4.52am Issue: 028 6th April 2017 Future Islands

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Welcome
Welcome to Issue 028
Another week already, who would have
thought it?
This time around we have the wonderful
Future Islands who release their album this
week and glory good it be too.
On the guitar front there are Harmony
Guitars old and new, pickups from Mojo
Pickups and we continue our
Paisleyification of out Telemaster Jr in the
DIY stakes, and have decided that an old
purple Les Paul Jr that is down on its luck
needs a bit of a make-over.
As for the music, great stuff from
Kamikaze Girls, A Certain Ratio, the
brilliant Electus, Black Grape and so much
more.
Have a fine week..
All at 4.52am

Contents
FUTURE ISLANDS
HARMONY H44 STRATOTONE
HARMONY H49 JUPITER STRATOTONE
DIY PAISLEY GUITAR - DEUX
MOJO PICKUPS HERSHEY BAR
MOJO PICKUPS P90 SOAPBAR GOLD FOIL
PURPLE JR RESURRECTION
KAMIKAZE GIRLS
ELECTUS
BLACK GRAPE
FREEZE THE ATLANTIC
THE HANGNAILS
A CERTAIN RATIO
BAD BREEDING
SPRINTERS
CHRIS REA

FUTURE ISLANDS
The Far Field
We spent a bit of time a few weeks ago
looking back at all of those traditionally
cool bands 4AD have shared with the
world and asked the question whether, all
of these years later, the label could still
deliver the goods. The answer was yes,
as whilst many of their contemporaries
have been happy to mine the rich seams
of nostalgia and heritage, 4AD have
continued to find, develop and share
some quite wonderful bands and music.
An excellent example of this are Future
Islands, who released their first album for
4AD a couple of years ago (although their
fourth album to that point), ‘Singles’
which proved to be both a critical and
artistic triumph. The release this week of
‘The Far Field’ was something that
particular caused some excitement in this
neck of the woods.
If you haven’t heard Future Islands
before, ‘The Far Field’ is the perfect
introduction to their lo-fi synth sound and
laid back vocals. Musically it reminds me
of the (apologies to the cool kids) Brian
Eno/U2 collaboration ‘Passengers’ with its
sense of air and wide-eyed beauty, and
yet it is still perfectly able to dive in to the
specifics with a vocal performance from
Samuel T. Herring that is never less than
perfectly observed. His vocals recall
Stuart A Staples at his most detached
lounge lizard but then there is also a
reflection of ‘Spirit of Eden’ era Mark
Hollis frailty and pain beneath the
dead-eyed rancour. There is a strength
though, this isn’t music for victims,
there is a lot more going on than that.
Saying all of that, it is the duet with a
certain Ms. Debbie Harry, ‘Shadows’
that will capture all of the attention.
This is something that so easily could
have been put out thirty years ago
under the This Mortal Coil moniker, but
here it is simple perfect with both Harry
and Herring capturing a mood
beautifully.
I am more than a little in love with the
waves of frost-bitten sound Gerrit
Welmers coaxes from his synth
collection, whilst William Cashion
provides some of the most obliquely
beautiful bass lines I’ve heard in years.
A genius of subtlety.
The album itself was recorded by
Grammy Winning Producer John
Congleton at Los Angeles’ legendary
Sunset Sound, where everyone from

The Beach Boys to Prince have laid down
masterpieces, and he has helped the
band – not a little supported by the
fantastic strings and horns arranged by
Patrick McMinn – create a rich tapestry
of music that feels like velvet in your
inner ear.
This album is, like the band itself, many
things and you will only really begin to
capture, to understand half of what is
going on with repeated plays and a note
book by your side. A quite exceptional
album from a beatific band.
You can find the album HERE
Future Islands are touring in the UK,
April 27 – GLASGOW, Barrowlands
April 28 – LEEDS, The Refectory At Leeds
University
April 29 – LIVERPOOL, O2 Academy
April 30– BRIGHTON, Dome
May 2 – NOTTINGHAM, Rock City
May 3 – BRISTOL, O2 Academy
July 1 – CAMBRIDGE, Junction
August 17-20 – BRECON BEACONS,
Green Man Festival

