Category: Sloth Racket

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.

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.

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.

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…

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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.

Release date: 12th June 2017 (CD, digital album and t-shirt)

Shapeshifters is the second album by Sloth Racket. The album was recorded in October 2016 at Blueprint Studios, Salford, at the end of Sloth Racket’s Autumn tour. The night before, the band had played a show at Islington Mill; the last of a run of five gigs also taking in London, Derby, Newcastle and Glasgow. Cath had composed a new set of pieces for the tour and they had developed over the course of the five dates, evolving from speculative marks on the page into full musical statements by the collective. When the session came around, the band was switched on and fired up by a week’s playing together. The resulting four tracks thoroughly dissect the written starting points and frame them in improvisations ranging from duos to whole group explorations. A snapshot of the band engaging with that music at that particular time, it probably sounds quite different to what happened live on the tour, although heavily informed by the process of touring.

Release date: 2nd May 2016 (CD and digital album)

Triptych is the debut album from Sloth Racket. The album is a suite of music in three parts, originally composed by Cath for Gateshead International Jazz Festival 2015 (a Jazz North East performance that was the band’s first gig). The pieces were constructed as frameworks for improvisation, combining composed fragments with graphic notation to explore the balance between freedom and structure – and make the most of the exceptional improvisers who join her in Sloth Racket. After several gigs during 2015 the band got together to record a version of the pieces in November, at Limefield Studio in Manchester with John Ellis (Cinematic Orchestra) engineering. The resulting session, on a cold and rainy evening fuelled by coffee and pizza, produced three substantial tracks that range across musical territories from fiery free jazz, to minimal improv textures, to deep grooves.