Being well aware of a lack of flowing movement here on the site, I’ve decided to commit myself to a monthly post for this year – with this month’s coming in somewhat last minute. I’m going to hopefully have enough happening month to month to cover, explain and promote numerous projects and events.
Firstly and most importantly – I have been making amplified metal noises and low gurgling growls (amidst spells of doom to abusers/rapists/men) with London doom-noise queerdos Dead Men Don’t Rape for a while now and I really cannot express how much I love these people and the powerful energy and friendship they have bestowed upon me – when our drummer Zak asked me to come on board I was so taken aback and so excited and relieved to finally be invited into a band dynamic after a significant sojourn away. Our live shows so far have entirely lived up to my high expectations and they are all just lovely beings to be around and make great, hideous noises with (and construct interesting performances with too)!
We have two shows coming up in London fairly soon. The first is the weekend after this one, Saturday 8th Feb, at DIY Space for London, supporting the amazing F. Emasculata.
The next is on Friday 14th Feb for Not Your Galentines Day at the Amersham Arms. The event will not just be for live bands performing but also for an art exhibition, here’s some more information about that:
💖 I’m With Her (Gallery Invitation) 💖
Open from 6 o’clock, KNM will be exploring the metoo movement through the lens of reactions to sexual assault.
The photographic gallery will be comprised of outtakes from the Brazen Hussy ‘Not All Men’ EP release accompanied by quotations from sexual assault survivors denoting adverse reactions & responses they’ve had to their assault, how it made them feel & how they wish others around them had supported them.
To submit an entry for the gallery (pls pls pls do 🙏) or to help us by sharing out the link for submissions – http://knmpresents.com/as-if-promotions/events/im-with-her-gallery/im-with-her-gallery-entry/
Secondly – I have been working on a new collaboration with my friend Maxwell Reynish. We have a prospective title, some artwork drafts and a lot of recordings done at this point – I’m really excited to get this announced, the earliest recording session goes back to July last year – with our newest just gone by last weekend (in which we also went over the old recordings, cemented some final changes and laid out plans for digital and physical release which is imminent).
Until then, I can refer you to the Anatum’s Abode Sessions we created some time ago now for an idea of our past trajectory – an improvised session between myself, Maxwell and Charlie Wheatley created at the now-extinct Anatum’s Abode of Limehouse. While ultimately very different, the new project with Maxwell is similarly focused on drone-based and ambient sounds and involves a lot of improvisation and textural exploration.
Thirdly and finally – I’ve become a bit lacklustre in the efforts of cultivating three netlabels but I aim to step up activity on all of them in 2020, ░░ HNW ░░ has already had its first three releases of the year touch down and I’m currently working on a promising second batch as well – things are going a bit slower for Terrarium and SSN Technologies but there are nebulous plans for both – as always, if you’re an artist and you’re reading this and you dig in to these platforms and find something you think your project will feel at home in, please don’t hesitate to email me at jpjshearman@gmail.com
PS: as a small addendum, I should mention that I’ve begun home-dubbing once again and will be posting about a DIY tape series I’m creating on here next month (the series will be a sequence of 1/1 special edition tapes, recorded in real time straight to tape with no edits, using recycled tapes and creating hand-drawn artworks, with each copy dedicated to a single individual in the noise crowd who has been an immense inspiration to me)
PPS: as an even smaller addendum, I have begun a major overhaul of my ‘blackened noise’ project Roadside Dead – I have left only the split release material available to stream as I really feel so happy with this in particular, but I want a considerably different and new direction for the project in the future, I have been putting a lot of work into this very slowly and incrementally but hopefully the fruits will be worth it all – I have already introduced a sneak preview of these developments (on instagram at @_shearman) in the form of a new logo I made whilst listening over some in-progress sounds ;
S H E A R M A N 