HARMONY H44 STRATOTONE
Vintage Quirk
We thought it would be interesting to
compare something old and something
new this week, an approach we want to
do more of, given the number of reissues
that seem to be around in recent times,
and where better to start than with an old
Harmony guitar.
Harmony, as a company had been around
since 1892, but it wasn’t until the 1950s
Rock ‘n’ Roll boom that guitars took over
from ukuleles and mandolins as their
biggest sellers. From the start they were
always intended to be cheap, mass
market instruments – the thing people
bought from chain stores rather than the
handcarved masterpieces people like
Gibson were making or the workhouses
Fender produced that were aimed at
professional musicians. Either way,
before long their earlier electric guitar
models were selling by the truckload –
250,000 ‘units’ each year, and being very
much a business rather than a ‘lifestyle
brand’ Harmony were happy to ship them
out with whatever name their customers
wanted on the headstocks. So, we see
Harmonys as Airline, Valencia, and even
Fender at different points in time, and
depending on the chain of stores they
were to be sold through.
The H44 Stratotone was the simplest
and most popular of the company’s
solid body models, with features that
now you are more likely to find in the
upper levels of boutique, such as a
through neck design with wings
attached, a beautiful copper finish and
a single ‘Hershey Bar’ pickup that
sounded like nothing else out there.
And if you are wondering why it is that
these old Harmony guitars seem to be
going for such high prices these days,
it has a lot to do with the often
wonderful pickups that the guitars
were supplied with. These don’t sound
like something from Fender or Gibson,
which for years was seen as a bad
thing, but in recent times the quality
and sheer different selection of tones
the Harmony pickups, which were
often made by DeArmond, offer to
guitarists has created a whole new
appreciation for the guitars that goes
beyond people buying ‘junkers’ to
harvest the pickups for other guitars.
You can find out about the variety of
original models at the exhaustive
Harmony Database web site, HERE

HARMONY H49 JUPITER
STRATOTONE
Modern Quirk
As with many similar companies, the
Harmony brand has over the last few
decades been owned by a variety of
companies and used to sell guitars at
many levels of quality and price.
Thankfully in 2009, the Westheimer
Corporation became the latest owners
and rather than simply rebadge existing
models they went the route of recreating
some of Harmony’s best known guitars
from the ground up, but with the modern
player in mind as well as such steps
forward as playability and quality control.
The H49 Jupitar is perhaps the closest to
the single pickup H44 although with it
they have gone for a Gold Foil style
pickup rather than the Hershey Bar of the
original. This is a beautiful looking guitar
although what hits you first is that the
neck is a lot slimmer than the original
models enjoyed. Whether that suits you
or not is a matter of personal taste, but I
think it is fair to say that it gives the guitar
a different, lighter, tone and perhaps
slightly less sustain.
In terms of the specification, neck apart,
Harmony have done a fantastic job of
creating something that very much could
have come off the production line in the
mid-1950s.
The specification is,
BODY: Spruce Top/ Maple
NECK: Maple
FINGERBOARD: Rosewood
PICKUP: Harmony Gold Foil
CONTROLS: 2 Volume, 2 Tone , 1
Blend, 3-Way Selector
BRIDGE: Floating Adjustable Wood
FRETS & SCALE: 20F, 24 1/8
MACHINE HEAD: Kluson Tuners
HARDWARE: Chrome
COLOR: Natural
I have to say I only got to play the
Jupiter for an hour, but had already
fallen in love with it. There is an
element of the Danelectro about it –
the quirkiness rather than the feel –
that is plain old fashioned grininspiring,
and the sound of the Gold
Foils, whilst maybe not quite as rich as
the originals or those of some of the
boutique builders out there, are
definitely an antidote to the usual
Strat/Tele/Les Paul torpor.
Find out more HERE

