We’re pleased to announce that as part of the event we’re hosting at Eastside Projects on 12 Nov with Ben Frost and Greg Fox, Mothwasp will be presenting a special live AV set. Stephen J Taylor and Matthew J Watkins fuse improvised rhythms, field recordings, cinematic noise and analogue visuals. Taylor’s percussion anchors Watkins’ baritone guitar. Live shows employ lo-fi visual experiments in paint, collage, macrophotography, 35mm transparencies and scratch film loops made by the duo.

Mothwasp  – 23 july 2014 from Beat13 on Vimeo.

Capacity is limited and advanced tickets can be purchased from Milque & Muhle or via theticketsellers

This gorgeous poster for our Supersonic presents series with Ben Frost + Greg Fox (Liturgy)  has been designed for us by the very talented David Hand of Lancashire and Somerset fame. The show will take place on Wed 12 Nov at Eastside Projects in Digbeth. Capacity is limited so advance tickets are recommended.
Tickets can be purchased from our friends Milque and Muhle at the Custard Factory or via theticketsellers.

“Talking to Lester Bangs sometime in 1979, Brian Eno once reflected that “for the world to be interesting you have to be manipulating it all the time”. Few composers embody this ethos better than Ben Frost. From the silver-lined ambient guitar rumblings of Steel Wound back in 2003, to his latest and most aggressive recordings on new album, A U R O R A, he’s a composer and producer that’s constantly made the invisible visible, and twisted breathtaking music from the unexpected. Manipulation certainly lies at the heart of his modus operandi, as does sheer control of his own musical destiny.” The Quietus

These posters form part of a series created for Supersonic by David and include:

We’re over the moon to announce a really special performance that we’ll be presenting at Eastside Projects with Australian composer Ben Frost who will be joined by Greg Fox (Liturgy) on drums. The show will take place on Wednesday 12 Nov.

The music of Ben Frost is about contrast; influenced as much by Classical Minimalism as by Punk Rock and Metal, Frost’s throbbing guitar-based textures emerge from nothing and slowly coalesce into huge, forbidding forms that often eschew conventional structures in favor of the inevitable unfoldings of vast mechanical systems.

Frost’s continuing fascination with finding ways of juxtaposing music, rhythm, technology, the body, performance, text, art -beauty and violence- combining and coalescing the roles and procedures of various artistic disciplines in one place.

Capacity is limited so get tickets while you can.

This Saturday is the Grand Cross Fayre at Hanford Park in Stoke on Trent, ST4 4QG. Capsule were invited to curate a festival of new music and performance by Appetite. The event takes place from 12 – 7.30pm and is FREE for all the family and will have food stalls and vintage bric a brac as well as live performances and workshops.

The line up includes

White Manna
Hailing from California, White Manna are a four piece who perform epic and weighty sonic excursions into irrepressible psychedelic rock.

Swoomptheeng
Swoomptheeng is a collective of costumed characters who through the elements of Rave Craft, Zombie Bass and Ritualised Punk Technology, seek to work with audiences to create twisted and dynamic live performances. Join them and unleash your inner beast.

James Blackshaw
Renowned 12 string guitar maestro James Blackshaw, performs celestial and spirit-lifting guitar-led compositions. Meditative in quality, cinematic in scope, his music spirals gracefully across complex patterns, motifs and harmonics. Despite his transcendent state music he is a grounded and earthly fellow who has been written about with reverence and has played churches, festivals, folk clubs and large concert halls on his many travels.

Rattle
Comprising of 2 of Nottingham’s most unique and recognisable drummers (Theresa Wrigley of Fists and Katharine Brown of KOGUMAZA) Rattle perform together to create hypnotic and danceable rhythms.

Paddy Steer
Produces a sometime cartoon-like music dense with events, new textures and the colours of children’s paintings, sounds like a Swiss cuckoo clock made of egg boxes and horsehair, glued together by an African Moog player in a Vietnamese iron monger’s shop.

Haiku Salut
‘Haiku Salut’s elegant weaving of minimalist electro tones around warm, somewhat folk-like arrangements awash with their intoxicating blend of delicate electronic textures and collision of curious instruments.

Come and join in our workshops during the day and then dazzle the audience at our procession around the park.

Juneau Projects: Procession Percussion
Work with artist duo Juneau Projects to design, build and decorate your own D.I.Y. percussion instruments, then play them as part of the Fayre’s procession. Shake, rattle and roll!

