Die Nacht der kleinen Wunder - Xposed Club, Saturday, 5th May

Poster by Mark Unsworth

Xposed Club presents 'Die Nacht der kleinen Wunder' on Saturday 5 May in the Francis Close Hall Chapel. A night of small miracles, music films, poetry, and much more with special guests including Ove Volquartz, the CIO Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra, the films of contemporary Russian filmaker Mikhail Basov and lots of other kleinen Wunders.  8pm start at FCH Chapel, Francis Close Hall Campus, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ Tickets £5 and £3 students and conc

Burning Wood - Xposed Club, Friday 4th May

Poster by Mark Unsworth

Burning Wood, a string quartet comprising violinists Alison Blunt, Renée Baker, Noura Sanatian with David Leahy on double bass will play Xposed Club on 4th May.

The evening will also feature a return visit from Ove Volquartz playing solo bass clarinet and the Mike Adcock Roof Slate Ensemble.

Xposed Club at The Centre for Art & Photography, Hardwick Campus, St Pauls Road, Cheltenham; £5.00 (students £3.00) on the door, starts at 8.00pm.

Predicate - Xposed Club, Friday 20th April

Poster by Mark Unsworth

Predicate - Alex Ward (guitar), Tim Hill (saxophones), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) - will play Xposed Club (in the Centre for Art & Photography, St Paul's Road) on the 20th April.

Predicate will play pieces from their recently released debut album as well as not-yet recorded material.

Alex Ward recently demonstrated his virtuoso, and sometimes ferocious, guitar playing as part of N.E.W. who played Xposed Club in January. 

Support will come from MkIII - Mark Unsworth with Mike Adcock and Peter Robson and Drachmae Lucky Strength - Stuart Chalmers, David Grundy and Martin Hackett.

£5.00 (students £3.00) on the door, starts at 8.00pm.

Man Ray (Film & Music Night) - Xposed Club, 14 March

Poster by Mark Unsworth

On Wednesday 14 March, Xposed Club will present an evening of improvised music to accompany a selection of silent films in the Chapel of Francis Close Hall, at the University of Gloucestershire.

Peter Urpeth (piano) and Stuart Wilding (percussion) will create soundtracks for Man Ray's 1928 film L'Etoile De Mer (The Starfish) and Emak-Bakia (Leave Me Alone) from 1926, as well as Dimitri Kirsanoff's 1929 Brumes d’Automne (Autumn Mists). They will then be joined by the Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra to accompany videos by Michael Basov.
Watch: L'Etoile de Mer, Emak-Bakia, Brumes d'Automne, and films by Michael Basov.

Kiki de Montparnasse in a still from Emak-Bakia by Man Ray (1926)

Kiki de Montparnasse in a still from L'etoile de Mer by Man Ray (1928)

Nadia Sibirskaia in a still from Brumes d'Automne by Dimitri Kirsanoff (1929)

Michael Basov, still from Rooks

Michael Basov, still from Digital Clepsydra

Michael Basov, still from Perforated Memory

gaNNets + Japonika - Xposed Club at Slak Bar, 4 February

Poster by Mark Unsworth

Gannets - Fyfe Dangerfield, Chris Cundy, Alex Ward, Dominic Lash and Steve Noble - will play an Xposed Club event at Slak Bar, Cheltenham on Saturday 4 February. Gannets are the experimental sister band to the more pop Guillemots - also featuring Dangerfield, Cundy and Ward.The band have been featured recently on both Radio 3 and 6 Music and are curently on a UK tour. Their debut album, Transmissions of Not is due for release in April. Listen to samples here.

Support will be provided by Japonika - a four-piece from Cheltenham: 3 guitarists, Steve Grund, Luke Stow, Jamie Dawson and drummer Chris Gage. 

£6.00 on the door (£5.00 in advance from Badlands). Starts at 8.00.

N.E.W. + Lund Quartet - Xposed Club, 20th January

Poster by Mark Unsworth

Xposed Club returns: the first concert of the new year will be on Friday, 20 January in its new space at the Centre for Art & Photography at the Hardwick Campus on St. Paul's Road, Cheltenham.

The event will be headlined by N.E.W. - Steve Noble, drums, John Edwards, double bass, Alex Ward, guitar. Listen to samples here.

Stewart Lee wrote: The bass player John Edwards turns up on the best British free-jazz recordings. The drummer Steve Noble cleaves through improvisatory rumblings with dramatic, decisive moves. And the guitarist Alex Ward, a compulsively creative polymath of indiscriminately omnivorous appetite, is a reliably unpredictable axe-hero for collaborators of all backgrounds. The trio’s second record posits a bricolage bebop, an ugly ecstatic jazz, played on sheet metal, broken glass and barbed wire. Coming Up for Air bubbles like an electric soup, and an elastically extended Empty Ballroom finds Edwards and Noble stretching back to catapult Ward’s electric guitar far beyond the gravitational pull of Planet Rock. 

