Wire Assembly live at Mopomoso Feb 2014 – The Vortex, London

Wire Assembly were lucky enough to launch their CD at John Russell’s long running Mopomoso night at the Vortex Jazz Club. The performance was filmed too !

Wire Assembly are John Jasnoch (guitar), Neil Carver (guitar) and Ian Simpson (guitar)

Update and recent history – Noise Research / Ian Simpson

Here’s an update on my activities in the last couple of months.

Been a busy time hence slow on the recent blog posts !

Perhaps the most significant recent event was my performance with the Rhys Chatham Ensemble in Birmingham Town Hall Symphony Hall on the 7th June. The piece was his ‘A Secret Rose’ scored for 100 electric guitars. It involed 3 lengthy intense rehearsal sessions folowed by the perfomance on Saturday evening. The experience and performance were nothing short of amazing and Rhys Chathams ability to bring 100 musicians from all over the country (and abroad) and create a cohesive unit in 3 days demonstrates his ability as both a composer and facilitator.

I got together with Charlie Collins and Anthony Donovan for a trio performance in Sheffield in May. Held at The Audatious Art Experiments performance space we gave a 50 minute improvised performance with 2 prepared guitars (me and Anthony) and metal objects (Charlie). The resultant industrial metallic drones combined with almost pastoral interludes will be released on Anthonys Classwar Karaoke label in the next few months. There will be future gigs including one at The Vortex Mopomoso night early next year. The trio has been christened Kourozu and we’re very excited at the potential of the unit.

Yeah Yeah Industrial, joint project with Barrow based artist Shaun Blezard, has finally done its debut performance at Manchester’s Noise Above Noise night (The Penthouse Studios) in April. The much talked about Noise Above Noise nights couldn’t have made a better launch, seeing us perform at either end of the studio’s long gallery with the audience able to wander through us. Really great spacial experience we were told ! Many thanks to Rosanne Robertson and Debbie Sharp for having us on and great to be on the bill with Sophie Cooper, Graham Dunning and Colin Webster. YYI also featured in the most recent Metanast night at their 1 Primrose St venue in Ancoats (a converted abbatoir I’m told and an amazing space to perform in). A real pleasure to play with some great friends including Rosanne Robertson, Coryn Smethhurst and Richard Knight. Many thanks to Manoli Moriarty for asking us to perform and the hard work he put into the night. Look out for the next one (they have a FB page).

I played (guitar) as part of the ‘Eternal Return Arkestra of Gizeh’ a four hour continuous improvised performance on the 5th floor loft space at Islington Mill in Salford as part of FatOutFest 2014. It was hosted by Gizeh Records and featured legendary This Heat man Charles Hayward, Manchester’s Horrid and Toronto’s Nadja as section leaders. Another incredibly positive experience for me and many thanks to the guys from Gizeh for the massive efforts they put into it.

Wire Assembly played Mopomoso at the Vortex Jazz Club to launch our CD in February to a very appreciative audience. A nice quality video is on Mopomoso’s You Tube page so check it out. Thanks to John Russell for putting us on us. We also played the Red Deer in Sheffield (June) hosted by Notes and Sounds with a set of compositions (one from each of us) and a set of improvisations. A live recording was made which will hopefully be released at some point.

Along with all this have been the usual Noise Upstairs nights and a couple of Centrifuge nights at Fuel Cafe bar in Withington. Always great fun to play free improvisation on my archtop guitar and a great networking / social scene for like minded players. Check them both out through Facebook. As always its thanks to Phil Morton , Anton Hunter and Rodrigo Contanso for their efforts with these nights.

Thats all for now, gig news coming soon !

Kourozu performimg at The Audacious Art Experiment in May 2014 (pic Annie Dee)

Noise Research / Ian Simpson gigs for 2013

Gigs for 2013 so far (keep checking for updates)

20th January – Blank Canvas, Ship and Mitre, Liverpool (guitar)

28th January – Open Mind, Fuel, Withington (as Noise Research)

17th February – Mopomoso, Vortex, London (with Kipple)

7th March – Centrifuge, Ducie Bridge, Manchester (guitar)

8th March – Xposed Club, University of Gloucester, Cheltenham (NR solo)

20th March – Acoute, Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool

19th May – iSplash – Ship and Mitre, Liverpool (guitar / perc)

21st May – Centrifuge #21, Ducie Bridge, Manchester (Frakture event)

25th May – Chorlton Arts Festival – St Werburghs Church, Chorlton (Wire Assembly)

25th June – Centrifuge #22 – Ducie Bridge – Manchester (guitar / perc)

21st July – Blank Canvas, Ship and Mitre, Liverpool (with Wire Assembly)

22nd July – Centrifuge, Fuel Cafe Bar, Withington, Manchester

10th Sept – Centrifuge, Lamp Tavern, Birmingham

15th Sept – Just a Minute, Ship and Mitre, Liverpool (Frakture gig)

16th Oct – Acoute, Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool (acoustic guitar / perc)

4th November – Centrifuge, Fuel Cafe Bar, Withington, Manchester

20th Nov – Noise Upstairs, Riverside, Sheffield (duo with Herve Perez)

Classwar Karaoke Survey 0021 out now (free download)

The latest in a series of wonderful compilations from Classwar Karaoke.

Over 100 tracks groundbreaking music from all over the planet !

Classwar Karaoke – Survey 0021

download FREE here

Founded in 2008, Classwar Karaoke is a label dedicated to the release of experimental music and short-films; principally, by means of a series of ongoing quarterly surveys, made available via sites such as internet archive, myspace, discogs, youtube, lastfm, facebook, sonic squirrel, reverbnation, soundcloud etc, under Creative Commons license 3. All material remains the property of the respective artists and is offered for free download in line with this license. The Surveys published so far feature artists from all over the world; and the material in toto represents significant documentation of the experimental scene itself. Involvement in the project has helped spawn many fruitful collaborations, live-shows and a vibrant exchange of ideas; so much so that, for several repeat-participants, Classwar Karaoke is as much a collective as it is a community and also a mechanism for the release of new material.

New EP from Concrete Bunker on Electronic Musik

The new EP from Concrete Bunker has been released on Electronic Musik as a free download.

Em185: Few Will Survive – Concrete Bunker

Free improvising duo of Rob Harrison (drums) and Ian Simpson (guitar / percussion) who have collaborated together in other situations (Acoute / Fraktal) exploring the extremes of volume and various sonic textures.

‘No Wave freakouts with post punk walls of sound’ – EM (2012)

‘Brutal’ – Reinhards Fuchs (2012)

Recorded live at Fraktures ‘Blank Canvas’ in Liverpool UK, September 2012.

download the album FREE here

Compilation 7 from Electronic Musik out now !

Electronic Musik has released it’s 7th compilation album this weekend.

Entitled ‘Output 7’ it features 36 tracks of cutting edge leftfield delights.

download the album FREE here

Artwork copyright Ian Simpson (2012)

Noise Research remix album on Electronic Musik September 2012

Electronic Musik have released a new remix album from UK artist Noise Research.

A track was provided as a basis for selected artists to do as the wished with.

The album is the results.

Remixers were: Fibreman, Richard Wilmer, Graham Dunning, Chris Lynn, David Nemeth, Victor Ward, Bacillus and Yura D

download the album FREE here

Huge thanks to all those who took part, the results are amazing (Noise Research, 2012)