UK label Bomb Shop take over The Cube for a session of bass, drones, electronics, experimental rave and epic visuals.

Rough Fields

"Astonishing music" Gilles Peterson (BBC Radio 1)
"Tremendous" Lauren Laverne (BBC 6Music)
"Outstanding experimental music" www.blindfun.com
"...the new Robert Wyatt!" Nick Luscombe (BBC Radio 3)

Rough Fields is the solo project of UK-based producer James Birchall. Began in 2011 with a series of epic lo-fi cassettes on the Bomb Shop label, the Rough Fields project progressed through expansive song forms on debut album Edge of the Firelight, and surreal, dreamy pop on the High Time EP. In 2013, Birchall released the first ever solo version of Steve Reich’s “Music For 18 Musicians”, produced in collaboration with the composer. The current Rough Fields live show stems from the 2013 album “Wessenden Suite” - a long-form drone piece constructed from layered field recordings. The performance involves recording environmental sound around the venue throughout the day of the performance, and then manipulating those recordings live using Max, Ableton and a series of custom built resonant filters to achieve densely layered textures of blissful, harmonic sound.

Ambrosia(@)

Ambrosia(@)’s back story is complicated. James and Sarah also run Fuse Art Space in Bradford, an autonomous cultural space which has hosted the likes of Helm, Karen Gwyer and Chris Watson over the last 18 months. Birchall also produces under the Rough Fields pseudonym. The duo first emerged in 2010 with a series of drone tapes packaged in ZX81 cases with defaced inlays, each one equally unique, puerile and mildly offensive. Then came the intense Hysteria Siberiana, with its sheet noise pressure, monolithic bass and enormous harmonic structures. On stage, Ambrosia(@) is a melding of guitar washes, bass attacks, noise and fantasmic vocals, blending heavy drone with clipped motorik beats and bass.

Interactive flight SIM: http://www.bombshop.org/ambrosia-chung/ 
 

Cru Servers

Cru Servers is the audio-visual collaborative project of Glasgow-based brothers Rickie and Jamie McNeill, a duo who individually appear under a plethora of monikers including Fox Gut Daata, Perfumed Head, Burnt Altar and Voices Like Bones. The sounds made are a kind of Poundshop psychedelia, where permo flashbacks bring half memories of Marshall, Theo and Juan, and hardware remains their master and guide. The influences are diverse, and the resulting sound is both large-system-functional and highly original.

ADULT MAGS

ADULT MAGS is the pairing of DMC finalist and hardcore legend Dr Weevil (aka Will Baldry) and Rough Fields. The collaborative project sees Birchall feeding the controlled output of his field recording manipulations into Baldry’s Serato setup, for the latter to use as raw material or vinyl manipulation. The result is chopped, weird techno, angular glitch-house and deep, disorientating bass music.

Survival Skills

Survival Skills is the solo, improvised music of Chris Sharkey, former guitarist for trioVD and Acoustic Ladyland. It has no fixed instrumentation but often the electric guitar, effects pedals, vocals, synths and other hardware are processed and layered to create dense, slowly shifting textures where rhythms are created from cracks, pops and noise with harmony emerging from hums and feedback. The main goals are to slow down the creative process and listening experience while eliminating the sound of the individual tools in order to create an audio object as physical as a painting or sculpture. Like placing one note or sound under a magnifying glass, then watching and listening to the results in slow-motion.