Ralfe Band recorded the entire film score for the recently released 'Bunny and the Bull' film - a comedy road movie from the director of The Mighty Boosh Paul King,  featuring the crème-de-la-crème of British comedy talent, including Noel Fielding, Julian Barrett and Richard Ayoade. The album will be released on Ghost Ship records on February 1st.

Oly Ralfe's documentary film 'Journey of the Childmen' about the Mighty Boosh has some screenings in February
at the Glasgow Film Festival on 12th February and in Brighton at the SEE Brighton Documentary Film Festival on February 21st for more information go to www.journeyofthechildmen.co.uk

Ralfe Band play at Pure Groove, 6-7 West Smithfield, London, EC1A 9JX  this Wednesday 27th January at 8.30pm. Admission - free. The band will perform a stripped-down gig focusing on music from Bunny and the Bull.  Signed copies of the soundtrack album will be available.  Pure Groove is a record shop/music bar/gallery space
 www.ralfeband.com      www.bunnyandthebull.com

From the creative force behind North Sea Radio Orchestra comes Craig Fortnams new project Arch Garrison. Fans of NSRO have come to expect beautiful melodies, quality arrangements and chord progressions that make your insides go funny. These elements are all in abundance here but in a much sparser form, with Craigs instantly recognisable nylon and steel string guitar playing combining with his trusty Philicorda organ providing the backdrop to his modern folk tales. Arch Garrison release the debut album 'King Of The Down' on Double Six Records on 22nd February and plays the following shows

January 23rd at Cecil Sharp House
February 24th at The Pangea Project, Stoke Newington
March 13th - Daylight session - Union Chapel Bar, Islington between 12-2pm.

http://www.myspace.com/archgarrison

Cluster have been making music for nearly 40 years. They have long since earned legendary status. If this bands music had lost any of its currentness, one would honor it as a gesamtkunstwerk. But it's far too early for that, as Cluster are as productive, wide awake and important as ever before. They release a new album 'Qua' on Klangbad on February 15th and play the following UK dates

February 6th Dublin, The Village
February 11th Birmingham, Town Hall
March 8th and 9th London Red Bull Music Academy
March 10th Newcastle AV Festival

Lost Idol - James Dean, producer & man behind the Cookshop record label, steps out from the shadows to don his Lost Idol alias & deliver his second full length lp. Since  2006’s critically acclaimed ‘Utters From A Cluttered Mind’  James has  moved  away from the psychedelic songcraft of his debut & into a predominantly instrumental oeuvre that reflects his love for electronica, ambient, krautrock, soundscapes & beyond. The album 'Brave The Elements' is released on 22nd February and a single 'A Sorrowful Thing' is out now - released 25th January.

Lost Idol will play a very rare live outing supporting Fujiya & Miyagi on February 5th  at Audio in Brighton  and there will be a launch party for the album on the 1st March at the Prince Albert in Brighton, playing live along with Dextro (Gronland)

Nightingales play

February 12th at The Old Bell Hotel in Derby
February 13th at The Little Civic in Woverhampton
February 14th at ULU (University of London Union) 
March 16th at The Robin 2 in Bilston

Extra Life  - In March Extra Life’s 2nd album 'Made Flesh' will be released by Loaf Recordings worldwide. Both more accessible and more severe than their previous work, the record extends from fragile acoustic ballads to industrial symphonic assaults and deepens the band’s signature heaviness while also exploring more psychedelic studio treatments, electronic textures and synths.

You can get a taste of it with this version of the track  'Black Hoodie' taken from a limited edition split 12" with Nat Baldwin  http://www.lorecordings.com/download/EL/BlackHoodie.mp3

Extra Life will be on tour in the UK/European in April 

The Bubbly Blue and Green is a four-day festival of eclectic 'water music' influenced by shipwrecks, rivers, waves and lighthouses. Housed in the halls of Kings Place, York Way, London N1 - the festival runs from the 24th to 27th February

The festival  features Philip Jeck, Janek Schaefer, Haushka,Hildur Gudnadottir, ISAN, Samphire Band, The Sleeping Years, Iarla O'Lionaird, The London Snorkelling Team, Paper Cinema andThe Willkommen Orchestra.

