Band Blog

A small amount of MT update juice...

Sun, 06 May 2012 07:50:00 GMT

Hey all,

We have finally got ourselves organised and are writing new songs at a good pace. Pretty much everything we are doing is recorded so I am sure we'll feed you something soon if you play nicely. We are taking a little break from gigging, although if something good comes up we probably won't be able to resist. You can be sure that if we do end up projecting our noises somewhere we'll inform you of when and where we do so, and we'll make sure that it's not on a school night.

Love to all. See you soon.

Jx

The Good/Excellent Ship

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:30:00 GMT

We had a fun time playing at the Good Ship last night. This time around there were no power cuts, no beer filled amps and no big gaps in the set. It went very smoothly, in fact, and I am pretty sure we'll be playing there again in the next few months or so. Thanks to Matt Glover of the Sincere Deceivers for opening the night with some of his original material master works! We also massively enjoyed Kite Asylum who had some excellent original tracks, tight harmonies and sweet tones and licks from the Strat playing guitarist. Wonderful stuff. The Occasionals also had some good fresh tracks and given that it was only their second gig they were impressively tight. We'll be announcing some more gigs soon so watch this space. Thanks for coming along last night and creating an atmosphere in the Good Ship. More good times to follow. MTx

Last Saturday Night

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:50:00 GMT

Given the chaotic nature of last Saturday's build up to our gig at The Bowery, none of us really expected that we would have one of the best nights we have had as a band.

We want to say a big thank you to everyone who came along to see us jump around on stage for 35 minutes, and a further thank you to those of you who joined in the jumping. Twas a lot of fun to play to thrash out our songs in front of so many happy faces.

Next up, a return to The Good Ship in Kilburn. Join us there if you can, and bring your phones/cameras/recording devices so that you can 'flash' us whilst we are doing some more jumping around.

Much love to all

MTx

New Songs, New Recordings, New Instruments

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:44:40 GMT

Hey all, Firstly, promo stuff. Take a look at the gigs page and join us at The Bowery in Central London this Saturday, or The Good Ship in Kilburn on the 30th March. Secondly, I just wanted to talk about MT's weekend as it was full of all of the above (in the title). It started with Will getting on a train at 07:56 on Saturday morning. He met me at my London dwelling (basement flat...) and we set up a studio in my room to record some music. Following the arrival of James and Dom, we set about recording this music (more details about what we were recording to follow...). This involved the microphones and stands that we had (temporarily) stolen from a studio in Hackney, the kitchen pan, instrument cases, two computers, two different audio interfaces and many many cables. We have no idea about the outcome of our efforts. The different instrument tracks will be combined and who can say what it'll sound like? Whatever happens we will definitely pass it on to our faithful friends at some point in the not too distant future. Following this odd musical excursion, we travelled to a Studio in East London to flesh out some new songs. This went pretty well and you can expect to hear some new material at one of the next few gigs. We are all quite excited about how the new tracks are coming together and we'd love to share them with you when they're ready. See you all soon, if not this Saturday! J

The Grand Masterplan...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:51:48 GMT

...is to play more gigs and make more music. It should be a simple enough thing to achieve.

On the gigs front we have a couple in our diary that we would advise you enter into yours. First up is a show at the MONTO WATER RATS in the Kings Cross area, London. This is on Tuesday 24th Jan so it is a last minute affair! It is free to all who accept the Facebook event. The next one after that will be on the 25th February at THE BOWERY in London.

On the music front, we have been having a few writing sessions in Jamie's new London flat, and for once we haven't been surrounded by all of our gear. It has been a fairly stripped back affair with lots of weird but wonderful computer based sounds mixing in with clean (and sometimes not so clean) guitar noises. The musical ideas have been plentiful, and we hope that they start magically forming songs very soon. We hope. And pray...

We all hope to see you at a gig/for a pint soon. January will be less miserable this way.

MTx

PS: hands up who read our 'best of 2011' email and has made it to this point? You have done too much reading and should now go and sleep.

