New Bike Sculpture
Designed by Huw and myself and crafted by his fair hands. Bike Orchestra practices with this as the only sonic source have been going great. Gigs to follow later in the year.
new Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra stuff
Been doing some really exciting work the last month or two designing new bike instruments with Huw. He’s made a little teasing video during his building… some pictures to follow.
slowly we have been finding new ways to play and the new piece which works much more like a huge amplified sculpture than the last pieces. Getting some music we’re really pleased with now.
You can hear them as they appear here
https://soundcloud.com/lev-bike-orchestra
and there’s more infos and the group here http://levenshulmebicycleorchestra.wordpress.com/
John Tchicai & Tony Marsh 1st October @ Carlton Club, Manchester
THIS FRIDAY!
86 BUS FROM PICCADILLY
MAP HERE
support from trio of :
Rich Harrison: percussion (Spaceheads)
Dave Birchall: guitar (Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra)
Pascal Nichols: percussion (Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides)
LBO in Hamburg
Just found these snaps from the LBO gig at the mighty Golden Pudel in Hamburg in July…
LBO instruments
One of just a whole bunch of photos taken of the Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra gear the other week with art direction by Jack Alexander. The images will be turned into posters and exhibited as part of the papergirlmanchester exhibition opening on 1st October @ The Soup Kitchen in Manchester.
Nine Doors Review
Cool review here of LBO CD from the good folks at diskant
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Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra. Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra. It’s so satisfying to say. It’s almost as satisfying to type out, time and again. Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra. The best thing about the name is that it’s wholly accurate: Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra are a troop of musicians based in a certain district of Manchester who come together to make music from all kinds of instruments, including bicycles. They’ve been a going concern for a few years now, but this is their debut release; a full-length CD album (or download if you’re so inclined) capturing nine of their collective improvisations for posterity and general confusion.
“Marlon. Marlon Brando are you the famous film star?”
And he says, “yes I’m afraid I am.”
“Why aren’t you happy with your existence?”
“Well that’s the question isn’t it?”
Confusion? Yes. It’s not like they don’t warn you: open up the beautifully packaged CD, pull out the bonkers fold-out poster and look on the back; you’re confronted with what reads like the ramblings of an insane man and a small disclaimer: “All lyrics improvised at time of recording and sung by Zeke S Clough”. Pity the fool that volunteered to transcribe them.
Zeke S. Clough (voice, synthesizer, percussion), perhaps better known for his insane artwork for Skull Disco that also adorns this release, is just one of the quartet of fearless improvisers that make up Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra. Huw T. Wahl (bicycle percussion, clarinet, piano, voice), David M. (for Magnus) Birchall (bass, small instruments, percussion, voice) and Josh J. Kopecek (synthesizer, piano, flugelhorn) are the other constituent parts that make up this glorious whole.
So what is the sound of confusion? The album opens up with some typically deranged moans from Zeke, before some clattering of bicycle percussion, fizzing pedals and rhythmic random percussion. This builds up to a point of tension before Zeke begins his first sermon, quickly accompanied by bass thrums and other assorted layers before it all collapses into the next song. “Starved Dog” features a piano accompanying what sounds like someone playing a bass guitar with a slide, a kazoo and god knows what else. “Oily Film” features what sounds like the ghost of crazed organist playing the soundtrack toChopper Chicks in Zombietown, accompanied by creaks, groans and moans and the odd whoop here and there. “Whale in a Duckpond” almost sounds like an actual, recognisable song at various points, with some welcome musicality as David plays the bass like an upright and Zeke croons in his best Geno Washington impersonation. Then it all goes wrong; maggots start crawling over the windows and hell gradually breaks loose. “Marlon Brando”? Well, you know how that one goes. Everything starts falling apart by the time we reach “Primate Engineer” and Huw’s clarinet starts wailing over the top of abstract piano phrases, phased bass rumbles and some beatboxing. Eventually it all comes to a crashing, triumphant halt with final track “Nine Doors”, which runs a full 20 minutes and encapsulates virtually everything that precedes it, mutating from broken-down church organ jam to skeletal percussion workout to bizarre melody hopscotch, all held together by another bizarre, nonsensical story. A glorious hymn to the power of collective free improvisation, it’s probably the finest moment on this fantastically cock-eyed album.
“Nine Doors” is the sound of what happens when you lock four like-minded musical voyagers in a room for 2 days and distill their inevitable improvisations down to something that approaches the coherent “music” your lazy brain desires. Live, Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra must sprawl all over the place as they take different paths towards collective enlightenment. On record, you’re served the mere highlights of their wanderings, jumbled-up and thrown together to create this mind-flaying assemblage of sounds, textures, noises, words and song. Running nicely over an hour, it might be too much to take in at one sitting, but keep listening and it’s the collective inspiration that frazzles your mind. Awesomely inspired and dazzlingly weird, simply nothing sounds like Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra
Everything in my house is made of plastic
Zeke designed covers of our special LBO tour CDR “Everything in my house is made of plastic” roughly 46 minutes of bicycle music encompassing the many moods made possible through symbiosis of man and machinery.
