Tours

Welcome to the Tours Section of No-Fi.

Please see info below on forthcoming tours by:

BONG (March 6-8)

SHOGUN KUNITOKI (March 8 + 12)

ATSUHIRO ITO (March 9-12)

ALASDAIR ROBERTS BAND + KIILA (March 12-20)

TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR (April 28 - May 2)

BONG

March 6 - KRAAK Festival, Aalst, Belgium
http://www.kraak.net/festival2010/index.html

March 7 - LONDON Bardens Boudoir
36 Stoke Newington Road N16 7XJ
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=368074811124

March 8 - NOTTINGHAM The Chameleon
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=341780655914&ref=ts

Bong formed in 2005 in Newcastle. They merge classic doom rock tactics with a love of psychedelia and raga hypnotism, lacing their monolithic drones with vocal incantations and live sitar.

Currently causing a lot of interest in all sorts of smoked out international quarters, this mini tour sees Bong take in Belgium's amazing Kraak festival as well as dates in London and Nottingham.

At Kraak, they'll be in the sublime company of Yoshi Wada, Bill Orcutt, Voice Of The Seven Thunders, The Homosexuals and much more!

Look out for 3 vinyl albums out this year on labels such as Alt.Vinyl and At War With False Noise, as well as an appearance at stoner fest Roadburn in April.

"Like space rock slowed waaaaaay down, Bong unleash a dark, dense roiling dirge drone doom, that slowly and gradually, and yes, druggily develops into something super rocking and ultra heavy. Crushing low end, lugubrious stoner doom riffs, pounding drums, and some buzzing sitar, adding a woozy Eastern vibe to the otherwise sludge-y proceedings. This is a total druggy lumbering stoned slow motion doom groove drug jam, channeling Monster Magnet, Black Sabbath, SUNNO))) and especially some Electric Wizard." (Aquarius Records)

Saturday 6th March 2010 - Monday 8th March 2010

Artists: BONG

SHOGUN KUNITOKI

Shogun Kunitoki is a quartet from Helsinki with a love of vintage synths and keyboards, oscillators and ring modulators. They have produced two albums of driving and insistent instrumental psychedelic rock that have excited adventurous music fans across the globe with their deft mix of lysergic revivalism and post-rock innovation.

Debut album Tasankokaiku (2006) was immediately recognized by reviewers and music fans as a compelling cocktail of accessibility and ambitious aspirations where edgy 8-bit bleeps and soft-focus psychedelia shake hands on seven kaleidoscopic trips. Rave reviews gushed forth in The Wire magazine, PopMatters, Stylus Magazine, Exclaim!, Dusted Magazine, and Pitchforkmedia, where it was tagged as 'recommended'. It was also top of the weekly chart on New York’s WNYU radio station.

Their second album, Vinonaamakasio (2009) saw Shogun Kunitoki claim full mastery of their somehow nostalgic yet futuristic and unique sound, with a fuller and fatter feel in both performance and production – the sound of a band in full possession of their powers. “There are splinters of Stereolab, bubbles of Broadcast, squeaks straight out of BBC Radiophonic experiments, the heart and soul of The Silver Apples... The end result, while oddly familiar, is almost impossibly irresistible and is sure to end up on many a top10 list at the end of the year. Shogun Kunitoki’s use of crusty analogue instrumentation and that band dynamic injects the project with the human element lacking from so much electronic music. You can hear the band busy at work, shakers rattling, keys being pressed, drums being hit – and it’s all the better for it. I was beginning to think music of this calibre had died out completely. Highly recommended.” Boomkat.com

Despite the impact of their records, Shogun Kunitoki’s live appearances barely reach double figures, but their music has traveled wider, thanks to the endorsement of numerous music blogs and underground radio DJs in the US and Europe and as far as Australia and Japan.

http://www.shogunkunitoki.com http://www.myspace.com/shogunkunitoki

Monday 8th March 2010 - Friday 12th March 2010

Artists: Shogun Kunitoki

March 8 - LONDON, Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin St, London, E8 3DL
http://www.cafeoto.co.uk

March 12 - GATESHEAD, The Sage Gateshead
with Alasdair Roberts Band and Kiila - part of AV10 Festival
http://www.avfestival.co.uk http://www.thesagegateshead.org

Atsuhiro Ito

Japan’s Atsuhiro Ito performs using his device the Optron, essentially fluorescent light tubes with integrated guitar pick-ups sent through guitar amp stacks.

