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Antarctica – that wide, white space…

10 August 2011- For Immediate Release:
Antarctica, Friday, August 19, San Francisco Bath House, $15 presale ($20 on the door)
featuring: Leila Adu, Riki Gooch, Alphabethead & The Labcoats
w/ selections from the MLKBDGR crates. Tickets – Under the Radar

Antarctica – that wide, white space, a place where the imagination is free to roam. You will be taken to the musical equivalent of a place like that: Leila Adu, Riki Gooch, Alphabethead, The Labcoats and MLKBDGR have the staple secret. They can take you there.

These are artists-as-explorers. This is sonic excavation. Something you can really dig.

Photo by Leon Dale

Leila Adu is readying her fifth album – she’s fresh from winning MTV Iggy’s Artist of the Week and has returned to New Zealand from her American home-base to tour and record. In recent years she has wowed audiences across Europe and America. She has performed improvised and composed pieces, as a solo artist, in small combos and with larger ensembles – she has two tracks featured on the upcoming album from Italian electronica act, MDF. Leila writes songs that are tiny but bold; huge but obtainable. She is a unique voice as writer and composer; she’ll take you to an aural Antarctica – a place of infinite discovery.
Media Relations/Hi-Res Images

Riki Gooch has produced solo singers, backed folk-pop players; he masterminded the Eru Dangerspiel big band and has played with a couple of other bands you might have heard of. Is he Wellington’s own Moondog? Or is he the Capital City’s Fela Kuti? Riki has created soundscapes across electronica and dub; he sits inside the beat while living further beyond the fringe. He has a heavy metal bebop inside him that pulses deep. For this performance Gooch will be performing his Cave Circles EPs with video artists Toby and Melissa Donald. And Ant Donaldson will be on stage with Riki. They’ll take you to an aural Antarctica – a place you have never been before.

Alphabethead is a wizard of the turntables – a composer who places found sounds in surprising new contexts. He takes tunes you think you’ve heard before and makes tunes you’ll never hear again. He charts his own path through almost every genre. With Alphabethead it’s always a fresh journey through the past to the future. He can take you to an aural Antarctica – he’s a sonic navigator.

The Labcoats is an improvising collective that knows how to uncover a buried groove. They have science at their fingertips and wear their art on their sleeves. No turn will be left unstoned in the search for a new jazz; a new way to groove – a new set of moves. The Labcoats will lay you out like patience itself has been etherized and feeling stable. They’ll take you to an aural Antarctica – they may just build you a brand new one.

MLKBDGR – will be providing the glue; the invisible threads that stitch the spaces together between these vibrant acts. MLKBDGR will take you to an aural Antarctica – he’ll steal one for you; he’ll slip it to you quickly.

RG “A humble, yet incredibly talented maestro showing us the way forward.” –3 Network News

AH “Alphabethead amazed and dazzled with his rapid and accurate hand work, sliding effortlessly from turntables to sliders to switches and balance – no wonder he won – this is a man possessed.” – Melbourne ‘In The Mix Awards’

LA “This young New Zealander of Ghanaian descent treats genre distinctions in much the same way that Godzilla treated those little cities made out of cardboard.” –MTV Iggy

Antarctica artists are available for interviews at: point 3 recurring and leilaadu.com

Tickets – Under the Radar

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“Sonically Compelling and Adventurous”

Stateside Summer and New Releases

URB ALT Fest 2010 @ 92Y Tribeca, New York, 25JUN10
After performances in LA, Chicago, New York and Washington DC, Leila Adu will play her final US date in Atlanta before returning to perform in Italy and the UK. Leila’s trio show in New York for URB ALT Festival with Federico Ughi and Andrew Weeks was described by Bold As Love’s, Rob Fields: “Usually, when a singer-songwriter strips a song down to just voice and piano, it provides for more space around the song, and lets it breathe. In Leila’s case, she’s dealing with such melodically dense concepts that the addition of the other instruments actually served to better ground me as a listener… The additional instruments help you experience her on a macro level. And that’s good, because what she’s exploring is sonically compelling and adventurous.”

URB ALT Sampler-Tres, Front Cover


With over 13,000 downloads of their previous sampler, the latest URB ALT Sampler-Tres Free download was released in June to celebrate the URB ALT 2010 Festival launch and includes ‘prendi uno’ the new single by MDF Feat. Leila Adu. Electronica producer MDF‘s solo album ‘Horus’ was released this year and labels are already interested in his next release which will include ‘prendi uno’ and other tracks in collaboration with Leila Adu. The URB ALT Sampler-Tres Free download features artists who performed for this year’s festival:Muthawit, Oh My Goodness, Dearling Physique, The Twin Shadow, MiLo and Lou Rossi, as well members of the URB ALT community from around the globe such as Gonjasufi/Flying Lotus, Dave I.D., Tuneyards, Faith, Jneiro Jarel and more.

Leila Adu’s fourth studio album of songs ‘Ode the the Unknown Factory Worker,’ solo piano, organ and voice with four tracks accompanied by drummer Daniele De Santis, is set to be released by RAI TRADE/Tracce and distributed worldwide in October 2010. ‘The Shoreditch Concert,’ an acoustic free improv concert released last month on Amirani Records of the group of Hannah Marshall_Nicola Guazzaloca_Gianni Mimmo_Leila Adu’ is receiving consistent reviews and radioplay in France and Italy. ‘Dark Joan’ the album produced by Steve Albini out on Frizz Records, is now being physically distributed in New Zealand stores and sites by Border Music www.youtube.com/bordermusicnz

'The Village Voice' New York City
'The Village Voice' New York City