Islet will be on tour in November. The amorphous Welsh group will be performing in the following places:
NOVEMBER//
11 // MANCHESTER, Deaf Institute // www.ticketline.co.uk
12 // LEEDS, Constellations Festival // www.seetickets.co.uk
13 // NOTTINGHAM, Bodega Social // www.alt-tickets.co.uk
14 // NORWICH, Arts Centre // www.norwichartscentre.co.uk
15 // BRIGHTON, Green Door Store // www.seetickets.co.uk
16 // LONDON, The Lexington // www.atpfestivals.com/events
17 // CAMBRIDGE, Portland Arms // www.greenmind.co.uk
19 // HAGUE, Crossing Borders Festival // www.crossingborder.nl
20 // ANTWERP, Crossing Borders Festival // www.crossingborder.be
A limited 12” record will be available on tour only, featuring new track ‘This Fortune’ and a Tidal Barrage remix of the same track. The record will also feature a vinyl only sound collage made by the group; assembled excerpts and fragments of their experiences, experiments and processes.
Gruff Rhys proudly presents a new double a-side single and accompanying game, in addition to a forthcoming headline UK tour.
The single is comprised of Space Dust #2 and Whale Trail. One of the many highlights of Gruff’s current Hotel Shampoo album, Space Dust #2 is a tale of short-lived, seminar-sparked romance in the form of a duet with El Perro Del Mar. The playful Whale Trail sees Gruff declaring “this is a motivational song, let’s all get along” and has been inspired by the accompanying iPhone game of the same name.
The digital double a-side single and Whale Trail game will be released on 20th Oct and a limited-edition 12” vinyl single on 31st Oct. Pre order the 12 “ single HERE.
Just like the song, the Whale Trail game is a highly addictive affair. Players pilot Willow The Whale as he flies through the skies collecting colours and points. As well as the soundtrack to Willow The Whale’s adventures, Gruff has also provided the voiceover, in Welsh. The Whale Trail app has been designed by Neil McFarland of award winning digital design studio ustwo – Neil’s previous collaborations with Gruff include artwork for Super Furry Animals’ Juxtaposed With You single and animations for the band’s innovative Rings Around The World and Phantom Power DVD albums.
It is our great pleasure to gift you BY YOUR HAND, the opening track from our forthcoming full-length, Hello Sadness. Just click on the artwork above and it shall be yours.
And we made a video for the track too.
We’re also incredibly happy to announce some new UK/US/JPN tourdates, which will see us play the songs of Hello Sadness live, for the first time. Unless states otherwise, these shows are all ages.
7 November – London, Kings College 8 November – Brighton, The Haunt 9 November – Cardiff, The Globe (16+) 10 November – Glasgow, Oran Mor 11 November – Leeds, The Cockpit 16 November – New York (NY), Bowery Ballroom (18+) 17 November – Brooklyn (NY), Music Hall Of Williamsburg (18+) 18 November – Philadelphia (PA), Union Transfer (16+) 19 November – Washington DC, Black Cat (16+) 24 November – Tokyo, Unit Daikanyama
Tickets for these shows are available direct from us, for cheaper than the usual ticket outlets, on sale from 2pm on Thursday 8 September. Just head over to our gigs page.
A recent collaboration between Gruff Rhys and Phil Collins has resulted in a new, forthcoming single.
Gruff teamed up with the Berlin-based artist and Turner Prize nominee (not to be confused with the Phil Collins behind mega-hits Sussudio, Easy Lover, A Groovy Kind Of Love, Another Day In Paradise, etc) for Collins’ short film, The Meaning Of Style. The resulting soundtrack song, Y Badan Bach, will released as a 300 copy, limited-edition 7” single available only at Gruff’s forthcoming UK tour dates.
The Meaning Of Style follows a gang of anti-fascist Malaysian skinheads and the short film — which is entirely soundtracked with Rhys’ Y Badan Bach — will be shown at The Museum Of Contemporary Art in Tokyo from 23rd September 2011 to 9th January 2012.
GRUFF RHYS’ FORTHCOMING TOUR DATES :
Sun, 2nd Oct – North Wales Theatre, Llandudno, Wales, UK Mon, 3rd Oct – Olympia Theatre, Dublin, Ireland Wed, 5th Oct – St David’s Hall, Cardiff, UK Thu, 6th Oct – Leeds Irish Centre, Leeds, UK Fri, 7th Oct – Central Methodist Hall, Manchester, UK Sat, 8th Oct – Bongo Club, Edinburgh, UK Sun, 9th Oct – The Middlesbrough Crypt, Middlesbrough, UK Tue, 11th Oct – Concert Hall, Reading, UK Wed, 12th Oct – Shepherds Bush Empire, London, UK Thu, 13th Oct – St Mary’s Church, Ashford, UK
Hello Sadness is the imminent fourth studio album from Los Campesinos!, recorded earlier this year in Girona, Spain.
