Baba Yaga's Hut Presents: Ak'chamel + Christina Deva At The Horse Hospital, September 15th First ever UK show for Ak'chamel! "Ak'chamel's deliberately lo-fi, murky temple music conjures not only the post-industrial rituals lusting for the pagan days of Druidic Britain but also the pantheistic, impishly playful rhythms from Thai temple music as well as some choice nods to the occult ethnomusicology of their professed influences, The Sun City Girls." -aQuarius Records Ak'chamel has built a solid reputation as one of the most compelling stage projects of recent years. Wearing nightmarish costumes and engaging in hallucinatory rituals. Their singular sound comprising desert-scorched psychedelia, post-apocalyptic shamanism, and lo-fi ritual-folk is as unique as the physical theater of their live performances. Authors of around fifteen cassettes, three vinyl LP’s and several cryptic VHS videos, they have been active for over a decade performing major festivals on both sides of the Atlantic garnering press from VICE, Consequence, The Wire, and many more. Christina Deva is a Greek vocal based musician and artist, interested in raw and unfiltered expression, and the power of transformation through the voice. Through her music Christina Deva aims to be a mirror of transpersonal metaphors that reflect the horrifying beauty of being alive. Vocalising is perceived as a surrender of the human vessel, through which the spirits flow, morph and transmute, where gender dissolves, where age dissolves, where there is no distinction between the ugly and the beautiful, the darkness and the light. In her solo work, the lyrical aspects of her music are birthed as poetry with surreal symbolism, archetypal energies, states of transcendence and descendence, an animistic realm where threads of interconnection between all are unveiled. The Horse Hospital was established in 1993 by Roger K. Burton, THH has uplifted countercultural and experimental art across music, performance, film, fashion, and visual art. It has also served as a living archive of countercultural activity and outsider art. Presented by Baba Yaga's Hut. All ages

Gosh, son... release a second album and zine of collaborative tracks this July. Jennet Thomas has made exhibitions with Matt's Gallery and was a founding member of Exploding Cinema, and here presents a live performance. Kate Mahony is an artist and makes music with bands Rainham Sheds and Shake Chain [grace+alex] is a new duo by artists and multi instrumentalists Grace Black (Mosquito Farm) and Alex McKenzie (Gentle Stranger, Shovel Dance Collective, caroline, and others). __ NOTAFLOF: if you would like to attend but can't afford a ticket, please reach out.

Kiran Leonard's unique and ambitious body of work spans more than a decade of releases on labels such as Memorials of Distinction, Moshi Moshi and Them There, limited-run noisy DIY fare, and everything in between. The adolescent guitar/chamber prog of early records such as Bowler Hat Soup (2013) and Grapefruit (2016) earned praise from Pitchfork, BBC 6Music, The Guardian and The Quietus. More recent work has seen Kiran attempt to synthesise interests in situated/home recording, collage, his live practice, and a combination of songcraft with graphic scores, as documented on the monumental (i.e. two-hour-long) and abstract Trespass on Foot (2021), and River Holds Peace, Some Live (2023), a collection of new and old material arranged for an ensemble of multiple electric guitars, cittern and double bass. Kiran's newest LP is Real Home, his first album of songs with choruses in half a decade, which in spring 2024 was named by The Guardian as one of the best albums of the year so far. In April he released Small Brown Bed/With You Waltz, a double CD compiling live recordings of his newest group, the so-called No Tailgate Group. Named for an unfortunate car accident sustained by the band while exiting the A40 last November, the band features members of caroline and Shovel Dance Collective. Both nights at the Horse Hospital will open with a solo performance by Kiran, followed by a TBA support act in the middle, and then a full group performance.

