Disembark! – 2023 cassette edition

Not a new release per se, but today we’re excited to announce that Disembark! by Dee Byrne and Cath Roberts is now out on cassette! The album was originally released in 2020, during that strange time when physical merch felt somehow…dangerous. We decided at the time to stick with a digital-only release, and shelved our half-finished plans for a tape. Fast forward three years and the duo is playing live this summer preparing for a new recording: a perfect time to finally unleash the cassette.

The bright yellow tape with hand-printed cardboard case is available now from our Bandcamp site and from a duo gig near you.

Sloth Racket – Organising Space

Release date: 7th October 2022 (pre-orders from 23rd September, CD and digital album)

Organising Space is the fifth studio album from Sloth Racket, the band of improvisers led by baritone saxophonist Cath Roberts, with Anton Hunter on guitar, Sam Andreae on alto saxophone, Seth Bennett on double bass and Johnny Hunter on drums.

The music was recorded by Giles Barrett in April 2022 at Lightship 95, a floating recording studio on a former lightship in East London, and the resulting album was mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney. Four main tracks are interspersed by salvaged audio off-cuts from the studio session. Compositions by Cath Roberts written between late 2020 and early 2022 form a structural skeleton of the music, fleshed out by the band through collective improvisation in the moment. Prior to the session, Sloth Racket played three live dates in the UK, their first since 2019, and this recording documents the fresh, exciting energy of being reunited after a long break. To celebrate the release the band will play three more dates in London, Brighton and Glasgow, with the album launched at Cafe Oto on 10 October.

Organising Space will be available to pre-order from the Luminous label via Bandcamp from 23 September. It is released on 7 October as a CD and digital album. Cover artwork/design is by Cath Roberts, and the CD edition features sleeves risograph printed by Footprint Workers Co-op, Leeds.

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Cath Roberts – baritone saxophone
Sam Andreae – alto saxophone
Anton Hunter – guitar
Seth Bennett – double bass
Johnny Hunter – drumsCompositions by Cath Roberts.

Recorded on 9th April 2022 at Lightship 95, London by Giles Barrett.
Mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney.

Cover artwork and design by Cath Roberts.
Sleeve printing by Footprint Workers Co-op.

Luminous Label 2022 | LU017

CD and digital album available now.

Dee Byrne – Live at Cafe Oto

Release date: 18th July 2022 (digital album)

Dee Byrne has been curious about developing a practice as a solo performer ever since she decided to go ahead with a gig when her duo partner (from long running collaboration Deemer) couldn’t make it. Stepping into this unchartered territory, Dee discovered that the experience was simultaneously like jumping off the edge of a cliff and coming home.

Fuelled by an interest in using electronics to augment her sonic possibilities, Dee has been using effects pedals since she and Dutch sound artist Merijn Royaards started their experimental duo. But navigating saxophone and electronics in a solo situation is a world apart from the hyper interactive ongoing conversation of the duo setting. Here, one faces the edge. Comes up against the sharp relief of the moment, unrelenting, crystal clear. Here, there is nowhere to hide.

Dee’s performance at Café Oto on 11th June 2022 captured the complex juxtaposition of risk and safety. Playing a support set for Washington D.C. duo Model Home (presented by Upset the Rhythm), Dee played for an uninterrupted 27 minutes to a focused and attentive audience. The result is a diverse range of textures, moods, wild scramblings, agitated stutterings, drones, squeaks, clicks and unabashed melody. These seemingly disparate sonic explorations are held together by an overarching intention to express what wants to be expressed in the moment.

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Dee Byrne – alto saxophone & electronics

Recorded by Pedro Subtil at Cafe Oto on 11th June 2022

Mixed and mastered by Dee Byrne
Album Artwork by Cath Roberts

Luminous Label 2022 | LU016

Digital album available now.

 

cr-ow-tr-io – Hold Music

Release date: 10th December 2021 (CD and digital album – pre-orders from 12th November)

Album release concert: 10th December at Hundred Years Gallery, London (presented by LUME).

cr-ow-tr-io is Cath Roberts, Otto Willberg and Tullis Rennie, who have been meeting since 2018 to explore playing improvised music with interventions/disruptions. These can be composed elements, objects, texts, rules, actions or anything else, often housed on a small table in the middle of the room. In the public performances by this group so far, there have been attempts at making music together whilst being distracted by small tasks, repetitive and/or banal instructions and games of hide and seek. Vocal utterances have been heard, including gurgling. Some teeth were nearly lost through sound-making, mostly by mistake. There were bits that felt uncomfortable – but in a good, challenging way – and there were lots of moments of collective fun.

Hold Music is cr-ow-tr-io’s first recording. It was made in July 2019 when they gathered in a large room and improvised together for long blocks of time over the course of a day. Recorded by Tullis Rennie at City University, the resulting large chunks of sound were then sifted through by the trio, before being sliced and diced into the short tracks that can be heard on the album today.

The trio are performing Cath Roberts’ new piece And then the next thing you know at hcmf// 2021 on 19th November in Huddersfield, and there will be a release concert for Hold Music at Hundred Years Gallery, London on 10th December (presented by LUME).