Ben Eshmade of the Arctic Circle: "When pondering the relationship between music and water the first thing that came into my head was a jaunty Disney image of a big iron bed drifting like a meandering melody along the bottom of a Technicolor ocean. Dismissing childhood cartoons, I then began thinking about other, more literary resonances: the angry sea in Shakespeare’s The Tempest or the watery poignancy of Coleridge's The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner. This festival of concerts at Kings Place presents an opportunity to tap both vaunting classical and more quotidian marine references via a glistening miscellany of musical genres, from electro-acoustic experiment to film score and everything in between."

The Bubbly Blue and Green:
Wednesday - Hall One 8pm

Touch recording artist Philip Jeck is an awarding winning turntablist feted for collaborations with the likes of Gavin Bryars. Using dusty vinyl records and processed Dansette record players the Liverpudlian conjures a galaxy of poignant, immersive textures - not least on An Ark for the Listener, a new work inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Wreck Of The Deutschland.

Innovative sound designer and sonic artist Janek Schaefer has made music using everything from three-armed record-players to voice-activated devices circulated through the Royal Mail. Tonight he premiers an especially composed piece: Sound Waves Through Space.

Thursday - Hall One 8pm

Haushka is the alias of Dusseldorf keyboardist Volker Bertelman. His critically acclaimed albums on the 130701 imprint evince a playfully accessible approach to the often austere realm of the prepared piano. Haushka is joined tonight by gifted Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir to essay a major new, aquatically themed commission.

ISAN’s Robin Saville and Antony Ryan may reside in distinct, watery locales (Southend, Essex and Orrefors, Sweden respectively) but their collaboration proceeds regardless. This is a rare live outing for the pair, currently working on the latest of their fluid, Eno-esque albums for Berlin’s Morr Music label.
 
Friday - Hall One 8pm

Molly Nyman and Harry Escott are BIFA nominated film composers. Wth their 12-piece Samphire Band they essay highlights from their repertoire, much of it inspired by the British coastline. They are joined for the performance by some very special guest singers.

Dale Grundle grew up on the Ulster coast. Water was a recurring leitmotif of his former band The Catchers and latest incarnation The Sleeping Years. Accompanied by members of both - and the newly convened Arctic Circle Brass Ensemble - Grundle will perform songs in special arrangements by John Jermy and Nick Drake collaborator Robert Kirby. 
Saturday - Hall Two 5.30pm 

Highly original theatre company Paper Cinema make watery narratives using projections of intricate marionettes against a white screen, accompanied by improvised live music.
Hall One 7pm

Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir has collaborated with the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Múm and Haushka. She released her debut solo album in 2007. An electronic-tinged follow-up, Without Sinking, appeared in 2009 on the Touch label.

Afro-Celt Sound System member Iarla O'Lionaird’s 2007 solo debut, Seven Steps To Mercy showcased a truly extraordinary singing voice. His work draws on a rich Irish Sean-Nos (‘old-style’) tradition, with rivers and nature prominent. His forthcoming album is built around reminiscences of Dublin’s River Liffey. (Presented in association with Note).

Hall One 9pm

The London Snorkelling Team is the brainchild of soundtrack composer and erstwhile Bjork remixer, Tom Haines. He and his sub-aquatic bandmates make cabaret music they “imagined happening in the 1950s”, using brass, cocktail drums and glockenspiels.

Comprising affiliates of popular Brighton label the Willkommen Collective, the Wilkommen Orchestra will perform the songs of label stalwarts Sons Of Noel and Adrian, Shoreline and the Ivor Novello nominated Leisure Society. This is a rare opportunity to hear the acts in full symphonic glory and will close out the festival on a celebratory communal swansong.

Scout Niblett  - 'The Calcination of Scout Niblett' cd/lp Drag City –  Released 22nd February 2010
People come to Emma Louise “Scout” Niblett for the joy of a scalding hot bath of sound amidst stark, bluesy emoting — and she won’t let ’em down this time. But something has shifted. Having made herself a record or two’s worth of celebration ballads and moody freak- outs, she seems to be hearing that call from within to feel for other things. Yelling at the kids around the way only ever gets you so far. So here we have it - 'The Calcination of Scout Niblett' - an intense devotional, a determined spirit journey and a collection of great slow-dance songs. http://www.myspace.com/scoutniblett

Sone Institute -  Curious Memories cd/lp - Front & Follow -  Released 25th January 2010
Sone Institute is the weird and wonderful world of electronic artist Roman Bezdyk spinning together found sounds, classroom percussion and a host of stringed instruments to conjure up a surreal and fantastical world of pure sonic imagination. www.myspace.com/frontandfollow