After a successful tour of Japan in 2016, & the release of their 1st CD collaboration “Spatial Roots”, Geoff Leigh (UK) – soprano sax, flutes, voice, small percussion, laptop processing, & Makoto Kawabata (Japan) – guitar, synthesiser, voice, electronics, will go on a European tour from June 21st.
Tour dates:
Wednesday June 21: Club Integral @ l’Iklectik – London, United Kingdom
Friday June 23: Avantgarde Festival – Schiphorst, Germany
Sunday June 25: VROOOM @ Pink Pank – Rotterdam, Netherlands
Wednesday June 28: Villa K – Den Haag, Netherlands
Thursday June 29 June: Centre Culturel Libertaire – Lille, France
Friday June 30 June: TBA – Paris, France
Saturday July 1: TBA – La Haie-Fouassiere, France
For updates and more information, you can visit the special Facebook page for this tour.
The music embraces a wide range of styles and influences, mixing elements of ethnic, rock, jazz, world, ambient, & electronica, and is completely improvised. The CD is a live recording of their first ever performance together, in Kyoto, Japan, in 2014. Since then the music has organically progressed – a 2nd CD compiled from the 2016 Japanese tour is in the pipeline & has even more diverse influences.
Geoff Leigh is well known for his work with Henry Cow in the early 70’s, as well as contributing to fellow Virgin bands of the time Hatfield And The North & Slapp Happy. Over the years he has performed in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ukraine, Estonia, Russia, & Japan, as both a solo artist and with members of Faust, Henry Cow, Porcupine Tree (as Ex-Wise Heads with bassist Colin Edwin), Nurse With Wound, Univers Zero, Aksak Maboul, Acid Mothers Temple, and musicians such as Max Manac’h, Mitsuru Tabata, Tatsuya Yoshida, Aogu Tanimoto, Kazuto Shimizu, Filippo Opaki, Yumi Hara, Sawada, Anthony Donovan, Uwe Bastianson (Stadtfischflex), Magnus Alexanderson, Adriano Lanzi, Tim Bowness, & Nana Tsiboe. He is currently a member of Murmurists, The Warrior Squares, Jump For Joy (featuring members of Faust & Henry Cow), and The Artaud Beats (also featuring Henry Cow alumni).
Makoto Kawabata is a guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, and leader of the psychedelic rock band Acid Mothers Temple. While he’s best known for his earsplitting, speed guru guitar heroics with AMT, he’s also the founder of his own school of ecstatic guitar drone using bowing and glissando techniques. Kawabata first started releasing works for electronics and homemade instruments in 1978. Since then his activities have been almost too wideranging to grasp: he has formed multiple units, released a plenitude of albums on labels all over the world, toured extensively in Europe, the US and Asia. He has played together with psychedelic originators like Gong, Guru Guru, Silver Apples, Nik Turner, Damo Suzuki, Träd Gräs och Stenar, with Occitanian trad musicians from the south of France including Rosina de Peira, Marc Perrone, Andre Minvielle, Beatritz, and in innumerable other sessions spanning all genres.
Source: Geoff Leigh & Makoto Kawabata