Haiku Salut at Nottingham Contemporary

Date: Sat 29th Sep
Time: 20:00

Haiku Salut consists of multi-instrumentalists Gemma Barkerwood, Sophie Barkerwood, and Louise Croft. Between them, Haiku Salut play accordion, piano, glockenspiel, trumpet, guitar, ukulele, drums, and melodica. Their music also features electronic elements, which they refer to as "loopery and laptopery". Influenced by the evocative film soundtracks of Yann Tiersen and Benoît Charest, the genre-melting electronica of early Múm, and the impressionistic writing of Haruki Murakami, the band released their debut album Tricolore in 2013, to critical acclaim, which was followed in 2015 by the equally acclaimed Etch And Etch Deep (“the album Four Tet might have made after Rounds” – The Observer). Last year they collaborated with Public Service Broadcasting on the track “They Gave Me A Lamp”, which featured on the PSB’s top five album, Every Valley.



This year’s release, There Is No Elsewhere, is Haiku Salut’s first album for neo-classical and electronica label PRAH Recordings and sees the trio continue their distinctive re-imagining of dreampop and rural electronica. It also sees the band finally find their place, both musically and politically.



“It is an album about occupying your space, being proud of what you believe in and who you are,” says Sophie Barkerwood. “It’s about making small life changes, making better decisions, writing better songs, having better conversations, knowing that these can lay foundations for change. It’s about finding who you are and not being dictated to about what you should be. It’s about celebrating others. It’s about making changes for a better future.”



This sense of solidarity and community prompted Haiku Salut to work with Glastonbury Brass on “Cold To Crack The Stones” and “The More And Moreness”, both of which marry the band’s ambitious interweaving of electronic and organic, natural and unnatural with the triumphant warmth of a brass band in full flow (with the former featuring a manipulation of a NASA recording of pulses emitted by lightning). It also provided the emotional core of the hypnotic electronic attack of “Occupy”, the genre-melting joy of “We Are All Matter”, and the startling “I Am Who I Remind You Of”, a seven minute pastoral symphony that sees treated vocals and glitched electronica blur into tradition, history and a sense of belonging, like waking up to sunshine after a long and dazzling dream.



The cover of the album features original artwork by the painter Geoff Diego Litherland. “The artwork very much helped shape the album’s expression,” says Sophie. “The portal, the warning and symbolic meaning behind the octagon all gave a further significance to the music. The octagon has a symbolic meaning of infinity and transition, which reinforces the significance of the endless ‘now’ and the responsibility we have for the ‘here’. We should say that the music, the album title and the artwork provide a triforce of meaning. All work together equally to make the whole.”



Much like Haiku Salut themselves – three incredibly creative and talented multi-instrumentalists coming together to fashion a bold, inventive and uplifting album. The record they’ve been working towards from the moment they formed.



Haiku Salut’s forthcoming live dates are as follows:

Sun 15 Jul – Pickle Factory, London (PRAH Recordings/Kit Records Sunday Sessions)
Sun 29 Jul – Indietracks festival, Derbyshire
Sat 4 Aug - Once Upon A Hill festival
Fri 10 Aug - Centre For Life, Newcastle
Mon 27 Aug – Greenbelt festival

** Lamp Show Tour **

Thurs 20 Sep - Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds
Fri 21 Sep - The Great Eastern, Glasgow
Sat 22 Sep - More Music, Morecambe
Thurs 27 Sep - Deaf Institute, Manchester
Fri 28 Sep - Wirksworth Town Hall
Sat 29 Sep - Nottingham Contemporary
Tues 2 Oct - The Cube, Bristol
Wed 3 Oct - Hard of Hearing Centre, Oxford
Thurs 4 Oct - Norwich Arts Centre
Fri 5 Oct – St John On Bethnal Green, London
Sat 6 Oct – The Haunt, Brighton
** Lamp Show Tour ends **

Mon 31st Dec – Town Hall, Louth (with British Sea Power)

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Haiku Salut

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