Lotus Pedals originally formed in 2006 to work with Forkbeard Fantasy in their sold-out theatre show Rough Magyck for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, for which the quartet composed and performed all the music. The group features cello, celeste, clarinets, bass sax, laptop, loop sampler, percussion and guitar. These four musicians from diverse backgrounds came together to create unique theatre scores. Whimsical jazz and folk tunes are flavoured with hints of early English classical music, John Barry, Les Baxter, sixties television theme tunes, Latin rhythms, and electronica. They are working with Forkbeard Fantasy again this year, composing and performing their new score for the upcoming 'Invisible Bonfires' production, and touring the country. In this new cabaret-style production the band have been incorporated into the staging of the show in a dramatically visual way. Lotus Pedals has become an arena for its members to develop their individual writing and arranging skills and to formulate a co-operative working method when it comes to setting and delivering their material. A UK tour is planned in 2008 with Club Integral.
Contact them via Divine Agency.
What the critics said: "This wasn’t the production’s only spectacular element: live music from the supremely strange Lotus Pedals, who remained on stage throughout the show...(supplying) the gorgeous live music...shambolic, bold and beautiful,it offers truly unique rewards."
Beccy Smith in Animations On-line 29th November 2007 Toynbee Studios, London.
"The piece rests on its delicious musical accompaniment - like a funky, late night cabaret - provided by the inimitable Lotus Pedals who are worth the ticket price alone."
Allison Vale in The British Theatre Guide, Tobacco Factory, Bristol, October 2007.
"The music of the Lotus Pedals...was very good, and they provided a beautiful love song written for the moon and the earth..." Peter Kirwan in The Barthedon, Warwick University, October 2007.
TO ORDER THE NEW LOTUS PEDALS CD "FABULOUS FAERIES" (£10) contact: Divine Agency
KEVIN BLECHDOM - NEW ALBUM !!! OUT NOW !!!! OMG !!!
GENTLEMANIA!! GENTLEMANIA!! GENTLEMANIA!! GENTLEMANIA!!
An acoustic album chock full of palpitating love songs.
Kevin Blechdom plays piano and sings.
Available NOW on Sonig and on iTunes.
www.itunes.com/kevinblechdom/gentlemania
24 Apr 2009, 20:30 - Club Integral @ The Canterbury Arms, Canterbury Crescent, 2 minutes from Brixton tube. London, SW9 UK £5 before 9.00/£7 after Featuring Patten, Glassglue, The Nobodies and The Sibylling Sisters (Sibyl Madrigal, Kay Grant and Armorel Weston). Entry £5 before 9.00 PM/£7 after. Doors open 8.30 until late. DJ Chris Cornett/projections by Jaime Rory Lucy of Rucksack Cinema. Info: www.divineagency.org/www.myspace.com/clubintegral. - Patten " ...the listener is drawn into a simplified world of ordered purposeful harmony, as microscopic in its exquisite detail as the music of the spheres is vast and expansive in its wonder" Wire magazine - Glassglue "vocalist Marcel Stoetzler... holds fort with a half-theatrical, half-knowing line in delivery and patter, whilst Matthew Karas, Gianluca Galetti and Emyr Tomos stagger with poise around the margins of time signatures." Takingnotes.org.uk The Nobodies "The Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir des nos jours.... tragic, haunting and very funny". Resonance Radio
CLUB INTEGRAL PRESENTS - HEXA / BENJAMIN BRUNEL / THE NOBODIES/THE BOYCOTT COCA-COLA EXPERIENCE
Club Integral present two concerts featuring Hexa from Manhattan, NYC on 20th and 22nd February at The Canterbury Arms in Brixton and Cafe Oto in Dalston
20th February: Club Integral 8:30 PM Friday 20th February 2009 Featuring irrepressible, adrenalized garage-band paeans from New York's finest - Hexa; mournful ballads about relationship breakup, with laughs, from the Nobodies; and agit-prop blues from Boycott Coca-Cola Experience. Entry: £5 before 9pm and £7 after 9pm. Canterbury Arms, Canterbury Crescent, Brixton, London SW9 7QD. (two minutes from Brixton tube)
22nd February: Club Integral @ Cafe Oto 8:00 PM Sunday 22nd February 2009 Hexa play an acoustic set. Singer/composer Benjamin Brunel plays a piano set of his caustic and original songs. Arch miserablists The Nobodies perform tragic cheap tavern songs about love. Entry £5 before 9.00 PM £7 after. Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8
Club Integral At The Grosvenor, 17 Sydney Road, Stockwell, London SW9 0TP SUNDAY 15TH FEBRUARY A Resonance Radio Benefit Gala (4.00 PM - 11.00 PM), featuring music from: Jowe Head and The Demi-Monde (Swell Maps), Tetine (Soul Jazz Records), Proxy Music, Oscillatorial Binnage, The Temperatures, Superstrings, Steve Greekshire, Raagnagrok, No Frills Band, Frank Bagay and The Topsy Turvy Band. Global filmic magic from Jaime Rory Lucy of Rucksack Cinema and music from the ineffable DJ Chris Cornetto. Vegan food will be available. Entry: £5 Info: 020 7737 0884 www. divineagency. org/www. myspace. com/clubintegral
TETINE "Brazilian duo Tetine were a huge inspiration on CSS, who turn up here for a typically boisterous remix. The original is the prime-pick, though, a joyful playground chant of pop Baile Funk." Fact Magazine"Always i"A
"The off-kilter, mutated funk, electro and sound manipulation that comprises this inventive and gravely album is an absolute treat." Joe Shooman, PLAN B, June 2008
THE TEMPERATURES "The Temperatures again prove that they are one of London's most spasmodically captivating outfits with the release of their first LP, Ymir (Heat Retention). The previous 7" aktion has been good (particularly the debut 7" on 4th Harmonic), but this record drags the whole drum/bass/duo concept into a new sludgier realm. They don't so any of the proto-prog calesthetics of Lightning Bolt, but prefer to just roll around in muzz. Which is a fairly admirable alternative, eh?" Thurston Moore
CLUB INTEGRAL on Friday 30th January 2009 - 8.00 PM until late. At THE CANTERBURY ARMS, Canterbury Crescent, Brixton SW9 - two minutes from Brixton tube station.
