This Town Needs Guns

So last night we had a practice with a good friend of ours. It was pretty damn good. The result of this practice was that we now have a new bass player. Jamie has been a friend of ours for quite a while now and was one of only two people that we knew who we asked to play for us. We are very pleased that he has joined.

There were a whole bunch of people who contacted us in the hope of playing. We tried a few people out who were all really good, but Jamie has nailed every song we’ve asked him to play and has brought the dedication we required. Couple that with the fact that he is already one of our friends we just couldn’t say no.

I’m really sorry to all those people that didn’t get a chance to try out. I suppose the only good thing is that no-one had to travel 100+ miles to spend an afternoon in a sweaty room with us. Thank you to all those that got in touch. It was really amazing that so many talented people contacted us and were so eager to join.

For those of you that don’t know, Jamie is also a member of the Oxford band Hreda. If you haven’t already, I suggest that you check them out.

Stu x

Triple R’s punk and hardcore radio program Bullying The Jukebox did their mid year review and counted down their Top 25 releases of the year so far. We’re in good company ;-P

1. Thrice – Alchemy Index III & IV
2. City And Colour – Bring Me Your Love
3. Polar Bear Club – Sometime Things Just Disappear
4. The Slackers – Self Medication
5. H2O – Nothing To Prove
6. Time Again – Darker Days
7. Verse – Aggression
8. Anti Flag – Bright Lights Of America
9. The Loved Ones – Build And Burn
10. Teenage Bottlerocket – Warning Device
11. Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Primary Colours
12. My Disco – Paradise
13. Jim Ward – Quiet EP
14. Less Than Jake – GNV FLA
15. Pennywise – Reason To Believe
16. Alkaline Trio – Agony And Irony
17. The Gaslight Anthem – Senor And The Queen EP
18. Millencolin – Machine 15
19. New Fond Glory – Tip Of The Iceberg
20. This Town Needs Guns – Australian S/T release
21. Foals – Antidotes
22. Paint It Black – New Lexicon
23. Coue Method – To Mock A Vapid World
24. The Night Marchers – See You In Magic
25. Murder By Death – Red Of Tooth And Claw

Midnight - 2am Sunday nights on 102.7FM in Melbourne Australia, or live streaming world wide via www.rrr.org.au

Been a while since I wrote anything here. Sorry. I’ve been feeling pretty rough with this Labyrinthitis thing. Doesn’t seem to be going away. After a week of work and another week of being in work and feeling rough, we played a couple of gigs (one in Oxford and another in London). Anyway, after I woke up on the Sunday (the morning after these gigs), I felt worse than ever. Gutted. Another week off work spent stumbling into things around the house and getting nothing useful done. At least I got to watch Star Wars over again.

Anyway, that there Huw Stephens interview thing and new song are probably not there anymore and have been replaced by his latest show, but the good news is that we should be putting up a new track from the album up on our myspace very soon. We had to send the album back to the studio to get tweeked and mastered. As soon as it comes back we’re going to upload ‘Chinchilla’.

Tonight we’re off to Brighton. We’re going to be playing with HPR! who we have liked for quite some time now, but have never played with. Anyway, it should be quite fun. Last time we played in Brighton was about 4 years ago and was dreadful. It was one of our first out of town gigs and it seemed like everything that could go wrong went wrong. Leads were pulled out of sockets, strings were broken, throats were sore. Hopefully tonight will go some way towards making up for it.

Here are some photo’s of our gig at Notting Hill Arts Center:

There is an interview with Kev (BSM), Hugo (Jonquil) and myself about the Oxford music scene available to listen on Huw Stephens ‘In new music we trust’ page. If you’ve got real player, you can listen to said interview as well as ‘Lions’ by Jonquil and a new song from forthcoming album ‘Animals’ by This Town Needs Guns.

He also plays tracks from JoFo and Dananananakroyd, so all round a pretty good show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/innewmusicwetrust/huwstephens/

…and it is sweet

Got back from the studio last night and have begun playing around with tracklistings. With any luck we’ll be getting the first track up for your listening pleasure pretty soon.

