Jane Weaver
Jake Mehew
Thursday 24th November, 7.30pm
Tickets are £13.50 (+ b/f) in advance (more on the door) and available from See Tickets.
*This is a standing show*
Abusing, evading, and obliterating 20 years of whimsical pop trends, Jane Weaver’s experience as a truly independent and resilient songwriter and sound-carrier commands respect and inspiration in equal measures.
Set for release in 2021, new album ‘Flock’ is the record that she always wanted to make, the most genuine version of Jane Weaver, complete with unpretentious Day-Glo pop sensibilities, wit, kindness, humour and glamour.
As an unshakable figure in the UK’s experimental pop music landscape her self-propelled career has in recent years reached a critical zenith with unanimous praise for her work.
Raised on the enthusiasm and inspiration of Factory records founder Rob Gretton and counting Doves and Elbow as her early backing bands, Jane’s desire to cultivate and promote Manchester’s lesser-documented female musicians lead to her long-running Bird records imprint (releasing the earliest recordings of Cate Le Bon, Beth Jeans Houghton and Maxine Peake) housed in the anti-office of Andy Votel’s Twisted Nerve label.
Having recorded eight critically acclaimed self-penned solo albums Jane has also written and recorded with a wide range of multi-disciplined artists featuring pioneering ‘lost’ musicians (Wendy & Bonnie, Suzanne Ciani, Cybotron and Suzanne Christie) as well as non-conformists (Demdike Stare, Dave Tyack and The Focus Group) and high-profile friends and supporters (David Holmes, Damon Gough, Dave Brock).
‘The Silver Globe’ was, in Jane’s own opinion, her most complete and realised commitment to vinyl to date and was released via her own Bird Records imprint in late 2014 garnering instant accolades. Gilles Peterson gave the first single ‘Don’t Take My Soul’ a Top Ten place in his best tracks of the year adding to the unanimous support of radio DJs like Jarvis Cocker, Marc Riley, Stuart Maconie, Lauren Laverne and Mary Anne Hobbs. Early DJ mix encouragement has also come from the likes of Andrew Weatherall and Beyond The Wizards Sleeve.
Signing to Fire Records, 2017’s lauded follow up ‘Modern Kosmology’ saw the melodic-protagonist channel new depths of creative cosmic energy moving from science to séance. ‘Modern Kosmology’ is a model student of second-hand Krautrock, female punk, hard-subbed new-wave, synthesizer skip-finds and unpronounceable worldly feminine pop that saw her reach another eureka moment.
Accumulated in the ‘Loops In The Secret Society’ AV tour bringing both albums together, a visual live album of the performance soon followed revealing yet another dimension to her creativity in the lab-friendly blossoming of the Weaver vision.
New album ‘Flock’ is an untested fusion of seemingly unrelated compounds fused into an eco-friendly hum; pop music for post-new-normal times. Created from elements that should never date, its pop music reinvented. Still prevalent are the cosmic sounds, but it is a natural rebellion to the recent releases which sees her decidedly move away from conceptual roots in favour of writing pop music.
Jane’s lesser known creative endeavours have also seen her contribute sound installation projects to labels via Manchester’s Boomkat experimental imprint, various international theatrical institutes as a film re-composer, as a compiler for Finders Keepers records, and as an author of children’s books based on her visual collaborations with Klunkclick (Yo Gabba Gabba / Bobby Conn).
Meanwhile her presence as a live performer has been requested by the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Guy Garvey (Meltdown), Laetitia Sadier, Richard Hawley, Josephine Foster and Gruff Rhys and has flexed her knowledge in the DJ booth as a one-time member of Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures DJ team. Jane’s music has appeared in fashion campaigns for Chanel and Chloe plus a wide range of TV and Cinematic productions including the soundtrack to ‘Kiss Of The Damned’ directed by John Cassevetes’ daughter Xan and on the award winning second series of ‘Killing Eve’.
Jake Mehew
Jake Mehew is a composer, performer, producer, DJ and radio presenter, based in Leeds UK. Jake’s work combines principles of free improvisation, with the technological considerations of the avant-garde. Jake uses a combination of acoustic instruments, modular synthesisers and samplers to create rich, meditative soundscapes that envelope the audience within an immersive quadraphonic sound field. Having spent years studying the causation of flow, Jake endeavours to create the conditions for spontaneous and radical composition in his live work, seemingly conjuring whole universes of sound from a self-induced act of trance. This process imbues Jake’s live music with a certain sense of danger, as if everything could go wrong at any given moment.
So far I have supported artists such as Suzanne Ciani, Soccer 96, Arooj Aftab, Matthew Halsall, Mdou Moctar, Roy Ayers and Mabe Fratti. I have performed at Gilles Peterson’s We Out Here Festival, and have been commissioned to exhibit my work for the Leeds International Piano Festival 2021. I have also submitted digital work which was broadcast as part of an international programme for Nils Frahm’s Piano Day 2021. I have recently installed performances for the International Festival of Ideas at the Howard Assembly Rooms, Superbooth Berlin 2022 (for which I am sponsored by Rhodes Pianos, promoting the launch of their new Rhodes MK 8 piano) and Audio Technica (to promote their 60th birthday). I hope you find my work entertaining; I’ve included links to my work in the footer of this email, alongside my website where you can view a portfolio of my work.
‘Engrossing modular synth compositions by Jake Mehew, add to the feeling of a great, rather than a hushed, night out”.’
(Kitty Empire) The Guardian
Jane Weaver
Jake Mehew
Thursday 24th November, 7.30pm
Tickets are £13.50 (+ b/f) in advance (more on the door) and available from See Tickets.