Oxfam Music Reading Presents

A night of contemporary psychedelia to exalt the beginning of summer.

HOO: Big Potato Recording artists. Thames Valley Dreampop.

Matt Sewell: Cosmic Troubadour from the constellation of Oxford.

Oxfam Music Reading is proud to present an evening of modern pastoral English psychedelia to exalt the start of summer. Promoting their recent LP, III (in the grand tradition of Led Zeppelin or Scott Walker) are HOO (previously Holten’s Opulent Oog). Phonetically inviting confusion with another classic rock band but on listening reveal that they are in fact the jewel of contemporary English Dreampop so far missing from your record collection. Although sharing genre sonics with peers and antecedents such as Slowdive, Mojave 3, vintage Cure or My Bloody Valentine, singer-songwriter Nick Holton writes songs which although drifting like departing dandelion clocks rendered in slow-motion colour-negative, often belie a strong pop sensibility. Known for expansive and intuitive live performances, the full HOO line up will be present to conjure and even exceed the opulent sound of their records.

The opening set is from Oxford-based singer songwriter Matt Sewell. Matt is a cosmic troubadour with a wonderful variant of contemporary acoustic head-music. Part of a strain of songwriting characterised by humour, whimsy and intra cranial excavation stretching from the ur-rock minstrelsy of Syd Barrett, early Soft Machine and Michael Chapman via the obsidian post-punk refractions of Robyn Hitchcock, Nick Nicely and Julian Cope.

A rare opportunity to catch both these acts at an intimate venue in Reading and support two great local volunteer led institutions in the town.