#eothen stearn

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Nightshift

Nightshift, from Glasgow, occupies the softer, dreamier end of the post-punk spectrum. The debut full-length, Zöe, got our attention in 2021 with its tight, pinging chords and airy ethereality. Jennifer Kelly wrote, “It is hardly a punk album at all on some levels, and yet it also is, just gauzier and more inferential.” The band has since expanded to a four-piece and produced a second album, Homosapien, which we liked as well, noting “a crisper, more rock-band-ish iteration of Nightshift’s dreamy, surreal punk.” Here the band members (Andrew Doig, Rob Alexander, Eothen Stearn and Chris White) describe some of their favorite things in music, books and film.

Andrew Doig

Bedmaker — S​/​t

My music choice is Bedmaker’s debut album on Dischord Records featuring the legendary Amanda MacKaye on vocals, some agitated and tight post punk with a classic Washington DC flavor.

Jeff Noon — Vurt

I have chosen the book Vurt by Jeff Noon cuz I love this Manchester influenced cyberpunk weirdness, it’s a refreshing northern England style take on Neuromancer type vibes.

Rob Alexander

Lily Paine — Between Silence and Speech

Between Silence and Speech is a brilliant and inspiring book of poetry and illustrations by Glasgow artist Lily Paine; I read it most days. There’s a really good film on YouTube (LILY - a medical documentary) by a medical student called Will Nutter about this artist.

L — Marilyn Monroe — All of Us

The debut album from Glasgow band L on Radical Documents is a jaw-dropping, mind-melted magic poetry rock virtuosos’ trip. They’ve got Jack Mellin, a legendary guitarist from Glasgow who has been part of the Nightshift at some point too.

R.Aggs

Our great friend Ray (R.Aggs) who contributed fiddle to Homosapien, fronts some amazing bands, Sacred Paws, Trash Kit and Shopping, and has two amazing solo records out that are uniquely uplifting and beautiful, each with banger following banger. I didn’t sleep well last night and woke up thinking that I didn’t like music anymore; listening to this has brought me back to life!

Eothen Stearn

Kai Cheng Thom — Falling Back in Love with Being Human

This book was recommended to me by a colleague who runs the anti-racist library at Woodlands Community. I had been discussing feelings of being overwhelmed and a desire to reconnect with the world, and she suggested this book. It’s an amazing collection, a mixture of short excerpts and vignettes, each accompanied by a small invitation. For instance, one might invite you to visit a place you’ve never been, or to write a letter to yourself. These invitations are often inward-facing, but some are like spells, encouraging reconnection with the world and finding small joys.

The author, a sex worker and trans woman, writes from a decolonizing perspective. The book is not just a series of stories; it’s interactive, with each short piece followed by an invitation, creating a rhythm almost like a metronome. I read it while on holiday, and it came at a perfect time. I’m grateful for its existence.

Grave Goods — Tuesday Nothing Exists

Manchester and Dublin power duo who take you on a journey. I’m really inspired by the sound and rhythms of the Grave Goods album. The lyrics are great, with a spoken word element and excellent timing. The music feels raw and exciting.

Robyn Rocket — Love EP

Some of you might be familiar with Robyn Rocket. Robyn, an instrumentalist who plays the trumpet, is a pioneer for neurodiverse musicians, being neurodiverse herself. She has been featured in The Wire magazine and is actively working to make spaces more accessible for neurodiverse individuals. Robyn is heavily involved with Heart n Soul in London, an amazing charity, and she also programs her night, Robyn Rocket, at Cafe OTO. She plays in various projects, including Dean Rodney Jr. and the Cowboys.

I love her collaborative approach, and her latest record features contributions from many people. Her work has a cosmic quality, both in her music and her illustrations. I’m thrilled that she’s receiving the recognition she deserves.

Chris White

Rob Churm — The Stone Tape — Posters 2001 – 2023

Rob Churm’s poster book is a great look at some of his art, featuring bands and venues from the past 20 years in Glasgow. It name-checks many of the venues and musicians I’ve seen since moving here in 2005 and features numerous previous bands that Nightshift members and contributors have been involved in. It’s a great one to look through, and the markings and colors look amazing. It also includes the first Nightshift gig poster, which has us on the bill with my next recommendation.

