Thursday 3 April 2025, 7.30pm
Maher Shalal Hash Baz – the legendary Japanese ensemble lead by musical polymath, anarchist, filmmaker and ceramicist Tori Kudo – celebrate 40 years as a group with this rare live performance; their first in the UK in over 15 years. Formed with his wife Reiko Kudo they have produced innumerable albums, including a series of solo-offshoot projects. You can find their music on the likes of The Pastels’ Geographic, P.S.F. Records, K Records and more.
Tori Kudo has resisted defining the sound of his band, although in an interview with Tim Footman in Careless Talk Costs Lives magazine (August 2002) he declared: “I am punk.” Psychedelic folk, pop, new york punk and free jazz influences permeate their sound, with guest musicians plucked from both friends of the band and audience members. In many ways, Kudo’s approach to music is one of controlled chaos, stemming from his radical anarchist roots. Across his work, he embraces error as an inescapable result of human nature. As he aptly writes in the liner-notes of From a Summer to Another Summer: “Error in performance dominates MSHB cassette which is like our imperfect life.”
Xu Shaoyang has mastered a beguiling sophisticated-naive style overflowing with humanity and beauty and that's what makes this Chinese musician so special.
He is a collaborator of the rather splendid cult errant pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and like the Japanese collective his songs pick apart conventional ideas of musicality by embracing fragments, happy accidents and the spirit of amateurism.
Over the years he has performed with musicians such as Lee Ranaldo, Ana Da Silva, Tenniscoats, Eric Chenaux, Jens Lekman, Oneida, Tomoko Sauvage.
After years in Canada, Japan, and Scandinavia, Xu currently resides in London, England.
