It’s with great sadness that I announce the departure of our longstanding and phenomenal French Horn player and vocalist Emily McMillan.

Joining the troupe in 2011, Emily has performed with us hundreds of times since then – through the mud and the glitter, the glamour and the long tour bus rides – on mountains, trains and beaches – Emily has nailed it all!

As I’m sure many of you will know, she is an incredible performer (not many people play French Horn like this!), as well as a gifted singer.
ALWAYS with a smile on her face and joy in her heart, we are all so sad to see Emily go.

However, she’s moving on to new pastures; starting a personalised musician finding service for weddings called TIE THE NOTE.
It’s already gaining great traction (featured in Vogue no less!), so if you know anyone that needs musical entertainment, then Emily and her team can help!

Emily, we love you so much, and will truly miss you.

We wish you every success for this next phase in your career!

Much love,

Squier and the troupe xxx

At the Britten Studio, Snape Maltings. Photo by Paul McHale

It’s nearly here. Our debut theatrical performance is coming, and it’s called
Nearly Human.
After a year and a half of songwriting and incubation, our production enters the final stretch…

I’m delighted to announce that the show will premiere at Edinburgh Fringe 2019, and the Pleasance Queen Dome will be our theatrical home for a month.
The show premieres on August 3rd (previews July 31st, August 1st and 2nd) and will run until the 26th August (with the exception of August 13th).

Tickets are on sale! And you can grab them here

Between £10 – £12

I hope you can make it up to see us in action, we’re so proud of what we have made, and truly believe it’s our strongest work yet.

After the run in Edinburgh we hope to investigate other touring options, and a concept album to accompany the show will be arriving in the Winter.

Eternal gratitude to Snape Maltings, The Pleasance and Les Enfants Terribles LET Award for believing in us!

:::::::::NEARLY HUMAN:::::::::::::::

How unlikely is your fleeting existence?
This nine piece, multi award-winning progressive brass band embark on a curious audio-theatrical journey.

Replete with intricate rhythms, enormous choral harmonies, dynamic choreography and ruminations about stars and happenstance.

This is gig theatre which contemplates our baffling origins, and the tiny stories entwined within. Bursting with triumphant horns, fascination and wonder.

‘Completely extraordinary’ (BBC 6 Music)

‘High-energy progressive brass’ (The Guardian)

In praise of Perhaps Contraption’s previous album ‘Mud Belief’:

‘A glorious symphony of strangeness that embraces and reconfigures such diverse influences as contemporary classical, jazz, post-minimalism and the avant-garde’
(R2 Magazine)

It’s with great joy I announce that we have been selected for the LET Award 2019; an acclaimed award for new theatre run by the brilliant theatre company Les Enfants Terribles.

We recently performed a 10 minute excerpt of our new theatrical performance, alongside 9 other theatre companies for a showcase at the Pleasance in Islington.

This accolade means we will premiering the performance at The Edinburgh Fringe 2019, at the Pleasance’s Queen Dome, on Saturday 3rd August, and remaining there and performing for the entire run of the festival!

As well as this, we will receive financial support and assistance with directing and producing the piece from Les Enfants Terribles. We’re over the moon about all this and couldn’t have asked for a better way to bring our most ambitious work ever into the world!

We want to thank them for their belief in the project, as well as the other prize winners – Dead Rabbits Theatre who scooped the Greenwich Theatre Award – and all the other competitors who were inspiring and highly talented in their own right.

Bottom 2 shots by Gail Harland

 

Hello Listeners,

We did a thing, a big new thing!

It’s not finished yet, but it’s well on the way.
On September 7th we aired the first draft of our new theatrical performance, inside the shell of a derelict factory in Suffolk, for Snape Malting’s ‘Festival of New’. 

You can see the highlights, and some chatter about the process so far in the mini-documentary above.

This is the first time we’ve worked with our own staging, radio clip mics, sound design and such detailed choreography.
It was a big step forward, and we think it really intensifies the live experience, and indeed, the essence of what we do.
Eventually, we want bring this thing to theatres and interesting locations around the globe, if you know anyone that you think might like to book it, please share share share.

Next, we’re excited to add more songs, more movement, and crucially, lighting design and projection.
AND this week, we start recording the album to accompany the production…

The premiere/release will be sometime in Autumn, 2019.
Big things afoot.

If you’d like to see the next couple of work-in-progress showings, then please join us in the wilds of Suffolk. There will be Q&A after each performance. We’d love to know what you think!

The ‘Open Sessions’ will be in the Britten Studio, at Snape Maltings on;

-Sunday 10th February 2019 – 4pm
-Saturday 25th May 2019 – 6pm

Tickets available here:
https://snapemaltings.co.uk/whats-on/open-session-perhaps-contraption/

As ever,
Thanks for your support.

We have SO much new material.

We think it’s our best yet, and we can’t wait for you to hear it.

Squier X

 

 

Into the wilds of Suffolk we went…to a place called Snape Maltings, to breath clean air, to ponder and create…

Perhaps Contraption photoshoot Jan2018 (Fuji)

Last Autumn, we found out we had been accepted onto the prestigious Open Space artist residency. Jubilation ensued! We have been given the chance to escape the pressures of city life, to get the whole band together for large blocks of time in an inspiring and calming place, just to create, as one unit. A luxury we have never been accustomed to.

The big idea: to write new album, and in tandem, develop an ambitious live show that will utilise loads of projection mapping, spatial compositions and choreography. It will be presented as an immersive, live theatrical experience (and also recorded and released as download/CD/vinyl).

The completion date is set for the August 2019, when the new work will be premiered at Snape Maltings, and then, hopefully, extensively toured.

And so, we are now deep in laboratory mode, friends. We will be recording and releasing new songs as we progress, and keeping you posted on these beautiful / ridiculous experiments with projection mapping.

It’s a very new direction for us, and we’re excited at the prospect of having loads of sparkling, stunning production behind our music – light, animations and movement accentuating every sound. Essentially, we want to blow people’s minds. Let’s see how we fare. The contraption is revving up again.

We’d like to thank the people at Snape Maltings for believing in us, and helping make this happen.

All snaps by Matt Jolly.

Perhaps Contraption photoshoot Jan2018

Squier in studio utopia.Perhaps Contraption photoshoot Jan2018

Photo 13-01-2018, 14 39 51

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Perhaps Contraption photoshoot Jan2018