Goodwill bingo

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:30:00 GMT

Heylo,

Merry festive bananas to you all. Have a lovely sausage.

BBC stoke were kind enough to play two of our recorded noises on their 'Best of 2011' show. We're very pleased, thanks chaps.

Here's to 2012. May it not bring the end of the world, but perhaps the end of the world as we know it. There's a few things not quite right about the current iteration, so perhaps a few upgrades courtesy of a mayan prophesy wouldn't go amiss.

Have a good one,
Love.

The Redder, The Better!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:50:00 GMT

Just a quick update from us in this season of goodwill and festive cheer...

Thankfully, in our last writing session, a bit of good ol' positive thinking spurred our lager afflicted amp back into life:

This resulted in a very happy chappy :)

Since our relocation to London, we've finally begun to settle back in to our 'writing mode' where real songs emerge out of space funk lounge jams. Some ideas are stranger than ever...

From all of us here in MT,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We'll see you soon...

xx

*Dasher
**Dancer
***Comet

:)

Whoops, there goes another...

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:46:09 GMT

Roighto,
Firstly thanks a bunch if you came to see us on Friday night. The Good Ship was a lovely place to play, the other bands, (Matt Midgley in particular) were great and it was great to see so many friends old and new in one place.
Apologies *again* for the elephant in the room, the drink in the amp. That was embarassing and forced us to change the set pretty substantially from what we wanted, as well as delaying everything and keeping you all waiting. We always want to put on the best show we can and we didn't quite manage it on Friday.

That said we had a great time and you all seemed to enjoy it!

As always there will (eventually) be some photos and stuff kicking around, and if you liked what you heard you can get it right in the privacy of your own bathroom and download our EP in the shop. Those of you who signed the mailing list will get very occasional info about where we're playing next, we'll keep you posted!

Hope to see you again sometime soon,
Love
Dom.

Gig this Friday...

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:36:16 GMT

Hey all,

Just a quick post to remind people of our gig in London, our new home, this Friday. It's at The Good Ship in Kilburn which is on the Jubilee Line for all you London-savvy peeps. (Yes, we sound like Northerners because we are!) Set time = 10pm so plenty of time to hit the bar beforehand. £5 entry

To whet your appetite, check out this performance of 'Let's pave over the Sea' on the NME website.

See you all there. It should be a pretty intense affair.

The menfolk from MT x

Out of the Box

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:43:34 GMT

It has to be said that this year's Boxjam was a hugely ambitious effort - pulling together over 50 acts across two days to raise money for Oxfam was never going to be easy for Redshift Radio's Simon Newbury, the organiser of the event. That said, the event raised plenty of money and we all had a lot of fun. It was good to see that so many embraced the halloween theme even if all the performers looked ridiculous on stage...

So from here we move from the delights of the North West to the perils of the big smoke. Our first gig in London is only 1 month away and we are planning to pack out 'The Good Ship' in Kilburn with friends and fans from all over the city. This is going to be the first London show of many (We have been offered 7 London gigs before Christmas!) although it will probably be the only show left in 2011 as we are focussing on writing new material. Come 2012 and we should be performing regularly around London, at least, that is the plan!

Forthcoming news includes more outings on the BBC, a new website and videos from Boxjam...

Jx

Nine Inch NASA.

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:17:11 GMT

Greetings, my fellow Earthicans. We're all looking forward to enjoying the BOXjam festival in Crewe this weekend - we're playing tomorrow afternoon, but we'll be around most of the weekend for the other great bands and acts that are on. Kudos to the inestimable Simon Newbury from RedShift radio for putting the whole event together - come on down if you're in the area (preferably tomorrow at 4pm so you can see us!). Sticking with the South-Cheshire-theme, Rob Adcock played "Dead Reckoning" on his BBC Introducing Stoke show last night (28th October). Big thanks to him for that - you can listen again here. Our track starts around 45 minutes in, but the whole show was great, as ever. In other news, writing sessions have begun again! There are several exciting ideas bouncing around which will probably start surfacing at gigs in the new year (there's an incentive to come see us...). We may even put up some rehearsal recordings up in the members area in the next few weeks, if we get excited enough about any particularly juicy noise nugget. Keep your fingers crossed :) Will x

Sasquatch and the pyjama monkeys

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:45:00 GMT

So it's been a busy month for everyone, no doubt. We're all spatially separated right this moment, but we've all been haunted by little musical ideas we want to try out when we get together next weekend. Very exciting indeed.

