Doors 7.30pm | Tickets £21 | Theatre
LYR is author and current British poet laureate Simon Armitage, singer-songwriter Richard Walters and multi-instrumentalist & producer Patrick Pearson.
LYR’s story stretches back to 2009 when Walters, an admirer of Armitage’s extensive body of written work, approached the poet’s publisher about the possibility of collaboration. The result was Walters setting Armitage’s poetry to music in his 2011 solo song Redwoods. Realising that their two-part formula had potential to grow, Walters approached musical acquaintance, Pearson, and his joining provided the impetus to create the genre-splicing ‘supergroup’.
Creating LYR Mk.1, Walters and Pearson provided Armitage with a dictaphone and waited for over two years for the poet to return the machine with spoken verses, fragments of work that had never found any other place to call home. When set to music, Call In The Crash Team came into existence.
Whilst artistically successful, opening the door to greater possibility, the three-piece point to The Ultraviolet Age as the advanced stage of that possibility. Coming together with focused, blended labour to instrumentalise Armitage’s words and vocal delivery, opposing the tag of ‘spoken word project’ or similar, the band ruminates instead on what aural breakthroughs could only be possible with a non-singing vocalist, gifted singer-songwriter and alchemistic musician-producer.
LYR are now a firmly established part of the contemporary music scene, with regular radio airplay across the networks, two critically acclaimed albums, Call In The Crash Team and The Ultraviolet Age, and over five million streams to their name. They have appeared at many major festivals over the past three years including Green Man and Bluedot and completed UK tours and sell-out events at venues up and down the UK.