BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//360exp//Events//ES METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo-outlook/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:19700329T010000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:19701025T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE TIMEZONE-ID:Europe/London X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London BEGIN:VEVENT UID:ab104747-76ed-4f26-b32f-ef255a2b73f6@360exp.net SEQUENCE:0 DTSTAMP:20260815T225555 DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261114T200000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261114T200000 SUMMARY:Zoh Amba LOCATION:Manchester Gullivers DESCRIPTION:Plus guests - In April\, Zoh Amba announced their Matador debu t album Eyes Full\, out June 5th\, an album of tough and soulful songs tha t feel like a pure transmission from the heart. Today\, Amba shares the al bum’s pensive and darkly hypnotic title track\, a song about what makes someone’s heart full\, and questioning why. It’s accompanied by a vide o directed by Grace Bader Conrad\, featuring Amba and album musicians Jim White (drums) and Kevin Hyland (electric guitar).‘Eyes Full’ follows f irst single ‘Another Time’\, on which The Guardian said\, “the free jazz saxophonist turns equally remarkable songwriter for a record that twi sts their Appalachian roots with openhearted\, choppy indie rock”\, and Stereogum in their Best 5 Songs of the Week noted\, “that voice\, along with those lyrics about being lost and seeking transcendence\, make for pu re beauty\, rustic country-rock style.”Alongside a recent sold out headl ine show at New York’s Nightclub 101 previewing songs from the new album \, Amba performed in Coachella as part of Iggy Pop’s band. They will tou r the US throughout the summer supporting Courtney Barnett and Folk Bitch Trio. A full list of tour dates is below.Eyes Full is distinctly\, instinc tively tied to Zoh’s hometown of Kingsport\, Tennessee and the rediscove ry of their first instrument\, the guitar. The album courses with a type o f muddy\, loose acoustic blues\, punctuated with bursts of feedback-laden electric guitar and sweet burnishes of Appalachian folk. It’s a remarkab le turn for an artist who has already become one of the most exciting saxo phonists to emerge from NYC’s avant-garde scene\,In music\, Amba is alwa ys striving for greater proximity to the divine. On Eyes Full\, they’ve never come closer. Every song circles the idea of seeing and being seen. T he record looks closely at the lives of working-class folk in small towns who bust their asses off while trying to find any salvation they can. “I hope these songs touch people’s hearts\,” Amba says. “They’re abo ut people who really need to be seen and heard.”For years\, Amba tried t o find an identity outside of where they came from. Raised in the mountain towns of Tennessee\, they left at seventeen for San Francisco\, then move d to New York City soon after. Yet no matter how far they traveled\, home always wrapped itself around their ankle. “When you try to run from some thing it ends up catching up to you\,” they say now\, speaking in a thic k Southern drawl they no longer attempt to hide. “And you have to deal w ith it.”Though Amba had long believed that pure instrumental music could help souls\, and that transcendence could be reached without language\, w ords eventually pushed their way in. While playing saxophone\, they often felt as though they were being carried heavenward: their body burning\, te ars rising\, the music opening a direct line to God. But alongside that ec stasy came flashes of darker childhood memories. The guitar became a way t o face those visions directly\, to hold them at eye level rather than flee . They sang their way through it\, and back to Kingsport.Growing up\, Amba watched their small town pass through a difficult\, destabilizing period. For a time\, they tried to keep that reality at arm’s length\, only lat er recognizing how thin the line was between themselves and those who suff ered most. They grew a greater sense of grace and understanding for these people. Each song on Eyes Full\, which is entirely character-driven — fr om the kid benumbed by medication (‘OCD’) to the weed-eating man who p lays hide-and-seek with God (‘Weed Eating’) — is an act of love for them. “They all deserve to go to heaven\,” says Amba\, rejecting the p unitive theology that surrounded them in the Bible Belt. Songs about damna tion never made sense to them\; what interested them instead was mercy\, a nd the possibility of redemption.The record was tracked live at Drop of Su n Studios in Asheville\, an hour from Amba’s hometown\, with no overdubs . Their best friend Kevin Hyland plays electric guitar\, while drummer Jim White\, whom Amba met on the streets of New York years earlier and now ca lls the closest thing they’ve had to a family\, plays drums. The three m usicians rehearsed relentlessly\, playing together all day\, every day\, “until we got real tight\,” says Amba. White and Amba play interlocked \, while Amba and Hyland weave around one another\, Amba playing rhythm an d Hyland playing lead\; currents of life running alongside one another.The music itself sounds moonshine-drunk\, Amba’s voice snarling and fiery\, their guitar slowing then gathering speed like a steam train edging off t he tracks. They veer suddenly between abrasion and gentleness. One moment they’re all teeth\, the next\, they go soft and still. On ‘Emahoy\,’ they play a drowsy and velveted guitar line while singing with unguarded tenderness about the sadness dancing in their soul.Standout ‘Southern So il’ is the song with the most stakes\, its eyes the most difficult for A mba to look into. “When that song finally came to me\, I was like oh shi t. I could have cried.” It was a feeling Amba had been trying to get to the bottom of their entire life: the reason their heart would swell at a s how only to deflate again once they returned to the hotel room. Writing it filled and emptied them at once. Addressed to the people who first taught them what could and couldn’t be said\, it confronts the silence that sh aped much of their young life. The lyric “you don’t have to keep a sec ret\,” the most hard-fought of them all\, is Amba’s triumph over pain with grace. They consider it one of the greatest achievements of their lif e.Eyes Full is a lesson in how to look and to stay open to the universe\, and to all the hearts that inhabit it. Through Amba’s gaze\, the album r estores spirit and dignity to those who are often overlooked or dispossess ed. Across Eyes Full\, Amba sings for people who rarely see themselves ref lected back with tenderness. The music carries an ache for communities pus hed to the margins\, for those growing numb or losing touch with their inn ermost sense of self. These songs insist on sustained attention: on lookin g closely\, meeting another person’s gaze\, and refusing to look away.\n \nBoletos: https://wegottickets.com/event/702860 URL;VALUE=URI:https://360exp.net/events/ab104747-76ed-4f26-b32f-ef255a2b73 f6 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR