What have we done?!
Hi guys, we looked back at our diaries and realised that 2012 had been a big year for us so we thought we’d have a look back and see what hijinks we’d gotten up to.
Our EP
We kicked off the year with our Debut EP - Songs & Shadows, which we had spent the end of last year recording at the lovely FIsh Factory Studios in Willesden Green. It was a great feeling to get people we loved into a studio and to spend a whole weekend just doing what we want to do forever.
European Tour
This was our first go at touring and it was pretty intense! We played in five different countries in ten days, met a lot of wonderful people and played in some great venues. We did it because we wanted to see some old friends and thought “why not combine that with gigging as well?”. You can see some photos and read more about it here.
Amazing gigs
We’ve played some great gigs through the year and had a lot of fun doing it too. We played in the gardens at the Gallery Cafe in boiling sunshine, in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden as part of the Urban Meadow Festival and in a mini big top at the London Orchard Festival. We also played to 7,000 scouts from around the world on the biggest stage we’ve ever played on at the Essex International Scout Jamboree, and got to play in the Palm Court at Alexandra Palace for their Summer Sessions.
LFF Presents…
Late last year we had had enough of trying to play gigs in the regular haunts with mismatched bands of varying quality and decided to set up our own nights. This started with the original “Light Up The Night” last December and we haven’t looked back. We put on two shows this year - Heartstrings and Music & Meadows - and they were great fun. We were able to ask friends of ours to play (Sea Stacks, Bleeding Heart Narrative, George Frakes and Union Starr so far…) so everyone got to see stuff that was actually good rather than submit to the lottery of band nights.
Germany Tour
Having had such a great time touring Europe in Spring, we decided to go back in Autumn but this time just to go around one country instead of five. We went back to some places we played before and found some new places to explore as well. Every gig went brilliantly and we were given such a great reception, Cafe Galao even baked a cake for Charlie for our gig there on his birthday! We also sold all the EPs we took with us, just in time to start on the new one. You can read more about it here.
The Perfect End
We finished the year having one of our tracks - Here & Now - played on Tom Robinson’s 6Music mixtape and his evening show. We’re very happy to have been picked and hope this is the start of things to come.
We’ve also been back at the Fish Factory to start recording our second EP, Journey, which we’re very excited about and looking forward to getting to you all as soon as we can. More news on that will follow soon.
Light Up The Night 2!
It’s back! Having had such fun last year we’re doing it again!
Light Falls Forward presents Light Up The Night at The Boogaloo – an evening of music and light to raise money for Crisis. The bands will play in darkness lit only by the light the audience brings so bring torches, head torches, lanterns, phones, keylights… whatever you have to light up the night.
With a line up of great London bands, all featured on BB6 Radio recently as part of Tom Robinson’s Mixtape series, starting with the beautiful harmonies of The Paper Shades, followed by the cinematic sounds of Sea Stacks and finishing with Light Falls Forward playing our mix of acoustic folk together with a string quartet.
It’s free entry but we are asking for donations to raise money for Crisis so please give whatever you can on the night. There will be mince pies baked by the bands on sale too to raise more money.
Doors open at 7pm and music starts at 7.30. Come and celebrate 2012 and a great cause before heading home for Christmas.
The Paper Shades – 7.30pm
Sea Stacks – 8.30pm
Light Falls Forward – 9.30pm
The Boogaloo. 312 Archway Road, N6 5AT, nearest tube Highgate.
Germany Tour November 2012
Hello! We wanted to share a few of the highlights from our recent Germany tour at the start of November with you. We had such a great time in Germany during our mini Europe tour in April, we decided to go back there and play more. This time we started in Berlin, the city that never sleeps…
Our gig there was on a boat called the Floating Lounge moored on the River Spree, a hangout for Erasmus students where one half was a hostel and the other half a bar. It had a lovely laid-back feel and we played alongside a jazz/blues local guitarist called Frederico who let us borrow his amp for the night - we couldn’t quite manage to carry that with us or afford Easyjet’s extra luggage charges! We met a lovely fan there called Rachael who had seen us play in Essex randomly and tried out a few new cover songs we’d been working on - Old Man by Neil Young, Walk The River by The Guillemots, Timshel by Mumford & Sons and a beautiful track called Another Language, by Lamb (quite appropriate given the international audience). After our gig, we celebrated with a few beers and discovered that Berlin really doesn’t sleep… we found ourselves still chatting away at 6.30 the next morning in a full bar that showed no signs of closing!
