Melting Vinyl: Bringing the cream of live music to Brighton.

Sam Lee: Song Dreaming Tour + special guest ILĀ.
Doors 7pm/start 8pm
Over 14s welcome, under 16s to be accompanied by an adult.

Tickets: £20 full price + booking fee/£10 All Concessions/£5*U21/£24 on the door.

Mercury Prize nominated folk singer, writer, conservationist, song collector, award-winning promoter, broadcaster and activist Sam Lee plays a unique role in the British music scene. Lee is a highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events.

March 2024 sees the release of Sam Lee’s fourth studio album,‘Songdreaming’, the follow up to 2020’s ‘Old Wow’, an album variously described as ‘A dazzling fusion of nature and song’ (The Observer) and a ‘sublime album that demands to be heard in the 21st century’ (The Daily Telegraph) amidst a host of critical acclaim.

‘Songdreaming’ represents the latest stage in the development of Sam Lee’s music, from its roots in traditional folk song to a new way of imagining and performing these old songs, making them relevant for a modern audience. The album sees Sam continue his work with producer Bernard Butler and long term collaborator, arranger and composer James Keay in creating an album rich in musicality and invention, building on the backbone of double bass, percussion and violin with a world of instrumentation including the Arabic Qanoon, Swedish Nyckelharpa and more. It is a full expression of Sam Lee as an artist and of his relationship to his muse, the natural world.

As he notes: “I wanted to sing a vision of what a conversation between us and the land could be, to restore and inspire a practice of songful immersion in nature that brings with it healing, something we need now more than ever”.

“Ambitious, eclectic but, ultimately, dedicated to the enduring passions that resonate through this treasure trove of great songs” – Uncut

ILĀ

Multifaceted artist and producer, ILĀ fuses ethereal non-binary vocal timbre with dense sonic textures and quantum data sonification. Their work explores fluidity from personal identity through to socio-economic systems with a focus on physics, philosophy and emerging technologies.

ILĀ has performed globally with recent commissions/collaborators including Turner Prize 2023 winner Jessie Darling’s MISERERE, Loomaland’s Robot Swans, Kindred VR, the European Space Agency & Kent Refugee Action Network (Little Amal). As co-founder and director of legendary choir London Contemporary Voices, ILĀ has worked with over 20 Grammy winning artists including Alt-J, Imogen Heap and U2 as well as two BBC Proms, the Harry Potter Play soundtrack and several iconic fashion shows for designers such as Burberry and Tommy Hilfiger. In 2022, they co-founded Trans Voices, the U.K.’s first professional trans+ choir. ILĀ’s upcoming film MURMUR features collaborations with Ai-Da (the first humanoid robot artist), Imogen Heap, Guy Sigsworth created using pioneering AI tools.

Celebrated as a music industry changemaker, ILĀ sits on the Ivors Academy Future Sound Experience Council, are a member of Earth/Percent Music Committee, a Redcliffe Advisory ambassador and a PhD supervisor and research partner (AI & Music) at University of Sheffield. ILĀ is co-founder and creative director of Maison Mercury Jones, the UK’s first (and only) trans+ queer POC led music branding agency working exclusively with composers from under-represented backgrounds.