Saturday 9 March 2024, 7.30pm
With new premises secured this year, Resonance is currently fund-raising to equip their broadcast studio near London Bridge - and to stay afloat in this difficult time for the arts. From its new base Resonance FM offers London 100+ regular weekly broadcasts of a staggeringly wide-ranging kind, while the free-from alternative to the alternative that is Resonance EXTRA reaches out on small-scale DAB to Brighton & Hove, Cambridge, London and Norwich. Both stations attract listeners worldwide by the web - over 700,000 last year in over 100 countries. This grassroots global phenomenon relies on its outstanding pool of volunteer broadcasters: their gratis contributions to freedom of expression have garnered Resonance the prestigious Gold Award as Audio UK's "Network of the Year" for two years running.
Such is the degree to which Richard Dawson has drawn down long drafts from the whirlpools of Elemental North Eastern Archetypes, he may now be one himself. Fearless in his research and willingness to follow his inspiration, Richard has created an impressive catalogue of music and storytelling steeped in both ancient myths and contemporary dread. A fog of sickness, trauma and mute inevitability inhabits these records and is often expressed in the havoc with which Richard's hands produce sounds from his long-suffering guitar, an instrument as bruised, individual and indefatigable as its owner.
Richard's latest release is The Ruby Cord (Domino), his critically acclaimed seventh album, comprising seven tracks that plunge us into an unreal, fantastical and at times sinister future where social mores have mutated, ethical and physical boundaries have evaporated: a place where you no longer needed to engage with anyone but yourself and your own imagination. Breaking of convention with its 41-minute opening track “The Hermit”, The Ruby Cord swiftly garnered critical acclaim for the Geordie bard and picked up several Album of the Year spots. Subsequently, Richard has released The Ruby Cord Live: a 40 minute DVD of his performance at St George’s Bristol in May 2023, filmed by James Hankins.
This benefit gig for Resonance, the best radio station in the world, offers a chance to hear Richard Dawson in an (increasingly rare) intimate setting.
One of Tokyo's most emotive and inventive artists, first emerging in Japan during the early '80s women’s liberation movement, Kamura was a founder member of the first Japanese all-feminist punk band, Mizutama Shobodan, also known as Polkadot Fire Brigade, formed in 1979 in Tokyo. As agitprop feminist pioneers, Mizutama Shobodan joined the Japanese punk rock DIY movement, toured Japan extensively, set up their own record label (Kinniku Bijo Records) and released two albums. Their second album, Manten ni Akai Hanabira (Red Petals in the Sky), was produced by Fred Frith. Kamura also teamed up with Tenko as the female vocal improvisation duo Honeymoons, who developed a unique style of avant-noise improvisation and performed internationally with seminal New York improvisers including Tom Cora and John Zorn. In the late 1980s Kamura joined Kazuko Hohki’s UK based Japanese pop group Frank Chickens and toured Europe, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, USSR and Japan. In 2002 she began working with UK musicians, expanding her vocal genre to ethnic-experimental song writing. At the same time she performed vocal improvisation with such masters of improvisation as Eddie Prevost and Clive Bell. Her 2021 project, Kamura Obscura Duo with Natalie Mason, supported The Nightingales' sold-out UK tour.
In 2022 Kamura recently released her first solo album, “4am Diary", on which - said Stewart Lee in The Idler - “she douses the anti-musical strategies of the late-seventies Rock In Opposition movement... with a soupçon of fizzy electrics, her operatic voice navigating an echoing mirror maze of pulses and tones.” That year too she performed “ A Page of Madness” with her original soundtrack at FILM FEST in Portugal, in the role of narrator for silent film.
https://kamuraobscura.bandcamp.com/album/4-am-diary
https://www.facebook.com/kamuraobscura/
