If you’re interested in DIY underground culture amongst young people in East Kent, Bandit Bazaar is for you. Having started life as a zine fair, Bandit Bazaar has taken its emphasis on local DIY culture and expanded it to include musicians and performers of all types.
Bandit Bazaar Presents: "Offbeat and Track" a spotlight for local rap-scene contributors
Live MPC Beat-tracks performed by Lab Rat Records, who've been entangled with the Kent rap scene for just shy of a decade, Boom-Bap sample flipping for the old-school hip-hoppers. On vocals, we've got Char.b, Priest & Vapid adapting lyrics and freestyling their own flow.
padfad
William Burroughs x SP-404MkII
Priest Adeyemi x Akai MPC One
Flyer design by Loose End
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Lab Rat Records
Char.B
Priest
Bandit Bazaar
Refugee Tales with Raga Gibreel, Fran & Flora, David Flusfeder
Refugee Tales is an annual walk in solidarity with detainees and refugees calling for an end to indefinite detention in the UK. It is a life-affirming embodiment of compassion and community with stories and music shared at the end of each day. This show is modelled on one of these evening events. Imagine you have walked a long way, made new friends, heard snippets of people’s lives and you arrive at Free Range ready to rest, get a drink and listen.
The first story, ‘The Stranger’s Tale’, will be told by Raga Gibreel. Raga is a journalist, a former refugee and founder of Green Kordofan, a charity providing opportunities through sports to children in Yida refugee camp in South Sudan.
You’ll then hear the ‘beguiling beauty’ (The Wire) of string duo Fran & Flora playing music from the traditions of Klezmer, Transylvanian, Romanian, Greek and Armenian music.
The final story, ‘Y’s Tale’ is from journalist, author and opera librettist, David Flusfeder.
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Refugee Tales
Fran & Flora
Mermaid Chunky
We invite you to celebrate the Autumnal equinox, and the opening of our Autumn season, with the glorious Mermaid Chunky. Named after a type of wool from their hometown of Stroud, their music is a charmingly disorientating blend of lo-fi ceremony and play. Songs from their album, VEST, have been described as ‘bass thumping schoolyard chant with a heart of darkness’ and ‘ranty cosmic synth empowerment’ (The Quietus). With a lightly-worn inventive brilliance two best friends dressing up and playing around opens up a dream-like ritual space which feels genuinely subversive.
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Mermaid Chunky
Website
Byron Wallen has been described as "one of the most innovative, exciting and original trumpet players alive" (Jazzwise Magazine). His 'Black Flag' project started life in 2004 as 'Dangerous Duets': a series of improvising duos performing live in response to the photography of Annabel Elgar. In 2022 this project was revisited and released as a book of photographs and a CD featuring Byron on trumpet and his long-term musical partner, Nick Ramm, on keyboards.
Informed by Byron’s own experience, this music charts the psychological and emotional frontiers of contact between a mother and her son separated by the Atlantic Ocean. It dives into the multi-layered toxic waste caused by global imperialism and colonialism and the creation of lost souls and generations living in socio-economic poverty confined within a mental bubble of paralysis. Byron invites us to "explore the shifting balance of power between the urban and rural with a glimpse of light before the Sun".
"A moment for transcendence on loop. A reminder of a home outside of ourselves. An affirmation that oneness of spirit is both our journey and destination. The Black Flag is an exercise in becoming. The spirit of hope, woven in sound"
(Dr Aditi Jaganathan)
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Black Flag
Byron Wallen website
👁 Extract of a duet set with Lemn Sissay and Byron Wallen
👂 Listen/read about Black Flag (album 2022)
Nick Ramm website
👁 The Cinematic Orchestra - Time & Space (ft Nick Ramm)
👂 Hello Skinny - Hello Skinny (ft Nick Ramm) via Bandcamp
The extraordinary lyric poet Kelvin Corcoran will be reading from his collected poems, to be published by the prestigious Shearsman Press in May 2023.
"Corcoran has as wide a range and as rich a vocabulary as any poet now writing. He possesses a flawless ear, a fresh eye for image and detail, penetrating analysis and a storyteller’s gift. He can shift registers suddenly, from lyric to formal mode to common speech, and even a snatch of song … Kelvin Corcoran is one of the rare true poets. Reading him is a privilege and a pleasure, a new awareness’
(David Wevill)
Balladeste are Preetha Narayanan (violin) and Tara Franks (cello), who explore the versatility and sound potential of just two string instruments. With traces of contemporary minimalism, Indian classical and folk, they co-create all original compositions that are vibrant and experimental yet melodic and filmic in quality – songs without words with a contemporary alt-folk twist.
"music that can radiate suspense but at the same time is warm and intimate" (Songlines 4****)
"Absolutely stunning"
(BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour)
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Kelvin Corcoran
Shearsmith books
👂 Kelvin Corcoran reading at Free Range in 2012
Balladeste
Balladeste website
👂 Balladeste - 'Dina Dukhio' via Bandcamp
👁 Balladeste - 'Being' via YouTube
Cellist, composer, producer & songwriter Francesca Ter-Berg was invited by Free Range to form a new trio and tonight’s show is the result: a brand new group of highly distinctive musicians performing together for the first time.
Francesca is known for her unique musical style blending Klezmer, improvisation and electronic synthesis. Jessica Lauren is a hugely experienced keyboard player and organist playing in the UK jazz and alternative scenes since the early 1990’s with a rare and refreshing minimalist sense of space in her improvising. Raimund Wong uses 4-track recorders with cassette-loops as rudimentary samplers, manipulating ‘found sounds’ through the language of dub and musique concrète. Raimund is also a visual artist, recognised for his graphic work for artists/promoters/labels such as Alabaster DePlume, Church of Sound and International Anthem.
