We’re delighted to launch We Break Strings, a website that brings together a disparate gang of musicians who are making adventurous music in London.

I’m Joe Bates of Filthy Lucre, I’ll be curating this site. In 2016, I got in touch with several of his friends who ran music nights in London to suggest banding together to present listings, news and releases on a single website.

The idea came from conversations with both Filthy Lucre regulars and interested strangers who expressed a frustration with their inability to find events in the “alt avant-gardee” scene. Many were aware that these events existed, but didn’t know how to find them. Many of the nights rely on word of mouth or social media, which can inadvertently limit audiences to those in extended social networks.

William Marsey of Listenpony jumped on board to provide the crucial technical skills, working with designer Scott Wooden to build the site you’re on now. Our goals is simple: to pools resources in order to reach a wider audience.

The idea in part came from a wonderful book by Thom Andrewes and Dimitri Djuric. Commissioned and published by one of the key progenitors of the scene, Nonclassical, it traced the story of the scene and the ideas behind it in beautiful images and revealing interviews. Not only did their work help coalesce the musical moment that is underway, it also provided a crucial tool: a name free of genre associations.

‘We Break Strings’ is an evocative name that avoids the problems that come with more specific names. While Thom and Dimitri favoured ‘alt classical,’ for many of our members the term ‘classical’ feels incorrect. I favoured ‘alt avant garde,’ a term you’ll sometimes find used on this site, but never as a priority or as a way to limit our scope. Some of our members don’t like that term much either: not least because neo-fascists seem to have rather selfishly stolen the prefix ‘alt’ for themselves.

While any title suffers from limitation, there are a couple of things that I feel bring together those musicians that populate this site. First, all are independent of big organisations, major labels and established venues. The dynamism of the scene comes in part from this DIY approach. Second, everybody has a broad view of new music, that welcomes sounds, performance conventions, design and more from a range of musical traditions. Finally, everybody is invested in newness, in original, daring music.

To participate in this daring new scene, sign up for the emails, become a student rep, or turn up to the events! Or even better: start something yourself and tell us about it.

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