European tour, which takes place to coincide with the release of their latest album Debased Shapes.
Tonight’s show takes place at Hackney’s Apiary Studios, as part of the ongoing series of Unconscious Archives events, which have also taken place at Cafe Oto. Full details of tonight’s performance can be found here. The evening is subtitled Dingo Ate My Brulee, in honour, they say, of the predominantly-Australian-but-partly-French nature of the line-up. The main attraction is Mad Needle, a bringing together of "key members from Australia’s noise band and label scene", including members of Sky Needle and Mad Nanna, who will be presenting a new and fully improvised performance. If the sound of Sky Needle’s new album is anything to go by it should be an intriguing prospect indeed: we’re promised an "anticlockwise psychedelic invasion of reconfigured improvised bands".
Joining Mad Needle tonight are Tara Pattenden, an Australian multimedia artist working with "field recordings, soft circuitry and analogue electronics", programmer/visual artist Jayson Haebich, who will be performing with Mad Needle to create an interactive, cave-like space in which the musicians will play, and French ‘expanded cinema’ artist Xavier Quérel. More information and tickets here.
Sky Needle will also be headlining separately, at Cafe Oto on Wednesday 11th September, for an Upset The Rhythm night. We’re promised, in the style of their new LP, "primitive, hypnotic and dementedly funky" jams. They’re supported by Melbourne crew Mad Nanna and The Pheromoans. For more details and tickets, click here.