‘Ter-Bergs vocals have a cool charm [whilst her] cello passionately laments’
(Clive Bell, The Wire)
Chase Coley is a musician, instrument maker, professional sound recordist and crab expert. For Chase, there is something primal and mysterious about creating new acoustic instruments: they become magical objects that move the air around us in unexpected ways.
Following his Chase's appearance for Dau's set in FR#251, Phil Self of Dau returned the favour to play in duo with chase.
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Francesca ter-Burg, Jessica Lauren & Raimund Wong
Francesca ter-Burg website
👁 Francesca ter-Burg on Free Range TV via Youtube
Jessica Lauren website
👂 Jessica Lauren - Chichourlette via Bandcamp
Raimund Wong website
👂 Floating World Pictures (Raimund Wong & Chestnutt) - The Village Headman Pleading With The Old Ferryman via Bandcamp
Chase Coley
Chase Coley website
Crab Museum website
👁 Chase Coley video clip via Facebook
Dau is the new ambient drone project from UK musician Phil Self. Known locally for his work with Smugglers Festival, the Isolation Choir and bands like Cocos Lovers, Will Varley and Montrose Composers Club, Phil is joined here by cellist James Gow. Dau’s debut release on Phantom Limb’s Spiritual imprint, entitled 'Zed Zed', was created entirely from acoustic instrumentation and real-time performances and has been described as ‘serenely crafted quietude [that] ripples and breathes with life, every creak of its bowed guitar as audible as the seagulls flying above Self’s flat’ (Phantom Limb).
Phil and James were joined for this performances by Chase Coley (see FR#252), playing walkie talkies, TV static and a waterphone, and Samuel D Loveless (trumpet).
Opening the evening is Tony Westcliff: famous rock star, intellectual giant of the manosphere and freelance sex therapist.
‘Tony is dry, silly, camp, sober and terrific, all at once ... He inhabits the stage with a throwaway charisma, and we're never sure if things are going to plan’ (Steven Todd)
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Dau
Dau website
👂 Zed Zed on Bandcamp
👂 The Drift by JOW (James Gow & Pete Judge) on Bandcamp
Tony Westcliff
Help Me Fake My Death on bandcamp
In advance of Earth Day (22nd April) Free Range has teamed up with Extinction Rebellion Canterbury for an experiment in art activism. Local environmental groups have been invited to work with artists from the Free Range community to try new ways of communicating their messages and values.
Award winning podcaster Ben Horner, has been working with artist and Friends of the Earth activist Amanda Thesiger on a series of interviews with environmental campaigners about their visions of a better world. This will be performed with live sound design at Free Range and the Lovely World event in Faversham on 24-25th June.
Puppeteer, theatre maker, part-time shepherdess and Feldenkrais practitioner, Kristin Fredricksson, has been working with Canterbury Repair Cafe to create puppets and theatre from objects that have come through the cafe.
Opening the evening we will hear from Esme Bone and Anna Presilia, an artist duo currently in their second year of the Fine Art Masters, 'Art, Society, Nature', at The Margate School. They work with natural materials to produce sustainable work which explores growth, decay and time.
This is a celebration of local environmental activism and adventurous culture.
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Extinction Rebellion Canterbury
website
'The Table of Consciousness' is the realisation of a recurring vision for Tom Delahunt, a nurse, poet and teacher. This is an experiment in improvisation, theatre and psychology in which five actors and two musicians gather around a table framed by representations of trust, trauma and love. With elements of music, lighting, visual art and improvised dialogue this piece speaks to the healing, pain and joy that is part of all of our lives.
Performers include Megan Garrett-Jones, Kristin Fredricksson, Ciaran Barata-Hynes , Kat Peddie, Hannah Marshall (cello) and Sam Bailey (piano).
Trust, trauma and love are central themes in Tom’s work as a nurse, teacher, author and academic. In 2019 Tom was awarded Most Innovative Teacher of the Year (Times Higher Education Awards) and in 2022 he published his first children’s book ‘The Wandering Lamb’.
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Tom Delahunt on Twitter
Megan Garrett-Jones on Instagram
Kristin Fredricksson website
Kat Peddie at Free Range
Hannah Marshall website
Sam Bailey website
The 2020 album ‘Whereness’ featured Paul Cheneour (flutes), Ansuman Biswas (tabla, percussion, waterphone, strings & flutes), Maureen Wolloshin (oboe, cor anglais) and Alistair Zaldua (violin & electronics). This album inspired the artist/filmmaker Annie Catford to make 14 quirky, playful and celebratory short films that are shown here interwoven with live improvised music and poetry from Paul Cheneour.
The first half of this evening is the debut performance of pianist Sam Bailey with drummer Corrie Dick. Sam’s creative practice spans free improvisation, music for theatre, classical music and jazz alongside site-specific work such as the year-long Piano in the Woods project.
‘Bailey’s fondness for splicing busy clusters of notes into rhythmic spaces that seem too tight for them often drove the group to a cliffhanging intensity’ The Guardian
The Mercury nominated drummer/composer/bandleader Corrie Dick has been described as,
“the perfect drummer/percussionist… colouring each piece with precision, complex rhythms/techniques and visible enjoyment” (London Jazz News).
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Whereness
Paul Cheneour website
Annie Catford Instagram
👂 Whereness on Spotify
👁 These words on YouTube