The Improvisor Podcast is a series of conversations with musicians and sound artists who have performed at The Horse Improvised Music Club in London SE1.
Please see details of the latest episode below. Thanks for listening!
Hutch
Episode 8 – March 2018
Live from the Iklectik Horse Festival. Conversations with musicians/composers: Dave Petts, John Butcher, Mark Sanders, Douglas Benford, Students from Leeds and Leeds Beckett, and Paul Sutton, at the IKlecktik Horse Festival of improvised and experimental music and sound. It includes some excerpts of music from the festival curated by The Horse Improv Club at IKlectik Art Lab in London SE1 in January 2018.
Episode 7 – February 2018
Sharon Gal live at the Iklectik Horse Festival. This is a conversation with Sharon Gal. A interdisciplinary artist, vocal experimentalist, performer and composer. She performs solo, and has on-going collaborations with Steve Beresford, David Toop, Steve Noble, Alex Ward, John Edwards amongst many others. She directs site specific compositions/performances examining the inter-relations between people and place. She is the co-founder of arts radio Resonance 104.4.FM.
I talk to her briefly before her performance at the Iklectik Horse Festival about her beginnings and collaborations and play excerpts of her music.
Episode 6 – January 2018
A conversation with John Edwards an incredible musician and double bass player. We talk about the Iklectik Horse Festival and his views on the improvised and experimental music scene in London and Europe. Listen to excerpts of music he has recorded. His insights and experience of how the scene has evolved over 30 years. How women as musicians and audience members are now contributing to the ever increasing interest in this music and his own inspirations and future musical journeys.
Refreshments consumed: Pints of ale and Belgium white beer
Episode 5 – December 2017
This is a conversation with Sue Lynch – inspirational musician, artist, founder and co-promoter of The Horse Improv Music Club. We talk about her improvised music beginnings and inspiration for starting the club and listen to some of her collaborations, but mainly we focus on the Iklectik Horse Festival which will take place in London SE1 in January 2018.
Refreshments consumed: Tea and later- Vegetarian Thai food in Lower March SE1
Episode 4 – December 2016
To mark the occasion of his 60th birthday – Improvisor releases a podcast talking to Adrian Northover, an inimitable presence on the improvised and experimental music scene in London UK for many years and in my view, an effortless master of the saxophone.
Discussing his playing with electronic players we discuss tonality and the combination of ‘ freedom and restriction’ in this environment- which Adrian summed up as ‘having handcuffs on- but still being able to jump out of the window’……
We talk about the function of playing improvised music live – the collaboration & interaction between players and ‘providing the meat and grist for the audience…. either successfully or unsuccessfully’.
He talks of his interest in ‘Sufi’ music and the idea of ‘the ecstasy’ behind the music and how he likes to know ‘the function of music’ .The difference between processed and produced or un-produced music ‘a document versus a treated document.’
Improvised music has become ‘more acceptable and less weird…’……people in the past would say it ‘was just noise’ not music…..it was ‘really out there in terms of public awareness… now you can do anything and it is not so outrageous’….. ‘it has moved more centre stage………’
Refreshments consumed in the course of the conversation: Tea and Pretzels
This is a conversation with Adam Bohman who has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for decades. Working with home-built instruments, found objects, tape cut-ups, collages, ink drawings and graphic scores. Favouring acoustic sounds over electronics, he explores the minute tendrils of sounds coaxed from any number of non-musical instruments and objects. He is a member of British experimental groups, Morphogenesis, The Bohman Brothers, Secluded Bronte, and The London Improvisers Orchestra. Adam’s music is unique and experimental, incorporating Fluxus japery, musique concrete, sound poetry and free improvisation.
I talked to Adam about how he began to play his instrument, his inspirations, collaborations and experiences of the experimental music scene in
London and we listen to some of Adam’s sound and music recordings.
Refreshments consumed in the course of the conversation: Badger Fursty Ferret Ale.
Adam Bohman
Episode 2
This is a conversation with Caroline Kraabel who grew up in Seattle USA, and came to London as a teenager. She discovered saxophone and expressed her love for it via indie music and street performance.
I talked to Caroline about how she began to play her instrument, her inspirations, collaborations and her experiences of the experimental music scene in London and we listen to some of her music.
Episode 1
This is a conversation with Richard Sanderson who is an improvising musician based in London, he has recorded with the groups Ticklish, Minnow, Lost Robots and in duos with Mark Spybey and Steve Beresford and The Horse Trio. He has recorded for several labels including Grob, Textile and Duophonic. He has performed at festivals of experimental music throughout Europe. Richard has performed regularly at The Horse Music Club in London. He is the curator of Linear Obsessional Recordings.
I talked to Richard about how he began to play his instrument, his inspirations, collaborations and his experiences of the experimental music scene in London.
Horse Improv Club 