News
Record Store Day single + live shows
Hello Darlings!
Here’s some new news for you…
The Prize 10” Single on Record Store Day
The new Gravenhurst album The Ghost in Daylight is to be released on 30th April. Preceding that, we are releasing a single called The Prize, which will be available exclusively from participating independent record stores on Record Store Day (21st April) as a marbled silver and white 10”, backed with a cover of Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren. To accompany this release, I will perform a solo in-store set at Rise Records in my hometown of Bristol on Record Store Day, from 7pm, as part of a series of special shows around the release of the album – full details below.
The Prize is too long to fit on a 7” single, so we were ‘forced’ to do a 10”, which was all the better as it’s my favourite format and a rare beast.
LIVE ACTION
Friday 20th April: FR, PARIS, Clap Your Hands Festival at Café de la Danse
Parisians will be the first to see the new Gravenhurst ensemble. We will be debuting songs from the new album ‘The Ghost In Daylight’ alongside old favourites. Whilst this show is part of a festival, Gravenhurst is the headline act and will be playing a a full-length set, and there will be one support act. Tickets here
Saturday 21st April: UK, BRISTOL, Rise Records solo in-store set for Record Store Day – 7pm – Free
It will be interesting to see how many people can squeeze into this wonderful shop without damaging any of the exquisite vinyl. I’ll play a solo set, with new backing drones emanating from some new pedals I’ve picked up.
Wednesday 25th April: UK, LONDON, St Pancras Old Church – Sonic Cathedral Presents…a Gravenhurst solo show. **SOLD OUT**
This has now sold out. With this show being promoted by the ever-dependable Sonic Cathedral, I’m being supported by Neil Halstead, which seems a little strange but also wonderful, as a couple of years ago I supported him. As many of you will know, Neil’s a music legend, a massive influence on Gravenhurst, and also a very nice chap. Further support comes from Johnny White of Fairewell.
Friday 27th April: UK, BRISTOL, Grain Barge – Solo show
I’m very happy to say I’ll be playing a Bristol solo launch at the marvellous Grain Barge, an intimate and sonically excellent small venue on the Hotwells waterfront. You can stand really close to me and make a nuisance of yourself, requesting songs you know I won’t be able to play on my own, like I do at War Against Sleep gigs.
Tickets here
Sunday 6th May: UK, BRISTOL, Simple Things Festival, Bristol – Gravenhurst Ensemble show
Buy tickets here
Tuesday 22nd May: UK, LONDON, The Lexington – Gravenhurst Ensemble show, supported by Sweet Lights
**Less than 20 tickets left for this show**
As in Paris we will be playing songs old and songs new, and we are delighted to announce that we will be supported by the fabulous Sweet Lights whose single ‘Endless Town’ is out now on transparent vinyl. We highly recommend you watch the Endless Town video
Tickets: here
And I think that’s just about it for now.
Nick
Special guests for London St Pancras show
We’re very excited to announce that in support at this special London show are very special guest Neil Halstead and a rare solo outing from Johnny White of Fairewell.
That’s Wednesday 25 April for this intimate Gravenhurst solo show at St Pancras Old Church. Very limited capacity and tickets are selling fast.
Buy tickets here
Promoted by Sonic Cathedral:
www.soniccathedral.co.uk
www.facebook.com/soniccathedral.uk
Live dates + Ultraskull back online!
Hello Pop Pickers!
Three very special Gravenhurst shows are coming up, here are the details.
Friday 20th April, Café de la Danse, Paris – Clap Your Hands Festival
If you are fortunate to live in Paris you will be the first to see the new Gravenhurst ensemble. This will be a band show, where we will be debuting songs from the new album ‘The Ghost In Daylight’ alongside old favourites. Whilst this show is part of a festival, Gravenhurst is the headline act and will be playing a a full-length set, and there will one support act. Buy tickets here
Wednesday 25th April, St Pancras Old Church, London – Sonic Cathedral Presents… a Gravenhurst solo show.
This will be a very intimate, one-off solo show in a unique but very limited capacity venue. Only 100 tickets available and you can get them in advance from here
Tuesday 22nd May, The Lexington, London – The Local Presents… The new Gravenhurst Ensemble show.
This is the UK debut for the new band line-up. Like in Paris we will be playing songs old and songs new, and while this is a bigger venue than St. Pancras Old Church, it’s still of limited capacity. Get your tickets here, here or here
…and as you already know, the new Gravenhurst album The Ghost In Daylight will be released on April 30th on Warp Records. Album track ‘The Prize’ is available to listen to now at the Gravenhurst Facebook page.