What news? We have a little MT news - there's another nice review of "It's not as dark as that, Friend" up on the progarchives site.

The other thing coming up is BoxJam festival at the end of the month (30th of October). It's a festival in Crewe which is shaping up to be absolutely awesome. We really can't wait to get stuck in, and the Box is an awesome venue. Check out BoxJam here. It'll be cracking. You can get tickets from us in the shop.

Apart from watching the disintegration of the world economy (and Liam Fox), that's all the stuff going on at the moment. I've had a lovely few days immersing myself in Opeth's Ghost Reveries and Blackwater Park. I need to get better at the guitar before I can *really* enjoy them though...

love
dx

Record of the Month - manchestermusic.co.uk

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 02:10:00 GMT

We've just learned that the nice people at Manchester Music have made 'Its not as dark as that, Friend' their unsigned record of the month. We are very honoured by this and would like to thank everyonewho's sung the praises of the record so far :). We've still got a few physical copies left of the record in our shop if you fancy it... A small bit of news: We're happy to announce that we are playing the Boxjam festival at the Box in Crewe on the 30th October. It's all in aid of a good cause with lots of great bands, so come along down if you can! Also, our song 'Sure It's Chaos But It's Ours' was played on BBC Introducing Stoke yesterday. Catch it again on iplayer (we are played right at the end!). In addition, we're working on a few other bits and pieces in regard to shows and maybe even releases, so stay tuned! JK x

Amazing Radio

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:50:00 GMT

We got our first national radio play yesterday on the Bethan Elfyn show on Amazing Radio. You can listen again for the next week or so. The little piece about us and one of our songs starts at about 36 minutes in. Yays! x

Listen again on BBC Introducing...

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 08:45:00 GMT

Today one of our tracks, "Let's Pave Over The Sea", was played on the BBC Introducing for Stoke show. It's a first for us and we're pretty stoked about it :)

You can listen again to the show on the iplayer for the next week (we're on at 26:21 minutes to be exact, although the whole show is well worth a listen!).

Onwards and upwards x

A Summer Summary...

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 02:03:11 GMT

...And so comes the end of a busy period for us. 600 driving miles, 5 gigs and 4 radio shows later and all for the a new EP, 'It's not as dark as that, Friend'. The best part for me was playing the new songs live. Most of them have been through several renditions and now that we have settled on a way to play them (largely guided by the recording process) they are awesome fun to jump around to and perform. If you came to an early MT gig and have also seen one our recent shows, you'll probably agree that we all jump around a hell of a lot these days. It's absolutely knackering, but epic fun. So our recent excursions to the Lake district to perform a couple of two hour shows (or even three for Will and Dom) within three days really put our stamina to the test! Not to mention the loading and unloading of far too much gear... On a more promotional note, we have sold about half of the first batch of the new EP so far so if you'd like to get hold of a physical copy (The progarchives.com guys seemed to like the packaging and art) then head over to the shop. The EP went on sale on both iTunes and Amazon recently, although if you are a member of our site you can download all 5 tracks for just £1.83. We have a few more gigs in the pipeline for later in the year and we'll be adding videos and photos to our site and to our facebook page over the next few weeks. If you want to take a look back at our record launch gig at the Roadhouse then go and take a peak at the videos. Jamie x

It's not as dark as that, Friend

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 01:00:00 GMT

THE EP HAS LANDED... Too much?