Alfred Bellman — Congregate

This is, for me, the sound and vibe of our last shared studio space, where Nightshift recorded most of our releases so far. For years, I’d show up at the door and hear this guy blasting out space-age psych jazz fusion — drones, drums, hymn-like verses, raps, and basslines. His first cassette album was put out by Doig on his Cusp label, the same label as our first Nightshift tape. This new one was put up on Bandcamp at the end of last year. He’s a multi-instrumentalist who plays trombone on our new album and drums in Rob’s other band, Radio Banter. His music is great and deserves more listeners, I reckon. Check it out!

[screamingforyears]

IN A MINUTE:

AN INDIE EXPRESS...

@aaaveytttare is here w/ a brand new standalone single titled “VAMPIRE TONGUES” (@dominorecordco) & it finds the Baltimore-based artist/producer linking up w/ his AnCo bandmate @pandabearofficial “to learn something from my old friend Noah” across a sub-4 min slice of eerily glitch’d ArtPop.

“CHANGE” is the lead single from @enumclaw.online’s forthcoming sophomore LP titled ‘Home In Another Life’ (8/30 @RunForCover) & it finds the Tacoma-based quartet of Aramis Johnson (guitar/vocals), Ladaniel Gipson (drums), Nathan Cornell (guitar) & Eli Edwards (bass) living that “coolest band in America” lyfe across 3 ½ anthemic mins of passionately propulsive & guitar-driven AltRawk.

@foliage_man are back w/ a brand new standalone single titled “FOLLOW” & it finds the solo project of San Berdoo’s Manuel Joseph Walker linking up w/ @sunderisaband to bring a dreamily delicious 3:23 clip of bashfully blissed, urgently earnest & guitar_poppin IndieRock.

@wearethebandcallednightshift are here w/ “PHONE,” the second single from their forthcoming LP titled ‘Homosapien’ (7/26 @troubleinmindrecords) & it finds the Glasgow-based quartet of Eothen Stearn (voice/keys), Chris White (guitar/vox), Andrew Doig (bass/vox) & Rob Alexander (drums) dealing w/ matters of the distanced heart across 3 mins of soulfully retro’d IndiePop.

“INDIGO” is the lead track from @rezzzn freshly released LP titled ‘Burden’ (@sargenthouse) & it finds the Chicago-based quartet of Rob McWilliams (guitar/vocals), Phil Cangelosi (bass/rainstick), Patrick Dunn (drums/percussion) & Spencer Ouellette (synths/sax/lapsteel/flute/piano) summoning the strength across a sub-5 min slice of proggy Doom.

[berlysbandcamp]

The band that became NIGHTSHIFT formed in 2019 in the ecosystem of Glasgow's current indie scene. The city's fertile & creative group of musicians have been committed to pushing the boundaries of and blurring the lines between DIY, punk, experimentalism and indie pop for decades now; a home to bands like Shopping, Vital Idles, Current Affairs, Still House Plants, Richard Youngs and Happy Meals as well as forebears like Orange Juice, Teenage Fanclub & Yummy Fur. NIGHTSHIFT slot right in with all mentioned, featuring members from current indie stalwarts Spinning Coin, 2 Ply and Robert Sotelo. The band was formed by David Campbell (guitar), Andrew Doig (bass), Eothen Stearn (keyboards/vocals) & Chris White (drums) as a "No Wave/No New York/early Sonic Youth/This Heat-esque" group, but their sound quickly evolved once guitarist/vocalist/clarinetist Georgia Harris joined (as the band was writing "Zöe"). The band self-released a full-length cassette on CUSP Recordings in early-2020, laying the foundation of their sound; hypnotic, melodic, understated indie post-punk with hooks that stick around long after you've heard them. "Zöe" is the band's newest effort, and first for Trouble In Mind. Unlike the band's previous album, the songs on "Zöe" weren't conceived live in the band's practice space, but rather pieced together and recorded remotely during quarantine lockdown, with each member composing or improvising their parts in homes/home studios, layering ideas over loops someone made and passing it on. The isolation actually allowed for an openness and creativity to flow and many of the songs took on radically different forms from when they were originally envisioned. Vocalist & primary lyricist Eothen Stearn says "The process of writing these songs separately during lockdown was a kind of exquisite corpse - I liked this gesticulation of reaching out to one another and responding. Building up the next layer and passing it on." Stearn says "poetic restraints" to writing & Eno's Oblique Strategies concepts were on their mind when composing the words to the songs on "Zöe" and lists the influence of author Rosi Bradiotti's book "The Posthuman". "Zöe" means "live drive", derived from the word conatus. Bradiotti defines conatus as “an effort or striving, endeavour, impulse, inclination, tendency, undertaking, serving is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself.” and Stearn views it as "...a kind of feminist re-claiming of communal public, anti- privatisation, looking to strive for social and environmental justice. Zöe kind of became a character of striving for me when writing.". "Zöe" kicks off with "Piece Together", a hypnotic song anchored by the band's chanted vocals and serpentine guitar licks. "Spraypaint the Bridge" showcases Harris' clarinet in an unexpected & delightful melodic shift during the song's anti-chorus. Elsewhere tunes like the swooning "Infinity Winner" and  "Outta Space"s minimalist, slinky rhythm swirl in a late-night vibe, while "Make Kin" ruminates on "Looking to kinship as a way of engaging with entangled environmental and reproductive issues... how a band is a bond" and lurches forward with kinetic guitar strangling & staccato rhythmic percussion from White & Doig. "Power Cut" is the album's centerpiece, kicking off Side two & lures the listener into its world over it's 7-minute runtime. Lulling them into involuntary movement with its waves of melodic harmonies, synth drones and metronomic pulse, until they all come crashing down in the song's dissonant midsection. The band acknowledges the whiffs of nostalgia prevalent in "Zöe"s songs (the title track in particular), and the nature of writing & recording the album is soaked in the self-work, reflection & reevaluations involved not only personally but creatively in each member's lives. Consequently, the album becomes a collection of sketches of hope, growth, awareness of the power of the world & the power of self, kith, kinship, friendship, resistance, and possibility.