More live dates and other exciting developments to come…
ULTRASKULL
Ultraskull is back online! We were forced to take it down due to legal action which has now been settled out of court. Basically e said we dun it, but we din do it, and we aint dun nuffink, but e says it like its like we ave done it, and makes out like we ave and makes it sound like we ave, and now everyone finks we ave, and slisiter says we ave to say we dun it when we aint done it just cos it looks like we ave!, and cos in court they will make it look like we totally ave and its not fair. You can read it at the new address here:
http://ultraskull.gravenhurstmusic.com/
Ultraskull – not work safe since 2006!
See you off-piste!
Nick
The Ghost In Daylight
Hello Sailors!
I’m delighted to announce that the new Gravenhurst album The Ghost In Daylight will be released on 30th April 2012 on Warp Records.
Album track ‘The Prize’ is available to listen to now at the Gravenhurst Facebook page.
So what’s the album like? I went back to my old way of using different guitar tunings to come up with new ideas, listening to lots of Richard Thompson and Brian Eno, writing song structures on the guitar, while carving out a sonic space for them by manipulating organs, optigans, mellotrons and synthesizers. I find the divine in drone, dissonance and noise so there is a near-religious amount of controlled chaos beneath the close harmonies and finger-picked guitars. So this album is at once deep in acoustics and heavy in electricity; an emergent contrapuntal sonic phenomenon occupying four to five-dimensional phase-space. It’s a bi-limbic, stereotactic sub-caudate trachtotomy of an album and it’s a real pleasure to finally be able to present it to people who have been waiting so patiently for it for so long.
Over the next few months there will be gig news including a Bristol and London launch party for the album, festival appearances and a European tour. ‘The Ghost In Daylight’ will be performed in a new three-piece ensemble, as a duo, and also select solo shows.
Bye for now folks!
Nick x
The Ghost In Daylight available on CD / gatefold vinyl / download
Pre-order here or here
Bram Stoker Festival
Hello Pop Pickers!
Gravenhurst at the 2011 Bram Stoker International Film Festival, Whitby, England
I was rather surprised to find myself invited to perform at the Bram Stoker Film Festival.
I was even more surprised to discover that I will be playing the Vampire Ball on Saturday 29th October.
The Vampire Ball is described thus:
Consider the Vampire’s Ball an opportunity to dress in your finest evening, club or historic dress! In the past the observed guest attire has included every genre from the gothic scene including old-school Goth, Steampunk, Edwardian, Victorian, Cyberpunk, all the way to black tie and regal ballgowns. To clarify, the Vampire Ball is a formal event and should not be confused with a “costume party”; casual clothes, jeans, T-shirts are not permitted. Guests are encouraged, but not required, to arrive masked. A truly mesmerising night’s entertainment to start this Halloween Weekend in style.
So it looks like I’ll have to dig out the Spiderman costume I wore to my eighth birthday party.
Legend has it that the mist-enshrouded Whitby harbour inspired Bram Stoker to set his vampire novel in Transylvania. Quite how his initial vision of Dracula as a grumpy flat-capped Yorkshireman flying his whippets on a Sunday afternoon slowly galvanised into the enigmatic noble-man of legend remains unclear. There is more historical information here
Perhaps all will be revealed at the festival. There is loads happening including some very interesting horror film premieres. It’s all jolly exciting and I’m really pleased to be given the opportunity to perform and check it all out. See you there…
Nick
Festivals – UK & Sweden, July 2011
Hello folks
Here’s two bits of news. Firstly, a reminder that I will be playing the Caught By The River stage at Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall this coming Sunday 24th July. There are day tickets as well as weekend tickets. Here’s a bit more info on the Caught By The River Stage. This bucolic angling-themed stage is host to a superb line-up of musicians, DJs, speakers and symposia. The Gravenhurst set is at 5.30pm. I hope to see you there.
Port Eliot website here
Port Eliot Facebook page here
En Ljummen I Gräset Festival, Stockholm, Sweden
I’m delighted to be headlining the En Ljummen I Gräset Festival in Stockholm on Saturday 30 July. Babelfish translates “En Ljummen I Gräset” rather unconvincingly as ‘lukewarm in the grass’. I’m sure the Swedish title means more than that. Anyway, I’m headlining at 21.30. I’ve not played Sweden before and I’m looking forward to this very much.
Location: Vintervikens Trädgård, underground station Aspudden, Stockholm
Admission ia SEK 60 (around 6.50 EUR – an absolute bargain).
Festival website here
Festival Facebook page here
Hope you can make one of these shows. I’ll be playing a bunch of new songs.
Keep it desperately real.
Nick
Port Eliot Festival 24th July 2011, plus James Brewster collaboration out now
I will be playing the Port Eliot Festival, St Germans, Cornwall on Sunday 24 July 2011 on the Caught By The River stage. The festival runs from the 21st to the 24th, and both weekend and day tickets are available. Authors and musicians vie for your attention and the list is so impressive you are sure to miss a great deal of what you want to see.
