Meditative heavy hitters Group Listening headline this Luminate show, performing music from their sophomore album, ‘Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works Vol.2’. With support from Lost Map Records artist Ed Dowie.

Group Listening’s first album, Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol.1, was a haunting, reflective and lovingly considered selection box of musical reworkings. It featured reimagined tracks by the likes of Arthur Russell, Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt. But it was also much more than that. In making their own record of reimagined musical works, the two musicians were doing what all music fans do: comparing favourite tracks, turning each piece over for new meaning and developing a musical understanding of each other in the process. While their first record was put together over an intense three-day period in a studio, Vol. 2 saw the pair take over Jones’ living room and gradually put its ten tracks together between September last year until March of this. They would record one or two songs over a couple of days then pause for the week, building and ruminating on ideas; it allowed the music to take on a more ambitious nature but also allowed in bits of chat, traffic noise and other creaks and squeaks associated with home recording. “I feel that’s part of the album’s essential character; recorded on and off throughout the pandemic in a domestic environment out of necessity; a testament to how it was possible to work at that time” says Jones.

Fast forward a couple of years, and with a remix album of Vol.1, a 12” featuring a reworked version of the Fatima Yamaha club staple What’s A Girl To Do?, a radically recomposed remix for Lambchop and an EP of re-arranged works from Cate Le Bon’s LP, Reward under their belt, the duo started Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol.2 from an altogether different vantage point. “We’ve done a lot more together now and so have developed certain ways of working. Because these processes have become norms, it’s spurred us on to push things a bit further and to avoid repeating ourselves” they say.

Ed Dowie started making music in the late 1990s with Brothers in Sound, who released three EPs and an album with Regal Recordings and BMG. After a hiatus of several years composing music for short films and theatre projects he embarking on a solo career in2012. He released 2 EPs (in 2013 and 2014) before joining the ranks of Lost Map Records, who released his debut album, The Uncle Sold in 2017. It garnered great support from BBC6 Music and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, which included the album in their Top 12 albums of 2017. His second album, The Obvious I was released on Pete Paphides’ label, Needle Mythology to reviews from The Quietus, Electronic Sound, Uncut, Record Collector and Mojo Magazine. It was featured as a BBC6 ‘Album of the Day’ upon its release and garnered support from many other shows on the network.

“Hands down the record i’ve listened to most so far this year” Electronic Sound Magazine

“Unfathomably moving, gentle but never weak, with melodies that loop around and around the brain like a mantra long after they’ve finished” The Quietus

“I promise you, it’s absolutely fabulous” -Lauren Laverne, BBC Radio 6 Music

Co-presented by Earth Cruises