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…

28th January – Turner Sims, Southampton (details/tickets)

16th February – RNCM, Manchester (details/tickets)

20th February – Ronnie Scott’s, London (details/tickets)

24th March – The Sage, Gateshead (Gateshead International Jazz Festival) (details/tickets)

28th March – Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple (details/tickets)

Full list of 2012 dates (so far…) as follows:

28th January – Turner Sims, Southampton (details/tickets)

16th February – RNCM, Manchester (details/tickets)

20th February – Ronnie Scott’s, London (details/tickets)

24th March – The Sage, Gateshead (Gateshead International Jazz Festival) (details/tickets)

28th March – Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple (details/tickets)

More dates to be announced so keep an eye on our gigs page, and full details on the album release to follow very very soon…

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…

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…

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…

• There will be 14 prizes of 1 signed DVD
• 1 entry per email address – we’ll check…
• Ony emails sent to dvdcompetition@beatsnpieces.net will count as entries
• Entries must be received by 1200 GMT on Saturday 19th November to be included in the draw – entries received later will not be included in the draw!
• Winners will be contacted and the DVDs posted in the week of 21st November
• Email addresses will be added to our mailing list from which you can of course unsubscribe at any time
• We won’t use your postal address for any other purpose other than this competition, and we won’t keep it on file either – promise
• Prize includes postage of the DVD to anywhere in the world

Thanks to everyone at Livingston Studios in London for having us for the session, and to the marvellous Tony Platt who produced the recording with us. Details regarding the album release coming soon…

Don’t forget that the EP launch is Thursday 20th October back at Band on the Wall (where else!) and it’ll be an amazing night – get your tickets in now, they’re cheaper in advance. Also if you’re coming down, say hello on our facebook event!

You’ll also have seen that we’re releasing an extremely limited edition DVD alongside the download which will initially be available exclusively at gigs – you’ve seen pictures of the box, now its time for a preview of the video! Check out queen spark below…

See you on Thursday! We start at 8pm sharp, don’t be late…

We will only be selling 200 numbered copies of this DVD, and initially they will be available exclusively at our final two gigs of 2011 – the EP launch party at Band on the Wall in Manchester on 20th October (tickets), and at Kings Place during the London Jazz Festival on 19th November (tickets). If there are any copies left after the Kings Place gig we will of course make them available online.

The DVD is pictured above, and we’re really pleased with it! Its a really nice cardboard sleeve, very minimally designed, and each DVD comes with a code to download the audio version for free. We’ll be putting some of the footage from the DVD up on youtube to preview over the next few days so keep an eye out – it looks great though!

If you can’t make it to either of those gigs fear not – we will be holding a competition to win one of 14 copies signed by a member of the band, full details to be announced soon!

Firstly you’ll be able to hear a track from our forthcoming live EP for the first time ever anywhere in the world on Mike Chadwick’s Cutting Edge show on Jazz FM from 10pm TONIGHT! (Sunday 9th). Mike is also in charge at Band on the Wall in Manchester, where we recorded the EP in June and where we’ll be launching it with another special gig on Thursday 20th October – get your tickets in NOW…

Secondly, very pleased to announce that we’re heading into the studio next month to record for a new full length album which will be released early next year – can’t wait to get in there and get started!