Diary

12/10/10 : Music on the go

Here's my next invention. I doubt it will work.

Music machine

We're all very excited about releasing our track 'The Elephant Of Castlebar Hill' as a single, we're really pleased with the new mix (which you can listen to here). We're also excited about some new tracks we're recording at the moment. I think it's time to upgrade my little home studio though - I'm going to splash out on a new computer I think before starting to mix the new songs.

I've also been doing some other recording recently - I recorded a track for Sony Extreme music for this production music album which was good fun, and I'm also in the middle of working on the score for a new indie feature film Booked Out along with my co-composer Derek Yau. It's quite a challenge - really different to be writing music that needs to fit in tightly with the film action and also set the right mood - which often changes quite quickly within one piece of music. It is absolutely brilliant fun though and we're making good progress. I think there will be around 45 minutes of music we'll be making in total though, so there's a lot to do. Definitely a good excuse for getting a new music computer...

Mark.x


19/8/10 : LeeFest 2010

At the weekend, Dave, Nick and I went to LeeFest down in Kent, a one-day festival headlined by Futureheads. We were there in the role of 'Wandering Minstrels' and so, despite the rain, we wandered the festival arena and played our songs to the people, even if they didn't want us to, or didn't know what on earth was going on. In fact, most people loved it and everyone seemed to want to have a go on my concertina.


5/8/10 : Floating on the Thames

Oliver afloat Well, our EP launch gig on a boat went well! Thanks to everyone who came along and said nice things to us afterwards. It turns out that the boat we were on (moored to the side of the Albert Embankment) only floats for a few hours each day, as the tide changes. We were afloat while we were playing, which was interesting - fortunately there were no sudden lurches causing Toby to miss a glock note! It was a little scary seeing the water get closer and closer to the bottom of the window until it started to lap over the glass though!

David Cronenberg's Wife and Thomas Truax were both great too, love Thomas' crazy gadgets. Yep, it was a top night, and I hope we can play on the Tamesis Dock again some time, it was a very charming boat - I'd love to own one and turn it into a floating house and recording studio... Next stop for us - The Lexington!


29/7/10 : Some nice reviews

We spent so long creating and recording our EP that we'd kind of forgotten that people would write reviews of it... fortunately so far they've all been pretty positive! Here's a few links to some of them!...

'A superbly confident and stirring debut... singer mark west, possess an extraordinary voice which blends brilliantly with the electric-folk instrumentation' - Rough Trade

'These finely crafted, literate and wistful songs are well worth giving your time and attention to' - Folly Of Youth

'Oh Sally is a beautiful fanfare of melodic, gentle instruments, brilliant, strong vocals and lyrics which tease the inner child from your memory. Experimental and truly unique...' - Stereoboard

'You get a real sense of accomplished majesty from this music. Sad yet uplifting, full blooded yet sensitive... This ex-Fanfarlo guitarist & his cohorts have a rather special appeal. 4/5' - Norman Records

Obviously, we're pretty chuffed! x


15/7/10 : Giving birth to our EP

So, the release date for our first EP is now only a couple of weeks away - it's been a lot of work to get everything done on time but I think we've done pretty well. We decided a while back to take the plunge and release it on our own label (Two Six Heave) which was quite a commitment, but worth it overall. Oliver had some experience of course having co-run the label Felt Tip before, releasing Fanfarlo's Harold T Wilkins single, so that gave us a head start.

To add to the stress of working out manufacturing deadlines, distribution arrangements and press we were also recording the songs ourselves and creating the artwork. Toby worked on the cover art of the steam-powered lighthouse boat and that's turned out wonderfully. He then passed it on to Dave who dealt with the layout and design of the CD packaging. Somehow we managed to get this finished at the same time as I finished working on the final mixes of the four tracks - we had recorded the drums and guitars with other producers (Paul at Stolen and John at No Studios) but we recorded the rest ourselves. I mixed the tracks in my home studio (a good excuse to buy some new Rokit 8 monitors!) and Mike from Offline Club was incredibly helpful, giving useful feedback on the mixes as I went. We took the tracks to be mastered the same day that the artwork was finished and when that was done we had everything ready to send off to the CD manufacturers and the digital distributors.

While we waited for the physical CDs to come back and for the mp3s to arrive online (it takes about 6 weeks to get anything onto iTunes or Amazon mp3) we moved on to worrying about press - something we knew nothing about. Fortunately, Cath at Sainted PR came to our rescue - she's done a great job so far, despite us giving her the CDs to send out for review two weeks late... it turned out we vastly underestimated how long the manufacturing would take - it took a full month rather than the two weeks we were expecting. I think we got away with it though.

So - the CDs looks great, we're really happy with them and also with the four tracks on the EP - new mixes of 'Oh Sally' and 'Secret Steps' and totally new recordings of 'The Elephant Of Castlebar Hill' and 'Only Forward'. They're all songs we love playing live, and I think we've managed to capture a bit of the energy of that in the recordings. I hope you buy a copy and I hope you like what you hear! If you can make it along to our EP launch (4th Aug) or Lexington gig (6th Aug) you'll get a free copy - otherwise you'll be able to mail order from a new shop section of our web site or buy the mp3 version from our shop or from Amazon, iTunes, eMusic and so on.

Mark.x


13/5/10 : Meat Sweats

It's been a busy week - it's all been building up to our deadline for sending our debut EP for manufacturing. I've been working to finish off the final mixes of the four tracks and Toby's been hard at work getting the cover art done. It's looking really nice. Then there's all the form-filling work associated with the boring stuff like barcodes, duplication forms and so on. We've also spent today having our photos taken for press shots - which was actually a lot of fun. My friend Amy kindly let us use her boat for the location and the nice gardens around the canals near Kings Cross station. Claudia Burlotti was the photographer, and I can't wait to see how the photos turn out.

