Since February, in the background, we’ve been listening to the album until we could all say “yeah man it’s done” and then it was mastering where we listened and said “yeah man it’s done”, and we gave it to some friends who said “yeah man let’s put this out”. The album is called KNOTS and here’s a track off it to wet your ears.
It’ll come out on Big Scary Monsters in the UK, Topshelf Records in the US, and To Lose La Track in Italy. Release dates, artwork, tour dates will follow when we’ve stopped refreshing Twitter and proudly enjoying how much people are enjoying the track. This track:
I’m sat here in the last few hours of our time at Whitewood Recording in Liverpool, about to pack up and hoof off back down the motorway. The sun is shining real low in the sky and the Mersey Delta is shining like a National guitar, all shimmery like the Space Echo reverb on the backing vocals and the room mic picking up the cymbal washes in the songs that we’ve been recording here for the past nine days on the fifth floor.
Thank Christ the lift’s been fixed.
And Rob Whitely is a genius and a gentleman. John and Lynny from Vasco Da Gama are saints. The staff at Elevator are so friendly I feel like I’ve been working here years.
The other day we were having a coffee down there and there was John Power and the rest of Cast drinking tea with Ian Broudy of The Lightening Seeds, and right there you’ve got about three of the first records a couple of us ever bought, them being the 7″ of that La’s single, the first Cast album, and the Seeds one with the strawberry on the front. I don’t know how well those records are standing the test of time on our shelves, but it’s a good feeling making music in a place where the music that got us deeper into music was made.
Next up: mixing and mastering, pressing and putting out the whole thing.
We started in London then went to Manchester and Leeds, then to Glasgow and Newcastle and finally down to Brighton, and everyday we travelled and played with the great band Raein who started playing some new songs from releases in the pipeline, and these songs blew us away even more than the others that had already blown us away repeatedly on the tour and in the weeks and years before the tour, on our record players and mp3 players and MiniDisc players.
Any why isn’t the whole internet written as Gizoogle would write it? We’re a funky-ass band with two boomboxes, two basses and a thugged out drum kit, dammit, and for the cost of my guitar I could get a pimped out boombox.
We played all new songs on tour. When we got time to play more, we’d kick out a Distal jam but for the most part we didn’t get that time. These new songs feel really good and have now been beaten about the face by being played live everyday for a week, which is a good place for a new song to be in and still be liked by the people that wrote it and the people who heard it on one or more of those days.
So on to the studio, where we’ll record those new songs and a few more, and come out at the end of it with a new album to pack up into boxes and put in the back of a van or a car and drive off for days at a time seeing inspiring sights and meeting brilliant people in new towns and cities, and then going back to work at the end of it feeling tired and beaten about the face but feeling all the better for it.
Hope you had a good festive season and all that. Happy New Year to you and yours.
We’re kicking off 2013 with a little tour with one of our most favouritist Italian bands – Raein. They’re incredible. Really they are.
We have a new batch of t-shirts to flog as well. The same design as the last one but in some sexy new colours. One or two of them are so nice that I wish I could wear them, but you’re not supposed to wear your own band’s t-shirt, right? Damn. I wish we were one of those bands that could get away with that. Or uniforms. But, no, we’ll be driving around and hanging around and playing, in our civvies, in these places on these dates:
January 4th – London – Old Blue Last
January 5th (Matinee) – Manchester – Kraak Gallery
January 5th – Leeds – Brudenell Social Cub
January 6th – Glasgow – 13th Note
January 7th – Newcastle – Northumberland Arms
January 8th – Brighton – The Green Door Store
Here’s what Raein sound like. I think this is a whole album in one video:
Remember when we released a tape, yeah? And we did a show in London, yeah? Where we played the album (the one on the tape) from start to finish, like those bands that haven’t been around for a while but then they come back and play that album from start to finish because it’s probably the best thing they ever did so why bother shoe horning in that new orchestral jazz odyssey ‘cos no-one really wants to hear it, not even yer Dad, Lars. Yeah, like that, except we didn’t go away at all really and we haven’t finished the orchestral jazz odyssey, so all we really did was play all the songs we usually play, but in the order that’s on the tape. Sounds really boring when you boil it down like that doesn’t it? That’s how Lars’ dad mind works. Always boiling it down boiling it down, standing on one leg in his son’s new field and boiling it down.
We’re proper chuffed to announce that Distal is coming out on tape via Big Scary Monsters. Head on over to their site to pre-order with (or without) a limited run tee. Nice one, youth.
We’re only a few days from setting off on our first full tour of the European mainland and we’re having a frenzied rush to get everything together on time. Beal has all the toothpaste and shower gel we could ever need. Draper has high-vis safety vests and a breakdown warning triangle. Jim has jump leads and an air compressor. Biff has a safety checklist. Not sure what Oli has, probably some tinnies.
We’ll be hitting Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy, France and Spain. There’ve been a few small amendments to a couple of shows so make sure you check the dates below.
We’re also having some lovely new shirts printed for the tour, designed by twoducksdisco. You can see the design over on our Facebook page if you want. And please, if you’re in the UK, we’d love to see you at our last show for a while at The Vic Inn, in Derby. A Facebook event thing for it is here.
Excited!
Sat Nov 12th – DE, Menden, The Rehearsal Room
Sun Nov 13th – DE, Mannheim, Juz
Mon Nov 14th – DE, Berlin, About:Blank w/ Mats Olson Trio
Tue Nov 15th – CZ, Prague, Chapeau Rouge
Wed Nov 16th – SW, Porrentruy, House Show
Thu Nov 17th – IT, Milano, Cox 18 w/ Verme
Fri Nov 18th – IT, Rome, Traffic w/ Gazebo Penguins
Sat Nov 19th – IT, Forli, Circolo Valverde w/ Distanti
Sun Nov 20th – IT, Torino, Blah Blah w/ Verme
Mon Nov 21st – IT/FR, Day Off – Contact with offers
Tue Nov 22nd – FR, Toulouse, Caravan Serail
Wed Nov 23rd – ES, Getaria, Gaztetxe
Thu Nov 24th – FR, Paris, L’International
Sun Nov 27th – UK, Derby, The Victoria Inn w/ Voo, Algiers
We’re putting this little shindig on in our hometown to wrap up what’s been a pretty satisfying year for us. Point your internets to the facebook event and click “Yes mate”.
Voo are from Liverpool and make stupidly good heartfelt indie-rock that harks back to the good old days when The Lemonheads and REM were taking the world by storm with stonewashed denim and loose-fitting blouses. They’ve been going for ages and we’re lucky enough to have played with them a few times in previous bands. You should check out their new album, it’s a proper stormer.
Algiers are a couple of chaps from Sheffield who have been kicking out the jams for a year or two. For just a drummer and a guitarist they make a sound that is so direct and righteous that you kinda forget that that there’s only two of them. I think one of ‘em used to be in Dartz. They have a few tracks on their souncloud page but you really, really, really should watch this amazing video for their song ‘Uncover Me’. Bloody lovely. They kinda remind me a little of later-era Promise Ring / Maritime but I’m shit at descriptions so don’t trust that at all.
Anyhow, come along. It’s going to be a beast and it’ll be the last show we’ll play for a while so we can focus on getting some new stuff nailed. It’s also the first time any of us will have played The Vic for bloody ages and we’re quite excited about that. That place was the centre of our universe when we were growing up.