New LBO pic, Tour links, Tele links…
Bathed in blue light. original pic here taken by Insa.
Some weblinks for tour below too:
24th June Liverpool Lost Voices @ View Two Gallery
25 th June Glasgow @ 13th Note
26th June Leeds @ Cardigan Arms
28th June Basel @ Obst & Gemuse
29th June Dornbirn @ TIK
30th June Geneva @ Cave 12
1st July Grenoble @ Le 102
2nd July Stuttgart @ FFUS
3rd July Prague @ Final Club
4th July Leipzig @ Conne Island
5th July Berlin @ Madame Claude
6th July Hamburg @ Golden Pudel
7th July Mainz @ Walpoldenakademie
8th July Amsterdam @ Delicatessen
Also amazing set of photos here from Huw of the now infamous BBC North West Tonight featuring the LBO earlier in the year. Filmed between 8.30 am and 9.30 am on the day of broadcast. I had to go to bed with a terror headache afterwards. Note pictures of Karl Marx added as feeble subversive element, wanted pictures of Bakunin or Colin Ward ideally but realised that sadly no one would recognise them…
SFTOC
A splendid action shot from last Sunday at Sounds From The Other City taken by deadmanjones. Note Zeke as the Prince of Darkness completely in shadow on the left handside of the stage.
This weekend…
We’re doing a couple of LBO gigs. First one is on Friday 30th April at Greenroom as part of “BIG VAUDEVILLE” in the mighty theatre space.
Then on Sunday 2nd May we play at The Kings Arms near Salford Central station (please note this is a change of venue from The Salvation Army) of as part of Sounds From The Other City. This is organised by Wotgodforgot & Mind On Fire, we should be onstage around 4.40pm.
There’s a nice little mix here of various people playing at SFTOC.
These might be the last Manchester/Salford gigs for a little while.
x
LBO Album launch photos and Reviews!
Some splendid photos of the Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra album gig @ The Greenroom taken by Jonathan Purcell. Glad to say we all look demented in everyone. Full set here.
First load of Nine Doors reviews have rolled in too:
“a Faust-like mixture of ritualised musical theatre and collective improvisation.. a scrapyard gamelan conjuring a post-industrial- even apocalyptic North of England… stumbling rhythms that echo some of the trash-kitsch of Swordfishtrombone-era Tom Waits.”
“In essence, The LBO are about the very physical creation of music as an art concept, as opposed to being a couple of blokes chewing out a tune using a Mac and Pro-Tools.
As the name suggests you’ll typically find a sculptured bicycle being beaten and bowed alongside bits of sheet metal, bobbins, anything that goes ‘clack!’ and battered drums. Someone plays an actual instrument somewhere and at sometime. Let’s not forget the howling wails and poetic, yet menacing vocals. As the loops are purely organic, the rhythm can often get interrupted, but at times they make this whole thing sound as interesting as Eno / Byrnes “Bush Of Ghosts”, as if taken as a field recording on the Raleigh production line. Whilst 9 tracks are listed, I think the Orchestra live up to their name – this is one long piece culminating in a difficult but disturbingly mesmerising, inside out version of what sounds like The Doors.”
“Nine doors is an album that offers an insight into the bizarre, the nature of happiness, the profane, insanity and the downright weird all with a strange beauty and a sense of humour.”
“Their music reminds me of The Brave Little Toaster, but older and angrier and probably drunk. Whiling away his older years at the scrap yard. The reason for this is… LBO are no ordinary band. As you can guess from the title, they use bikes to make music with, amongst other ordinary household items. Their recently released album Nine Doors, is like Jazz on Prozac, played in an abandoned factory using instruments in the way that Blue Peter used fairy liquid bottles. On both occasions the result is unexpected, strangely enjoyable and definitely imaginative. It’s not the kind of thing you can play in the background and ignore whilst reading the latest Marian Keyes, but it will get you thinking about the nature of happiness, society, insanity and Marlon Brando. And for those who don’t give a shit about all that – you can enjoy it for the weirdness.”
www.futurelegendmusic.wordpress.com
Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra CD “nine doors” now out!
Out as of today 22nd of february! 9 tracks of splendor available from www.concretemoniker.co.uk for a bargain price of £6. Covers are handscreened on to heavy weight recycled cardpackaging, insert contains a super savage collage from Zeke and lyric sheet.
