Archives for April 2015

All posts from April 2015

The Return of The Bedlam Six

Tuesday 21 April, 2015
Tags: bedlam six

Well, it’s happening.
To quote John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd: “We’re getting the band back together.”

Maybe you didn’t even know we’d gone away. It’s not been that long. We went on hiatus last year and we’ve not been in the same room since (though various band configurations have met severally), we didn’t fall out or anything like that, we always knew we’d do something else together, we just needed a break. I wrote an explanation here if you’re interested.

Now it’s official though, The Bedlam Six are returning.

But we’re not going to be fiddling about with radio and press anymore. If we get any outside attention then it’ll be through accident and word of mouth; I for one am done with caring about buzz and reach. That way madness lies. No more second guessing what so-and-so from Whatever FM might enjoy, no more gimmicky press angles to whet the appetites of the chronically jaded. We will accept the gigs that look fun and create the records that make sense (or nonsense) for the time/place/headspace we happen to find ourselves in. If we desperately want to get on the telly we’ll audition for that game show Philip Schofield presents where everyone gets hypnotized and made to say things like “bum” – it’s no more debasing than many of the things musicians do to get noticed.

So here’s what to expect…

A handful of new (but probably quite simple) music videos to accompany some of the remaining tracks on 2014’s YOUTH album. I always wanted there to be more visuals to accompany that record but time/budgets/energy/friends ran out.
A few festivals and one-off Summer shows in England, Belgium and Germany. Not very many, we’re hardly a hot ticket right now and we don’t accept offers of “good exposure” so that immediately puts us on a lot of festival blacklists!
A new studio album by the end of the year. This will mostly feature songs you’ve already heard if you’ve been to any of our shows but we’d all like to get proper studio versions of live favourites like “Mary”, “Matilda & The Screw” etc, so this record will be a sort of exercise in loose-end tying. There will also be some completely brand new material though so it won’t all be old news.
Web gigs. Let’s face it, if the USA visa situation doesn’t change we’re never going to get over there so we might as well face the facts and come up with an alternative for our transatlantic friends. We’ve been meaning to try the web gig option for a while but we didn’t want to do it half-cocked. We’ll do our best to make these interesting, fun and semi-regular.
As always we’re open to other ideas so feel free to get in touch.

READY FOR BEDLAM?

New Release: Louis Barabbas Unplugged

Wednesday 15 April, 2015

I’ve been talking for too long about a solo album of songs I’ve written over the years that were deemed unsuitable for Bedlam Six arrangements (too wordy or dainty or simply not appealing to the tastes of my bandmates). The album (entitled “Gentle Songs Of Ceaseless Horror”) is still in progress but gradually taking shape (there’s always so much to do at Debt Records that I only ever get time to work on it in short bursts!). Still, I should be done recording it in a few weeks, ready for release in late Autumn.

In the meantime I thought I’d make a little acoustic EP to give a taste of a few tracks (and also to raise a few pennies to put towards the album’s physical production). The songs “A Matter Of Life And Death”, “One Tiny Taste”, “Faith In Myths” and “Scarecrow” (which you might well already know in its Bridie Jackson & The Arbour incarnation) will appear on the LP as full band arrangements; “Ghost Story” has been a staple of my solo live sets for years but has never been recorded so I thought it’d be nice to finally put down a version; “Lullaby” appears quite early on in the musical I’m currently writing (before all the characters start getting killed off).

The album is available as a pay-what-you-want download here.

Barabbas and Hagan in your house

Monday 6 April, 2015

Summer is a notoriously difficult time of year for traditional gigs – festivals and school/university holidays mean that promoters are reticent about booking artists outside of their comfort zones. Besides, who wants to be in a dark and dingy club when the sun is still shining? And yet people don’t stop enjoying music.
Felix Hagan and I have been chatting about going on tour together for a while and we thought it might be an interesting plan to propose a series of weekday early evening house-concerts between festival appearances, a chance to air new material as well as perform stripped down arrangements of established works in an intimate setting.

Now all we need to know is whether anyone else is up for this sort of event? It’s a very simple format: the two of us come to your house/flat/mansion/shed and perform in the living room or garden (or wherever is appropriate – kitchen, conservatory, armory or batcave will also do). It could be a case of a couple of hours around dinner time or an all-night session (depending on work schedules).

If you’d like to have us play in your home send me a message through the contact section. The period we’ve earmarked is the third and fourth weeks of June. All ideas considered.

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