9–10 March 2018
Hugely excited to host a residency featuring two of the most consistently mindblowing outsider groups performing today!
Celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, Vibracathedral Orchestra are the totemic ensemble of contemporary British outsider music. Their chimerical DNA spans from beatific Labour-club raga to full-on face-flaying West Riding Kraut-out, whilst the core membership and elastic supporting cast that has realised this wayward vision is an unrivalled who’s who of the UK audio underground.
Guttersnipe have been performing together for far less time but since forming in 2014, the duo of Xyloxopa Violaxia Bdallophytum (guitar, vocals, electronics) and Oxylepis (drums) have forged an incendiary reputation for their incredible live shows that have resulted in numerous gushing comparisons but really sound like nothing else.
For this special residency, the groups call on the services of artists spanning the breadth of Leeds' undervalued but vital new music scene on the Friday – including some of their constituent parts – before sharing the stage for an unmissable double-header on the Saturday.
Vibracathedral Orchestra are one of the cornerstones of contemporary British outsider music, their sonic palette drawing equally from rock, folk and experimental music. They have forged a reputation over the past 20 years playing long intense sets of free-riffing kaleidoscopic instant composition, heavy on transcendental string drones and wild percussive clatter. Their membership and elastic supporting cast over the years has been an unrivalled whoís-who of the UK audio underground, currently solidified as the stable quintet of Adam Davenport, John Godbert, Julian Bradley, Michael Flower and Neil Campbell.
"Slowly, the scattered surfaces of insistent, intricate noises in implacably revolving plateaus give way to strange, imaginary vistas ... the abandoned roof of a crumbling tower block overrun with climbing creepers affords a view over a forgotten city, submerged in jungly tendrils ... in a becalmed haze, turn to descend the tower beneath the surface of the green ... at first down worn corroded concrete stairs that become ever more thickly choked with vegetation ... until the easiest path is to step out through the twentieth-floor windows, long since absent of glass, supported by branches, stalks, thick leaves, a slow tumble through ever denser foliage until a headfirst, steady scramble downwards, suspended by forgiving green layers." - Owen Coggins
Guttersnipe are one of those bands that sound like they must have half a dozen members from the pure ecstasy of raucousness they emit, when they are in fact a duo. Itís the sound of a guitar played with a whole junkyard of scrap metal thrown at it and drums assaulted with telegraph poles, the vocals those of someone trying to escape the resultant carnage.
“Queer absurdist no wave noise rock abstract freak out. This is hard bop right here!” – Maximumrocknroll
