September 2023
This week I had the special pleasure of a very brief trip to Norway to play You Are The Mole at the Oslo Fringe. Because I had never played in Norway before, and because I knew exactly three people in the country, I feared for the worst: a mostly empty room of friends who had forgone an evening of Netflix to show their investment in our acquaintance. All the more delighted was I, then, to find the room not-so-sparsely populated at all. The festival takes place in a warren of interconnected venues down by the port on the fjord, opposite the opera house, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you’re ever in Oslo when it’s on, head down. Heck, go to Oslo for it – I’m planning to go next year as a punter, drop me an email and we’ll meet up. Thanks to Andrew for engineering, to Amanda and the OF crew for their warm welcome, and to M & D for drumming up a whole posse. And to TS, for his unforgettable, airborne hospitality.
photo credit: Martin Thomson
My friend T.Z. has put out another strange, moody little record (embedded below and linked here), and I like it more than the last ones even. Give it a whirl! I want to also plug an EP by one of my all-time musical heroes, Rutger Zuyderveld, AKA Machinefabriek, whose videogame soundtrack Hinkelstap (‘Hopscotch’ in Dutch), I’ve been playing on repeat on my recent travels. At this point, I can hardly tell where the record ends and the wispy, washed-out, just-after-dawn light begins. For anyone with dotted note or double-clavé abuse issues, it’s irresistable.
Some fun and exciting things on the horizon; a stripped-down live set for a smaller, four-piece manifestation of Northumberland Radical Fun Group ahead of a kind of grand 45-minute album that has been 90% done for a year, a touring piece about LIGHTER-THAN-AIR TRAVEL for the Berlin-Boston Departure Duo, and trombonist Ian Sankey and I will be back at The Glasshouse ICM (formerly known as Sage Gateshead) in November to work on a funny storytelling thing about Luciano Berio and the Swiss clown Grock, from whose garden Mr. Berio stole apples as a kid before dedicating his trombone Sequenza to him as a grown-up. Lo, what antics! Updates to follow.
joesna.pe 