[colletterayner]

Symposium & exhibition: 

Positions – Strategies for artistic accountability

Friday March 24th

Piet Zwart Institute, Karel Doormanhof 45, 3012 GC Rotterdam.

Connie Butler, Angelica Falkeling, Anni Puolakka, Nicholas Riis, Erika Roux, Eothen Stearn, Daniel Tuomey, Collette Rayner, Timur Akhmetov, Sophie Bates, Shraddha Borawaka, Katharina Cameron, Larisa David, Alexander Iezzi, Anastasia Shin

Does an artist’s identity matter or do we only have to focus on form?

This discursive event at the Piet Zwart Institute (PZI) will bring together artists from the MFA programme and invited speakers to question notions of accountability and revisit identity politics in art. The event will take the form of a Mini-Symposium, movement workshop and exhibition.

At PZI this spring, within the context of the recent open letter by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in which he stated stated:  ‘Doe normaal of ga weg’ (Act normal - or leave) the question of ‘normalcy’ and the presentation of cultural identities seem to us, especially urgent topics.

The Thematic Project at PZI “The Art of looking” facilitated by Research Professor Nana Adusei-Poku explored questions of decolonization, contextual framings of artists and artworks and the predisposition to read Blackness and treat Whiteness as 'neutral'. We invite you to join us in this collective process, discovering what strategies are utilised when we talk about ‘positions’ and which positions we take strategically, with our invited speakers from distinct orientations, platforms and practices: Quincy Gario, Barby Asante, NIC Kay and Wendelien van Oldenborgh on Friday the 24th of March.

Schedule:

10am-1pm NIC Kay Movement Workshop (For Speakers and PZI Students)

1pm-3pm Communal Brown Bag Lunch and visit of Exhibit.

3-5pm Guest Presentations .

15 min Break

5:15- 6:15 pm Discussion

6:15-7:30 Reception (in Exhibit) with music and dancing.

Bios:

Quinsy Gario was born in Curaçao and raised in St. Maarten and the Netherlands. He studied Theater, Film and Television Studies at the Utrecht University with a focus on Gender and Postcolonial Studies.  His most well known work 'Zwarte Piet Is Racisme' critiqued the general knowledge surrounding the racist Dutch figure of Black Pete. His latest focus is on state protection of the marginalized and political resistance as performance.

Barby Asante is a London based artist, curator and educator whose work explores place and identity through creating situations and spaces for dialogue, collective thinking, ritual and re-enactment. Using archival material in the broadest sense, she is interested in breaking down the language of archive, not to insert or present alternatives to dominant narratives but to interrupt, interrogate and explore the effects and possibilities of the unheard and the missing.

NIC Kay is from the Bronx. Currently occupying several liminal spaces. They make performances and create and organize performative spaces. They are obsessed with the act and process of moving the change of place, production of space, position, and the clarity/meaning gleaned from shifting of perspective. NIC’s current transdisciplinary projects explore movement as a place of reclamation of the body, history and spirituality.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh develops works, whereby the cinematic format is used as a methodology for production to look at the structures that form and hinder us. Using the format of a public film shoot, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce a script and orientate the work towards its final outcome.

