In Water Scores, Lauren Mason’s dark and experimental poetics respond to A-Sun Amissa’s tide-like currents of guitar, synth, sampled hydrophone, loops, and clarinet. This long-form piece ranges through deep ambience, crashing chaos and ebbing aftermath. During this new work Mason explores the curses of corporate extraction and pollution on our planet’s water, and listens in, as water speaks back.

Rowan Evans will be performing his poem and sound sequence The Last Verses of Beccán, plus some new material. Bilingual poetry and sound composition explore medieval hermitage, sea-exile, ecology and language hybridity, with field recordings made in the inner Hebrides. New unreleased material will combine Ancient Greek translation and dream lyric with tape samples, drum loops, synths and bass.

Samatar Elmi and Roscian (solo) will be performing a brand new collaboration featuring Samatar's highly charged political poetry, freestyle rap and gospel singing, alongside Roscian's darkly heavy synth and sample soundscapes. Not one to miss!

Artist bios:

Lauren Mason is best known as bassist with now-defunct existential sludge band Torpor, where she often wove her spoken word pieces through heavy soundscapes. She has been developing her poetic practice for many years and published her first pamphlet ‘Rust Canyon’ in 2025.

A-Sun Amissa are a group in a permanent state of metamorphosis, existing on the fringes of some kind of avant-rock, relentlessly pushing forward, shapeshifting and presenting their unique noise in new ways and on their own terms. A sound underpinned and overlaid with drones, moving in and around a diverse chasm of post-rock, melancholic drone, noise, doom and ambient sounds.

Rowan Evans is a poet, composer and sound artist whose debut collection A Method, A Path (Bloomsbury Poetry, 2023) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. His chapbook The Last Verses of Beccán (Guillemot Press, 2019) won the Michael Marks Award for Poetry. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2015 and a selection of his work appears in Penguin Modern Poets 7: These Hard and Shining Things (Penguin, 2018). Evans records and performs music for theatre, dance, film and art installation.

Samatar Elmi is an award-winning writer, musician and educator. His debut pamphlet, ‘Portrait of Colossus’ (flipped eye press, 2021), was selected as a PBS Pamphlet Choice. His stunning debut collection, ‘The Epic of Cader Idris’ (Bloomsbury, 2024), includes the 2021 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize winning poem. His poems have appeared widely including in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Magma, and Iota and anthologised in More Fiya, Filigree, After Plath, and The Echoing Gallery. Elmi is an Obsidian Fellow, flipped eye press associate poetry editor, and is a specialist tutor in 'Neurodiversity and the Creative Process'. He is currently touring nationally throughout 2026, reading from a pair of collections ( Agen Bien Fou, Kulvert Books, 2026; and Reclamations: Disregard Prior Prompt ,Aout Fecit, 2026).

As Knomad Spock, his debut album, ‘Winter of Discontent’ was critically acclaimed in print (Clash Magazine, Afropunk, GoldFlakePaint, Equate Magazine) and radio (BBC 6 Music, BBC Wales, Amazing Radio, Radio X). His recent albums ‘A Darker Light’ and ‘Through the Walls’ are available on Bandcamp. He raps under his own name and has recorded with UK hiphop luminaries, Jesht and Chester P.

Roscian (solo) is Simon Mason, better known as drummer of existential sludge band Torpor. Roscian sees him creating a different kind of heaviness with synthesis and samples.

Doors 14:30 for a prompt start!

Accessibility info:
Please note the basement is not wheelchair accessible and is accessed by a narrow enclosed staircase. For more accessibility info, please email [email protected]