Sorry we've gone a bit quiet on you over the last few weeks. We thought
we'd just take a bit of time now to have a ramble about what's been
keeping us out of trouble/getting us into trouble recently.
LIVE SHOWS
It's probably been most noticeable that we haven't had many live shows this year and the calendar is still looking quite blank over the next few months, but we'll explain the reason for this later. We started the first show of the year at the Eurosonic festival in Groningen, Netherlands on the 15th of January, followed by a special Burns Night show at King Tut's in Glasgow. You can read Andy's much funnier account of these snowy escapades over on the myspace blog.
LIVE SHOWS
It's probably been most noticeable that we haven't had many live shows this year and the calendar is still looking quite blank over the next few months, but we'll explain the reason for this later. We started the first show of the year at the Eurosonic festival in Groningen, Netherlands on the 15th of January, followed by a special Burns Night show at King Tut's in Glasgow. You can read Andy's much funnier account of these snowy escapades over on the myspace blog.
Apart from
that, the only other shows we've done this year have been two
'acoustic' shows in Edinburgh in the last weekend of January - The
Hidden Door festival at The Roxy and Sick Kids Sunday at the GRV. The
shows were very much 'stripped down' (but thankfully fully clothed)
sets with just Jamie, Rory, Arne and me, and the whole weekend was a
bit of a nostalgia trip for the four of us. We first met Arne at The
Roxy in late 2005 when my flatmate John brought him to see an embryonic
version of Broken Records (Jamie, Rory & Me touting a comically
small toy accordion). For some reason he wasn't deterred by the
ramshackle performance and we asked him to join that night. It just so
happened that the first show we then did as a 4-piece was at The Left
Bank, which as many of you may recall is now the GRV.
But enough of these misty-eyed ramblings - both shows were a lot of fun to play, despite some slightly embarrassing moments (to the gentleman at Hidden Door who knew the words to Wolves, a thousand thank-yous!). Alongside the usual numbers we threw in a couple of new tracks and a very nice version of Nearly Home performed in the style of eagleowl! But most importantly a huge amount of credit needs to go to the organisers of both events. The effort that went into converting The Roxy into a maze of multimedia art installations and performance spaces was staggering, and the Sick Kids Sunday organisers put together a brilliant line-up of local acts including Meursault, Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers, Sparrow & The Workshop, Eagleowl, James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley, and a last-minute slot by Rob St John. On top of that a goodly amount of money was raised for charity! It was really great to see so much happening in Edinburgh with everyone donating so much of their own time and energy to put on two very successful events.
SXSW
The one exception to the lack of upcoming live dates is our trip out to Austin, Texas for the South by South West (SXSW) festival in March. This is another reason we've been a bit quiet - the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to arrange working visas as well as trying to sort out the logistics of flights, transport and kit hire for this many people and for the cheapest way possible has become something of a full-time job over the last couple of weeks! Seriously, if anyone has ever had to try and get a US Visa/Work Permit you'll know it's an enormous pain in the arse, but I think we're nearly there. We've got the final interviews at the US embassy shortly so the main task for this week is to get our (well, mainly my) thick winter growth of beards trimmed down to something slightly less "Taliban-esque"!
Thankfully we've had some help with all of this from the Scottish Arts Council who have very kindly provided some funding towards the trip as well as putting us on at one of their Scottish Showcase events while we're out there. Exact details of where and when we'll be playing while we're out there still need to be finalised, although we can confirm that we're playing a 4AD/Bella Union showcase at Buffalo Billiards on Thursday 18th March with Midlake, Efterklang, The Low Anthem and Peter Broderick. If you're going to be in Austin for SXSW we'll be putting up details of the other showcases on our website, myspace and facebook pages when we have them, or keep an eye on the SXSW website for more updates.
