An evening of fractured sound collage & tape manipulations with post-rock & experimental folk sensibilities.

Able Noise

Able Noise are a cross-continent duo based between The Hague (NL) and Athens (GR), built around an experimental conversation between the baritone guitar and drum playing of George Knegtel and Alex Andropoulos. 

A colliding sound collage of entangled cables, amplifiers, voices & instruments, this is a whirling state of de/construction without a centre: a woozy, disorientating shuffle & distorted patchwork of enveloping, cascading form & time. Nothing is allowed to settle for long. Warped reverberations, flat toned & scratched string sounds, distorted flickers & hazed surges of tempo are familiar to fans of American post- rock group Slint.

It is a pleasure to welcome their return to The Cube. We last hosted them in 2021 when their recorded output was then a few scattered youtube uploads & a brilliant, atmospheric & moving 30 minute cassette piece, all subdued overdrive & muddled FM radio signal hiss. That release on Glasgow’s famed GLARC label has evolved into last year's celebrated High Tide album, released on London’s World of Echo:

'one of the year’s most rewarding listens’ & a top 100 of 2024 - The Quietus

In the live environment Able Noise stretch their approach; reframing & exploring the acoustic resonances of the performance space and the construction of sound before it fractures, decomposes & begins anew again.

Milkweed

Here is a duo of voice, guitar & banjo shrouded in mystery despite the white light heat of a trio of celebrated cassette releases, 4* Guardian reviews, collaborations with free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker & a sold out show at Cafe OTO opening out this year. Milkweed describe themselves as ‘Slacker-trad’ and it’s certainly an apt description for their transatlantic live performance which leans into the grunge thrash dynamics & gear shifts of those halcyon Pavement days with fuzzed folk reworkings reminiscent of Amps For Christ & the lo-fi tape stretching of experimental hip hop trio cLOUDDEAD.

What the description doesn’t fully capture, is the densely original multimedia, intertextual exploration of hauntology, prehistory and folklore, referencing both Appalachian & British traditional music. A contemporary folk horror exposes the fault lines of historical rupture through spliced tapes and muddied melodies, washed up on a river’s shore or chopped up with pirate radio static. Amongst shredding banjo and a defiant voice akin to Lankum’s Radie Peat, Milkweed draws out the ghosts in the glitched, distressed echoes & shadows of their unearthed & disrupted source material. A tape spliced approach that holds something of a plunderphonics impulse, Milkweed’s work explores notions of artefacts & psychic lines as they reconstitute symbolism & storytelling.

Eva May & Pat Benjamin

We welcome a debut show for this new duo.

Eva May’s solo work occupies the warm piano chords & pure choral voice that evokes Laura Nyro’s New York, the sun washed songs & layered voices of Joni Mitchell’s Laurel Canyon or the soulful suites of Dusty Springfield, Evie Sands & Bobbie Gentry. Alongside these sunnier climes, Eva’s music also presents a distinctly English pastoralism. Pat Benjamin is an adventurous stalwart of Bristol’s alternative scene, best known for his keyboard & electronic experimentations in one of Bristol’s finest recent exports, the Tara Clerkin Trio. Together Eva & Pat shape their keyboards through a multitude of effects & loops in a late night mist of sound.