Os and Mike performing with Andrew Booker (drums) and Simon Laffy (bass) at the recent Improvizone gig.


Improvizone at Switch, October 7th 2008 from Andrew Ostler on Vimeo.

os, Oct 2008

Tags: Improvizone, video, andrew booker, simon laffy

Darkroom will effectively be playing at the Woodford Festival on October 7th, as part of Improvizone. We'll be playing with Andrew Booker, the drummer on Some Of These Numbers Mean Something, and bassist Simon Laffy.
More info on the event page on Facebook or the Improvizone site.

os, Sept 2008

Tags: Improvizone, andrew booker, simon laffy

Some gigs to announce, all under the Improvizone banner.

• 23rd May 2008 at The Design Museum, London. Mike can't make it sadly. Playing will be myself (Os), Andrew Booker and Steve Lawson.
• 28th May 2008 at Ember, London. Ember, against all our expectations, has re-opened after the fire that cancelled our residency earlier this year. It'll be Mike & myself, plus Andrew Booker and Simon Laffy - a repeat of the line-up at our last Ember gig.
• 4th June 2008 at The Plough, Walthamstow. It'll be Mike & myself, plus Andrew Booker and Nick Cottam.

See you all there, no doubt.

os, May 2008

Tags: Improvizone, Ember, The Plough, Design Museum

Wednesday 27th Feb: To Croydon, for the Dragon's Ball at the Green Dragon. Darkroom + Andy Booker, or Improvizone with Mike & Os? (Not sure if there's a difference...) Supporting Croydon-based Burning Shedders, The Resonance Association. Thanks Daniel.

We were billed as 'lo-fi dreamy techno' (!) The theory was we'd play drones with percussion... but to me, the venue didn't seem right for that, and it's definitely not what came out. Haven't heard the recording back yet - but towards the end,  I remember picking up on something Os played and thinking "no echo & maximum fuzz". Darkroom go ambient metal?

The fuzzulator helped make this work: www.demeteramps.com/products/accessories/fuz1.html Small but flexible, it handles vintage, gargly non-linear as well as brutal, bright & focussed with compressed lows. Varying the guitar's volume & tone does something useful as well, and given I typically use a volume pedal after the fuzz, there's a whole range of tones to explore even without echo. Somehow last Wednesday I rediscovered this!

Audio & video to follow...

Mike, March 2008

Update: Andy has written about the gig on the Improvizone blog.

Tags: gig, pedals, fuzzulator

We have a gig on Wednesday 27th Feb 2008, at The Green Dragon, Croydon. We're supporting The Resonance Association. There's a Facebook event for this gig here.

As for the Norwich Loopfest, we'll be joined by Andrew Booker on electronic drums.

Tags: Croydon, TRA

Sadly we have to report that the forthcoming gig at Ember on January 16th has been cancelled, due to the venue being closed after a serious fire on the premises.

Stay tuned for updates - quite possibly the next couple of gigs in January and February will also be cancelled, or moved to a new venue.

os, Jan 2008

Tags: Ember, Improvizone