Aidan and Kris jamming down in “Office” Hacker Farm’s amazing studio

Lau have been enjoying Hacker Farm’s latest release UHF in the van of late, and seeing as we had a day off in the South West of England, we gave them a shout (go internet, go) and sounded them out for the chance of a trip to their beautiful, unique and distinctly ace noise farm near Crewkerne.

Hacker Farm make varied and extraordinary electronic music with a strong DIY punk ethos and a bloody cool sense of the homemade, circuit-bent and re-appropriated. Many of their instruments the made themselves, and few others are left in their original form.

Hacker Farm’s excellent sounding milk churn amp. Nice logo boys!
Photo: John Gray

The HF boys are a warm and welcoming crew, and after a hearty curry we set about the exciting business of plugging many things into many other things. The resulting jam, I think we can safely say produced a sound the universe has never encountered before.

Farmer Glitch welcomes us to their farm of delights.

Tim and Martin get setting up for Lau/Hacker Farm mega jam Photo: John Gray

 More to come on this, including recordings and some great film footage courtesy of the very nice John Gray who is traveling with us this week documenting Lau in the wild.

Many, many thanks to Bren, Kek-W and Farmer Glitch for their hospitality, openness and deeply memorable trip on planet Hacker Farm,

Cheers lads!

Lau x

 

 

You can see a sneak preview of John’s work here, in our tour diary part 1:

Lau took home “Best Group” at the 2013 BBC Folk Awards the other night. Surprised, but I won’t pretend we’re not chuffered. Celtic Connections was amazing, I met some really brilliant musicians, some of whom I have admired for a long time. It has to be one of the world’s great festivals. Here is Lau at the Folk Awards:

This is from the gig in Manchester:

 

Crows’ Bones ‹ GQ Central.

Lau Have been nominated for Best Group and Best Album (Race The Loser) at this year’s BBC Folk Awards. The awards take place on Weds 30th Jan and will air live on BBC Radio 2 from 7.30 to 10.00pm. They will also be televised via BBC red button. Clips will be available internationally the day after the awards.

 

“put together with artful imagination … beautiful sounds from his assembled quartet of musicians…a show that dealt its atmosphere in spades”

**** (FOUR STARS) THE HERALD

“deliciously eerie arrangements of ghostly-themed songs.. . ranged from delicately disquieting atmospherics to nigh-on orchestral-scale ominous grandeur”                 

**** (FOUR STARS) THE SCOTSMAN

Some nice reviews of the Crows’ Bones from the Celtic Connections show on Wednesday. More to come from Crows’ Bones, I’ll keep you posted.

 

 

The Late Junction session I recorded with Sheema Mukherjee is now available to listen to. It will be up for next seven days, I had a great time time recording with Sheema, and thanks to Verity Sharp and all invloved.

 

I am delighted to have been asked to participate in one of Late Junction’s collaboration sessions for BBC Radio 3. I spent the day with Sheema Mukherjee in London last week and we recorded three pieces of semi improvised music for the show. It was an inspiring way to spend the day and I think it’s a brilliant set up that they have at Late Junction to facilitate it. Thanks to all involved. The show will air Jan 24th at 23.00.

 

 

last week we did the premier of Crows’ Bones, the show of ghost songs that I have been making for Opera North in Leeds. The band, Inge Thomson, Becky Unthank, Niklas Roswall were absolutely amazing, through the whole production week and the shows themselves. Below are some photos from the dress rehearsal. All photos by Jonny Walton at the Howard Assembly Room, thanks to Opera North Projects for permission to post them here.

The Next performances of Crows’ Bones are:

RNCM Manchester 22 Jan, TICKETS HERE

Celtic Connections, Glasgow 23rd Jan TICKETS HERE