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.

LBO tour pictures

This is us outside the venue in Berlin. Had a great 2 weeks in UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Holland in June.  See many more moments of boy bandesque pain and beauty on Huws blogspot here. Hopefully there’ll be some audio and the infamous ‘tour diary’ appearing at some point.

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…

Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra tour

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.

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LBO & Ken Turner Greenroom footage!

From performance 25th January at Vaudeville event Greenroom, Manchester. Thanks to Insa for the filming and editting.

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