[apubliclibraryofandforlistening]

Eothen Stearn and Mark Briggs: The Listening I Speaks With Care

Performance

Sun 22nd April, 2.30pm

A pair of performances from Eo and Mark, two artists working with intimacy, note taking, everyday ephemeral experience, exploding multiple voices and more...

http://www.eothenstearn.com

http://markcbriggs.tumblr.com

All welcome.

Free, no booking required.

Mitchell Library, North St, Glasgow, G3 7DN

Please note that the Mitchell Library is closed on Sundays. These performances will take place outdoors. Please meet at the Granville Street entrance to the library and dress accordingly for the weather. There will be no toilets available.

Partially accessible: please mail katherinemacbride@gmail.com to discuss any access requirements.

http://glasgowinternational.org/events/eothen-stearn-mark-briggs/

[dustedmagazine]

Nightshift — Homosapien (Trouble in Mind)

Photo by Brian Carroll

“Together We Roll,” from Nightshifts second full-length ambles into view like a slacker’s call to arms, its guitar cadence rhythmically insistent but lackadaisical, its rallying chorus emphatic but also sliding off into anomie. The beat swaggers, swaying from wide to side. The words advocate for action in a sing-song metronomic cadence, bassist Rob Doig urging, “Stand up tall/together we roll/elevated language and prose.” And yet, like the other songs, it has a sleepy not quite real air. It’s a battle cry that’s on the verge of a nap and a crisper, more rock-band-ish iteration of Nightshift’s dreamy, surreal punk.

Nightshift’s last album, Zöe came out in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, the product of lockdown and remote collaboration. It was driftier and less angular than the previous cassette debut; in my review I wrote, “Where before you might have thought about Shopping or the Fire Engines first, now, with Zöe, you grasp for reference points like High Places, White Magic and Good Fuck. It is hardly a punk album at all on some levels, and yet it also is, just gauzier and more inferential.”  Since then the band’s drummer, Chris White, has switched to guitar and Rob Alexander of Tarantula and Radio Banter has slipped behind the kit. Eothen Stearn — a big part of the band’s soft-focus dreaminess — continues to sing and play keys and some percussion, with Doig is again on bass and occasional vocals.  

The big change, though, is that they’re all in the room recording together. The sound is far more immediate and electric than before. The double-timed one-two surge of “Crush,” for instance, has a tactile prickliness, a top-speed everybody-hold-on giddiness like a rollercoaster going around a sharp curve. “Come and sit beside me, metabolize me,” cajoles Stearn, in a rich fluttery tone with some sex in it, and it’s far more visceral than anything on Zöe. Likewise “Your Good Self” yelps and roars and pummels, a furious drum solo breaking out amid blasts of errant trombone mid-cut, Stearn coming in to close with a “ba-da-ba-da-bop,” syncopated bleat of vocal sound, like ESG in the 1980s.

There is also a fair amount of slow, psychedelic swirl in the post-apocalyptic “Mellow Baby,” and in equally enveloping “Cut.” Yet even these tracks seem more present, more fleshy, more in-your-face than the music from the last album. “SUV,” the disc’s gentle pop song about multiple lovers, follows a loose, twanging groove of guitars and tootling keyboards. Yet even as relaxed and in-the-pocket as it is, there’s an unmistakable life and collaborative energy to it. COVID forced all kinds of compromises, and lots of bands, including Nightshift, made excellent music despite them. But there’s really nothing like a band all in the same room and making noise, is there?  

Jennifer Kelly

[screamingforyears]

IN A MINUTE:

A_NEW_MUSICAL_EXPRESSS…

@beenstellar are here w/ “PUMPKIN,” the latest single from their forthcoming debut LP titled ‘Scream From New York, NY’ (6/14 @dirtyhit) & it finds the NYC-based quintet subduing themselves across 4 mins of moodily melancholic AltRock.

“DEVOTED” is a brand-new standalone single from @mrchriskeating & it finds the NY-based “former @yeasayerguy” stepping out under his own namesake while linking up w/ @eliasabid to bring a minimally beat junkied 2:46 clip of funkily synthetic ArtPop.

“NO PROBLEMS” is the lead single from @gingerrootmusic’s forthcoming LP titled ‘SHINBANGUMI’ (9/13 @ghostly) & it finds Cameron Lew’s Huntington Beach-based project living that “Aggressive Elevator Soul™” lyfe across a 3:44 clip of tastefully retro’d SoftPop.

