As someone who doesn’t like to listen to their own songs much, I am finding Footsteps almost too listenable! This is absolutely a good sign, right?

But we haven’t been sitting about, no. We’ve been cooking up a whole batch of new songs and, as I write, Tim is putting the finishing touches on the three that we recorded at the weekend. Expect to see some activity on our MySpace page soon.

Here is the key information: Entry is FREE until 8pm, and £5 thereafter. So, come early.

More info at the Notting Hill Arts Centre website.

Please come and see us, and say hello!

We’ve been busy moving, writing new songs, being played on Radio 1, knitting, playing gigs, buying old keyboards and going to ATP.

Have you got your tickets for The High Llamas at the Whitechapel Gallery yet? We have. See you there.

Tuesday 1st April
HEAD & ARM
More a continually evolving collective than a band, ‘NOW’ claim to make pop music while managing to incorporate 11 minute soundscapes, dainty electronica, thumping techno, and all-out samba throw-downs. They have collaborated with Krautrock legend Damo Suzuki (Can) and supported bands such as Faust, Tunng, Psapp, Rothko, Plaid, A Hawk and a Hacksaw amongst others. Their album ‘Frisbee Hotpot’ is out now on Pickled Egg recordings. Live they are hugely enjoyable, their myriad of influences brought together by a strong rhythmical heart to create astoundingly catchy and inventive 21st century pop music. Currently they are an eight-piece.
7.30pm - 11.30pm — FREE

Then, two days later…

Thursday 3rd of April
SWISS CONCRETE
On Thursday, we’ll be doing our FIRST EVER HEADLINE SHOW at the Bullingdon Arms, a pub on the Cowley Road in Oxford. The lovely people at Swiss Concrete are putting this gig together, and the lineup is a peach. Come early because you should listen to main support group My Sad Captains. If you live in Berkshire, Hampshire or Oxfordshire, you really ought to come. Entry is £4 on the door or £3 in advance at WeGotTickets.com.

Here is Swiss Concrete’s rather silly flyer (click for bigger):

What a nice flier, eh? Come catch us at Riffs & Fragments on Friday 14 March at Christ Church and Upton Chapel, Lambeth (map). The sublime Télégramme à Jane, who we supported in Paris, will also be playing so make sure you don’t miss them.

Doors are at 8:00pm, entry is an extremely reasonable £2.

Our next gig will soon be upon us - Friday 22 February is really not that far away. And it looks as though Fortuna POP! has assembled a fine evening of electronic loveliness. Playing alongside us are: The Keyboard Choir, Champion Kickboxer and The Leaf Library.

Tickets are now available at WeGotTickets.

We’re very excited to announce our first show outside the UK and, indeed, outside London! We will be playing with the wonderful Télégramme à Jane on 23 February 2008 at Le Vieux Léon in Paris. It looks like a lovely little venue.

Tim and I have both never been to Paris before so we are double excited and plan, with Christopher, of course, to make a little holiday of it.

Come and see us at Le Vieux Léon, 18 rue de La Grande Truanderie. Merci mille fois to Télégramme à Jane for organising this!

Mark Norton - Although best known for his saxophonic talents with the mighty Gene Drayton Unit and a host of other bands, tonight Mr Norton will be leaving his horn at home and entertaining us with a sparkling spoken word set.

Martin White - Mr White has played at Scaledown both solo and with his Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra. We welcome him back as he returns with more accordion and ukulele masterpieces of mirth.

Having seen Martin White (better known to us as The Accordion Man) live before, I know that you’ll be in for a treat. Come along this Friday for an evening of variety and interest in central London!

Some more acts have been announced for the Scaledown gig on 25 January at the King & Queen. Here are the details:

Mark Braby, Andy Coules and Dan Whaley present the latest in an ongoing series of genuinely alternative after-office live entertainments.

+ more to be confirmed

Sounds like a good night.