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Cath Roberts – baritone saxophone
Otto Willberg – double bass
Tullis Rennie – trombone
cr-ow-tr-io – pipes, bells, whistles, and many other objects
Recorded by Tullis Rennie at City, University of London on 29th July 2019.
Sliced and diced by cr-ow-tr-io.
Mixed and mastered by Tullis Rennie.
Design and printmaking by Cath Roberts.

Luminous Label 2021 | LU015

Digital album available now.

 

Deemer + 1 – Aftermath

Release date: 4th June 2021 (CD and digital album – pre-orders from 24th May)

Tickets on sale for album launch live set on release day (online and in-person)

Deemer started life in 2006 as a weekly improvisation session in a warehouse in Hackney Wick. While Dee Byrne and Merijn Royaards put their acoustic drums and sax through various effects pedals and sample triggers at a loud volume, Merijn’s fellow warehouse dwellers watched TV, washed dishes and read books. A tolerant attitude that gave the duo the space to develop their edgy, searching sound. Over the years Deemer has incorporated found objects, reel to reel tape machines, suspended industrial metal plates and stacks of small TV monitors projecting sonic wave patterns. Merijn exchanged his drums for analogue drum machines and Dee shed effects pedals like old skins.

Today Deemer is a leaner, more pared-down version than its previous incarnations and has sought to extend its horizons in other ways, by collaborating with other improvising musicians. Their third album on Luminous sees them join forces with Manchester based improvising drummer Johnny Hunter. Dee has always been curious about working with acoustic drums in the context of this duo. When LUME was invited to curate a showcase on the Barbican Freestage for London Jazz Festival 2019, this seemed a good opportunity to try out the augmented duo with Johnny. Shortly after the performance, they went into the studio to record this album.

Aftermath was recorded in one long session at Viva Recorders studio, Islington in November 2019. Due to the subsequent lockdown, the material lay submerged in an external hard drive for over a year. After rescuing the file, Deemer proceeded to edit the session down to nine short tracks that reflect the scope of the trio’s collective musical journey that day.

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Dee Byrne – alto saxophone/electronics
Merijn Royaards – electronics
Johnny Hunter – drums/percussion

Recorded by Tim Hamper at Viva Recorders studio, London on 19th November 2019.

Mixed and mastered by Deemer.
Artwork by Dee Byrne.

Luminous Label 2021 | LU014

Digital album available now.

Sloth Racket – Exabout: Live In Ramsgate

Release date: 23rd November 2020 (digital album and t-shirt)

One September evening in 2019, a roomful of people climbed up a ladder by the sea for a special gig. It was the seventh night of Sloth Racket’s Dismantle Yourself tour, hosted by Extra Normal Records at Arco Barco, a flexible studio/co-working/venue space. We were sharing the bill with Evan Parker playing solo, there were some sort of delicious cakes for sale at the bar, and a carful of our mates had driven out to eat seaside chips and catch the gig. Our music sounds different every time it’s played, and this is how it sounded that night in Ramsgate, with all those things taken into account.

The usual way we do things is this: I write the scores that form the skeletons of our music, we tour them, then we record. In 2019 it was the other way around: we turned up to a studio in snowy northern England in early February, recorded a batch of my new music we’d never played before, and *then* toured it (and released it, as Dismantle Yourself) later in the year. So when we arrived in Ramsgate we were deep into the process of deconstructing/constructing something out of the pages from February, chewing on it every night on tour. Recorded by Anton Hunter and mixed/mastered by Alex Bonney, this set contains three live versions of Dismantle Yourself compositions, and one piece – the title track in the opening pair – that wasn’t on the studio release and came into its own on tour.

Writing this now in October 2020, with all the band’s work this year cancelled and an uncertain 2021 looming, I find myself feeling a weird sense of nostalgia for a gig and tour that only happened 13 months ago. Spread out across the UK in different lockdowns, it will be a while until we can meet in person as a band; the cycle of albums and tours has been paused, but I am still writing new material. The release of this live album falls where our 2020 tour would have been – I hope it can serve as a statement of intent for the sloth tours of the future.

(‘Exabout’ is what Seth Bennett’s phone said when it wanted us to exit a roundabout on tour.)

– Cath Roberts

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Sam Andreae – alto saxophone
Cath Roberts – baritone saxophone
Anton Hunter – guitar
Seth Bennett – double bass
Johnny Hunter – drums (and, for one night only, piano!)

Compositions by Cath Roberts.

This music was played live at Arco Barco, Ramsgate on 18th September 2019.

Recorded by Anton Hunter.
Mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney.
Album artwork and t-shirt design by Cath Roberts.

Luminous Label 2020 | LU013

Digital album and t-shirt available now.

Dee Byrne & Cath Roberts – Disembark!

Release date: 18 September 2020 (digital album)


Disembark! is the first studio album by the duo of Luminous label founders Dee Byrne (alto saxophone) and Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone). The pair have been collaborating under the banner of LUME since 2013, and running the Luminous label since 2015. They play together in many different ensembles, most recently the UK/Swiss collaboration MoonMot. In 2019 they started to explore playing as a duo, with a cluster of live dates at the start of that year.