When the voltage applied to the tubes is altered, the lights flicker and the pick-ups harvest the electromagnetic noise perfectly synchronized with the flickering light, the intense noise creating a visual hallucination and the sounds veering from some kind of extreme techno to outright noise.

Ito also performs with the Optron in the duo Optrum, where he vies cacophonously with drummer Yoichiro Shin – they released the album Recorded on the Unknownmix label in 2006 – and he’s also previously collaborated with C. Spencer Yeh. You can find him in all three combinations on various riotous Youtube clips.

For his first UK tour though, he’ll be performing solo in a live show that straddles extreme noise and performance art to create a genuine sonic spectacle.

"Ito seems to wrangle a blend of techno and noise from simple pedals and his optron, creating blistering volumes of noise cutting in and out, dense with analog textures, while also producing repeated rhythms. The rhythmic in-and-out can be dense in the low end, and lithe in the high, creating a defacto drum kit of noise, mechanically pulsing just so atop the blistering screeches.

However, it is not just the sounds that thrill. The entire performance is compelling, not just because of the light show (exciting and disorienting though the strobe from the brilliant optron may be), but because of the manner with which Ito utilizes his instrument. Slung in a manner resembling a guitarist wielding his axe, Ito takes this novel device and produces anything but rock and roll, but it makes the viewer remember the old adage that "punk is an attitude." It is the attitude of the player that defines the instrument, and the instrument that often determines the players mood. For as rock as Ito comes off, the harsh sounds, the techno feel, give his performance, and the visuals that accompany it... a noir, futuristic, dirty look. By drawing attention to this interplay, the tug and pull of intent versus inspiration, Ito's conceptual work can blow minds and ear drums in equal measure."
www.killedincars.com

This tour is supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, the Japan Foundation and AV10 Festival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tsRq7VYeGg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qdZg9LB05M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwLYfH8PY4w&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y72_6MMr5KQ&feature=related

http://www.japanimprov.com/aito/index.html

Tuesday 9th March 2010 - Friday 12th March 2010

Artists: Atsuhiro Ito

March 9 - NEWCASTLE, Star & Shadow, Stepney Bank, NE1 2NP t:0191 261 0066
w/Kanta Horio and Posset
http://www.no-fi.org.uk/events
(As part of AV10 festival - http://www.avfestival.co.uk)

March 10 - BIRMINGHAM, Vivid, 140 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, B9 4AR t:0121 766 7876
http://www.capsule.org.uk

March 11 - CAMBRIDGE - Man On The Moon, 2 Norfolk Street, CB1 2LF t:01223 474144
w/ Team Brick and Canaveral
http://www.bad-timing.co.uk/

March 12 - LONDON, Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston, E8 3DL t: 0207 923 1231
w/ Dylan Nyoukis & Adam Bohman
http://www.cafeoto.co.uk

ALASDAIR ROBERTS BAND + KIILA Scottish tour

Alasdair Roberts expands to a 4-piece for this tour, joined by the Finnish band Kiila, who comprise members of Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Shogun Kunitoki, Avarus and Pekko Kappi.

The tour begins at AV10 festival at The Sage Gateshead and then heads north for 8 dates in a range of varyingly remote Scottish outposts.

Glasgow-based Alasdair Roberts has now released 5 albums of tender yet driving folk music, since his ‘discovery’ via Will ‘Bonnie Prince Billy’ Oldham’s advocacy on hearing a demo tape.

The last four of Roberts’ albums have been on the big US indie Drag City and he has shared stages with Joanna Newsom, Magnolia Electric Co, Smog, Charalambides and countless others. Alasdair's last album Spoils is widely regarded as his strongest collection to date and graced many recent end of year polls. You can also see him on the front cover of the March edition of The Wire.