DIY PAISLEY GUITAR - DEUX
Body Talk
Following on from our previous missive,
the story so far was that the front of our
rather dashing-looking Telemaster Jr had
taken on a paisley coloured hue, thanks
to the rapid Mod Podging of some lovely
paisley fabric to its top. This we then
coated a few times which has the effect
of turning the material ‘plastic’.
Nobody expected what came next!
Actually, that isn’t true as it is obvious,
that we would take a very sharp knife and
cut out the cavity holes.
If you are doing this yourself, the secret
is to pull the blade at an angle through
the fabric, and pull the cloth itself as tight
as you can once you have started working
around the cavity. Or you can just chop it
if you prefer and let it fall as it does.
In terms of the fabric itself, you very
much have a choice between making it
smooth and making it wrinkled around
the edges so that it still looks like fabric.
This is really down to what you are trying
to achieve. If you are aiming for
something closer to Fender’s original
glossy paisleys, smooth is the key, whilst
personally I’ve always liked the fabric to
at least look a bit like fabric at the end of
it all. For the Jr – we’ve gone for a few
folds and wrinkles around the edges
and I have to say I think it looks all the
better for it.
So, the top is done, apart from that
we’ll varnish or lacquer it later, so we
turned our attention to the back and
repeated the process. I won’t bore you,
it is exactly the same as last time.
Where it gets more interesting is
around the edges where you need to
take some time to get it exactly as you
like it. Again it is a case of it depending
on what you want. I like to cut close to
the edges and cut Vs in the fabric
around the edges and then fill any
gaps. If instead you are dead-set on
the pattern flowing all around, it can be
done but be prepared for some angst
along the way.
Once the back and sides are dry, the
neck pocket and rear cavity need
uncovering and apart from the lacquer,
the job is done.
At this point – pre-lacquer, I like to
mock it up to see how things are fitting
together. So far so good.
Next then we’ll leave the body alone as
the neck is looking anaemic, time to do
something about that.

MOJO PICKUPS HERSHEY BAR
Harmony Central
If there is one pickup winder that has
done more to research, analyse, recreate
and promote the pickups of the
past than Marc Ransley of Mojo Pickups,
I really can’t think of them. Over the last
few years he has single-handedly
redefined the types of pickups we use in
our guitars with his development of the
perfect Gold Foil pickup – and yes, other
people make them too, but nobody can
touch him when it comes to attention to
detail and the perfection of the tone and
response his pickups seem to have.
It isn’t just Gold Foil Pickups that Marc
has reinvigorated though, there are many
other types of pickups that he had
brought back from the dead. His
development of the classic Lap Steel
Pickups are creating a market in their
own right that goes far beyond the fans
of Ry Cooder and one of my favourite
pickups of all is his take on the classic
Mosrite single coil. One of them at the
bridge of a Jazzmaster is god’s own
combination.
As for the Kay Speedbump, well, you can
see I’m a fan.
All of which means that over the last few
years, when Mr Ransley tells me he has
something new on the horizon, I tend
to start planning the guitar I’ll build
around it, and in the case of his
recreation of the harmony Hershey Bar
pickup, I’ve already got plans, as you’ll
find out soon enough.
As with everything Marc does, this was
never going to see the light of day until
it was a perfect reproduction, tin can
and all, and in terms of its specification
it might as well be the real thing:
• Reproduction of the
Stratotone® / H-44 nicknamed
the Hershey bar.
• The magnets have been cloned
from original magnets and are
wound with the correct gauge
wire.
• Low output 3.8K.
• Vintage correct sized 77.5 x
27mm and approx 7mm tall.
This is a pickup with a sound of it’s own
and would work in a semi-acoustic just
as well as at the neck of a Telecaster
or bridge of a Les Paul Jr.
Find out more HERE