Here is a cool promotional video demonstrating the variety of ingredients that make the festival unique. For some arcane reasons they chose Gravenhurst’s monumental My Bloody Valentine rip-off masterpiece ‘Hollow Men’ as the soundtrack: http://vimeo.com/25126745
Here are some personal recommendations (so if for some peculiar reason of your own you wish to follow me around all weekend you’ll know where I’ll be). I’m not-not-recommending the numerous others, I just don’t really know them. So:
Authors
Helen Walsh, Mick Brown, Sam Bain & Jesse Armstrong, Hari Kunzru, Hanif Kureishi, Jon Ronson, Rosie Boycott, A.C. Grayling, Kevin Sampson, Luke Wright, Caitlin Moran, Matthew de Abaitua, Rob Young, Joe Dunthorne, James Attlee.
Caught By The River
Andrew Weatherall, Jonny Trunk, Hannah Peel, Geoff Travis, Gaggle, Richard King, everyone speaking at the Ghosts Of Gone Birds Symposium, John Andrews
Idler’s Academy (Curated by The Idler’s Tom Hodgkinson, a man who may well be lazier than me).
Music & Cabaret
Laetitia Sadier, Glenn Tilbrook, Ed Harcourt, John Cooper Clarke, Simon Munnery, John Hegley, Guy Pratt
That’s only a small sample of what’s on offer. Check the rest out and get your tickets and further info from www.porteliotfestival.com
Weekend tickets here
Day tickets here
James Brewster album “As A Hovering Insect Mass Breaks Your Fall” featuring Nick Talbot and many more guest vocalists
www.jamesbrewster.com
www.straydogarmy.co.uk/shop.htm
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/as-hovering-insect-mass-breaks/id425101513
I’m delighted to announce my collaboration with James on his new album, ‘As A Hovering Insect Mass Breaks Your Fall’ released on Make Mine Music via Cargo Distribution. Each track features vocals by a different guest singer; I sing vocals on the track ‘Wingbeat Fission’ which we plan to release as a single later in the year.
James Brewster is an English musician, producer and sound explorer currently living in Malmö, Sweden. ‘As a hovering insect mass breaks your fall’ is his fourth solo album, though it is the first to be released under his given name. It is also the first full album he has recorded since moving to Sweden in mid-2006. You may know the music he released under his previous moniker, ‘Mole Harness’.
The new album moves seamlessly between ultra-melodic song-structures, atmospheric sound-design, dense digital processing, spoken word, field recordings, evolving minimalist themes, intricate drum machine rhythms, chiming interlocking guitars and cascades of bells. The minimalist leanings of the first half of the album gradually build towards a more pop-oriented second half.
The range of vocal contributors to the album neatly reflects both stages of Brewster’s musical development thus far. Firstly, his roots in the Bristol DIY scene of the early 2000s – which both inspired him to start making music and nurtured his early sound – and, secondly, the the broadening of influences which resulted from his relocation to Malmö. From the Bristol side we have myself, plus Men Diamler (one of the West Country’s most astonishing live performers) and Suzi Gage (of acclaimed Bristol band You and the Atom Bomb). From further afield comes the Albanian opera singer Egzona Gervalla and Iranian puppet-artist Soodabeh Haaji as well as fellow Englishman Daniel Goody (of Malmö electro-indie-pop band Steel Island).
“a great record… bounces off in all directions you could think of.” Vital Weekly
“strikingly covers an impressive amount of ground” Textura
“a brave, unconventional album” Norman Records
“Brewster is now just as concerned with creating great songs as much as he is to satisfy his thirst for experimentalism.” Leonard’s Lair
PREVIEW THE SONGS HERE
BUY MP3s HERE
BUY THE CD HERE
Cheers!
Nick
STOP PRESS! SATURDAY 12th March: War Against Sleep album launch featuring Gravenhurst & Bronnt + More
CAFE KINO 108 STOKES CROFT • BRISTOL • BS1 3RU
Four acts (Bucky, Hacksaw, Gravenhurst, Bronnt Industries Kapital) will perform short sets including cover versions with a ‘time’ theme… Followed by a solo set from War Against Sleep aka. Duncan Fleming featuring lots of songs from the new album plus some old favourites.
…Please bring along a clock to the event (any kind of clock will do except those on mobile phones, which are disgraceful). We will encourage people to set them to various incorrect times so we can all enjoy a white room full of lovely music and declare time abolished for a short while.
What is the War Against Sleep?