Entry: £5 before 9.00 PM, £7.00 after.
Featuring music from: Trumpet and beats duo LOOP ELLINGTON Avant-garde wayfarers KOBAYASHI Australian folk chansonniers THE DOOMED BIRD OF PROVIDENCE. + a special guest to be announced.
With projections from JAIME RORY LUCY of RUCKSACK CINEMA DJs CHRIS CORNETTO and KARINA TOWSEND (Chalkwell Ladies).
Club Integral Pre- Yule Party - an early festive fiesta...
13th December 2008 at The Grovesnor, 17 Sidney Road, Stockwell, London SW9 0TP
An unmissable night of music from London's home to the unpredictable... Jack Shirt - one-man machine-tooled psychedelia The Boycott Coca-Cola Experience - green-tinged agit-prop blues The No Frills Band - feral folk troubadours Superstrings - 2 : King and Cornetto - sick jazz + special guests - Popskulls - tunes from the boneyard Plus esoteric projections from Jaime Rory Lucy of Rucksack Cinema and music from legendary DJ Chris Cornetto
Club Integral @ Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston E8 - Friday 5th December Featuring music from Fukuoka's angriest Diva Atsuko Kamura and her band I Am A Kamura, plus special guests Strathbungo Schleppers (poet and raconteur Ivor Kallin and meta-guitarist John Bissett). Doors 8.30 to 12.00 Entry £5/£7
Atsuko Kamura's debut solo album is one of this year's most remarkable collection of songs... I Am A Kamura are all about live playing and uncanny vocal delicacy. Are we in a hotel bar in 1930s downtown Fukuoka, Kamura's hometown in Japan? Or are those harps and strings from Wong Kar-Wai's heady 2046-style fantasies? In fact Kamura's music could only have been made right now and in London, for all its Japanese lyrics and faux-oriental touches over Latin rhythms. Clive Bell - Wire magazine, November 2008
John Bisset is a quietly brilliant improvisational guitarist; Ivor Kallin is a bearded Scotsman. Bisset extemporises appropriate accompaniment on an acoustic guitar; Kallin intones apocalyptically sinister street names. Stewart Lee - the Times
26 Sep 2008, 20:00 Canterbury Crescent, Brixton SW9, 2 minutes from Brixton tube, London, SW9 Cost : £5 before 9.00 £7 after
An evening of the finest music in the clubbable Victorian ambience of The Canterbury Arms - featuring sets from The Otters (featuring Mark Astronaut), Geoff Leigh (Henry Cow, Ex Black Sheep etc), plus machine-tooled psychedelic evocations from Jack Shirt, and the unpredictable rock improvisations of Superstrings (Atsuko Kamura - vox, Paul May - drums, Simon King - guitar and effects). Esoteric visual peregrinations from Rucksack Cinema (Jaime Rory Lucy)
featuring music from: Pikachu-Makoto Millefeuille Yakuza I am a Kamura Shimmy Rivers and and Canal
The Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective step out in yet more avatars as Pikacyu- Makoto, and Millefeuille Yakuza. This will be the first time either group has played in UK.
Pikachu-Makoto: featuring Drums - Pikachu (Afrirampo) and Guitar + and vocals - Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) "To the strains of Kawabata’s hurdy-gurdy Pikachu took to the stage in the guise of the little psych girl before the duo threw down a barrage of guitar-drum based heavy improvised psychedelia". www. acidmotherstemple. com
Millefeuille Yakuza: featuring Mitsuru Tabata (Zeni Geva/Boredoms), Koji Shimura (Mainliner/High Rise, Acid Mothers Temple), and Hiroshi Higashi (Acid Mothers Temple). The band is a complete mystery - if you want to know what they are like you had better be there. Great name though!
+ avant-garde funsters Shimmy Rivers and and Canal, and Japanese chanson from London-based I am a Kamura, fronted by legendary Tokyo punk diva and ex-Frank Chicken Atsuko Kamura.
"Out-rock, angular, lo-fi...the performances immediately evocative, the melodies memorable, the lyrics unusual, and great rock/musical ideas abound...Shimmy Rivers and And Canal do more with less than just about any 'rock' band in recent memory." forcedexposure. com
"Atsuko Kamura is a singer of rare emotional acuity, no one sings like this anymore - Dare we say it? Yes we do - Diva!" - Resonance Radio 104.4 FM
Illuminated by the esoteric projections of Rucksack Cinema. The world in a suitcase.