Next stop was Bonn and the Folk Club, where we played before in April. We had such a great time there that we knew we had to go back and they gave us another warm welcome. It’s so much fun to play there with a great audience and there’s always so much variety in the acts playing. Alongside us we had a jazz duo, a classical guitarist, a local singer-songwriter, a 9-piece choir and the host, John, doing delta blues. We broke a new record for the number of CDs sold at a gig too, thanks in part to John’s persuasive salesmanship… we should take him with us everywhere! You can read more about the gig on the 3 Songs Bonn website run by Folk Club photographer and blogger John Hurd - thank you John for the great review!
We were very excited about the next gig, our very first House Concert with Naomi’s good friends Anke and Phillip. We stayed with them in April and played a few songs on their piano and from that, the idea for a house concert was born! They had invited lots of friends and family along and we played to a packed-out living room, with great wine and food. The highlight for us was that Philipp, a very talented cellist, agreed to accompany us so our second set was as a trio. It sounded so beautiful, we resolved to find local string players on our next tour so that we can always have strings in our set. We hope to have some video footage of that concert to share on here soon.
After a well earned break in Düsseldorf, we arrived in Stuttgart to play at Cafe Galao, a venue we visited in April and some of our friends (Max & Laura and Benni Benson) had recommended to us as a great place to play. It was amazing and we loved it even though the complete silence of the audience hanging on every note was slightly terrifying to start with! It was a great way to celebrate Charlie’s birthday - the cafe owner Reiner is a lovely man who makes you feel at home, they had made Charlie a cake and we were fed and wined all evening. We played a 1.5 hour set and got asked for an encore… luckily we had saved 2 songs just in case as we’d played everything we knew, so it’s time to write more songs! We stayed on to the early hours chatting to some lovely people in the audience and resolved to return there again too in Summer.
The last stop on the tour was a venue called O-Ton in Mannheim that has a policy of only putting on local bands, but they decided to make an exception for us and we’re very glad they did as it was the perfect way to end the tour. It looks like more of a rock/punk venue but the sound was great and the other bands playing all fitted together perfectly. We opened the night with our best set yet, followed by a fun 3-piece band called Brit Girl Abroad that also sing in English, fronted by Kate Dowle from Hertfordshire who now lives in Germany. The headline band - called Solonela - were a great 6-piece with violin, double bass and cahon playing catchy songs with lovely melodies, ending the night on a high. We sold the last few of our CDs and enjoyed a last few beers before trying to get some sleep as we had an early train back to Berlin to catch our plane home. We arrived back in London 10 days later shattered but happy and ready to go into studio on 25th to record our next EP so we can tour that next summer!
Germany!
We’re on our way back to Germany in the Autumn and we can’t wait! We’re still finalising details but we thought we’d share the dates we have at the moment! It’ll see us returning to Folk Club Bonn and Cafe Galao and playing a more extensive house concert in Krefeld with cello accompaniment.
31st October Berlin Spree Boat Party
2nd November Bonn Folk Club Bonn
3rd November Krefeld House Concert
7th November Stuttgart Cafe Galao
8th November Mannheim O-ton Club
If you’re around or know someone who is then come along to a show. It’d be great to see you there.
guardianmusic:
THE TUBE MAP AS AN ACTUAL RADIO
Apparently this was made by Yuri Suzuki (artist-in-residence at the Design Museum) and is fully-working. Amazing. CS
(via london-underground.blogspot.co.uk)
We think this is amazing! It’s a tube map as a working radio. It was designed by Yuri Suzuki at the Design Museum.
Here’s a lovely review of the Under the Influence night we played at the Boogaloo a couple of weeks ago!