"Roberts' appropriation of antique songs calls to mind the prospecting of Daniel Day-Lewis's oilman in There Will Be Blood: he performs the subterranean, hardscrabble toil of research, then plunges his drill down deep, coming back with black gold."
The Independent

This will be the first ever UK tour by Kiila, a collective based in Turku, Finland whose eclectic tastes are betrayed by their ever more adventurous recordings and live sets.

Kiila released their 3rd album Tuota Tuota in June 2009 and, in the words of Dusted Magazine: “Kiila’s greatest coup is shoehorning genuine song craft into this mix without upsetting the balance. (For example) album opener, Viisi Hirvasta. For its first half it’s a hypnotizing instrumental built from plangent strings, stray percussion, and a recurring melody on the bass, until a half-chanted/half-sung passage emerges near its conclusion, making you wonder if it started life as a song, a poem or a jam. Tuota tuota is full of moments like these, where you have to question how it is your listening, as all your usual hierarchies are upended and genres turned on their heads. That you at first don’t quite realize Kiila is doing this is remarkable; that they make it seem so natural is even more so.”

Often compared to like-minded US acts such as MV&EE, Wooden Wand and Espers, who have all found significant audiences in the UK and US, Killa are regarded by those who know them as at least as equally musically profound and influential but still to reap their much-deserved wider recognition.

http://www.alasdairroberts.com/
http://www.kiila.com/

This tour is supported by Scottish Arts Council's Tune Up programme, by Finnish organisations ESEK and LUSES, and by AV10 Festival.
http://www.tuneup.org.uk/
http://www.luses.fi
http://www.gramex.fi/?mid=294
http://www.avfestival.co.uk

Friday 12th March 2010 - Saturday 20th March 2010

Artists: Alasdair Roberts Band Kiila

12/3 GATESHEAD The Sage Gateshead w/ Shogun Kunitoki
http://www.avfestival.co.uk http://www.thesagegateshead.org

13/3 MONTROSE The Links Hotel
http://www.linkshotel.com/

14/3 GLASGOW Stereo
http://www.stereocafebar.com/

15/3 TOBERMORY, ISLE OF MULL An Tobar
http://www.antobar.co.uk/

16/3 INVERNESS Mad Hatters
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=38305356906

17/3 AVIEMORE the Old Bridge Inn
http://www.oldbridgeinn.co.uk/

18/3 ABERDEEN The Tunnels
http://www.myspace.com/interestingmusic

19/3 KINLOSS The Loft
http://www.loftgigs.co.uk/

20/3 ISLE OF SKYE Sabhal Mor Ostaig
http://www.seall.co.uk/index.asp

TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR

Träd Gräs Och Stenar (Trees, Grass & Stones) were forged out of the 'communitarian' underground scene in Sweden. Their fusion of psychedelic folk and cosmic rock has been hugely influential on today's underground. Describing themselves as Sweden's "first minimalist rock group", the band sound as contemporary now as ever.

Träd Gräs Och Stenar evolved from the ashes of equally legendary Swedish underground psychedelic acts Parson Sound and International Harvester.

Heavily influenced by witnessing a live performance by Terry Riley in Sweden, TGOS' own take on minimalism merged with their lysergic roots to create a powerfully transcendent next stage in Swedish psychedelia.

Träd Gräs Och Stenar have in recent years become an increasingly acknowledged influence on modern psych folk and outsider rock music, touted by artists such as No Neck Blues Band and Keith Fullerton Whitman as a vital influential touchstone.

Live, the band are as transcendent as ever, and their recent album 'Homeless Cats' (Gashud) is a slow grower that gradually reveals the band to still be on thoroughly hypnotic form even after all these years.

Wednesday 28th April 2010 - Saturday 1st May 2010

Artists: Trad Gras Och Stenar

April 28 - GLASGOW CCA
w/ Pyramidion, Vom

April 29 - NEWCASTLE Cumberland Arms

April 30 - LONDON Luminaire
w/Voice Of The Seven Thunders, Andy Votel

May 1 - tbc

May 2 PENRYN Miss Peapods