Season’s Greetings my friends

this occasional society update

Gig 2 (Livestream 1) completed. thanks to everyone who came along and the good, good folks at Gravitons.org (and in particular Melljoann) for hosting such an eclectic lineup of great acts.

t.o.s. has an exclusive ‘festive’ session playing on VoiceFM’s Sine Waves on Sunday show, hosted by Max Williams. It’s 4 tracks recorded live last weekend. There’s a bunch of other vaguely festive music on the show as well, including great tracks from Roberta Fidora and Dave Clarkson.

This month’s music sketch here if you want to check it out. It’s an abandoned demo reversioning of the track ‘habana’ with a view to including it in live sets.

the next newsletter will be with you 1.1. as ever, if you want anything included in the ‘updates from friends of the society’ section, just let us know.

updates from friends of the society

Speaking of festive tunes, Scanner shared a delightful festive mix the other day. Very lovely it is too, with some rather unexpected stuff on there as well as more ‘typical’ Scanner fayre.

Simon Heartfield has many strong albums in his discography, but his latest, Stella Rossa, is probably my favourite so far. A touch darker than what I’ve heard previously, I can hear touches of his love of post-punk mixed in with the ambient / techno / Haunted Dancehall.

HDRF has a new ep H25L of his live sets from Switched on and Synthlark. Darkly majestic ambience abounds.

Speaking of Switched On, early bird tickets for 2026 are already available for a astonishingly reasonable £50.

Also dropping a live set is Mike K Smith has shared his set from Dustopian Frequencies only a few nights ago as PWYW.

Kayla Painter’s latest volume of Ambient Owl Core (vol.4) came out on Dec 5 and is exactly what it says, beautifully constructed ambient with owls. They are playing on the same bill as Colin Stetson in Brighton in April, that’s a double bill I’m highly anticipating.

Traindeer, who makes synths and software as Decadebridge btw, also had a great ep, Lenses 2, out on Dec 5. Mixing breakbeats with tuneful modular synths, they are quickly rising up the list of acts to see live.

Not a music release, but important news in the independent music ecosystem. If you’re on Mastodon et al, NHAM have updated their fedi-handle to @nham@nham.co.uk. Give them a follow - they are one of the central planks upon which independent music on the fediverse is built.

a.o.b. - things that have replenished our creative wellspring recently

There’s a great set of short shows on BBC Sounds on Electronic Women artists including Daphne Oram, Suzanne Ciani and Laurie Anderson.

Well, that’s enough for now. Take it easy kitty kats.