Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening

Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening play The Stables on Tuesday 3 November, with the set starting at 8:00pm in the Jim Marshall Auditorium. It's a North-East England four-piece, and they're touring their latest album, Cloud Horizons, which has picked up a 'wildly thrilling' from The Guardian and an 'unexpectedly cosmic' from MOJO.

The band's name comes from an old Northumbrian word for 'twilight', and they call their music 'Ancient Northumbrian Futurism'. They're based in the shadow of Hadrian's Wall, and the songs they write there pull from the landscape and the people who've lived across it for nearly 2,000 years. The themes they return to are freedom, nature, and the world after times of darkness, and the set includes a Roman inscription with links to Libya and Syria. It's a lot of ground to cover in one evening, but that's exactly where the record sits.

On stage, Kathryn Tickell handles the Northumbrian smallpipes, fiddle and vocals. She's joined by Amy Thatcher on accordion, synth, clogs and vocals; Heather Cartwright on vocals and guitar; and Joe Truswell on drums and percussion. Stef Conner adds vocals and lyres to the mix. Between them, they bring together a wide range of sounds — traditional pipes, synth, guitar, drums and lyres — and they'll be playing through Cloud Horizons live. The show is at The Stables, Stockwell Lane, Wavendon, Milton Keynes, MK17 8LU, starting at 8:00pm on Tuesday 3 November.