“The Casio-psychosis of a moral dyslexic squeezing out songs like glue to hold himself together. The act of picking cigarette ends off the floor because you like the taste of cheap lipstick. Love crafted from a night in with Teletext and Benylin. A suit, stained with the amphetamine sweat-beads of your worst porno nightmare. A stolen suit, a borrowed suit, a dead man’s suit, a dead-skin mask. Dance with me, you syphilitic tramp. I love you. A silk cravat, a painted rope. Hysterical, literate, blackened by the sun. Pop svengalis pissing blood into bronze buckets. The very idea of a Masterpiece. Ancient orders, first religions, Old Gods. Tascam Porta-7. Sex for small change. Thrillingly lo-fi, absurdly ambitious. Man as blind abacus. Man as performer; touched by the hand of Thoth. Man versus the world; woman as insect. An enormous insect that you want to be eaten by. Eat me: keep me warm. Keep dancing. Did I tell you to stop dancing? Locked in the cellar: We have always been here. Bontempi nights: the moon is in control. Pulling to the sea pulling violently like a green disease from within, ever-living, divine but violated, blind, more to come tonight. In the War Against Sleep winning is not even the issue. It’s the cheating that counts. Now dance, damn you. Dance until you are on fire.” Derek Ultraskull
“Sexy psychedelia” NME
“Gloriously ridiculous stuff” The Wire
“Classic songwriting” Record Collector
“He performs complete wonders” The Big Issue
“War Against Sleep are the audio version of the programmes that used to scare me witless as a child” Rough Trade
www.myspace.com/hacksawbristol
I hope those of you who wish to come are able to in spite of the last minute nature of this notification. I have been ensconced in Toybox studios working on some tracks for the new Gravenhurst album. Distracted, I failed to notice that this gig was looming on saturday and had still not done my part in publicising it at the Gravenhurst end. Apologies. The new War Against Sleep album ‘Versus Time’ will shortly be available on CD from Silent Age Records and for download via Bandcamp. Full details to follow.
Nick
Gravenhurst on tour in Europe & UK, November and December 2010.
Dates Listed below but please go to Myspace or Facebook for full details. The new website is coming soon!
Greetings people of refined taste and discerning proclivities. And hello to the dull, the indifferent and the moronically incurious. And the horrifyingly pointless. All are welcome here.
I am roughly half way through the creation of the next Gravenhurst album. I will however be taking a break from writing and recording in November because Paul Smith of Maximo Park has a solo album coming out and he has invited me to perform as the main the support act on his tour of Europe and the UK, and naturally I said ?F*** yeah?. So here are the dates.
Thursday 4 November, HOLLAND – Amsterdam, Sugar Factory.
Friday 12 November, ITALY – Milan, La Casa 139.
Saturday 13 November, ITALY – Rome, Blackout. Buy tickets
Sunday 14 November, ITALY – Mirano (VE), Moon Club. Tickets on the door only
Tuesday 16 November, SWITZERLAND – Luzern, Bar 59. Buy tickets
Wednesday 17 November, SWITZERLAND – Fribourg, Café de la Fonderie. Buy
tickets
Friday 19 November, SWITZERLAND – Zurich, Plaza. Buy tickets
Saturday 20 November, FRANCE – Paris, Fleche d’Or. Buy tickets
Sunday 21 November, BELGIUM – Brussels, Botanique/Rotonde. Buy tickets
Tuesday 23 November, UK – Southampton, Joiners. Buy tickets
Wednesday 24 November, UK – Oxford, Jericho. Buy tickets here or here
Friday 26 November, UK – Nottingham, Bodega. Buy tickets here or here
Saturday 27 November, UK – Leeds, Brudenell. Buy tickets here or here
Sunday 28 November, UK – Birmingham, Glee Club. Buy tickets
Monday 29 November, UK – Bristol, Thekla. Buy tickets here or here
Wednesday 1 December, UK – London, Bush Hall. SOLD OUT
Thursday 2 December, UK – Manchester, Deaf Institute. SOLD OUT
Friday 3 December, UK – Glasgow, Classic Grand. Buy
tickets
Saturday 4 December, UK – Newcastle, Sage 2. Buy tickets
I will be playing at least four new songs and several old ones, switching between electric and acoustic guitars as quickly as possible and trying to avoid wasting time repeatedly tuning up. I will as ever be accompanied by a number of drone-making electronic devices. I am assured by a reliable source that the Deaf Institute in Manchester is haunted and that three-part harmonies may be provided spontaneously by the resident revenants who are doomed to wander the eternal limbo between the realms of the living and the
dead, unable to rest in peace until they find that f** stereo mini jack to quarter inch patch lead that some c*** from the support band accidentally-on-purpose wandered off with after a gig that ended in disaster when part of the building collapsed, trapping the group of singers back stage for three days over the course of which they were driven insane by a monumentally pedantic sound engineer. By the time rescue workers reached them they had smeared the walls with their excrement and eaten their own eyes before finally strangling themselves to death with XLR cables. The sound engineer was found unharmed, lucid, and fervently espousing his position on the problem of phase cancellation in applications involving multiple microphone placements.
Hope to see you there.
Nick