The album was recorded at Gun Factory Studios in April 2019 by Cath Roberts, and mixed by Alex Bonney. It is a collection of short improvisations; an unplanned format that spontaneously emerged without discussion. The two acoustic saxophones engage in a dialogue that navigates a range of contrasting textures, from delicate breath sounds to visceral howling…

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Dee Byrne – alto saxophone
Cath Roberts – baritone saxophone

Recorded on 29th April 2019 at Gun Factory Studios, London
by Cath Roberts.

Mixed by Alex Bonney.

Artwork by Dee Byrne.

Luminous Label 2020 | LU012

Sloth Racket – Dismantle Yourself

Release date: 2nd September 2019 (CD, digital album and risograph-printed zine)

Dismantle Yourself is the fourth studio album by Sloth Racket. The album was recorded in early February 2019, over two snowy days at The Chairworks studio in Castleford, Yorkshire. After three albums made in single day sessions, the aim was to have more time to work on the music in the relaxed setting of a residential studio. The band hadn’t seen the new compositions in advance of the session, in contrast to previous albums which were recorded at the end of tours. With more time for experimentation, the focus of the recording was the exploration and development of the new material, collectively improvising the composed starting points into finished pieces. It was a glimpse into the world of multi-day recordings and a fresh approach for the group, who now look forward to taking the new music on the road and completely deconstructing anything that may have been settled upon back in that cosy winter studio.

Dismantle Yourself is available to pre-order from 12 August, and is released on 2 September as a CD and digital download, plus streaming via the Bandcamp app. A risograph-printed zine is available as a companion to the album, containing words and graphics by Cath Roberts and printed by Footprint Workers Co-op in Leeds. The zine is on sale in a bundle with the digital album, and there will be an option to purchase the CD, zine and digital album together.

Sloth Racket are touring to support the release, with dates in Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester, Lancaster, Todmorden, London, Ramsgate, Norwich and Cambridge. The tour is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and the album recording session was supported by the Fenton Arts Trust and the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust.

 

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Cath Roberts – baritone saxophone
Sam Andreae – alto saxophone
Anton Hunter – guitar
Seth Bennett – double bass
Johnny Hunter – drums

 

Compositions by Cath Roberts.

 

Recorded on 1st and 2nd February 2019 at The Chairworks, Yorkshire
by David Watts and Aled Way.
Mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney.

 

Design and printmaking by Cath Roberts.
Zine printing by Footprint Workers Co-op.

 

The album recording session was generously supported by the Fenton Arts Trust and the Oppenheim – John Downes Memorial Trust.

 

Luminous Label 2019 | LU011

 

CD, digital album and zine available now.

Sloth Racket – A Glorious Monster

Release date: 4th June 2018 (CD, digital album and t-shirt)

A Glorious Monster is the third studio album by Sloth Racket. The album was recorded in November 2017 at Blueprint Studios, Salford, when the band were in the middle of a mini-tour to promote the release of their live cassette ‘See The Looks On The Faces’ on the Tombed Visions label. The material was extremely fresh: a live set at The Peer Hat in Manchester the previous night was the first outing for the new music before going into the studio. The one-day session was a process of orientation, deconstruction and communal improvised negotiation around just how this music was going to sound, and the resulting album is a statement of (continued) intent from a group who are deep into the rabbit hole of a collective musical experiment. On tour this summer the music will almost certainly transform itself again as repeated performances turn the compositions inside out, but tracks on ‘A Glorious Monster’ are the first glimpse of this next phase of Sloth Racket…

The band are touring to celebrate the release of ‘A Glorious Monster’, with dates in London, Bath, Manchester, Derby, York, Durham, Edinburgh and Leeds.

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Cath Roberts – baritone saxophone
Anton Hunter – guitar
Sam Andreae – alto saxophone
Seth Bennett – bass
Johnny Hunter – drums

Compositions by Cath Roberts.

Recorded on 29th November 2017 at Blueprint Studios, Salford by Gary Hadfield.
Mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney.

Design and sleeve printmaking by Cath Roberts.

Luminous Label 2018 | LU010

CD, digital album and t-shirt available now.

Favourite Animals – Wasps/Wolves Trios EP

Release date: 6th March 2018 (digital EP)

Three trios formed from the Favourite Animals ensemble play improvised interpretations of ‘Wasps/Wolves’ by Cath Roberts. An appendix to the Favourite Animals large ensemble album….

1. Dee Byrne (alto saxophone), Anton Hunter (guitar), Tom Ward (bass clarinet)

2. Sam Andreae (tenor saxophone), Julie Kjær (flute), Tullis Rennie (trombone)

3. Seth Bennett (double bass), Anton Hunter (guitar), Graham South (trumpet)

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Recorded at City, University of London in August 2017.
Engineered by Alex Bonney with studio assistance from Vincent Ott.
Mixed and mastered by Alex Bonney.

Cover image: cut-up excerpt from ‘Wasps/Wolves’ score.

Luminous Label 2018 | LU009