Ex-Easter Island Head
Charles Hayward: ZigZag + Swirl
Lola De La Mata

Ex-Easter Island Head will be joined on stage by extra special guests Charles Hayward and Lola De La Mata, presenting their own wildly original music as solo artists and joining the group for open-ended explorations of material from the 2024's Norther album.

Ex-Easter Island Head are a UK-based experimental musical collective composing and performing music for solid body electric guitar, percussion and other instruments. The group plays multiple electric guitars augmented through mechanical preparations and extended techniques, creating hypnotic performances rich in repetition, shimmering drones and melodic invention through purposefully limited means.

Their records and live performances have received significant critical acclaim from the likes of The Wire, Pitchfork, the Quietus and the New York Times. Favourably compared to the likes of Steve Reich, Glenn Branca and John Cage, the groups' music has been praised for its mixture of percussive drive, emotional warmth and playful experimentation. They have performed in venues ranging from the tiny Scottish island of Iona to a 150-year-old brewery in Berlin, with major festival appearances including ATP, Supersonic and Le Guess Who? Collaborators have included the BBC Philharmonic, composer Arnold Dreyblatt and musicians Laura Cannell, Charles Hayward and Andre Bosman in the group Whistling Arrow.

Their library music releases Mechanical Landscapes 1 & 2 released by EMI/KPM have seen the group’s work used internationally for television and radio productions, whilst the groups’ own Large Electric Ensemble projects have seen the core quartet joining forces with forward-thinking musicians to make ambitious large scale performances across the UK and EU.

Charles Hayward is an English drummer/singer/composer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with early European improv group Mal Dean's Amazing Band and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in Quiet Sun as well as a short stint with Gong. Since the late 80's he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations, including Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith), Monkey Puzzle Trio and Albert Newton (with Pat Thomas and John Edwards) and most recently Abstract Concrete, Hayward's five-piece group with forward-thinking young London players from a diversity of European underground and experimental scenes.

He will perform ZigZag + Swirl a solo set of drums, voice, zigzag and swirl, songs in quantum funk, never the same twice, no click, no fixed zero point. This music does not exist in its own orbit; it is completed by ears, minds, bodies, the interplay between intent and perception. From This Heat to now: Forward Music!

Watch Charles Hayward - That distant light , Time is a spirale - Live @Le106

Lola De La Mata is a conceptual sound artist, composer, and musician (theremin/violin/voice) based in Liverpool. Tinnitus and aural diversity are at the core of her research practice. In 2024 she won a Sound of the Year Award and an Oram Award for her debut album Oceans on Azimuth released in May to much acclaim (The Quietus, Electronic Sound Magazine, New Scientist, BBC Radio 6, Crack Magazine). She has received commissions from the Riot Ensemble, Zubin Kanga, Nonclassical, Spitalfields Music, Lisson Gallery, and crafted soundtracks for experimental film, documentary and the award winning feature film STOPMOTION by Robert Morgan.

Press for Ex-Easter Island Head:

“Free flowing genius” (The Guardian)

"Churning pulses, alternate tunings and dense harmonic worlds... all the strings being heard at once" (The New York Times)

“Repetition and rumbling resonances bringing to mind Rhys Chatham's seminal works with tone and John Cage's rhythmic sensibilities” (Pitchfork)

“A three chord punk mission statement turned into a neo-classical manifesto” (The Wire)

“Rarely do beauty and urgency come quite so tightly intertwined” (The Quietus)

“You must see this group. They are minimalist noise art but come on like entertainment. Absolutely captivating, classy, beautiful and sublime” (Stewart Lee)