Release your inner beastie with the Swoomptheeng Collective
The dynamic Swoomptheeng will be offering an assortment of options in making facial/head wear in eight swoompy colours; perform with them in simplified versions of their balacava stage costumes, and perhaps beards. Yes beards.

Elizabeth Still: Pop Pom Poms
Create colourful a Pom-Pom on a stick using layers of recycled, plastics, net and cellophane to wiggle and jiggle in the finale.

Traveling Treasury is a magical story telling experience that takes places in a beautifully transformed caravan.

Audiences are invited to step inside the pages of a book and where stories unfold, quite literally before their eyes.

Traveling Treasury allows you to think, dream and believe as you are taken on a wonderful journey through sound, stunning visual paper creations and animated story telling. A wonderful experience for all ages!

We’re really excited to announce that Paddy Steer has been confirmed to perform at The Grand Cross Fayre on Saturday 6th September in Hanford Park. Recorded, he produces a sometime cartoon-like music  dense with events, new textures and the colours of children’s paintings, sounds like a Swiss cuckoo clock made of egg boxes and horsehair, glued together by an African Moog player in a Vietnamese iron monger’s shop.

PADDY STEER | Live at The Kazimier Jazz Club from Jack Whiteley on Vimeo.

In rejection of the notion of ‘immaculate reproduction’, live performances  are more daringly and admirably on the frontier of chaotic abstraction, expression and focussed blunder, dice rolling down the hill in case of duende, as from behind his stacked array of instruments, the anarchically intrepid punk gargles through a vocoder with his xylophone, all a-clatter under disco lights and doilies.

Paddy joins a line up that includes psychedelic sounds from Californian 4 piece White Manna, stunning 12 string acoustic maestro James Blackshaw and the delightful hypnotic rhythms of duo Rattle.

With a selection of workshops led by artist collective Juneau Projects and the dynamic, costumed Swoomptheeng. An array of Street food, vintage stalls and more to entertain!

Free – family friendly
Open from 12 with live performances from 1pm – 7.30pm

We’re delighted to be partnering with the amazing Supernormal Festival in Oxfordshire this weekend to present one of our Supersonic Kids Gigs. Performing at the Kids Gig are FLAMINGODS –

This Bahrain-born, Brixton-based troupe take African rhythms, repetitive grooves and a hedonistic sensibility to form a riot of sound and fury that’s both sonically adventurous and feverishly compelling. With po-faced muso tactics at a minimum and dancefloor frenzy to the fore, they bring a welcome and vibrant splash of day-glo to all or any proceedings.

Ever since Schoenberg and Kandinsky became pen pals back in 1907, avant-garde art and experimental music has been attempting to find some common ground. But, it’s not been easy. Here’s Capsule’s contribution towards a solution: Supersonic Kids Gigs ‘Big Sounds for Little People’. If you couldn’t guess from the snappy title, it’s a gig for kids and their families, which aims to introduce children to experimental music at an early age. Kids Gigs provide a fantastic opportunity to show children the beauty of live music.

Listen to Flamingods here http://flamingods.bandcamp.com/

Capsule have been invited to curate a festival of new music and performance as part of Appetite in Stoke-on-Trent. Appetite’s mission is to get more people in Stoke-on-Trent to experience and be inspired by the arts, working with a range of local and national artists and communities to deliver an expanding menu of artistic projects to develop the appetite for the arts.

The Grand Cross Fayre will be taking place on Saturday 6 September in Hanford Park and will include live performances from James Blackshaw, White Manna from California and Rattle to name but a few as well as workshops led by artist duo Juneau Projects and the costumed Swoomptheeng .
An array of Street food, vintage stalls and more to entertain!

The event is free and will be open from 12 – 7.30pm
More confirmed artists coming soon…

James Blackshaw – We Who Stole The Dream from esther may campbell on Vimeo.

We’ve pulled out just a small selection of items to show you from stockroom. All these bits and bobs are available to buy on our online shop, so have a look for yourself HERE. There’s plenty more where that came from!

Need some new music in your life? Then check out our edition of live recordings taken at previous Supersonic Festivals and issued on high quality heavyweight vinyl. Harvey Milk, Tweak Bird, Iron Lung, Capsule’s 10th Birthday 7″ and other items on CD…. these are VERY reasonably priced right now, so now’s the time to christen your deck with something new!

Thanks for all the support to those of you who’ve already gone shopping with us!

Visit the Capsule Shop