MOJO SOAPBAR GOLD FOIL
Never Believe It’s Not So
Following on from the Hershey Bar, I
wanted to have another look at the Mojo
Pickups Goldfoil, not because I haven’t
droned on about them before, I’m sure I
have countless times, but because I have
decided that I need to pimp a guitar that
is a little down on its look, and this is all
about writing a wrong.
A while back I put together a Les Paul Jr
and rather than use a P90 at the bridge,
I instead used a Mojo Pickups Teisco
Style Gold Foil pickup. This worked
brilliantly, but as is the way of things, I
swapped it for an amp, then sold the amp
to buy something far less interesting or
cool.
Anyway, ever since then I’ve felt that a
Gold Foil in the simplest of simple
mahogany guitars is a marriage made in
heaven, and I’ve wanted to repeat the
trick.
I won’t go into the history of the Gold Foil
all over again, but one thing I’ve always
been impressed with as far as Mojo
Pickups goes, is Marc Ransley’s ability to
manage to recreate something classic,
but not just stop there and instead mould
it into a variety of shapes and sizes.
This has meant that whilst I still love
the Metal Mickey Teisco look, I also
have had Jazzmaster sized Gold Foils,
Filter’tron shaped and humbuckersized
too. However, seeing Marc’s P90
soapbar version, just flipped something
for me, and that is definitely the way
I’m going with the Junior pimping we’ll
look at over the coming weeks.
Now the only problem I have is in
deciding whether to go for Gold Foil or
Silver Foil. I don’t mind admitting I buy
with my eyes quite often, but only after
my ears have done the biz.
Check them out for yourself HERE

PURPLE JR RESURRECTION
Pimping My Ride
Sometimes guitars go together
beautifully. Sometimes they seem to
linger and then even when you are
convinced all is well apart from a little
tweak, it slowly dawns on you that there
is something fundamentally not quite
right.
The Violent Chameleon One is such a
guitar, on the face of it, it was perfect.
Some beautiful woodwork, superlative
paint, the best of everything in terms of
the parts, but whatever we did the action
wouldn’t go quite low enough, or rather
the Dogear P90 was always just that bit
too high for everything to work perfectly.
Anyway, long and short of it was that we
needed to use a Soapbar P90, but the
holes for the dogear had made a mess.
The only P90 I had was suffering from a
plastic cover that looked as though it was
an offcut from a 1950s artificial limb, and
to be totally honest I lost heart and stuck
it in its case in the cupboard for a year or
so.
It is all about motivation, dah-ling.
Anyway, looking at the Mojo Pickups P90
Soapbar Gold Foils this week inspired me
to dig out the Purple ‘un and give it
another chance. How bad could it be,
after all? It was always destined to be
a brilliant guitar. Time to stop
stropping.
So over the next few weeks, I thought
I’d get myself some Mojo Gold, have a
go at sorting out the damage to the
finish, oh and do something about the
way the wraparound bridge has started
to lean forward (we had to top wrap to
get the strings to go over the pickup
cover – so help me) and then, perhaps
revisit some of the other bits.
We’ll have a pimping project and
hopefully we can stage an intervention,
make something sweet after all. It is
too pretty to leave forgotten.

KAMIKAZE GIRLS
Berlin
One of the bands we looked at early on
in 4.52am quickly turned into one of my
favourite bands of all – the rather dishy
Kamikaze Girls.
They are just brilliant, I gushed, and
continue to do so.
Anyway, I was made up this week to find
out that they have been signed-up by one
of the coolest labels out there, Big Scary
Monsters Records, who will have the
honour of releasing the band’s debut
album, “Seafoam” in June of this year.
I don’t want to be pushy, but you can preorder
it HERE. Just saying, like.
To celebrate all of this, they have just
released a fantastic new single, ‘Berlin’
which sets the bar high.
Commenting on the album, vocalist
Lucinda Livingstone says: “Coming off
tour in November 2016 without a penny
to our name and nothing on the other
side of the airport was tough. It was quite
a low few months for me as I didn't have
a steady place to live and we just had the
album recording looming over us. I was
driving myself crazy most days. We had a
good routine on tour and it was just all
lost. A lot of Seafoam is written from that
perspective, just being in a hole with
nowhere to go, feeling a bit numb to
everything I guess.”
2017 Tour dates:
28th April - DIY Pop Fest, London
23rd April - Hyde Park Book Club,
Leeds
6th May - Deadpunk Fest, Bristol
20th May - Great Escape Festival
3rd June - Matrix Bar, Grimsby
10th June - Gullivers, Manchester
20th June - Conroy’s Basement -
Dundee
21st June - Edinburgh - Bannermans
22nd June - Wharf Chambers, Leeds
23rd June - The Smokehouse, Ipswich
24th June - Sebright Arms, London
25th June - White Lion, Watford
26th June - The Alex, Southampton
27th June - The Hope & Ruin,
Brighton
28th June - Edge of the Wedge
29th June - Buffalo, Cardiff
6-8th July - 2000 Trees Festival
21st-23rd July - Truck Festival
27th July - The Adelphi, Hull
Find out more HERE