We've also been playing some gigs - last weekend we played a small one that we thought would be fun - and we were right. It was at the Low-Fi Fayre, at Harvest Cafe in Kendal Green, and we played it acoustically. We have plans over the summer to play more totally acoustic gigs, and after the Low-Fi Fayre gig I think it will work well. A guy in the audience drew a picture of us too. Then last night we played at the premiere of the new short film 'Red & Cyan', which also features our track 'Oh Sally' on the closing credits. The launch party was at Bardens in Stoke Newington, and it was possibly the loudest gig we've ever played. We made the mistake of going for dinner just before hand around the corner in a Turkish restaurant and eating too much. This was Oliver's dinner:
Olivers dinner
...Not quite to my vegetarian taste, but impressive all the same. Toby managed to eat a similar amount despite having eaten one dinner already - even more impressive. We all managed to get through the gig without having to have a break for a sit down, though I think Oliver was struggling against the Meat Sweats...


13/4/10 : Video Diary: Down On The Farm


9/4/10 : The Lock Tavern with Dave Tattersall from Wave Pictures

Last night the Cavalry rolled into the Lock Tavern in Camden for a stripped down (musically, not physically) set supporting the brilliant Dave Tattersall of the equally brilliant Wave Pictures as he launched his new solo album. Based on last night's offerings it sounds like it will be brilliant too, so check that one out.

First on the bill, Silent Paper Radios also impressed with a nicely melancholy collections of songs to set a tone for the night that was a bit more inkeeping with our own style than last time out where we followed on from a selection of dubstep craziness (I still have no idea what that is, but the kids seem to like it. See Nick's post below for more on that).

Sadly lacking Toby this time, who is off enjoying himself in Japan, the remaining 4 of us squeezed onto the, erm, diminutive stage and set about unleashing some acoustic-pirate-folk on the impressively packed-in crowd. We played a familiar set but with the added trials and tribulations of trying to cover for Toby - it's amazing how indispensible he's become after such a short amount of time, and after juggling glock, snare, harmonica and the proverbial kitchen sink for this gig I will be delighted to have him back.

Big thanks to monkeysuit-Dave and sound-Dave for organising and making everyone sound great, seriously it was like Night of the Living Daves - a bad horror film where everyone shares a name.

Dave, obviously.


6/4/10 : Recording on a farm by the sea

And so to No Recording Studios, in deepest rural Essex, to record drums and guitars for two new tunes. The rustic surroundings and overpowering smell of horse manure belied a cool studio and we managed to get things sounding frankly rather awesome, in a nice lo-fi kind of way. Producer John was extremely patient with our requests for a guitar sound that was simultaneously bright, warm, crunchy and growly, and despite the inevitable rush to finish at the end of the day we're well pleased with the tracks we got done. Vocals, bass and assorted bits, bobs, bells and whistles to be added at home as soon as poss.

Next was a late-night gig on Easter Saturday/Sunday at Jack's in London Bridge. The Wonderland Ball was a bit surreal, with face-painting and flowers and cakes and Alice-themed costumes, but despite feeling a bit underdressed we thought the set went down well (a special mention goes to Dave for soldiering on seamlessly as his drum kit came apart around him). Our folky charms were a bit different to the rest of the bands and djs, who were a lot more dancey than us; as Easter morning wore on, your correspondent headed off to his bed, but various other band-members were still to be found enthusiastically throwing shapes on the floor to the heavy dubstep, or something.

Next up for the Cavalry? A (mostly) acoustic set supporting David Tattersall of The Wave Pictures at the Lock Tavern (April 8th), and, before too long, getting the fruits of our recording labours out to the music-buying public... Whey, and indeed, hey.

Nick


20/3/10 : White Heat and The Windmill

This week we played our first gig at White Heat - the club where Oliver and I used to visit every Tuesday back when it was at Infinity and our mate Jon used to DJ downstairs. Half the people I know in London I met through White Heat, including our new band member Toby. It was good to be back at White Heat - I'd played there before as the drummer in Wolfie and guitarist in Fanfarlo, but this time I got to be the singer and stand at the front, which is of course the best place to stand. I'd forgotten how high up the stage is at Madame Jo Jo's.

We had to rush round the corner after sound check to meet a PR company so we missed the first band, but the headliners were a brilliant band called Foreign Office, who's song 'think about leaving the house' is still stuck in my head now. It was a fun gig, we played our new song 'The Flood' and it seemed to go down pretty well. I get to play my new concertina on it, which hopefully everyone could hear ok - I need to get a built-in mic for it maybe but I bet they're expensive.

Thursday night we played at The Windmill in Brixton. If you've ever been to The Windmill you'll know that from the outside it looks a bit dubious - someone described it to me as looking like a hippy scout hut - but I have never been to a night at The Windmill that hasn't been brilliant. There's something about the place that just has an amazing, friendly vibe, and despite the slightly strange stage layout the sound is always really good. Thursday night showed that to be true - Tim had put together a great lineup that really worked together - Twin Falls were beautiful, and Heliopause had a lovely rich sound. And they were all great guys too. We played one of the most fun gigs we have played so far, despite a few entaglements with ukulele leads and the especially hot lights! Mike from Urban75 (he's the unofficial King of Brixton) kindly took some photos which can be seen here: www.urban75.org.

Our next gig is for Wonderland and will be a bit different - playing at around midnight in a club inside some of the arches near London Bridge. Then we have a good acoustic gig coming up at The Lock Tavern supporting Dave from The Wave Pictures. Apart from that, we're going back into the studio over Easter Weekend to record two new tracks, more on that later...

Mark.x



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For any project, big or small - or to ask any questions at all, please contact me:

  mark@mixedcasesspaces.co.uk