Pram + special guests

Pram formed in the late 80s with a sound that ranges from exotica, Krautrock and the forgotten film soundtracks. Over the years Pram have expanded their ideas to encompass disorientating shifts in mood, with their new material seeing the band build on their distinctive soundscape with added textures and a raw, powerful live show careering from eerie to bone-shaking

Pram are essentially a product of the post-punk late 80s, inspired by the likes of The Raincoats and The Slits and contemporaries of Stereolab and Broadcast. Pram have always sounded like they make up their own rules, including an inventively open approach to rhythm and timing. And their use of theremin and the manipulation of instruments also adds a certain harmonic wooziness.

The band still use a bewildering array of instruments and are unrepentantly unfazed by the possibilities of performing on anything and everything that seems appropriate. “It’s not possible to develop a facility on every instrument we want to use” explains founder member and multi-instrumentalist Sam Owen, “so we simply don’t worry about it and look instead for the initial thrill of discovering a new sound”. The addition of mountain dulcimer and trombonist/theremin player Harry Dawes’ sometimes playful, occasionally mournful soprano saxophone are a testament to this continued experimentation in the new set.

The band mix instrumentals with songs, weaving a gleeful path through the musical territory of film scores, 30s jazz, sun-drenched pop, electronica, and post-punk experimentation. Owen’s breathy and ethereal voice is set in a variety of soundscapes, sometimes appearing as a snatched fragment of the subconscious and dreamlike, at others crafting a story of longing or regret, now often weaving round Kitson’s gorgeous musical cadences.

Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Matt Eaton explains why the music works so well as a soundtrack to the imagination. “There’s a huge interest in the band in collages of sound, triggering emotions in people. That’s part of the experimental end of what we do, but we bring it to our more conventionally structured songs as well so that each one grabs you and you live in its world whilst you are listening.”