The warren is empty

Yep, it certainly is.

Luke and I recently completed our Fall Of Efrafa remix/reimagining and if I do say myself it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever been associated with. Totally stoked on how it turned out. I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to get finished or see the light of day but after almost a year of us doing little bits here and there and then about a month of intense hard work at the end, we got it done.

It only really came together though after Alex from FOE had managed to persuade 2 labels to put up the money to release it… despite the fact that neither Alex nor either label had heard a note, or there even really being anything worthwhile to play to them! I think after placing that much trust in Luke and I, we realised we’d better produce something worthy of it.

And thankfully I think we did, definitely surpassing my expectations of what we could do! It’s a 15 minute epic… we took their song ‘Dominion Theology’ completely taking it apart and then putting it back together layering extra guitars, piano and cello (courtesy of my good friend Tom Cook) and even synth! We went all out on constructing as much atmosphere and subtlety around the original that we could, but also adding extra melodies, enhancing certain sections… It was a lot of fun to do.

It’s coming out in the upcoming weeks, on Sound Devastation records and Tadpole records. It’s going to be a one-sided 12″ record, with the b-side screen-printed. It’s going to look sweet. It will sell out. These are all facts. If you want a copy, you pretty much HAVE to pre-order it, or come to the release party as there’s no guarantee I can hold you a copy. sorry! Hopefully we can sort out some way of making it available digitally at some point.

I just mentioned the release party… It’s on the 9th of August at the Cowley Club in Brighton, there is a flyer here, and as you can see Hot Damn are playing it, and no Luke and I will not be performing with Fall Of Efrafa… although I personally would like to see Luke tinkling away on the piano next to Alex screaming his face off… I can only dream.

Knock the sloth down on his arse

Yep, so it took forever to do and it’s taken me forever to say anything about it but The Steal finally released our first 7″.

We actually originally recorded the songs about a year and a half ago. It turned out totally crap though because we were even more under-prepared than we usually are. For example I managed to forget my snare AND cymbals for the recording, and lindsay forgot his guitar… no joke. Dave was also recording us, the first time he’d recorded a full band. All in all it was a ‘learning experience’.
We then did it again a couple of months later, recording the music for the songs on the split and the Lightyear covers (that will come out within 10 years) in a day at a rehearsal space. It was intense, we had an extreme technical metal band rehearsing in the room next to ours that actually managed to play constantly the whole 9 hours we were there, also added to that was Dave House’s double duty on playing and recording heightening the cabin fever. It was fun.
The vocals then took an age to get done, we didn’t even have words for both songs sorted out. We only managed to do it by forcing ourselves into Dave’s room in Kingston months after doing the music, working it out as we went along… using his bed as a vocal booth, going stir-crazy (again), deciding at about 1 in the morning a part was ‘missing something’ so ending up with me delivering my first spoken word performance on record, with buses very audibly going past the window and fights kicking off outside. We’ve still yet to do all the vocals for the Lightyear stuff, it’s going to be interesting… Recording things yourself is cheap and flexible but not necessarily good for your mental health.

The split was originally going to be with those cheeky northern scamps in The Mercury League but they went and broke up which delayed the whole process even more. We had the recording done for months and didn’t really know what to do with it. Several ideas were floating around including; creating a fictional band, recording fake songs and effectively releasing it with ourselves, using the same music but writing different words for the b-side, doing it as a split with Top Chess… unfortunately none of these saw the light of day.

Around this time I had started playing with Beat Express and the other guys suggested doing it with them, I was of course well into this idea and after a bit of activity it is now out. I wrote a bit more about why i’m so stoked on doing it with the Beats on The Steal website.

Anyway, I’m real pleased with how it turned out… The artwork looks amazing, Will Exley has done a fine job indeed. The sleeve is actually an A2 2-colour screenprinted poster, screened by pavey himself (he IS a busy man) and the songs actually sound 100% better being on vinyl.

We got 300 made and I think about half of them have been sold already so you’d better be quick! You can get them from The Steal site or Banquet Records at the moment. ok.

451. go.