Rattle, Quinie – Upset The Rhythm 22nd Birthday gig, Cafe Oto, London, 25th November 2025 – Twenty two years of eclectic choices from promoters Upset the Rhythm, celebrated with an expertly chosen bill, the first of a two day celebration – we missed out on the punky synths of Es but caught some breathtaking songs from Quinie.

Just a voice, in a cave-like dark lit by candles and a single spotlight like Newgrange on the midwinter sunrise, felt like real, tangible culture coming alive, reconnecting down thousands of years.  Quinie sings old, old songs gathered in Scotland, Scots mixed with Gaelic and tunes repurposed from pipe melodies.  Her voice is astonishing, the tunes astonishing, both complex yet delivered unselfconsciously, effortlessly.  A song about the messy berries of sea buckthorn, a song that repeats with increasingly detailed ornamentation, delivered unaccompanied, at times touching on throat singing – lilting, acrobatic sounds practised by women holding everything together year on year going back to unwritten times, suddenly here in the present, packed with both wonder and a strange homelyness.

Rattle are perfectly matched with this – there couldn’t be a better combination.  Two drummers, facing each other, the venue becomes even more cave-like, the lighting red embers dying down, further back in prehistory.   Rattle are Katherine and Theresa,  a duo of stripped down, expressive, expansive drums – simple repeated motifs that are not so simple after all. Hidden complexities, interlocking numbers, big spaces – and playing and singing at the same time.

There’s no intent to be ‘tribal’ or ‘shamanic’, none of those cliches – on record, it certainly doesn’t, on record it’s calmly mesmerising, inducing a unique brain state.  But here in this urban cave, Rattle are – like Quinie – reaching back down a thousand generations to something primal.  Something needed in a straightforward way, drum music from a different place than testosterone driven energy, a call to calm and depth and expansiveness.  For the two drummers, there’s no abandonment to the groove, no ‘losing it’ in this altered state, but the opposite: absolute focus.  A different sort of reward, maybe even a coming back to self and a joy in reality, in what we have, in what quietly, surprisingly exists. (Marina O)

Previously…

ORGAN THING: double-drum duo Rattle have a new album, Encircle more that delivers in terms of those rather unique experiments in rhythm…

ORGAN THING: A rather ritualistic Rattle video and listen back to last weekend’s Other Rock Show that featured, alongside Rattle, music from that new album from The Residents, some Antistatic, Koenjihyakkei, Free Salamander Exhibit, Basil’s Kite and more…

More Upset…

ORGAN ALBUMS: More albums – New Me Lost Me, King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto, avant-garde guitarist David Kollar and visionary trumpeter Paolo Raineri have a second Komara album, instrumental duo Lyndhurst, Peretsky, Tan Cologne and…

ORGAN THING: Stop, there’s a new EarthBall album. They are painters, EarthBall paint music and somehow, they’ve dialled it all up even further, this is intense, this is a serious album… 

Links – Bandcamp / Upset The Rhythm / Rattle on Facebook