‘Canada’s modern day answer to Arthur Russell and Paul Simon’ Boomkat

In association with Bird on the Wire, we are delighted to present Sandro Perri’s first London show in seven years, off the back of his stunning 2018 release, In Another Life. He is supported by Toronto’s Sing Leaf, who occupies an enchanting world somewhere between bluesy folk and electronica.

Please note that this is a standing event, seating is limited. Please call the Box Office on 020 7520 1490 to discuss your access requirements.

Sandro Perri is a musician and producer based in Toronto. He has released a dozen records under several aliases and worked on over a hundred others in various creative and technical roles.

His latest solo release, In Another Life, is an experiment in ‘infinite’ songwriting. The title track – a pop mantra for sequenced synth, piano, guitar and voice – suspends itself for nearly 25 minutes, progressing sideways rather than forward. On the flip side, Everybody’s Paris is a song-cycle designed to accept any lyrical variation fed into it: a fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire in the form of a song. The record features Perri’s original ‘template’ version plus two mutations by Andre Ethier (The Deadly Snakes) and Dan Bejar (Destroyer) respectively. Released in 2018 on Constellation Records.

‘For nearly 20 years, Sandro Perri has been cultivating his own genreless brand of futurism.’ Pitchfork

‘On his first album in almost seven years, the Toronto artist uses ambient pop to craft a masterful, dreamlike world’ Pitchfork

Sing Leaf’s David Como never really meant for Shu Ra to be heard by anyone. ‘Some things only retain their power if you don’t talk about them,’ he says – and so even his friends and family knew little of the music he recorded, in an attic space so small he couldn’t stand up in it. Music, for him, had always been an ‘individual, therapeutic thing.’ It wasn’t until Sandro Perri, his friend and fellow musician/producer, discovered Shu Ra in all its mystical, genre-bending glory, that the album got the chance to reach beyond the confines of that cramped attic.

Shu Ra (his second album after 2013’s Watery Moon) is the product of introversion – but its musical palette is anything but. It paints with sweeping, colourful strokes, dotting middle Eastern flecks onto psych-rock and folk, blending organic instruments with electronic synths. For the most part, the music bubbles with optimism – Distant Morning is distinctly cinematic in its reverie, and the refrain of Somewhere In The Night bursts like the sun breaking through clouds – even if the lyrics tend to pierce the sanguine simplicity.