http://sxsw.com/
"LIES" SINGLE
To coincide with our trip to the US, 4AD will be giving our "Lies" single a digital release there on the 15th of March. It was originally released as a limited edition 7" back in 2008 and has apparently gone on to be our most successful single. It even made it to number one in the Indie charts in Qatar. Twice. Now it's America's turn so let's see if we can get it to the top of the Billboard charts there (just the once will be fine, twice is a bit greedy)! Full details on where you can download it will follow soon. In the meantime, here's the video for it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuDUiVwNpdc
SKINS
We've been led to understand that our track "A Promise" will be making an appearance on this week's episode of Skins (Series 4, Episode 4, Thursday 10pm on E4. All the fours.). Now we've got into the habit of never believing something's going to happen until we're on the plane/the money's in the bank/the lawyer's arrived to bail us out etc, so we'll see what happens. No matter what your opinion of Skins is, the music selection is always excellent and eclectic. Recently we've spotted them using tracks by Max Richter, James Yorkston, Electrelane, an entire episode of Debussy pieces, and the splendid opening sequence of an episode that had no dialogue for the first five minutes while Mogwai's "Cody" played in its entirety. So we're quite excited to see what they do with "A Promise", and for a fleeting moment we might just be "down with the kids"!
NEW MUSIC
So, the main reason we've been pretty quiet on the live front is that we're all holed up busily working on writing and demoing songs for the second record. We recorded a new single with Glasgow based producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Delgados, Belle & Sebastian) back in November and it's due for release later in the year, so we'll keep you posted about developments with that. As usual with us it doesn't have a title yet (and almost certainly won't do until someone actually forces us to put something down on a record sleeve!), but we've been dropping a working version of it into live sets since the summer so if you've seen us since then there's a good chance you've heard it!
We're currently putting Rory's burgeoning Garage Band skills and patience to the test, and he's been home-recording rough demos of some of the new tracks, although I think it's just a ruse to make sure his violin goes really high in the mix! We're planning to go back into the studio with Tony when we get back from SXSW so we're unlikely to be doing any more live shows until summertime comes around. As always, we'll keep you posted with more album details and live shows when we have them.
GENERAL STUFF
Apart from all of that we're all very well thank you, and this is what we've also been doing with our time:
Gill: Being driven slowly insane trying to code a 'new-look' version of our website.
Rory : As above, being driven insane by constant requests from everyone to change things in the demos.
Arne: Continuing his quest to make the perfect cup of coffee with his fancy espresso maker. It was great during the demoing - he just kept appearing with amazing coffees for everyone in these little glasses with expertly frothed milk. If the band goes tits up he's going to have a bright future as a Barista!
Ian: Pretending to be Neil from Meursault at every opportunity and bemoaning the imminent loss of his luxuriant beard in a bid to make getting through US Customs run a bit smoother.
Jamie: Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. And probably playing a bit of Championship Manager as well.
Dave: Catching up on a lot of our boring band admin work and doing whatever it is that Dave does.
Andy: Playing with his shiny new electric drum pads so he doesn't disturb the neighbours and contemplating his banjo-led Bluegrass/Techno fusion side-project.
Keep checking the website and sign up to the forum, plus facebook, myspace and twitter for updates and hopefully see you all soon!
ianbrokenrecord
But enough of these misty-eyed ramblings - both shows were a lot of fun to play, despite some slightly embarrassing moments (to the gentleman at Hidden Door who knew the words to Wolves, a thousand thank-yous!). Alongside the usual numbers we threw in a couple of new tracks and a very nice version of Nearly Home performed in the style of eagleowl! But most importantly a huge amount of credit needs to go to the organisers of both events. The effort that went into converting The Roxy into a maze of multimedia art installations and performance spaces was staggering, and the Sick Kids Sunday organisers put together a brilliant line-up of local acts including Meursault, Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers, Sparrow & The Workshop, Eagleowl, James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley, and a last-minute slot by Rob St John. On top of that a goodly amount of money was raised for charity! It was really great to see so much happening in Edinburgh with everyone donating so much of their own time and energy to put on two very successful events.
SXSW
The one exception to the lack of upcoming live dates is our trip out to Austin, Texas for the South by South West (SXSW) festival in March. This is another reason we've been a bit quiet - the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to arrange working visas as well as trying to sort out the logistics of flights, transport and kit hire for this many people and for the cheapest way possible has become something of a full-time job over the last couple of weeks! Seriously, if anyone has ever had to try and get a US Visa/Work Permit you'll know it's an enormous pain in the arse, but I think we're nearly there. We've got the final interviews at the US embassy shortly so the main task for this week is to get our (well, mainly my) thick winter growth of beards trimmed down to something slightly less "Taliban-esque"!
