‘Astonishing’ Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music / ‘Stunning….gorgeous music’ Bob Harris BBC Radio 2 / ‘Unique..they scream originality’ Spiral Earth
Venue: The Slaughtered Lamb
34-35 Great Sutton St, Clerkenwell, EC1V 0DX Ph: 020 7253 1516
Doors open 7.30 pm, music from 8.15 pm. Nearest tube Farringdon, 6 minutes walk
£10.00 adv BUY NOW / £12.00 door
Seeing the (shive) light – the brilliantly ‘other wordly’ Mishaped Pearls release their first album in four years.
‘Astonishing, with heart-stopping vocals from Manuela Schuette. It’s not often a band can truthfully claim to have a sound unlike anyone else in the country, but Mishaped Pearls can certainly make that proud boast’- Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music
Forget trains, boats and planes. Mishaped Pearls have an elixir that can transport you instantly to fascinating worlds of infinite possibilities. Four years ago, the dynamic London seven-piece band released an album that stopped people in their musical tracks. Thamesis met with widespread media acclaim, drawing particular praise from the likes of BBC Radio’s Bob Harris and Tom Robinson and drawing an abundance of adjectives from reviewers – “stunning”, “heart stopping”, “astonishing” and “captivating”.
Now they are back with a beguiling nine-track release, Shivelight – which takes its name from a word created by Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to describe the lances of sunshine that pierce a woodland canopy – apt for this album of light and shade.
Mishaped Pearls formed in 2009 as a collaboration between Ged Flood and Manuela Schuette, bringing out their first album, The Singer and the Poets, a year later. Curling round Manuela’s incredible voice is a whole plethora of instruments. Flood fields an astonishing array of stringed instruments – saz baglama, tenor guitar, tenor banjo, Chinese ruan guitar, charango, baritone acoustic guitar, mandolin, bass ukulele, electric bass and electric guitar – instruments that have formed the bedrock of the band’s sound over the years. He is joined by five outstanding musicians Laurel S. Pardue (violin, viola); Andrew Sleightholme (piano, loops), Calie Hough (congas, djembe, darbuka, cajon, drums) Tom Finigan on saz baglama, tenor banjo, guitar and mandolin and Massimo Troiani on bass.
Once again, Mishaped Pearls have created a dazzling, ‘free spirit’ album–a unique listening experience that resolutely refuses to conform to any kind of pre-determined, stylistic house rules.
‘Shivelight’ will be released on the Misshapen Records label and distributed by Proper Distribution.
“At a time when every band describes themselves as unique it’s really refreshing to find one that truly is – they scream originality” – Spiral Earth
‘Unexpected, gently startling English pastoral folk” – The Guardian
“Stunning – very, very imaginative, ethereal and atmospheric. Gorgeous music” – Bob Harris
“Uber cool London collective’– Songlines
New Roots 