ELECTUS
Ticket To Nowhere
Much as it always goes against the grain
for a Baggie boy to praise anything from
the dark side – Wolverhampton, that is –
for Electus I find myself having to make
an exception to one of my own scarlet
lines, as ‘Ticket To Nowhere’, the first
single from their debut album ‘Rock n Roll
Incarnate Part One’ is many kinds of
brilliant.
Electus ae something of a rarity these
days, a good, hard rock band of the old
school, so if you like heavy riffs, brilliant
(and I mean that – brilliant vocals) some
awesome lead guitar and songs that are
up there with Led Zeppelin, Megadeth
and even Kiss, this is tailor made for you.
It is the quality of the songs though that
makes them stand out and why they are
surely destined for the big leagues.
They have a number of dates coming up,
although I don’t think I’ll be risking the
first of them as it is on the wrong side of
the tracks. Your experience may be
different.
Do check them out, they are a quite
brilliant band of the type that they only
seem to develop in the Midlands, these
are what Black Country Communion
should have sounded like.
Find out more, HERE
See ELECTUS!! Live on their UK Tour
Starting –
8th April 2017 at -The Slade Rooms,
Wolverhampton for the MAYOR FEST
2017
Some other shows of note are –
30th April - Roadhouse, Birmingham
5th July - Robin 2, Wolverhampton
3rd December - The Arches, Coventry
for Winterfest 2017

BLACK GRAPE
Hope & Glory Festival
I must admit I’ve never quite gotten my
head around the idea of secret gigs,
especially when I get press releases
about them, but as they go it doesn’t get
much cooler than Black Grape playing off
Piste on the eve of the ‘Boutique’ Hope
and Glory Festival, in Liverpool in August.
To explain,
“Liverpool’s brand new boutique festival
HOPE & GLORY has announced BLACK
GRAPE as the first act to play at the free
gig for early bird ticket holders on Friday
4th August. The band features Happy
Mondays star Shaun Ryder, who says the
band are, “Really looking forward to
playing HOPE and GLORY festival in
Liverpool. Always a pleasure to nip down
the Lancs!”
The concert will be taking place the
Friday night before the festival weekend
begins, in the stunning St George’s Hall,
in the heart of Liverpool. Access to this
very special show – with a secret line-up
– was available only to the first 1,200
ticket buyers for the HOPE & GLORY
festival as an extra-special bonus for
early purchases.
With reaction to the festival proving
unprecedentedly strong and tickets sales
soaring following the huge full
weekend line-up announcement, the
first 1,200 tickets sold out straight
away. The only way now for fans to get
their hands on tickets for the Friday
night show will be by entering the
exclusive competition to be in with a
chance of winning one of 10 pairs of
tickets.
To enter fans must simply ‘like’ and
‘share’ the event on the HOPE & GLORY
Facebook page and ‘follow’ and
‘retweet’ the competition post on their
Twitter. Those people already holding
tickets for the free early bird secret
show also have the chance of taking
more friends with them, or enjoying a
free bottle of champagne at the
festival, by getting involved in sharing
the event details across their social
media.”
Sounds cool to me.
To order a ticket, visit HERE