Thankfully we've had some help with all of this from the Scottish Arts Council who have very kindly provided some funding towards the trip as well as putting us on at one of their Scottish Showcase events while we're out there. Exact details of where and when we'll be playing while we're out there still need to be finalised, although we can confirm that we're playing a 4AD/Bella Union showcase at Buffalo Billiards on Thursday 18th March with Midlake, Efterklang, The Low Anthem and Peter Broderick. If you're going to be in Austin for SXSW we'll be putting up details of the other showcases on our website, myspace and facebook pages when we have them, or keep an eye on the SXSW website for more updates.
http://sxsw.com/
"LIES" SINGLE
To coincide with our trip to the US, 4AD will be giving our "Lies" single a digital release there on the 15th of March. It was originally released as a limited edition 7" back in 2008 and has apparently gone on to be our most successful single. It even made it to number one in the Indie charts in Qatar. Twice. Now it's America's turn so let's see if we can get it to the top of the Billboard charts there (just the once will be fine, twice is a bit greedy)! Full details on where you can download it will follow soon. In the meantime, here's the video for it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuDUiVwNpdc
SKINS
We've been led to understand that our track "A Promise" will be making an appearance on this week's episode of Skins (Series 4, Episode 4, Thursday 10pm on E4. All the fours.). Now we've got into the habit of never believing something's going to happen until we're on the plane/the money's in the bank/the lawyer's arrived to bail us out etc, so we'll see what happens. No matter what your opinion of Skins is, the music selection is always excellent and eclectic. Recently we've spotted them using tracks by Max Richter, James Yorkston, Electrelane, an entire episode of Debussy pieces, and the splendid opening sequence of an episode that had no dialogue for the first five minutes while Mogwai's "Cody" played in its entirety. So we're quite excited to see what they do with "A Promise", and for a fleeting moment we might just be "down with the kids"!
NEW MUSIC
So, the main reason we've been pretty quiet on the live front is that we're all holed up busily working on writing and demoing songs for the second record. We recorded a new single with Glasgow based producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Delgados, Belle & Sebastian) back in November and it's due for release later in the year, so we'll keep you posted about developments with that. As usual with us it doesn't have a title yet (and almost certainly won't do until someone actually forces us to put something down on a record sleeve!), but we've been dropping a working version of it into live sets since the summer so if you've seen us since then there's a good chance you've heard it!
We're currently putting Rory's burgeoning Garage Band skills and patience to the test, and he's been home-recording rough demos of some of the new tracks, although I think it's just a ruse to make sure his violin goes really high in the mix! We're planning to go back into the studio with Tony when we get back from SXSW so we're unlikely to be doing any more live shows until summertime comes around. As always, we'll keep you posted with more album details and live shows when we have them.
GENERAL STUFF
Apart from all of that we're all very well thank you, and this is what we've also been doing with our time:
Gill: Being driven slowly insane trying to code a 'new-look' version of our website.
Rory : As above, being driven insane by constant requests from everyone to change things in the demos.
Arne: Continuing his quest to make the perfect cup of coffee with his fancy espresso maker. It was great during the demoing - he just kept appearing with amazing coffees for everyone in these little glasses with expertly frothed milk. If the band goes tits up he's going to have a bright future as a Barista!
Ian: Pretending to be Neil from Meursault at every opportunity and bemoaning the imminent loss of his luxuriant beard in a bid to make getting through US Customs run a bit smoother.
Jamie: Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. And probably playing a bit of Championship Manager as well.
Dave: Catching up on a lot of our boring band admin work and doing whatever it is that Dave does.
Andy: Playing with his shiny new electric drum pads so he doesn't disturb the neighbours and contemplating his banjo-led Bluegrass/Techno fusion side-project.
Keep checking the website and sign up to the forum, plus facebook, myspace and twitter for updates and hopefully see you all soon!
ianbrokenrecord
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