CD release show is this Thursday 25th February @ The Greenroom on Whitworth Street in Manchester. We’ll be performing with performance artist Ken Turner.
Also superpleased that we got Karl Marx back on prime time TV with our brief burst of fame on friday eve. Hopefully the footage will get digitised sooner or later, its currently trapped in the inbetween world of VHS. Ok so sure, Karl didn’t get everything right and people may have done bad stuff in his name but I’d rather see him back on TV than more post-modern brain grinding that degrades even further our slippery grasp of history, the past and what it means to be human and alive.
East London Times Interview
The Bicycle Orchestra were quizzed last week when we were down in London by a corresspondent from the East London Times. See the resulting article here.
Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra Tour!
21st January @ Bardens Boudoir, London
23rd January @ Tudor House, Wigan
3rd February @ Cardigan Arms, Leeds
11th February @ Tin Angel, Coventry
25th February @ Greenroom, Manchester
24th April @ The Wheatsheaf, Oxford
We’re going to be out and about the UK over the next few months in support of our soon to be released ‘Nine Doors’ CD/download on Concrete Moniker. Its going to be mega. Do come by if you can make it! There’s also a split tape in the pipeline from Ikuisuus and a couple of remixes of tracks from the CD on their way…
LBO aktion
Some photos taken by Huw below from our recording session in October at our practise space in the Hotspur Press building.
The fruits of this labour will appear on a CD/download album due for release early next year on Manchester’s very own Concrete Moniker label. You can hear a few excerpts on our special place here. Also check out the new and updated website megasicked up by Huw.
We’re working on booking dates to support the CD when it comes out too! Below is what we’ve got so far; more will follow for sure.
11th February @ Tin Angel, Coventry
25th February CD release show! @ Greenroom, Manchester
12th March @ Blue Cat Cafe, Stockport
3rd/4th July @ Litomerice Festival, Czech Republic
More anarchosyndicalist bike aktion
All photos by Helen Brealey
Some snaps above of our ongoing bicycle based horrorshow live at Islington Mill in Salford last night. Show was notable for my nearly totalling all of the bike based instrument sculptures with my first physical gesture of the set.
Disaster was narrowly avoided via some careful cable wiggling and shouts of “Youve ruined Christmas now Jimmy” from the more lively parts of the audience. Managed to lay down some good grooves though eventually; mostly informed by the rhythmic memory of Huw’s 90s reggae tape that we had on repeat in the Volvo on the way over. You can’t make this stuff up.
Bike Orchestra wise we’re playing on the Thursday 29th of October as part of the Vaudeville night at the Greenroom in Manchester. We will be in the studio with the talented and brave Joshua Kopecek in the next few weeks and hopefully this session will produce material for a download and CDR release on Manchester’s Concrete Moniker and a tape split on Ikuisuus.
x
Live LBO!
All pictures taken by Paul Green last thursday of Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra
performance at Fuel. Next LBO gig sunday 11th october at Islington Mill playing with
x
Live Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra Action!
The group operates in an as yet undefined area between intuaitive ritualised musical theatrical performance and shared collective improvising around musical and lyrical themes developed by all members of the group. There are various aims and objectives.
To function as an accepted method of therapy for members to express and explore ideas and behaviours in forms that would be unacceptable outside the realms of performance.
As a theoretical machinery that allows the musicians and audience to interrogate their own ideas of the boundaries and interrelations between sound, music, tone, vibration, movement, theatre, performance, spectacle, art, and catharsis.
As an ongoing process of instrument building, adaptation and reclaimation from that which is not specifically an instrument but with which sound can be made. This use of scrap, discarded and recycled objects rebuilt as instruments locates a utilitarian power with the players and for anyone who wants to imagine and construct their own instruments.
Levenshulme Bike Orchestra comes back to life…
A few pics from practise the other night plus see below for added theortical rigour… www.levenshulmebicycleorchestra.com
The group operates in an as yet undefined area between intuitaive ritualised musical theatrical performance and shared collective improvising around musical and lyrical themes developed by all members of the group. There are various aims and objectives.
To function as an accepted method of therapy for members to express and explore ideas and behaviours in forms that would be unacceptable outside the realms of performance.
As a theoretical machinery that allows the musicians and audience to interrogate their own ideas of the boundaries and interrelations between sound, music, tone, vibaration, movement, theatre, performance, spectacle, art, and catharsis.
As an ongoing process of instrument building, adaptation and reclaimation from that which is not specifically an instrument but with which sound can be made. This use of scrap, discarded and recycled objects rebuilt as instruments locates a utilitarian power with the players and for anyone who wants to imagine and construct their own instruments.