The GRAIN residency and label for improvised music comes to The Horse Hospital. With four solo sets from Steve Noble, Theodora Laird, Downgraded, and Caius Williams. GRAIN is a concert series, small label, and archive for experimental and improvised music, operating mainly out of Avalon Cafe, South Bermondsey. GRAIN is curated and produced by Caius Williams and Theodora Laird. The series is focussed on programming new and adventurous music and nurturing a growing community with cross-scene and cross-generational collaboration. The residency also documents music made in and around South Bermondsey, and gives occasional workshops aiming to widen access, interest, and explore processes for improvising and collective music-making. Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more. In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book Improvisation; its nature and practise. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins). Theodora Laird is a vocalist and multidisciplinary artist. Releases under her solo project feeo have received critical acclaim. Theodora's practice has involved in tandem with an interest in situating narratives within freely improvised music, specifically through frequent involvement in the GRAIN residency. Downgraded is the ongoing sonic-sculptural-artistic project of Lene De Montaigu, a French/American artist based in London and fresh out of Glasgow's DIY music scene. Their solo performances saw their debut with Piano Sketches where they played their reconstructed piano built from found and newly built piano parts. Recent projects include the improv trio Lene Otis Finn centred around found and home-made instruments with their latest album released by the Glasgow label GLARC. Caius Williams is a musician from London who plays the double bass, guitar, and bass guitar. He works in collaboration with others, alongside an ongoing solo project, and often works with improvisation. Some projects include Crosspiece (with Theodora Laird), a duo with guitarist Tara Cunningham, alongside recent performances or collaborations with Lifetones (Charles Bullen of This Heat), Steve Noble, feeo, Daniel OSullivan, Mark Sanders, Sachiko M, Tom Challenger, Maggie Nicols, Mark Wastell, amongst others. Caius has been running the GRAIN series at Avalon Cafe in Bermondsey for the last 3 years, which is focussed on programming new and adventurous music and nurturing a growing community with cross-scene and cross-generational collaboration.

An evening of music, performance, and spoken word from Jesse Darling VS Gentle Stranger, AMRA (Imran Perretta & Paul Purgas), Fondant, and Semionightmarekatz Jesse Darling is an artist working in sculpture, installation, text and sound. His practice delves into the fallibility, adaptability, and vulnerability of living beings, societies, and technologies. Darling was awarded the Turner Prize in 2023. https://bravenewwhat.org/ Gentle Stranger are a London based trio, composed of Tom Hardwick-Allan, Alex McKenzie, and Joshua Barfoot. They are a band who are not so much without a genre, but operating at a level where the very idea of genre is anathema; they make music purely as is required (The Quietus). Existing across both music and performance, their most recent release was 2023's Inner Winter. They have collaborated with artists including Agnes Scherer and Adam Christensen. AMRA is an audiovisual collaboration between Imran Perretta and artist-musician Paul Purgas (Emptyset, We Can Elude Control). Their live performance will incorporate electronic sound and analogue media, addressing South Asian identity through diasporic echoes and archival disruption Fondant are murmurs, tape and string ~ sitting down encouraged. Semionightmarekatz

Giulio Erasmus's music swirls into unintelligible mutterings, songs, and collapsing collages, all made with the idea of keeping things simple. It is post-punk p-funk, pre-post dub. It is a kind of proto-music that delves into post-punk's past and confronts it with new ideas of abstraction, space, and effectiveness. Between alienating and concrete, making the hiss of plugged instruments a central part of it all, Erasmus uses crude field recordings, voice samples, and descriptive and contemplative lyrics to great effect, reversing musical logic as melody and rhythm confusedly spiral around them. Yexxen played live for the first time in October 2024 and already might be the most exciting din in the biz for punk jazz masochists. Transmitting from Berlin, theyve got a brace of Argentinians with jazz/improv bona fides baritone saxophonist Sofia Salvo and bassist Guido Kohn plus, on lapsteel and drums respectively, Claire Nico, a Canadian who smashed SN24 as part of Cuntroaches, and Leeds cat Bobby Glew of Guttersnipe and Nape Neck. Exposure to Yexxen's deranged, freeform noisejazz tornado may well have you concluding these lot were born to play together.