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Helen Money

with Kuro, Cavalier Song and Ocean Floor

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Tue 19 September 2017 // 20:00

Tickets: £12 advance (+booking fee), £14 on the door

Alison Chesley, known also by her stage name Helen Money, is a classically trained cellist who draws her inspiration not only from Pablo Casals and Shostakovich but Jimi Hendrix and The Minutemen.

She began playing the cello at the age of 8 in her hometown of Los Angeles and steered a course towards a career in classical music until she went to Chicago to attend North Western University and decided to go full steam ahead in pursuit of a career outside of it. She began a busy period as a solo artist, especially on Chicago's then thriving studio scene, where she played on over 100 albums including those by Bob Mould, Broken Social Scene, Anthrax, Mono, Russian Circles, Disturbed and Poi Dog Pondering. She began composing music for films, theatre and dance including two world premiers with the modernist icon Shirley Mordine.

In 2007, Alison wrote the first Helen Money album and released it on her own label, Cellobird Records. Since then, she's recorded three additional albums as Helen Money: "In tune", also on her label, "Arriving angels" on Profound Lore Records and her latest "Become Zero" out on Thrill Jockey.

Written after the death of both of her parents, "Become Zero" amplifies Chesley's musical ferocity with palpable sadness and striking beauty taking us on a journey as she grapples with the concepts and the emotions of life's end: loss, isolation, sorrow, peace and resolution.

Helen Money is equally at home in the New Music realm as she is in the New Metal realm. She has toured extensively with an incredible array of musicians, including Shellac, Neurosis, Sleep, Russian Circles, Magma, Agalloch, Earth, and Nina Nastasia. Both Portishead and Shellac selected her for their respective All Tomorrow's Parties festivals.

Read more about Helen Money in this feature/interview with The Guardian.

"Become Zero is an obliteration of the senses to leave one wrung out and euphoric, offering both epiphanies from Heaven and elegies from Hell. " - The Quietus

"The most interesting feature of Helen Money's live performance is the ease at which Chelsey's compositions shift between the two poles of vulnerability and harshness. The whole performance comes off as simultaneously heavy and disarming." - CVLT Nation

"Become Zero is spare but heavy, dark but beautiful, melodic but meditative." - The Guardian

The Cube is pleased to announce a late addition to this already stellar line-up in the form of Cavalier Song, hot on tour and fresh from recent BBC6 exposure, Cavalier Song release their 2nd album on God Unknown records in September after recent split with Bristol's own Agathe Max. Described as sounding like The Fall jamming with King Crimson on Acid!, Cavalier Song are likely to bring a bit of welcome raucousness to this evenings proceedings.

 "..mix a post-Fall with abstractly imagined music that recalls the Third Ear Band." - The Wire Magazine

 "...full of post minimalist inventive abstractions" - Terrascope

 "A triumph of imagination – a wide-eyed stare at the skies, in love with sound and possibility." **** - The Skinny

 https://www.cavaliersong.com/

http://www.godunknownrecs.com/

Kuro are local duo Agathe Max (Pon Pon, Yama Warashi, solo)  and Gareth Turner (Big Naturals).  Using electric basses and violin they create a swirling landscape of psychedelic drone, inviting the listener to join them on their journey into deep rich frequencies.  Last years début LP was described as:

 A unique, richly atmospheric and largely improvisatory record that stands proud and defiant of pigeon-holing, Kuro is neither elegant chamber music nor intense drone-noise, neither psychedelia nor spiritual jazz, yet with elements of all of the above- dwelling perhaps atop a psychic hinterland between the shamanic vortices of Ashtray Navigations, the wild extrapolations of Sun City Girls and the melancholic richness of The Dirty Three. Yet what comes across strongest of all is the original spark of the partnership, summoning altered states, meditative vibrations and internal narratives by the power of eight strings. 

https://kuro.bandcamp.com/

Ocean Floor, aka Aonghus Reidy delivers brooding ambient soundscapes utilising synths and piano who is much in demand at the moment. After the release of Jupiter on Zamzamrec, he recently released the Four Shadows E.P. through Aphelion Editions and in October will be releasing The World of Rain on Erstwhile Books & Music. We are excited to have him back playing tonight.

https://oceanfloor.bandcamp.com/

Tickets available from Bristol Ticket Shop, Headfirst Bristol, and Here Shop And Gallery.