When: 7.30pm on Wednesday 24 May 2017
Where: The Ruby Lounge, 28-34 High Street, Manchester M4 1QB

PLEASE NOTE: Due to exceptional demand, this show has been upgraded to The Ruby Lounge! Original tickets remain valid, and all other details stay the same.

We’re delighted to be working with Aldous Harding again – plus guests H.Hawkline and Katie von Schleicher!

4AD welcomes Aldous Harding, a remarkable talent from New Zealand. Today, she presents a powerful opening statement with a new song Horizon and startling companion video.

Aldous Harding’s music is not for the faint of heart. Disarming in its desolate imagery and stark instrumentation, her songs draw from the core facets of life: death, birth, grief and love. There are few happy endings, but the power is in how Harding enters into battle; with a dancer’s grace and a boxer’s stance.

Harding initially ignited interest with her eponymous debut album released just two years ago. With echoes of folk luminaries Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs, Harding’s work is one step removed from the modern world, but lies in more savage terrain than her forebears, wrought with a wry wit and tenacious gall.

For her 4AD debut, Aldous – real name Hannah – Harding has been working with award-winning producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse), and Horizon offers an enticing preview of that collaboration. The confrontational accompanying video, directed by Charlotte Evans, and produced by Evie Mackay, stars a combative Harding and her mother in the New Zealand hinterland.

‘Compelling, gothic-folk first from NZ newcomer’ – Uncut

‘Soft chanting and singing saws add mystery to a beguiling debut’ – Mojo

Main support comes from H.Hawkline. H.Hawkline (Huw Evans), who releases his new album I Romanticize on Heavenly Recordings on 2 June 2017, has previously played with the likes of Foxygen, Gwenno and long-time cohort Cate le Bon. He also recently announced a run of shows with Devendra Banhart, Aldous Harding and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, as well as a number of festival appearances over the summer.

Opening the show is Katie von Schleicher. Katie Von Schleicher’s Bleaksploitation was an accident, years in the making. While interning at Ba Da Bing Records, owner Ben Goldberg offered that she make a cassette for the label to release. It could be anything, demos or a live performance, but she took it a bit more seriously than Goldberg intended. The result was her first self-produced and engineered effort, a strange, hazy, pop-laden tape. Doing her own press under a pseudonym and referring to it as an ‘album’, Von Schleicher garnered enough attention for Bleaksploitation to see it released on vinyl in Spring 2016.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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