FREEZE THE ATLANTIC
Altogether Not Together
We’ve talked about how good Freeze The
Atlantic are a few times now, but their
third album, ‘The People Are Revolting’ is
due to be released on the 14 th of April and
to celebrate they have shared the third
single from it, ‘Altogether Not Together’
and if that isn’t a good enough excuse to
share their new video, well I don’t know
what is. They are wicked (and playing
Bristol – really must get out there this
time.)
Anyway, the video is quite special, a
fantastic animation, as FTA vocalist Liv
Puente explains,
“I saw a documentary last year about the
unbelievably dangerous journeys
refugees take across Europe out of sheer
desperation for theirs and their children's
safety, something that any of us would
do. This inspired the lyrics for ‘Altogether
Not Together’ and later the video
concept. I thought straight away of our
good friend Kyle Webster of Chog Zoo
Animation Studio. He's a super talented
animation artist who worked previously
on videos for Oceansize frontman and
Biffy Clyro touring guitarist Mike
Vennart's solo project. What he came out
with exceeded all our expectations and
perfectly visualises the song as a whole.”
The band hit the road in April 2017 on
a run of headline dates in support of
the new record, which is already being
championed by the likes of Rock
Sound, Upset and Kerrang! Magazine.
The People Are Revolting is released
14th April 2017.
You can Pre-order it HERE and it is well
worth checking out.
April 2017 UK Tour Dates:
12.04 - Birmingham – Sunflower
Lounge
13.04 - Glasgow - Nice N’ Sleazy
14.04 - Nottingham – Bodega
15.04 - London - The Borderline
16.04 - Bristol - The Louisiana

AND THE HANGNAILS
DOG
An album we have already decided is one
of the best of 2017, is coming from the
Hangnails on the 12 th of May and you
really need to get it sorted.
If you have missed And The Hangnails,
they are simply put one of the best,
coolest, loudest and plain old ‘proper’
bands around. 2011’s album ‘Loud as
Fuck Rock Music’ just about covers it
perfectly.
If Punk is your aesthetic but proper songs
are what gets in your head, these chaps
are for you as despite being a two-piece,
they are massive soundwise yet in there
somewhere there is a subtlety that you
would never imagine. There is a real craft
about their songs that a Crowded House
or Squeeze would admire, whilst the
pulse never drops below 180.
The new album, And The Hangnails' 4th
full length, was recorded at Red City
Recording Studios in Manchester by
David Radahd-Jones.
"DOG is a word we used to describe the
general overriding feeling we had whilst
writing this album." says guitarist, Martyn
Fillingham. "It was a feeling of being
pretty disenfranchised with everything.
Underwhelmed and pretty unenergized
and disappointed. DOG was always a
word we used to mean a bit scruffy, or
rough or hungover. I guess we were
feeling a bit hungover from our last
record. It was weird to feel
unenthusiastic yet come out with some
of the most energetic and most fun
sounding songs to date."
Best of all, guitarist Martyn builds and
designs his own guitars.
HE IS YOUR BROTHER.
Without a doubt you really need to
check these chaps out and hopefully
we can get some time with them to see
what it is all about before the album
launches. Brilliant band, top music,
jobs a good ‘un. Go find them HERE

A CERTAIN RATIO
Discography
You have to admire Mute Records at the
moment. Not only are they releasing
some of the coolest, most interesting
music around with the likes of Swans and
Mick Harvey, but they are also hoovering
up some of the best music from previous
decades and producing expansive plans
for exceptional reissue programmes.
The latest to go this route are the
criminally underrated (at the time
anyway) A Certain Ratio, who over their
careers produced some of the most
interesting albums of the ’80s and ‘90s.
To celebrate the band are playing a
handful of dates,
LIVE DATES
25 May - UK, Liverpool Sound City
24 June - UK, London Venue 229
1 July - IT, Foligno Dancity
3 Aug - NL, Amsterdam Dekmental
Albums that will be released as part of
the project, are:
The Graveyard And The Ballroom
(1980)
To Each (1981)
Sextet (1982)
I’d Like To See You Again (1982)
Force (1986)
Good Together (1989)
ACR:MCR (1990)
Up In Downsville (1992)
Change The Station (1997)
Mind Made Up (2008)
As the band said,
“A Certain Ratio & Mute = Good
Together. We are looking forward to
our new found partnership with Mute,
a label whose DNA, like ours, is ALL
ABOUT THE MUSIC.”
You can listen to the band’s ‘4 Tracks’
HERE

