To celebrate 25 years of Rocket Recordings, we are thrilled to announce a special show featuring three of our favourite artists on the label. Join us on Saturday 18th November as we welcome Teeth of the Sea, Smote and Alison Cotton!
Rocket is an indie label very dear to our hearts, and we feel honoured to host such an occasion in our tiny chamber of noise. Darkest Kent salutes you, Team Rocket! Here’s to many more years ahead…
“Responsible for some of the most forward-thinking British (and international) records of recent years, committing to wax the wonderment of astral rejecters Gnod, the ephemeral adjacent post-rock of Teeth of the Sea and the ecstatic trance of Goat” – Loud and Quiet
Blasting their way through all or any genre distinctions in a storied journey across the chaos and nonsense of sixteen years, London’s Teeth Of The Sea remain true to their original mission – to set sparks flying at the meeting point between raw noise and rich atmosphere. Thundering beat-driven abandon, chaotic psychedelia, heavy melancholia and indelible melody have all coalesced and converged on their five albums for Rocket Recordings, and their sixth later in 2023 promises to a open up whole new dystopian debacles and cinematic vistas.
Summoned from the murkier reaches of the subconscious and summoning a powerful aura of twilight communion, Smote are here to intimidate and enchant. The base ingredients of Smote’s spell-casting may not be unfamiliar – the eternal three ‘r’s of repetition, repetition, repetition being paramount along an eldritch and less-travelled musical pathway which wanders from Swedish godheads like International Harvester via the skewed Americana of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and French cult psych-folk heroes Natural Snow Buildings. Possessed of a peculiarly pastoral sensibility and earthen intensity, these ceremonial serenades thus take on feverish and compelling life of their own.
Alison Cotton is a viola player / vocalist based in London. As well as her solo work, she is one half of the Walthamstow based band The Left Outsides. Her most recent album Only Darkness Now won critical acclaim, receiving 5 star reviews and reaching number 11 in The Quietus Albums of the Year, number 1 in the Quietus’ New Weird Britain chart, as well as being mentioned in Stewart Lee’s Cultural Year. Alison uses an array of other instruments (her voice, harmonium, percussion, recorder, omnichord, shruti, piano etc) to create long, haunting folk drones.
“Full of variety and unpredictability, like the best science fiction it maps out a dreamworld of our times, a tonic against the deathly thoughts of the small hours” – The Quietus on Teeth of the Sea
“A deliriously absorbing psych odyssey, side effects of Smote’s ‘Drommon’ may include bowing to it’s ancient (yet simultaneously contemporary), omnipotent sound, such is it’s totemic potency” – Backseat Mafia on Smote
“Rerie, filmic incantations… Cotton’s album renders traditional music in uncanny colours with influences from her native north-east England” – The Guardian on Alison Cotton