Hello Sadness is ten songs of love, loss and heartbreak nail-gunned to a back-drop of broken, tangled bodies, creeping, dead-eyed animals, suffocating, looming shadows and World Cup exits. It is an honest, bare-bones documentation of breaking up and trying not to break up in the process. A record whose complexion changed dramatically when, on the eve of recording, the end of a relationship meant every word that had been penned before had to be rewritten.
“It feels like we’ve done all our growing up while in this band,” says vocalist Gareth Campesinos! “Not like we’re Hanson, or anything. But we’ve been Los Campesinos! since finishing university, and in that time we’ve all changed as people massively. That’s something we want to put across in the music.”
As a result, Hello Sadness is a record made by a band united, all pulling in the same direction with the result being Los Campesinos!’ most lean, direct, coherent, and simultaneously exhilarating and debilitating collection of songs to date.
The album will be available as a pre-sale bundle from the Los Campesinos! website (loscampesinos.com). The package includes a CD/vinyl copy of Hello Sadness plus a digital download, an exclusive, limited edition DVD of footage from the recording of the new album (including a documentary and a “How To Play…” feature) plus an exclusive, pre-order only ‘Palmist’ T-shirt and Hold On Now, Youngster… The Demos, a CD of recently unearthed demo versions of songs from Los Campesinos!’s first album. It includes rare track “How I Taught Myself To Scream” and the previously unreleased “No Tetris”.
Hello Sadness tracklisting:
By Your Hand
Songs About Your Girlfriend
Hello Sadness
Life Is A Long Time
Every Defeat A Divorce (Three Lions)
Hate For The Island
The Black Bird, The Dark Slope
To Tundra
Baby I Got The Death Rattle
Light Leaves, Dark Sees pt. II
We are happy to announce a new record on behalf of our friends at Fat Possum. And a wonderful record it is. Details below and a link to listen to a track from it here – http://tinyurl.com/theheartiswilling
Much to the singer’s amusement, Guitar Player magazine turned down the chance to talk to A.A. Bondy about his third and best solo album Believers on the grounds that it’s “too quiet”. It’s their loss- this languorous, sometimes clangourous set, co-produced by Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith’s Either/Or & Figure 8) with a sparse line-up of Macey Taylor on bass and Ben Lester doubling up on drums and impressively expressive pedal steel, is decidedly electric. Bondy himself says his guitar style is fundamentally the same as showcased on his previous records, though he deliberately used flatwound strings, notorious for their lack of sustain.
“I started with an idea of the four compass points,” explains Bondy of its genesis, “Brian Eno on one side, Motown on the other, gospel on the top and a question mark for the fourth, to represent whatever else I was taking in, be it books, movies or whatever.” This conceptual approach is audible at times. ‘Surfer King’, is a beautiful Smokey-infused soul tune, ‘The Twist’ an off-kilter soaring epic Eno would understand straight away while the ghostly march to glory of ‘The Heart Is Willing’, already available as a taster, surely nods to gospel’s brave certainties.
Bondy sings superbly throughout, with a relaxed confidence that matches any of his peers. He let these songs discover him. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know when I’ve found it, the briefest moment when you can stand outside yourself,” he says.
And there are several great examples on show. Maybe the gentle, but relentlessly circling ‘Skull and Bones’. Or the unexpected collision of ‘drmz’, new wave done like old country. Perhaps the moment when ‘Hiway/Fevers’ slips elegantly yet unexpectedly into its coda. Their author clearly spent time thinking about these songs. “I drove across the country four times in the last year. It’s weird driving across America by yourself. Funny things go by your window,” says the Alabama native, recently transplanted to Los Angeles, “That definitely informed some of what came later.”
Auguste Arthur Bondy is not a nostalgic, but he won’t pretend that things haven’t changed. Approvingly, he echoes Tom Waits’s comment that people today suffer from a deficit of wonder. “They used to rely on their imaginations for entertainment,” he says, secure knowing that his latest record possesses mysteries even for its creator. Believers will likely be enjoyed by anyone who still has a sense of wonder.
Honey Bunny will be out on 7″ and digital October 10 through Fantasy Trashcan / Turnstile.
The B side will be brand new track Martina Martinez.
Here’s what Christopher Owens from Girls had to say about the track
“Honey Bunny” was my 19th song to write. I wrote it on my birthday in 2008. I think the fact that it’s No. 19 gives it a little perspective. My first songs were kind of like, “Ahhhh, Help!” This one has a bit of swagger to it, and some reflection about my mother. It’s a special song to me now, not for the sassy swagger bits as much the parts about Mama. But I think for the listener, it could be the exact opposite. The energy and optimism and determination in it is quite appealing. But that’s the great thing about these things, right? The fact that all of us are hearing something entirely different. I believe that.”