“CRYSTAL BALL” is the lead single/track from @wearethebandcallednightshift’s forthcoming LP titled ‘Homosapien’ (7/26 @troubleinmindrecords) & it finds the Glasgow-based quartet of Eothen Stearn (voice/keys), Chris White (guitar/vox), Andrew Doig (bass/vox) & Rob Alexander (drums) addressing the real world across 3 mins of melodically deadpanned PostPunk.

“OAR” is the debut single from @aintband & it finds the UK-based based quintet of George Ellerby (guitar/vocals), Ed Randall (guitar), Hanna Baker Darch (vocals), Chapman Ho (bass) & Joe Lockstone (drums) waxing upon irreparable disasters across a sub-3 mins slice of passionately post_punking IndieRock.

“BEST WITNESS” is the official lead single from @sinaivessel’s forthcoming LP titled ‘I Sing’ (7/26 @keeledscales) & it finds Caleb Cordes’ Asheville, NC-based project, rounded out here by Bennett Littlejohn (bass/synth), Andrew Stevens (drums) & Bella Porter (vox) knowing themselves better than anyone else across 3 heartwarmingly indie_rocked mins.

[dustedmagazine]

Nightshift — Zöe (Trouble in Mind)

Zöe by Nightshift

A couple of years ago Nightshift made a taut and bristly synth punk album, full of zinging sharp basslines and drone-y, a-melodic choruses. The music came out on cassette on the Glasgow label Cusp Records, garnering very modest attention (i.e., I couldn’t find a single review online). In the interim between that 2019 release and now, which were, of course, the COVID years, the band began experimenting with remote collaboration among its four regular members (David Campbell on guitar, Andrew Doig on bass, Eothen Stearn at the keys and singing and Chris White on drums) and, crucially, added a new one in singer/guitarist/reed player Georgia Harris. This reconfiguration had a dramatic effect on the sound, which became dreamier and more elliptical. Though still strung together out of tight pinging chords, still jittery and irregular, Nightshift’s music turned airier and more ethereal. Where before you might have thought about Shopping or the Fire Engines first, now, with Zöe, you grasp for reference points like High Places, White Magic and Good Fuck. It is hardly a punk album at all on some levels, and yet it also is, just gauzier and more inferential.

Consider, for instance, the odd disequilibrium of “Outta Space,” with its trebly abstracted guitar shards, its minimalist drums, its space rocket zoom. High soft unearthly singing holds it together, just; though quiet, the song feels like it could fly off in all directions at any moment. Later, a clarinet, which provides the same uneasy through-line. And, it’s not just Harris who has changed the band’s sonics. The rest of the instruments have realigned around her, in a looser, more free flowing configuration that leaves plenty of space for wonder.  

“Make Kin,” a single, is more emphatic with a big, booming drum line and rupturing buzzes of bass, but it retains a certain deconstructed anomie. Stearn chants in rapid, uninflected spates, making cool, incisive observations about relationships, familial and otherwise. A clarinet executes curving scraps of melody, not softening the cut’s hard edges as much as engaging with them.

“Power Cut,” the disc’s longest, at first seems to hew most closely to the post-punk template, with its growling, bumping bassline, its thick layers of synth sound, its steady, not very syncopated drum rhythm, but it slips blearily, intriguingly out of focus. Harris’ vocals haunt these angular grooves, weaving in and among sharp edges with a spectral, unhurried grace. The song stretches out woozily, foggily, so that you can only see a few feet ahead. It seems like it might go on indefinitely, with its warm blasts of saxophone, its regular pulse of inchoate rhythm, but eventually the mists fade to wisps and you’re clear.

The post-punk revival has thrown up a lot of same-y sounding bands, many of them fine on their own merits, but a little dull as a steady diet. Nightshift has made a very odd, fetching record that doesn’t resemble any of them. It’s otherworldly, elusive and well worth checking out.

Jennifer Kelly

[colletterayner]

THE FLOOR SHOW 

21st Sept- 5th Oct 2017 With Timur Akhmetov, Seecum Cheung, Raluca Croitoru, Clementine Edwards, Angelica Falkeling, Daniel Fogarty, Tracy Hanna, Clara J:son Borg, Mitchell Kehe, Ash Kilmartin, Alexander Iezzi, Collette Rayner, Erika Roux, Natalia Sorzano, Eothen Stearn, Daniel Tuomey ONONO, Rotterdam