New A7 print project: Raw Materials


New A7 booklets! Following on from the 2023/24 Setlist zine series, Raw Materials is my next project for Ink-Paper-Sound. At London Centre for Book Arts this year I’ve been learning how to use the risograph machine to print my own publications, experimenting with one, two and three-colour print. For Raw Materials I wanted to create something new out of discarded, unfinished things that I found at home and in my studio, and ended up bringing together words from the back of scrap paper, elements from backburner graphic scores that I didn’t finish or use for anything, and offcuts from linocut printmaking that I then scanned to make digital artwork. As with the Setlist zines, when making these I was imagining them as starting points for improvisation, hoping that they could be some kind of raw kernels for other future live work as well as standing alone.

Raw Materials 1 and 2 are on sale now from the Ink-Paper-Sound webshop; read on for info on each one.

Raw Materials 1: Deep-Sea Hunting
Fragments of text extracted from the scrap paper pile, lino-print offcuts dragged into the digital realm, and elements from an unfinished graphic score are mashed together in this three-colour booklet, with new cover artwork (blue variant) created especially for Raw Materials.

Raw Materials 2: Boxes
Another unfinished, parked graphic score is deconstructed into its component parts and presented as a series of unevenly-sized boxes. With unifying new cover artwork (yellow variant) created for the Raw Materials series.

Guesting with Last Dream of the Morning at Cafe Oto

It was an absolute pleasure to be invited to join Last Dream of the Morning for the second night of their residency at Cafe Oto! The gig was totally amazing – what a trio. I took the Lyra-8 and it was a fantastic workout for the synth. Working with it in an improvising ensemble setting is a lot of fun as it pushes my playing to the limit; each time I do it I think the machine comes out with sounds I’ve never heard before. So that’s nice! Here’s hoping this formation plays again…

New video: Composite Mashworks!

Tullis Rennie and I have been working on documentation for our duo project, starting with this video. This improvisation is from a studio session at SET Lewisham in March,when we were trying out the performance mode of the duo before our set at INTRASPECT, University of Surrey. The project now has a name too: Composite Mashworks! More on this coming soon…

Out today: Creatures of Tooth

Out today: the first release by Creatures of Tooth! This is the duo of Tom Ward on bass clarinet and me on the Lyra-8 senthesiser. We played a set together last year at Lewisham Arthouse, then recently went into the studio for the next stage of the project. Mixed and mastered by Martin Clarke, the two resulting tracks see us stretch out and explore this acoustic/electronic combination of instruments. The recording is out today on Madwort Recordings, as a cassette and digital album.


I’m very pleased with the cassette sleeves, the design of which Tom and I worked on together and which feature a photograph of Tom’s printed in bright orange riso print. This was part of my ongoing explorations at London Centre for Book Arts as a studio member, and was a nice challenge. I drew up a template for the sleeves, printed them up and then cut them (with help!) using the LCBA guillotine. Having cut a lot of sleeves for previous releases one by one, by hand, using a knife, over many hours, I found this process pretty game-changing!

Trio gig at Moers Festival

Rehearsals are underway this week for an exciting trip to Moers Festival! I was very happy to be invited to bring a trio to perform as part of the hcmf// ‘X perimental N counters’ night at the festival on Friday 6th June. The set will be a first-time collaboration between Kate Carr, Iris Colomb and me, and we had a really great first rehearsal yesterday so I’m pretty excited about it! Info is over on the Moers Festival website.

Quartz Sand set at light.box ‘Eyre’ album launch

Coming up on Friday 9th May at Hundred Year’s Gallery is the third gig of my collaboration with amazing sound artist Kate Carr. Our duo Quartz Sand is i due to release an album on Kate’s label Flaming Pines this Autumn. In the mean time we’re very happy to have been invited to play at the launch of light.box and Tom Challenger’s new release ‘Eyre’, out on Bead Records. Head to the HYG website listing for info.

Horse Improv Club with The Remote Viewers

Quick post about an impending gig! I’m at the Horse Improv Club on Thursday 17th April, joining The Remote Viewers on Lyra-8. This is a fun group for me, getting to interact with two saxes (Adrian Northover and Dave Petts) and bass (John Edwards) on my synth.

Please note the venue change for this gig, which will be at Living Space near Waterloo. Tickets can be bought in advance over on the Horse tickests page.

ATTNTYK in Surrey, and CUEE end of year concert

A couple of notable gigs coming up this month that I felt warranted a blog post, weirdly both happening in universities…

And then the next thing you know with Tullis Rennie at INTRASPECT VII

Over the past couple of months, Tullis Rennie and I have been working together to develop a new iteration of our duo practice. It’s been a while since Blurts/Growls came out in 2017 (!), and although we’ve worked together loads since then it hasn’t been in duo format. The catalyst for this new chapter was an invitation to be part of INTRASPECT VII, a concert series at University of Surrey organised by Bill Thompson. Bill was keen to bring my 2021 hcmf//project And then the next thing you know to Surrey, and rather than repeating it exactly as it was then, I decided to create a totally reworked version for this performance, collaborating with Tullis.
In the studio in Hastings, earlier in March

Whereas in 2021 the cardboard fragmented score object was suspended from the ceiling and was not interacted with by the players, this time I wanted to make it a changing, shifting structure that we can alter. So there will still be hanging elements, alongside new standing elements and smaller parts that we can add or remove from the main structures. Working with the physical objects will be part of what we’re doing on stage, alongside electronic and acoustic sound-making. It will basically be, as Tullis said in one of our rehearsals, a giant playground…trombone, saxophone, electronic instruments, and a table of small objects/instruments will all be available. If this sounds like the kind of thing you’d like to see and hear unfolding live in front of you, the gig is happening on Thursday 3rd April in PATS Studio One at the University of Surrey and tickets are free.

Work in progress table structure

CUEE end of year concert 2025

It seems unbelievable that another year has passed, but coming up the week after the Surrey gig is the final concert of my current cohort of students at the City St Georges Experimental Ensemble! On Wednesday 9th April we’ll be descending on the Performance Space at City with guest artist Iris Colomb, and sharing the bill with the Field Recording Ensemble led by Kate Carr. The students have been exploring new sonic territories this year and it promises to be an exciting night of improvisation, collaboration and…experimental room layouts?! Free tickets are available on the university website, and you can also catch Iris and me playing duo at BRÅK on Saturday 12th April.

My collage for the CUEE/FR gig listing