As you can see from the picture above, we set up mission control recently to see just how rusty we are. The good news is that we were sounding good and had quite a lot of fun. The bad news is that as two of the band now live in the South of England, getting together for practices and shows is a lot more difficult than it used to be. For that reason, we’ve sadly had to pull out of the n_ilk festival at the Botanic Garden in Dundee. Chris, Cat and our friend Paul are all involved in organising n_ilk and I’m sure would love to see as many people there as possible. It’s going to be a great day, I missed it last year due to work commitments so will be making sure to attend this year!
It was a couple of weeks ago now, but our friends at Glasgow Podcart played “Polar White” on podcart #74 and said nice things. Give it a listen, if you’ve not already!
The artwork for the album is coming along nicely, and there should hopefully be firm details of the release and a launch event in the coming weeks.
Really nice mention for “Polar White” on the excellent blog Sweeping the Nation:
“A bit Mum, a little bit Liz Fraser, a smidgen Psapp. They’re from Dundee and say other tracks on their soon come album are more guitar based and take influence from Stereolab and Life Without Buildings. Curious.”
I have found the remaining t-shirts we had made quite a while ago, so have set up a shop where you can buy them for £5 plus p+p. We have limited stock of the following sizes:
7 x Mens Small
4 x Mens Medium
1 x Ladies Medium / One Size
As you can see above, the t-shirt features a simple logo (by Alex Botten), taken from the legendary and at the time much sought after badges, hand screenprinted on a brown American Apparel shirt. The print has held up very well to repeated washes.
“Polar White” will be making its national radio debut tomorrow (Sat 10th July) on Amazing Radio. Charlie Ashcroft will be playing it on the Audition show from 5pm, and again on Tuesday and Thursday. Amazing Radio is available on DAB and online here.
Peenko has featured us as one of this week’s Friday Freebies, alongside our pals Pensioner and Q Without U, which was nice. I’ll also be doing a wee Q+A for them around the release of the album, so keep an eye out for that.
Euan McMeeken from the Kays Lavelle has done interviews with Argos Barks and Kowalskiy this week and has been kind enough to give us a mention. Which as just as well, seeing as Chris and I are in the Kays too!
On the subject of the Kays, it was good to see Russell from the band get 3/5 from Uncut this month for the debut Mammoeth album, “Nascent”. If you like the Shins or Alfie you should check it out. You can see the rather cheeky animated video for “LapDog” here.
Not strictly related to The A Forest, but I got my pre-order package of the Kid Canaveral album in the post this morning, and as you can see from the picture it’s a nice wee bundle. For a tenner plus postage you get the CD album, a cassette single of “You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night” featuring a couple of remixes (including one from Kwaing Creasite), a fanzine-style lyric booklet and a couple of badges. I can’t imagine any of these cost that much extra to produce, but it’s a nice touch and I think a good way to encourage people to get involved early.
Of course Kid Canaveral are not the first band to take this approach, but I think that these days its become more and more important to throw in little extras to help stand out and give people a little something extra. I’ve been thinking of ways to make the physical version of our album a little more appealing as I get closer to placing orders and making commitments, but I think the physical product is going to be quite appealing in itself.
So, if there’s anyone out there reading, what do you think?
Other than that, the word seems to be spreading slowly. We’ve had shout-outs on AyeTunes and the German blog White Tapes. I’m hoping that if enough people describe me as a “photographer” it’ll become true.
Things are moving along with the physical version of the album. Artwork has been commissioned so hopefully we’ll be in a position to order the physical copies by the end of the month. I’m also looking into wider digital distro and getting on Spotify.
If you’ve not downloaded it already, you can get “Polar White” for free here. Tell your friends too!
As a taster of the forthcoming album, you can download the first single now for free (well, in exchange for your email address) from Bandcamp. “Polar White” shows off the more electronic side of the band, with programmed drums and layered keyboards.
A second single will follow before the release of the album later in the summer.
Once upon a time I had a go at writing a general blog, mostly about music, photography and films. It’s a lot harder than it looks. One of the ideas I had (stolen from someone else) was to write a wee bit about each of the bands I have been in. I only got as far as my first school band, but ended up writing a tangential post about some early demos by The A Forest. They have a certain rough charm, but by no means should be viewed as any way representative of the album!
As you can see, our website has been updated to a blog format. The old one hadn’t been touched for a long time, but to be fair there hadn’t been much to update. Hopefully that has now changed! We now have the final master for our eagerly anticipated album, and it sounds lovely! We are unlikely to be able to play live to promote it, so I thought it would be good to keep a blog about the whole thing.
