Well, last weekend was pretty awesome. Continuing in the fine tradition of playing before we’d usually even be awake, we opened the main stage at 2000 Trees near Cheltenham. We’re going to be honest, we weren’t expecting much. We’d arrived the night before in pitch black, torrential rain and high winds, struggled to put our tent up, then slept for perhaps two hours. Thankfully the people of 2000 trees are made of sterner stuff than us city boys, and there were loads of lovely (slightly damp and exhausted) folks up and about when we finally made it on stage.

We’re not a massively festival hardened band – we’ve tended to do two or three per year so far – but of those we’ve seen, it’s now our favourite (home-town festivals excluded). The audience and atmosphere was unrivalled (Kudos to the now legendary Dan who crowd surfed in a crocodile costume almost constantly on Friday), and the line-up was astonishing. I don’t think we’ve ever spent so long trying to get off stage whilst saying hello to so many old friends – which became something of a theme over the following 16 hours.

This Sunday we’re off to Off The Cuff in Birmingham, which has a similarly incredible line-up, which we’re looking forward to equally eagerly. Hopefully we’ll see a few more friendly faces but come home in slightly better shape than last weekend.

Today almost didn’t happen. Thanks to our pal Frank (he’s the one with the beard in the video) we’ve made it out to Jamie’s studio in the middle of the Leicestershire countryside, and Jamie’s made it out of hospital, so we can get some guitars recorded.

As usual, we’ve been filming the tedious process of making shit sound right, and getting it played right, so here’s the video…

So this is going to be a bit of an odd recording blog, in the same way that for us it’s a bit of an odd recording session. Today we officially start work recording our third LP, but because of schedules, money and the way we write, it will probably be a good few months before anything is anywhere near finished.

Today we’re tracking drums for four songs at Seamus Wong’s in Leicester where Youthmovies recorded ‘Good Nature’ – collectively one of our favourite albums of all time. In a few weeks we head out into rural Leicestershire to Park Farm studios, run by our bassist Jamie, where we’ll record the bass, guitars and other bits and bobs which make songs ‘songs’ and not just the sound of Jim hitting things – as pleasant a sound as that is. In a few more months we’ll come back to Wong’s to record some more drums, then head back to Park Farm to do some more guitars.

Confused? We certainly are.

Having done all our previous recording in spare rooms, having nice spaces and equipment at our disposal is an unusual experience for us, so we’re determined to make this sound as good as humanly possible. Jamie’s taking the lead on production duties, so everything’s still being done ‘in-house’ so to speak, but it’s another step up and we’re pretty deliriously excited about it.

Having said that recording is, like many of the realities of being in a band, really fucking boring once the initial excitements over. Whilst Jamie sets up and Jim’s still at his day job, the rest of us are entertaining ourselves by making  the video blog you can watch above, drinking excessive amounts of tea, and doing bits and bobs for our day jobs.

Enjoy…

x

So we’re back from tour. The last week as been amazing – it feels like a bit of a turning point for us in many ways. We’ve been a bit rough round the edges, but we know what we’re doing and where we’re going for the next year now at least. There’ll be a proper announcement in the next few days about what you can expect, but for now we’ve got something to get off our chests.

This weekend was the White Noise Festival that we curate with our friends in the (now defunct) Death Of London. If you’re not familiar, it’s three days of awesome bands from our city playing together to raise awareness of the scene we’ve got going on, and as a by product, raise money for local charities.

On Friday, just as we were bracing ourselves for three days of little to no sleep and excessive drinking, we were sent THIS article – an interview with our friends in Minnaars, in which specific members of the band take it upon themselves to dismantle and admonish our cities musical community and directly attack the festival that we (and the majority of bands in the city that we respect) work hard to put together.

We want it on record that we refute every last word of that article.

You can define a scene any way you want, whether it be a collection of bands that are grouped together through friendship, style, mindset or level of success. Whichever way you want to look at it, our city has a scene. Maybe it is cliquey – we’re protective of each other, but we’re also supportive of as many bands as we can – if they’re fully fledged touring bands or promising teenagers doing something exciting. We certainly wouldn’t turn our backs on a band because they became ‘successful’, or because they couldn’t participate in an event we’d put together – it’s not our place, and it doesn’t benefit anyone.

We’re not going to go in to the reasons behind any mutual bad blood there may be – we’re not here to air dirty laundry – but we want to be the ones to say that although our city has it’s faults, we’re genuinely proud to say we’re from Leicester, and proud to be counted alongside any of the bands we share our cities rehearsal spaces, venues and pubs with. Minnaars Included.

We don’t do White Noise because we think it somehow makes us better than anyone else, or because we think it allows us to command some trivial respect from anyone. To be frank with you, we don’t even do it through any moral obligation – Although we’re proud to have made over £1000 over the last three days, we’ve never wanted the charity element to be at the forefront because it’s not what we consider to be most important. We know White Noise doesn’t matter to anyone outside of the 500 or so people that come out to enjoy it, and that no one in the wider music industry gives two fucks about it. We do White Noise because it’s an awesome excuse to watch some fucking incredible bands, get pissed with some of the best people in the world, and enjoy ourselves for three days.

You might not think much of our cities music scene, but it is our cities fucking music scene.

Anyone is welcome to consider themselves part of it.