Thursday 20th October | 7pm | Pay what you can: £6/£10/£15 ADV
A night of rare music from a mountainous region of France called Maseev Centrale where an unexpected experimental underground scene is bubbling away. Rien Virgule create baroque synth songs with heavy driving drums and electro - acoustic innovations. Arlt are a duo playing dreamy psychedelic chansons music described as "riotous, uncanny and brazen'"
“The gigantic sound of Rien Virgule floors you, its gurgling and an electrocuted Stockhausen starts hitting out on looped rhythms and hypothermic cymbals, suddenly eating up the space like a half-starved animal. Anne’s hex-like incantations pools around crevices with dark majesty as waves of slippery organ break over an agitated kaleidoscope of a cut-up / crumbled / singed cataclysm.” - FREQ
Arlt, the duo formed by Eloïse Decazes and Sing Sing, have been subverting the boundaries of French song for almost 15 years. The pair have performed all over France as well as numerous tours of UK, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, USA sharing stages, with Josephine Foster, Old Time Relijun, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Chris Cohen , Calvin Johnson, Eric Chenaux and The National.
Today, Arlt releases ‘Turnetable’, their 6th LP and their most youthful, riotous, uncanny and brazen effort to date – a collection of unruly, jury-rigged unhinged calypsos, ghostly blues and infectious love songs. Raspy rhythm guitars, minimalist keyboards, and bewitched cassette-players join forces with Bulbul Tarangs and concertinas – bending, droning and chipping the sound-world while the duet’s twin voices chant, hum and unload in slap-stick quivering French. Arlt’s magnetic rive shows are like comical spirit summoning sessions, psychedelic odes to childhood, macabre parties with heart-wrenching melodies riddled with improvisation and serendipities.