Friday November 23rd 2007
The Yorkshire House, 2 Parliament Street, Lancaster, LA1 1DB.
Doors 8pm, Entry £5

Advance Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/location/LAWM

LAWM presents one of our favourite bands – from Toronto, Canada: Picastro. A night of Lo fi indie

alt.folk excellence. With great support from Brighton's Birdengine, Lancaster's New Hawks and Stephen

Hudson

Picastro

Far out middle eastern drones, balkan gypsy strings & ancient blues wrestle for your attention while Liz

Hysen's voice cuts straight to the heart. The queue to collaborate with her is a long and illustrious

one, with Owen Pallett, Beirut and XiuXiu players making it in time for the latest LP 'Whore Luck'.

Comparisons to Godspeed You Black You Emperor! and Dirty Three are inevitable, but Picastro also lay

down all sorts ofeastern European folk vibes. The beauty of the album unfurls slowly but surely. -The

Independent

What raises Picastro above the herd of atmospheric noise-makers is that these tracks aren't instrumental

jams, they're songs- with all the structure and emotional closure that this implies. -The Sunday Times

U.K.

Heavy on doom, atmosphere, with violin, cello, piano and guitar all creating a sense of incipient

Menace. -Q Magazine

Beginning in 1997 and ostensibly a vehicle for singer-songwriter Liz Hysen, Toronto based Picastro

(Polyvinyl/Monotreme Records) weave her songs into an abstract framework of extended, moody soundtracks.

Here the singers identity is absorbed into the overall impression left by the music. Reported

comparisons with Cat Power are therefore wide of the mark. Hysens role is oddly selfless, her voice

subdued to a general murmur amid the musics burgeoning drama. The songs are instead a vehicle for the

group to expand their vocabulary, creating a gloomy variant of folk blues with a wide reach. Over the

years Picastro has invloved a wide range of additional musicians including Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy).

Picastro have just released their latest album, 'Whore Luck' and were one of the inspirations for

starting the LAWM night in the first place so we're very happy indeed that they're playing!

http://www.myspace.com/picastro

Birdengine

Birdengine (Drift Records) is the name Mr Lawry Joseph Tilbury chooses to make music with. He hails from

the Dorset countryside and began making music as a child. Venturing at night into the fields and forests

surrounding his childhood home, with a broken nylon guitar, a record player and a couple of carefully

scratched and doctored records, performing his ramshackle and melancholy sound for only himself, the

woodland creatures and the moon. He has since fled the countryside and moved to a nearby city but has

managed to hold on to the eerie and pastoral sound that infiltrates his music. Recording only on a

4-track tape recorder and using a whole range of dictaphones, home-made tape loops and music boxes, he

harbours a deep loathing for digital equipment opting instead for the humble hiss of a tape cassette.

Based in Brighton, birdengine's live shows are rare and consist normaly of just voice and nylon guitar.

His body of work ranges from soft and slow waltzes to thick electronic dirges all retaining that

distinctive weird, sad and isolated birdengine sound.

‘….like visiting a museum of curiosities packed with shelves of malformed foetuses and two-headed dogs

pickled in jars; the songs are full of rustic-mythic weirdness' - The Independent

‘Tilbury's music has the nervy pastoral loneliness of immediately post-Barrett Floyd….. it's a very

beautiful record.’ - Word Magazine

http://www.myspace.com/birdengine

Dan Heywood's New Hawks

Dan Heywood's New Hawks (Timbreland Records) an arching, tragi-cosmik song-cycle by Dan Haywood

(formerly of "promising" alternative-rockers The Puma-Sutras, and creator of Dan Haywood's Dapple).

Wrote the twenty-nine New Hawks (songs) in a month-long burst awhile back. It was a shocker. Aided by a

host of kind, talented musicians, including Therese Standish (strings), Jeff Jefferson and Billy Myall

(rack)- New Hawks are now being brought to a venue near you. and, scratching and screeching, into the

stoooodio. That's what they say anyway. We say they're very probably the most interesting and creative

band furrowing an experimental alt.country path for many many miles around.

http://www.myspace.com/newhawks

Stephen Hudson

Kicking off the night is a solo set from Stephen Hudson, singer with Uncle Jeff and The Ampersands. Solo

Hudson's material is stripped back acoustic, alt.folk featuring his lyrical observations on life!

http://www.myspace.com/stephenhudson