Delighted and very excited to finally be able to reveal full details of our brand new album! Here’s the low down: its called Big Ideas and will be released on 12th March 2012 on Efpi Records. It features 8 tracks, recorded with producer Tony Platt in London late last year – some of the tracks you may recognise from our live shows, some you won’t!
It’ll be available for pre-order on the Efpi shop and other retailers very soon (join our mailing list to be alerted when its available), but until then we’ve put up a track that you can listen to and download for free – just click here… Its called jazzwalk and is a new track named after the Street of Fame in Burghausen, where we won the European Young Artists’ Jazz Award last year, and features storming solos from Sam Healey on alto saxophone and Anton Hunter on guitar.
If the track whets your appetite to hear more, we’re kicking off a UK tour produced by Serious in a couple of weeks in Southampton, followed by album launch gigs in Manchester and London in February – its our first album, we’re allowed to have two launch parties! In the unlikely event you needed any extra encouragement to come along to any of those dates, the album will be on sale at those gigs in advance of the official March release date. Full details below…
In our customary belated style let us be one of the last people to wish you a Happy New Year! The 3rd of January seems as good a time as any (?) to reflect on the past 12 months, an amazing year for us as a band – things that happened in the first few months of 2011 seem such a long time ago now and maybe thats because so much else has happened as the year went on!
In January we played our first gig of 2011 and our first gig at Ronnie Scott’s in London, a gig that we all really enjoyed and that seemed to go down well too… Then in March we were off to Germany (kindly supported by the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund) to compete in the final of the European Young Artists’ Jazz Award in Burghausen – which we won! This meant that we got a giant novelty cheque (below) and the honour of opening the Burghausen Jazzwoche, performing a full set before Chick Corea & Gary Burton in a concert that was recorded for TV and radio. We all had an amazing time in when we were over in Germany, check out some of the best photos here (or if you’re really keen, here’s the complete gallery from days 1, 2, 3 & 4).
The next major thing on the horizon for us was in June when we played a really special gig at Band on the Wall in Manchester that was recorded and released as an extremely limited edition live DVD in October. We’ve still got a few left – head on over to our shop to get your hands on one! Here’s one of the tracks:
Over the summer we played in Norwich, in a field in Cheshire, and had a great day at Mostly Jazz in Birmingham, and then in August we were invited back to Ronnie Scott’s for their annual celebration of all things British in a double bill with the amazing Kairos 4tet - again this was another brilliant night, with some really nice reviews!
At the beginning of November we were busy recording our debut full length album, which was a hectic few days to say the least… Its all come together nicely though, and will be out in February – more information to follow shortly! Here’s us all at the end of the session at Livingston Studios in London with producer Tony Platt and engineer Simone Filiali – more photos from the weekend in our gallery here and on our tumblr blog here.
Finally, we ended our year at the London Jazz Festival with an amazing gig at Kings Place which was a fantastic way to round off 2011! As for 2012, we’ve already announced some gigs at some lovely venues and as I’ve mentioned above, our album will be released in February – its already shaping up to be an exciting year. Thanks for your support in 2011 and we hope you enjoy what we’ve got lined up for you in 2012!
Merry Christmas! Here’s the Efpi Records Christmas Message which we filmed the other day in a Beats & Pieces festive gathering – ‘We Wish You An Atonal Christmas’…
Hope it gets you in the festive spirit!
Posted by Ben on 24/12/2011 at 17:23 in misc. Leave comments here.
Really excited to announce our first set of dates in the UK in 2012 – in these first 5 dates we’ll be travelling the length of England from Southampton to Gateshead, with stops in Barnstaple, London and Manchester along the way. The Manchester and London gigs will also be launch events for our debut album (released in the same week as the gigs), both held at venues very close to our hearts…
There’s a really nice article about us and interview with me and Anton in the new Dec/Jan issue of Jazzwise, out now! Its written by the brilliant Chris Ackerley, who’s managed to make us sound a lot more eloquent than we actually are… The article is below but you’ll have to get your hands on a copy of the magazine to read it – you should be reading it anyway of course!
We were also picked out by Mike Chadwick of Jazz FM and Band on the Wall as one of the acts to look out for in 2012, cheers Mike! We certainly do have a lot planned for next year – there’s a clue elsewhere in the Jazzwise issue if you can find it but all will be revealed here in the next couple of days…
Its been a really busy but really exciting time at Beats & Pieces HQ – lots more info to come in the next few days so keep an eye out… Here’s just a few little things though that I wanted to let you know about before the big news drops!
Firstly massive thanks to everyone who came to our London Jazz Festival gig at Kings Place – we had a great time and it was really nice to see so many people there! It was also cool for us to speak to a lot of people in the interval and in the bar after the gig, you’re all lovely… I said this on stage on the night but massive thanks again to everyone at Serious and the London Jazz Festival, as well as to everyone at Kings Place for having us. The picture below (taken by Ben Watte) is our drummer Fin getting a bit excited in soundcheck…
Secondly, you can now purchase our Live @ Band on the Wall DVD through our online shop – just in time for Christmas… They’re priced at £8 + postage which also includes a digital download of the audio tracks and a PDF photo album from the night. We’ve also updated our remixes EP with a brand new remix of yafw (part iii) by our very own Nick Walters – he’s not used his own awesome solo but its still amazing work! The eagle eyed amongst you may notice that our 2009 EP is no longer available to download – this is in preparation for the release of our debut album early next year, as I said above there’ll be more details to come in the next few days…
Ahead of our gig at Kings Place during the London Jazz Festival next weekend (tickets here!) we’re running a competition to win one of 14 copies of our extremely limited edition Live @ Band on the WallDVDs, signed and dedicated to you by a member of the band!
Full details are below in the customary smaller print but basically all you need to do to enter is send an email with your name and postal address (so we can send the DVD to you if you win) to dvdcompetition@beatsnpieces.net before 1200 GMT on Saturday 19th November. After our soundcheck at Kings Place in the afternoon, each band member will pick an entry at random and then sign a copy of the DVD with a personal message…
Here’s a track from the DVD to whet your appetite – don’t forget that only 200 of these will ever be sold, so if you want to guarantee yourself a copy make sure you get down to Kings Place next weekend and get hold of one! Good luck…
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Heading to @bandonthewall for gaNNets supported by @efpirecords very own Trio Riot all the way from Norway! Suitably arctic temperatures... - 1 day ago
writing our first newsletter of 2012 at the moment, going out this afternoon - you don't want to miss out now do you…? http://t.co/V81L41EF - 4 days ago
Tonight I'm at Empirical (with Julian Siegel) in manchester, soundcheck sounded top - looking forward to gig - 6 days ago
This time next week we'll be in Southampton @turnersims kicking off our tour! Can't wait... - 6 days ago
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