We added the string arrangements courtesy of Robert John Godfrey to Rabbit yesterday, aswell as polishing off the mixing for the remaining 12 songs/interludes that will make up the album. It was a bit of a slog, but listening to the tracks today makes it all worthwhile.

x

Headin back to Northampton and The Lodge to finish mixing the new record. We started mixing last Monday and it sounds soooo good. All our fears over how everything was going to sound were laid to rest once we began mixing. I think that those of you particularly enamoured with Tim’s guitar work will be really pleased.

Just received a ‘friend add’ from a band called Teejay Sundance. Give it a listen I think you’ll like it.

Jonquil and Maps & Atlases both have new songs on their respective myspace pages. They’re both absolute honey’s so if you haven’t heard them, what are you waiting for?

x

Hello,

Day 2 and we’ve got loads of things done. All the drums, guitars, bass, trumpets, hand claps and tambourines are now done. Just a few more vocally things to do tomorrow

After yesterday it’s a significant step up in the right direction and I think we’re all pretty chuffed. Not feeling so great after today though as I’ve been doing a lot more and this Labrynthitis is a bit of a killer. Still “it’s all been worth it”……I think.

Might redo Aardvark vocals tomorrow. None of us are really sure what to do with it anymore. Think the songs will be keeping their animal names as well. Don’t know for definite, but I can’t imagine any of us wanting to change them now. They’re just names after all. At least they’re all just one word and not some ridiculously long sentence.

Stu x

P.S. Superbad is ace. Watching “Walk the Line” now. Johnny Cash wasn’t very nice to his first wife was he?

So this morning Dan and I set off to Northampton nice and early. I unfortunately am currently suffering from Labyrinthitis which isn’t exactly fun, but it does mean that so long as I don’t move around too much I’m not too bad.

Anyway, Tim and Chris were at a party last night in Stratford-upon-avon and rather predictably turned up an hour after we arrived Bummer. Oh well, after a fair bit of fafing around we’ve got things going. We’ve now got the drums down for Crocodile, Panda and Elk. Most of the guitar bits are done and we’ve even managed to do a few vocals

Dinner time soon. Robert is cooking us some kind of rice and spiced meat thing. Smells amazing! Tim has bought Superbad, so we’ll no doubt be watching that later on if I’m not too much of a wreck by this evening. I’m just about the only person I know who hasn’t seen it and I’m starting to feel left out with all the various in-jokes and quotes that are doing the rounds amongst all our friends

Anyway, I’ll try and write something more interesting tomorrow (but it probably won’t be)

Stu x

So we’re back in the studio this weekend. We’re going to be working on 4 more songs as well as polishing off the first 9 from the previous session. We’re all pretty excited especially now as we have somehow managed to find enough money to pay for the recording, without bankrupting ourselves.

The weekend after we’ll be returning to the studio to start mixing. I really can’t wait to hear everything mixed properly. We’ve spent so much time and energy working on these songs now. I really hope it all comes good in the end.

We’ve got a bunch of gigs happening once recording is complete. We’ll be playing with some sweet sweet bands in places like Oxford, London, Brighton and er…….Trowbridge It’d be great if some of you could make it out to see us. We’ll no doubt be trying a few new songs out as well as busting out a couple of classics. We really need to start saving again so we can buy a van. At the minute we’re back to 2 cars and considering we’re in the midst of a fuel crisis of sorts it’s getting a bit ridiculous.

Big thank you to everyone who has got in touch about the bass player position. We’re obviously a bit busy at the moment, but we’ll start playing with new people in June. We’ve had a lot of interest from some pretty excellent musicians so competition is fierce(ish). If you’ve ‘applied’ we’ll be in touch soon.

Anywho. See you soon I hope. More news as and when we decide what the hell we’re doing.

Stu x

So we played a gig the other week in Oxford and between soundcheck and first band on, we slipped away to a quiet little pub called the Three Goats Heads in town, with a lovely young lady by the name of Luisa Mateus. She asked us a bunch of questions and recorded the answers. She has since been busy trying to make sense of our witerings and putting them into a readable form. If you’d like to read what she has written, you need only click here.

x