Deep Cabaret is the culmination of bandleader Steve Lewis' life's work: to make a band that curates all the musics that fascinate him - jazz, improv, African, folk and leftfield pop. To use that music to set fragments of text taken from novels, journalism, spiritual and other texts that have interesting things to say about being human.
Deep Cabaret is a thing of riffs and drones. Desert blues improv and noir-drenched dronesongs; fulsomely romantic and coruscatingly edgy. Mashed-up lyrics lifted from neuroscience, slavery, fiction and Cole Porter covers all "pickled in the juices of the peat”.
Deep Cabaret emerged fully-formed from the intertidal mudflats and cowbelly quicksands of Morecambe Bay creating an entrancement of riffs and drones. Desert blues improv and noir-drenched drone songs. The music is fulsome and romantic one moment, edgy and disturbing the next. Lyrics sampled from literature, science, sitcoms, anything that has something interesting to say about being human.
Steve Lewis : vocals, guitar
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Steve Lewis has been a vocalist, guitarist, percussionist, improviser, songwriter, community musician and bandleader for 30 + years. His ‘Deep Cabaret’ projects, from solo torch songs to African dance band to 15-piece improvised opera have in common a desire to explore the musics that most fascinate him. This most recent manifestation is the culmination of that work curating jazz, improv, African, folk and leftfield pop to set fragments of text taken from novels, journalism, spiritual and other texts that have important things to say about being human.
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Maja Bugge : cello
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Maja Bugge is a Norwegian cellist and composed who since 1998 has created a large body of work both as a solo artist and in collaboration with others for a number of organisations and companies that include Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Art (LICA), Oslo Moderne Teater, the National Theatre Oslo, Beaivvas Theater, NING, Katma Productions and Opera Omnia. She has a particular interest in devising work with and for children and young people, winning several prizes and scholarships, including The Cultural Rucksack Norway’s best performance in 2010 for Usynlig. (www.majabugge.com)
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Ben McCabe : drums, vocals
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Ben McCabe is a drummer, French horn player and singer and has played high profile festivals and had national radio airplay with Paddy Garrigan and The Stroller Priests, Natural Causes, Kollega, as well as Deep Cabaret, to name a few. He is the musical director of Off The Rails creative jazz orchestra and plays drums with ceilidh band Striding Edge. Additionally, Ben is a Creative Producer at More Music, an internationally renowned Community Music charity based in the West End of Morecambe where he programmes and commissions gigs, festivals, workshops and more.
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Paul Sherwood : hurdy-gurdies, bagpipes
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Paul is a multi-instrumentalist and has had a passion for drone-based music since he discovered the hurdy-gurdy about 16 years ago. As well as playing in Deep Cabaret Paul performs in Avant Deux, Quercus, and with Boom Bike Bourrée, a band that fuses medieval and folk music with hip hop beats through a mobile sound system. Paul has most recently taken on the bagpipes, playing various instruments ranging from the sonorous low D English Border pipe to the bright and powerful Galician gaita. (www.paulsherwood.net)
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Matt Robinson and Jayson Stilwell, pictured above, are no longer permanent members of the band.
