Bitch ’n’ Monk roll up for Rich Mix album launch
Friday, August 26, 2016
Experimental London-based duo Bitch ’n’ Monk – aka Heidi Heidelberg (lead vocals, guitars, percussion) and Mauricio Velasierra (Quena, Sikus, Mozeño, vocals) – are set to release their highly-charged debut album We Are Peering Over on 30 September, with an official album launch gig on 22 September at Rich Mix.
Velasierra and Heidelberg (the latter part of the Serious Take Five scheme in 2015), share a rare chemistry, with Heidelberg’s dynamic arsenal of vocal techniques taking in beatboxing and live looping while always riding the extremes of her range. Colombian flautist Velasierrauses a variety of Latin American wind instruments, including the bass mozeño, a two-metre-long flute that provides the gutsiest of pitches. His reputation as an innovator is well founded, having developed an entirely new technique that allows him to play chromatically.
The album is the follow-up to their critically-acclaimed EP Fulafalonga, the Anglo-Colombian pairing writing material for the album during a year of ‘hibernation’. That doesn’t mean however that this is an introspective album – the themes suggest quite the opposite. ‘Shell’, described as an ‘aria for the Arctic’, wrestles with ignorance around climate change, while the music video for ‘Moolah’ encourages grey-eyed commuters to break free from hum-drum habits with the lyrics, “You can’t get away/When you’re making moolah!”
Heidelberg describes the fuel behind their song-writing as a hunger to take them “to the edge harmonically, melodically, technically, stylistically”. She continues; “our music is always in flux, and we think that desire to break out of the box, into a wilder and more unpredictable terrain, is what comes through on this album.”
The album launch, produced by the Jazz Standard radio show and promoters Chaos Theory, will also feature the visceral sculptures of artist Cristabel Christo whose work will be exhibited at the venue, with characters created to represent each of the album’s nine songs. Christo’s paintings have also been used as cover art for the likes of The Orb, Youth and Killing Joke. “There was just something visceral, sensual about her work”, explains Heidelberg. “Something simultaneously dark and childlike and it seemed to fit our music, which luckily she loved!”.
The album launch will also feature acclaimed avant-jazz guitarist Chris Sharkey who brings his electronic project Survival Skills to life at Rich Mix, before German saxophonist Peter Ehwald, who is travelling to the UK from Germany especially, will perform a disarming solo set.
– Tina Edwards
For more info visit www.richmix.org.uk