Cheers! Hong Kong In The 60s is one this month! You can help me celebrate with a nice honey and lemon to soothe this dreadful flu.

What with Christmas and New Year and so on, we never got round to telling you about our gig with Misty Roses (brilliant - Sunny Intervals was lovely too); or when we were played on FM radio in Montpelier, France, by Babes In Boyland; or to show off our new song Shadow Of The Bear which is on our MySpace and Last.fm pages; or about the gigs we have lined up for 2008!

Our first show of the year will be Friday 25 January for Scaledown at The King & Queen (1 Foley Street, London, W1P 7LE). Expect good Resonance FM-style stuff here. We’ll give more details when we have them.

Also, we’ll be playing a Fortuna Pop! night in February and Twee As Fuck in April, supporting Fanfarlo.

We can guarantee that these gigs will be exciting as we’re working on a new, high-concept live set. Ambitious! Atmospheric! Please come and see!

I donned the finery of a debonair Dennis Wheatley-esque Satanist in order to attend a rare UK performance by Daemonia, the band led by former Goblin keyboard maestro Claudio Simonetti, last Saturday night. He’s one from the left below, though sadly in this photo he isn’t sporting the fetching half-moon reading glasses - with spectacle cord - that he wore on the night.

The crowd at Slimelight was somewhat sparse, but counted amongst its number none other than Doug Bradley - Pinhead from Hellraiser. The band were outstanding, and played all the classic Dario Argento themes including Profondo Rosso and Suspira. They also performed a cheeky medley of Halloween and Tubular Bells in a jazz-rock style, and overall put on a stunning show of old-school prog-jazz classical-synth-rock soundtrackery.

It was a shame to miss the Sisters Of Transistors gig that the other two-thirds of the group attended, but if anything could equal that, it was surely Daemonia.

On Saturday 1st Dec, Mei Yau and I went to see the Sisters of Transistors at the George Tavern in East London. The group are a new project from Graham Massey of 808 State, and their myspace page describes them thus:

The Sisters Of Transistors (S.O.T.) are a Combo Organ Quartet and Ladies Social Club. S.O.T. hold weekly afternoon workshops at the Museum. Members who graduated this year are Sister Wigby Elka Whippany Sister Ragna Teisco Dottir Sister Naomi Doric Pencrest & Sister Henrietta Vox Humana S.O.T. play a selection of fully working exhibition organs with an emphasis on the Italian models from the early 1970s. Accompanied on drums by museum curator, Prof. Vernon World. Repertoire includes a mixture of S.O.T originals in the style of baroque disco prog (B.D.P.) and classics from the golden age of Horror OST (H.O.S.T ).

They lived up to the description. Live, the Sisters of Transistors were mostly instrumental, with six vintage synths blazing and live drums by Massey played over laptop beat tracks. I can’t recommend them enough. I was also thrilled to discover that Die Die Deneuve were supporting, as I saw them at an art squat party about a year ago and they were excellent. They played the gig in a slimmed-down two-member incarnation called Plug, and they were great.

Listen!
http://www.myspace.com/thesistersoftransistors
http://www.myspace.com/diediedeneuve

Hey! We were played on the radio in Spain! Thanks goes to Agustín Fuentes for playing us on his show, La Merienda, on Radio Extremadura.

Agustín had emailed us a few months ago, asking for a CD, and he was very complimentary about our music on his programme. While talking about us, he mentioned Stereolab, Broadcast and Japanese pop so we’re pretty happy.

You can tune in to La Merienda at 18:07 CET, download shows or subscribe to the podcast. It’s a lovely mix of indie pop and, I think, ideal dinnertime listening.

We watched Mario Bava’s Hatchet For A Honeymoon yesterday evening as a bit of post-gig relaxation. Wonderful music by Luigi Zito, an opulent setting and plenty of dark humour and unsettling imagery: I loved it. Perhaps one of our future videos will be a visual homage to this giallo gem.