BAD BREEDING
An End To Silence
It is a truism that grave times breed great
art, and like the 1970s lead to Punk and
then New Wave, our current situation is
having the same effect upon musicians
and artists alike. As ever it will only be in
the decades to come that we can see who
really stands tall and speaks the kind of
truth we all need to hear, but if anybody
is looking likely to prove to be a Clash for
the Brexit Generation it is without a doubt
Bad Breeding who, in Jake Farrell have a
talented collaborator and politically
astute voice who can see through the
crap and tell it exactly as it is.
And the band’s new album is packed with
this level of understanding, whilst
remaining one of the best and most
energetic Punk albums in decades.
As the band explains,
"Divide was put together a couple of
months after the EU referendum and
particular parts of the record sought to
make sense of the confusion and
misdirection that was so prevalent last
summer. In some ways it’s an attempt to
resist the impulse to collapse under the
weight of perpetual distortion packaged
by certain sections of the British media,
but at times we simply found ourselves
instinctively lashing out in
bewilderment at what was unravelling
around us: the division and derision of
certain sections of society, the
enablement of xenophobia and the
continued manipulation of workingclass
identity by politicians and press
organisations alike. There are obviously
some overtly political points being
discussed on the record, although last
year presented moments of pretty
difficult personal trauma for us too and
there are a few songs on the record
that try to deal with those things."
This is an important album from a band
very much ready to explode in every
sense. You really need to listen to this
one, and then think about the world
you want to live in, not just the one you
are being told you are going to be
spoon fed.
Sometimes bands reflect their times,
and others they define them. It is that
important.
Find out more HERE

SPRINTERS
Figure It Out
An album to look forward to for all Indie
fans in May is set to be released by
Manchester’s Sprinters, and it is one that
we feel will prove to be seriously cool.
The band is the brainchild for Neil Jarvis
and lines up as with Jon Hodson (bass),
Mark Stevenson (drums) and Jason
Hughes (guitar).
To celebrate the news of the album, the
band are releasing their first single from
it, ‘Figure It Out’ which is a hazy and
beautiful song that leaves you in all kinds
of tingles. The guitar work is exemplary,
reminding me of Johnny Marr and/
Bernard butler with a little Leo Rockfort
and Neil Young on the side.
Recording the album was all new to the
band though, as Neil Jarvis explains,
It took a lot longer than planned (just
over a year). At one point it was almost
the death of the band: I became very
meticulous on how I wanted it to sound.
It was my first time in a studio and I
didn't like not having full control of the
sound. Before then I'd record at home on
a 4 track which really was all I was
familiar with. Things got a bit tense. We
ended up re-recording lots of songs
which probably didn't even need redoing.
We then spent a good while
mixing it. Luckily, the engineer Ste
Jones is one the funniest people we
know, and kept the vibe light with his
obscene humour. We spent most of the
sessions joking around and it made it
much more bearable.”
You can listen to Figure It Out HERE
and Pre-order the album THERE.
Some forthcoming dates, are:
The band will be playing the following
shows across the UK:
April 7th - Alma Inn, Bolton
April 26th - Star & Garter, Manchester
May 5th - Sprinters Album Launch - The
Castle, Manchester
May 12th - New Continental - Preston
May 13th - Brock N Broll, Chorley
May 28th - Snooty Fox Club - Wakefield

CHRIS REA
Road To Hell
If a song name has ever better fitted the
zeitgeist, I can’t think of it right now, as
today’s choice from La Contessa D’Jook
sees her channel her inner guitar hero
and take us on the Road To Hell with Mr
Rea as driver.
The long version of this song is
particularly special and for all those
guitarists out there that are sniffing
‘Knopfler’ you really should have
another listen and then as Chris says
himself, go and get an education and
listen to JJ Cale like he and Mark did
back in the day.
This is a brilliant song, and one that will
stay with you, if only you’ll let it.