Battle of the Bands is back on Thursday March 26, with a lineup of your new favourite artists. Learn more about them below, and hear them live at The Victoria – book your tickets below!
lum tin wing
Annabelle Lam (b. 2001, England) is an artist and performer working in experimental music under the persona Lum Tin Wing. Their practice engages with archival and degraded sound materials, employing processes of manipulation and distortion to examine rhythm, memory, and transformation. The work is informed by experiences of cultural detachment and frequently incorporates elements of speculative or fantastical narrative. Drawing on methodologies from storytelling and theatrical performance, Tin Wing situates sound as a system of translation and resonance. This approach is shaped by practices of archiving, tradition, reiteration, and remixing, resulting in layered sonic experiences that interrogate inheritance, transmission, and embodied knowledge- asking how memory survives, mutates, or gets lost.
They will be presenting Found in Migration.
cell deletion
Top: Ushara Dilrukshan, Bottom: Sonnie Carlebach
Cell Deletion is an experimental music and performance project exploring narrative journeys between embodied, analogue and digital sound, consisting of Sonnie Carlebach and Ushara Dilrukshan. As a “noise opera” duo, we construct charged, atmospheric journeys that sit between ambient, drone, noise and operatic lament. Moments of devastating vocal intensity dissolve into fragile acoustic textures and granular electronics; bodies, voices, strings, wires and circuits fold into one another to form narrative scenes that challenge conventional modes of listening.
Working with tape manipulation, live instrumentation, operatic vocals and theatrical monologue, we create immersive sonic environments that blur the line between concert, story and embodied performance. Our practice approaches sound as a dramaturgical force — a way of building worlds in which narrative, emotion and noise are inseparable. Formed initially for the IRCAM Forum 2024 as an experimental dialogue between tape and code, Cell Deletion has since expanded into a broader sonic-theatre language, performing across Europe, including ISCIAN (Milan), 90Mil (Berlin) and multiple venues in London, including LOST.
Ushara Dilrukshan is a London-based, Sri Lankan multimedia performance artist. Her works tackle ideas of cultural identity, womanhood and trauma explored through narratives. The work aims to open up questions and start discussions about experiences of similar narratives and journeys through life. As an interdisciplinary artist, sound and performance are a centralised form. Utilising poetry, field recordings, body and soul; further explored through video installation, publication and mutated operatics, she offers an insight into these themes.
Sonnie Carlebach lives in London. He teaches creative media at colleges for adults with profound learning disabilities, he is the artist in residence at Brompton Cemetery Chapel and he is half of performance and sound art duo ‘Cell Deletion’. He has produced a body of music for film, audiobook, and theater over the last seven years and continues to release solo music under the monika ‘Schim’. He has published creative and critical writing in a few small magazines and is currently writing a short novel. He studied Theology at the University of Edinburgh and then Information Experience Design at the RCA where he occasionally teaches. His topics of interest include information, attention, storytelling, education, and ambientness...
lucy havelock
Image © Lauren Whitehill
Lucy Havelock is a saxophonist/composer originally from Manchester. She is currently based in London, having recently completed MMus Performance and Related Studies at Goldsmiths. Her practice explores the physicality of sound, often through aesthetics of drone, microtonality, and effects pedals. Primarily, her work is process driven and frequently involves close collaboration with other musicians and composers. Key processes and ideas across her work include embodiment, improvisation, and the limits of sound production using a breath-controlled instrument. Within her work, Lucy likes to explore the closeness of sound, and the fragile edges of audibility and timbre.
Much of Lucy’s work and collaborations explore the complexity of pitch, sustained tones, and multiphonics. Over the last two years she has worked with composers Desmond Clarke, Scott McLaughlin, and Joanna Ward, developing pieces for saxophone, sometimes in combination with electronics and fixed media. She has presented her Masters research at CTM Festival (Radialsystem, Berlin) and performed at venues such as Cafe Oto and The Hundred Years Gallery.
Lucy is currently finalising an album of works for saxophone and pedals, uncovering a latent emotional charge to her listening and writing process. Her work is significantly guided by her embodied experience of playing the saxophone and practice as an improviser. The album forefronts shifts in tuning, spectral qualities, and subtle harmonic development drawn over time through looping, drones, and distortion. Alongside Lucy’s performance and compositional practice, she has a keen interest in community radio and is Station Manager at AAJA, Deptford.
arcai
Image © Trevor Bailey
Kai Chareunsy (b. 1998, Liverpool) is a Lao-British drummer, composer, and music facilitator who works across a variety of genres, including jazz, free improvisation, electronic, and folk music. He composes with field recordings, traditional folk instruments, and sensory percussion to create music that blurs the line between composition and improvisation. Kai’s recent works include commissions from Brighter Sound, Lancaster Jazz Festival, and B:Music.
On 20 November 2025, Kai released his debut EP Naak Dam Naak Don, which weaves together field recordings gathered during a month-long, Arts Council England funded R&D trip to Laos, with intimate family testimony. The EP tells the story of the journeys and sacrifices made by refugees who have arrived in the UK.
delyth field + ozgur kaya
Ozgur Kaya is a cellist, gambist, and composer known for bridging historical performance with experimental contemporary work. A graduate of the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Royal College of Music, he has performed internationally with musicians such as John Williams. Ozgur is the founder & curator of the collective "serpentine.iii", whose work fuses classical music with visual art and aesthetics from digital culture.
Delyth Field is a half Japanese half Welsh composer, sound artist and creative technologist, graduating from Royal College Music. Her works span across various forms from film scoring, electronic music, generative music and building sensor-based devices. She often draws inspirations from nature, ephemerality and co-existing with virtual spaces, with particular interest in resonating sounds of metallic objects.
Together they will perform a duo with viol da gamba, voice, electronics and modular synth.
lise vandersmissen
Image © IOA Photography
Belgian harpist Lise Vandersmissen travels with her modern pedal harp and her Italian Triple Harp to perform across Europe and Asia. Lise was one of the Upcoming Artists at Klara Radio, the main classical radio in Belgium, and won the Supernova Chamber Music Competition with her Aglica Trio. As a soloist, Lise won Prizes including the First Prize at the 5th International Harp Competition in Slovenia, the Second Prize at the 5th International Harp Competition in Hungary and the Second Prize at the Camac Harp Competition in London. She was awarded the Guildhall Harp Prize and received the Culture Prize in Bilzen, Belgium.
Lise released two solo albums: “TRANSFORMED” (pedal harp), and “TRE” (Italian triple harp) with Etcetera Records. She gave the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new piece for solo harp: “Four Meditations”, which was dedicated to her, in Milton Court Concert Hall. Lise’s Aglica Trio will be releasing their album consisting of four new commissions this summer.
Lise lives with her harps on a blue houseboat on the London canals. When she is not playing the harp, she loves to knit jumpers and run along the canal.