Dalston, East London, July 28 2026.

I’m sat outside Café Oto, taking to Simon Fisher Turner, who has just completed a soundcheck ahead of his performance with John Lee Bird. Bird is also with us, on an adjacent bench, spontaneously writing the words that he will thread through Fisher Turner’s evolving soundscapes. We are also joined by writer and musician Sukie Smith, who, despite only having known me for less than five minutes, offers me suggestions of London galleries where I might consider hosting a Mortality Tables event later in the year.

Fisher Turner mentions that he found a recording he’d made of Chuck Berry at Wembley, and, for reasons I now cannot remember, we wind up talking about an all-female Slade covers band. The last thing I remember is a conversation about Gary Glitter. Bird considers adding Glitter lyrics to his performance later, but we collectively conclude this would more than likely be ill-advised.

New connections were formed, new ideas were shared.

I became acquainted with albums by both Smith and Bird in the days that followed. Smith’s wonderful The Glass Dress And A Ringing Bell was released in September 2024 and covers a lot of ground, steering a course between leftfield rock and experimental electronics. We find Smith helming the rapturous motorik blues rock of ‘Into The Light’, reflecting mournfully on love and loss on the fragile ‘Pull And Twist’ and offering a plaintive R&B-inflected electronica on ‘Fixed Star’. These dexterous stylistic shifts are possible thanks to her adaptable vocal style, pitched in the style of PJ Harvey, Patti Smith and Stevie Nicks, but one that is always Smith’s own.

On ‘A Ringing Bell’, Smith fuses a melancholy, delicate vocal with restless electronics and gentle acoustic instruments, while the closing track ‘Move Towards The Storm’ finds her voice occupying an ethereal, angelic tone on a track that is poised somewhere between hope, despair and acceptance, a bleeping electronic melody sounding not unlike a Morse code transmission from the edge of uncertainty.

One of the most evocative tracks here is ‘We Try Not To Think About It Now’, charting a wistful, dream-like trip through a vivid and restlessly-shifting Los Angeles over jangly guitars and a rhythm track that barely ever pauses for breath. We move fluidly between the Sunset Strip, Culver City, the Pacific Coast, Silver Lake and Echo Park, our motion framed by countless interactions and tiny character portraits, the whole thing punctured by an undercurrent of emerging and unresolvable sadness.

When I arrived at Oto, Fisher Turner greeted me with a very formal, “Good evening Matthew.” From behind the piano, Bird popped up like a jack-in-a-box and blurted, “Matthew Broderick?” The name stuck. I became Matthew Broderick that evening. He thrust a Bandcamp yum code and a pink badge proclaiming the legend Think Pink. The code unlocked his album with fellow sound artist Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo. The badge was its front cover.

The centrepiece of this album is the 21-minute title, featuring Bird recounting a list of observations, all delivered over Palumbo’s squealing electric viola and a rich and undulating series of drones, field recordings and processed sounds. Example non-sequiturs:

 Pink is:

A cucumber in its happiest state

Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, previously ‘Blue’ Derek Jarman

A panda on a pedestal

The reference to Jarman and his monumental Blue – soundtracked, lest we forget, by Fisher Turner – is instructive. There is more than a hint of Blue here. It may not be as diaristic and political as Jarman’s observations, recorded painstakingly and painfully toward the end of his life, as his eyesight was fading to nothingness, but there is something just as curiously poignant present in Think Pink. Only it’s pink, not blue.

Yes, there is a tendency toward absurdism and wry humour, at least in the first few minutes of the title piece. However, once you surrender to Bird’s mesmerising, hypnotic voice, an implied disenchantment begins to appear. This happens at precisely the point the sounds become more inchoate and brittle, a hissing noise and tiny bells finally overwhelming the track and suppressing the last residues of Bird’s presence.

The release is rounded out by a reminiscence-filled interlude, a piano version containing very little discernible piano (until the final three minutes) and remixes from Paul Beauchamp, Xiu Xiu, Julia Kent and, in a somewhat – and perhaps inevitable – full-circle moment, Simon Fisher Turner.

The Glass Dress And A Ringing Bell by Sukie Smith was released September 1 2024. Think Pink by John Lee Bird and Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo was released April 17 2026.

Catch John Lee Bird and Sukie Smith in conversation and performance at The Crypt, 30 Prescot Street on August 21 2026, accompanying Bird’s Dollhouse Exhibition of his elaborate dolls. Tickets available at vout-o-reenees.com

Thanks to Simon.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.