We had a fantastic gig at the Manchester Roadhouse last night. The MEN chose it as Gig of the Week in Manchester, which was pretty exciting, and we played with some great other bands... The best bit for us was the official launch of our new EP, "It's not as dark as that, Friend". We've got these beautiful physical copies of the EP, with artwork we're really proud of. As well as those (which you can pick up at gigs, or on the store), you can download the EP in digital formats right now.

You can get it in a few different ways. If you're not a member of the site, then you can download it for a fixed, iTunes-like price. If you are a member you can download it for a pay-what-you-want donation (with a minimum donation to cover our costs and stuff). If you choose that route, we're sending 20% of the money you pay to the amazing National Youth Music Project, a charity working to enrich the lives of disadvantaged young people through music.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us make this EP as good as we could make it. So many people have helped us it would be a bit OTT to list them all, but you know who you are. Thank you also to you, for visiting our site, reading our waffles and listening to our music.

Love,
Dom, Jamie, James and Will.
xx

Redshift Radio with Simon Newbury and some broken instruments...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:30:00 GMT

We all turned up at the Redshift Radio studio on Monday and we were provided with general chit chat with the heavy metal band 'Junker' and a tray of tea and coffee which we most certainly did not take into the studio...

We were in the company of Redshift's Simon Newbury who, in his own words, provided 'the banter in the background' whilst we played a couple of acoustic versions of tracks from our new EP. Check out one of them here (you'll need to stop the site-wide player below):

The other track will be available in the Member Area so head over there and sign up if you haven't already.
Conversation included Roofdog, Knuckles (You can have many brownie points if you know what 'Knuckles' refers to!), the broken or altered percussive instruments we were using and new local bands that we have seen, heard and/or played with.

We had an awesome time on the show and it was nice to see people getting involved on the facebook page and texting/tweeting/emailing in their thoughts - cheers to all those who caught the interactive vibes and said hello! If you liked what you heard then come down to the Roadhouse this Saturday for our EP launch gig. We are also doing some more radio this week so we'll keep you posted.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in on Monday ;-)

Jx

Biscuits

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:40:00 GMT

Hello everyone, We've just got back from helping clear up after Rock on the Rocks. It was a really fun afternoon, burgers and beer. Sun and great bands. We haven't been together as a band for more than a few days in a little while, so it was great to get back together and chill out on the grass with a beer. If you were there, hope you had fun, if you liked our music please sign up to the mailing list and we'll let you know about gigs around and about... This week is all go: on the radio a few times, then gigs on Friday and Saturday. Here's a rundown: Sunday (tonight!) - This is the Cat Radio with Sean Dyer 9-11pm Monday - RedShift Radio with Simon Newbury 10-11pm Wednesday - Canalside 102.8 FM Radio with Mike Chisholm 7-8pm Thursday - Silk 106.9 FM Radio with Keisha Spence 8-10pm Friday 8th - Gig at The Swan with Two Necks, Macclesfield Saturday 9th - RECORD LAUNCH gig at the Roadhouse, Manchester Tune in/come down/both. Hope to see you soon! Many loves, Dom

NEW TRACK AVAILABLE - 'Let's pave over the Sea'

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 05:30:00 GMT

The first track from the new record should now be playing for your listening pleasure via the player below. If you have been to one of our latest shows then you may recognise it. We hope you enjoy it! We'll be playing the tracks from 'It's not as dark as that, Friend' at our album launch on the 9th July at the Roadhouse - one that we hope you'll be able to join us for. This will be the first chance to get the new record. Tickets for the show will be £5 - not bad for a line-up involving Collibus, Kill for Company and Erase.Replace - and the whole evening is being hosted and promoted by Designer Magazine for the launch of our new CD. If you fancy a day filled with lots of different types of music then join us at Rock on the Rocks on 2nd July. We are opening the show at 5pm but there are some awesome bands throughout the evening. Take a look at the line-up and get your tickets here. Come join us if you can - The Roadhouse is going to be pretty mental in terms of performance so if nothing else, come and see Dom thrashing around in his purple trousers... J MTx