N.E.W. will be supported by Lund Quartet - Simon Adcock, piano and Theremin, Jake Wittlin, turntable, Sam Muscat, drums and Rob Childs, double bass.
Audio and videos here.

£6.00 (students £3.00) on the door, starts at 8.00pm.

Exit Kit - Xposed Club 29th April

 

Poster by Mark Unsworth

Xposed Club will be hosting an event at The Playhouse Theatre, on Friday 29th April as part of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

Chris Cundy will lead a performance by his new group Exit Kit, featuring Xposed Club founder Stuart Wilding on drums, Olie Brice on double bass and Mark Sanders on drums, they are joined by innovative guitarist John Bisset, who will also perform a short solo set.

The Playhouse Theatre, 8-10pm, Friday 29th April, £10 (Book at Cheltenham Festivals)

Ray Kaczynski & Ove Volquartz - Xposed Club, 4th March

Poster by Mark Unsworth.

Ray Kaczynski ('electronic sculpture') & Ove Volquartz (contra bass clarinet) will headline the Xposed Club event on 4th March. The session will also feature Cheltenham based ''xbox xistentialists', Brown Torpedo and The Pete Crooks Trio with special guests Clive Skinner (trumpet) and Nicole Warfield.  

Ray Kaczynski & Ove Volquartz

This will be the last Xposed Club event to be held at Pittville Studios - event organizer Stuart Wilding says: “After four years of innovative, world-class musical concerts, this will be our last gig at Pittville before we look for a new home. So please get yourself and many friends along to make it a very special night to remember.” 

Xposed Club: in the atrium, Pittville Studios, Cheltenham on Friday 4th March. £5.00 (£3.00 concs.) on the door, starts 8.00pm.

Longstone + The Land of Nod - Xposed Club, 10th December

Poster by Mark Unsworth
Longstone, the experimental electronica duo, Mike Cross and Mike Ward, are making a welcome return to Xposed Club with a performance on Friday, 10th December. Listen to a sample of their wonderful 2009 album, Kabuki, at MySpace.
["electronic circuit bending drum programming analogue modular slide guitarring oscillatory low pass filtering junk percussion sax blowing voltage controlled glacial funk"]
The Land of Nod (another duo - Anthony Walker and David Battersby) will also be playing. This will be their first live gig for five years, when they headlined the John Peel night in Cheltenham. (In 2003 they recorded a session for John Peel’s Radio 1 show.)
Xposed Club: in the atrium, Pittville Studios, Cheltenham on Friday 10th December. £5.00 (£3.00 concs.) on the door, starts 8.00pm.

Barre Phillips - Xposed Club 20th November (FCH Chapel)

Poster by Mark Unsworth
On Saturday the 20th November, Xposed Club will host a rare performance by Barre Phillips in the Chapel at the Francis Close Hall campus in Cheltenham. Barre Phillps is a free improvising bassist who has worked with Sonny Rollins, Chick Corea, Ornette Coleman and many others. On Saturday he will be performing with Tony Bevan on saxophone, Matthew Bourne on piano, Tony Buck on drums, + Pat Thomas on piano and Chris Cundy on bass clarinet.
£6.00 (£3.00 concs.) on the door, starts 8.00pm.

Catatumbo - Xposed Club, 12th November

Poster by Mark Unsworth.

Catatumbo - an improvising trio: Ingrid Laubrock (tenor saxophone), Olie Brice (double bass) and Javier Carmona (drums), will play Xposed Club in the atrium, Pittville Studios, Cheltenham on Friday 12th November. £5.00 (£3.00 concs.) on the door, starts 8.00pm.

[Catatumbo = a river rising in Colombia and flowing into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela; Catatumbo Lightning is a spectacular phenomenon occurring over the mouth of the river, where it enters the lake: lightning storms will occur for up to 10 hours a day, 140-160 days a year. (Source: Wikipedia)]

Photograph by Vladimir Marcano

diatribes - Xposed Club, 29th October

Poster by Mark Unsworth.

A new season of Xposed Club events kicks off with diatribes on Friday 29th October in the atrium, Pittville Studios, Cheltenham. diatribes, from Switzerland are 'd'incise' (laptop, objects, treatements) and Cyril Bondi (drums, percussions). On Friday they will be playing with Chris Cundy and Pete Robson and then with the massed ranks of the CIO (Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra). Expect (according to their website): "magnetic freedom, interaction, intensity and fluctuation, breaths, quiverings, cracklings, bearings, masses, crash, chaos. Sound matter builded, deformed, tears off influence of the reason, imploses and becomes again the dreams behind our eyelids"! Unmissable! (£5.00 (£3.00 concs.) on the door.)