Pravda and posters

We're back in Pravda at the end of this week to record three tracks: Curtain Up, Exits Are Blockades and Demons & Slaves.

It's a great studio with top notch gear. Matt and Andy who run it are two talented fellas. Have a look at www.pravdauk.com.

We've also just had a new poster done for our next gig with Stateless, Samsa and worriedaboutsatan.

Brudenell pictures

More pix from the Brudenell.

The Big Bad Brud

My first one of these new fangled bloggy-malarkeys, be gentle..

So, on Saturday night we played to a packed Brudenell with 4 other exceptional bands. It was truly an honour to open proceedings. We blasted through the now quite brave and bulging set and by all accounts it went pretty well, so that's nice. The sound in there was awesome and Tim at one stage got rather excited by the tone of his guitar and I think wanted to try and bottle it..so we may only ever play the Brudenell from now on, with the talented Trev twiddling the knobs of course. We'll see.

The car was stashed at home for a change so there were beers aplenty and with earplugs firmly wedged in I enjoyed a night of eclectic, loud as fuck and rather good tunage from Downdime, Itch, Immune and the mighty Vessels. i concur, it seems, are Vessels' official sponsors of late and we'll be expecting payment for the continued co-support when they hit the big time. Oh yes.
Itch definitely bear further scrutiny so may check them out again soon. I couldn't quite get my head around the tangents those guitars were coming in at, but that must be a good thing. They seem to be a bit of a well kept secret around these parts, so check them out if you can at www.myspace.com/itch. Math-tastic.

I've never seen so much kit in one place as on that stage last night, apart from maybe a sports shop, but it all seemed to work and well. We're quite proud to be a nice simple 2 guitars, bass & drums combo and leave the switch twiddling to the scientists. Who knows, some of the synthesized madness of the last few gigs may rub off on us sometime. Pravda on thursday to record 3 more tracks..watch this space kids.

Jim

Richmond Fontaine

I went to see a band called Richmond Fontaine on Wednesday night at the New Roscoe. The Roscoe has a real sense of character with metal pots hanging from the ceiling and a bar straight out of the 50's. it also has one of the best sound systems - which is often lacking in other more 'hip' venues. It's one of Leeds' forgotten gems and because of this they usually only put on cover bands to get the punters in, which of course is a shame, but when a band like Richmond Fontaine come along it's one of the cities best venues.

Fontaine are from Portland in the States and they play country music with little dashes of post rock thrown in – though I don’t think they realise themselves that they stray into that sort of territory. It's the second time i've seen the band at the Roscoe and they seem to get better with every album. The new album 13 Cities is currently on repeated circulation in chez Hann.

Anyway in summary, they're bloody superb. Their music gives an insight into the different lives and surroundings of living in shit American towns and cities. The lyrical imagery is brilliant.

www.myspace.com/richmondfontaine

Tim.

Tiny Cats

Played at The Atrium last night (for DIY promoter Tiny Cat) and much fun was had.

New song, Lucky Jack, seemed to go down well and Chris made his debut as a stand-up salesman by continually plugging the life out of Saturday’s up coming gig with Vessels. Never to be repeated. Hopefully.

Peasman and Palo Alto were mint as usual while The Window Right were absolutely awesome. They’ve been asked to do an improvised set with Damo Suzuki soon. Very impressive. Check them out at www.myspace.com/windowright

Now we can’t wait for Saturday.

Set list

The current set is:

Demons & Slaves
Oblige
You Make Your Own Luck
Decimal Places
Curtain Up
Exits Are Blockades

Plus we're adding in 'Lucky Jack' for the first time for this week's gig. It'll probably go in just after Decimal Places.

Eek!

The new one

On Monday night we spent four full on hours banging out the new tune.

Oh yes it's a mother!

It should be ready to try it out at gig number three on Tuesday night.

Sunday

Tim and I jammed the new tune at his house yesterday. It's sounding good like some crazy My Bloody Valentine wall of noise. Ace! The rest of the afternoon was spent drinking tea, watching old Wilco videos and generally talking shit. Good, good.

CW

Last night. The second gig, "first one proper".

Last night was great fun. Our set is starting to sound quite tight and most of the folks in the Mixing Tin seemed to enjoy it. Seeing some of our former band mates there was a bit daunting by hey they were giving us support.

Vessels were absolutley blinding as the headliners. They seem to have created a new heavier sound and at one point they even used two drum kits. Can't wait to play a few gigs with these guys over the next few months. Don't think it'll be long until they've gone on to special things.

Current topic of debate in the Concur Camp is photo shoots (looks like we'll be doing one with local Leeds celeb photographer Kevin Petch) and the next recording which we're doing at the start of March. Should all be good fun.

Next gig is on the 20th Feb with our good mates Palo Alto then it's the 24th with Vessels, Immune, Itch and Downdime. All of them are very, very good. Hopefully we'll have at least one new tune ready to go before those gigs.

CW

A catch up

So we've just hit the start of Feb and our first proper, proper gig is this Wednesday in our home town of Leeds. I made this flyer on MS Paint (my first one!).

So far quite a lot has happened. This is how it all begun...

Tim and James' old band, Nikoli, called it a day in Summer '06.

Neither of them were enjoying the direction that the band was heading however Tim carried on writing and Jim carried on drumming with him.

I (Chris) was at an end with my old band, LaRusso, in September '06. The band had been together since I was a kid and we'd all grown in different directions musically.

I'd known Tim for a while after reviewing his old band and I'd bumped into him at various gigs such as Low and Broken Social Scene.

With Tim, James and I sharing a strong liking for good music (especially the Americana, post-rock, Canadian indie stuff) the three of us decided to start working on Tim's "darker" material.

Toby came on the scene about three or four weeks later. He'd previously spoken to Tim when applying to be the bass player in Nikoli. However they'd never actually managed to meet up.

So, after a couple of phone calls and emails, Tim and I went to meet Toby in The Packhorse pub in Leeds city centre, Oct '06. Tim liked Toby's love of The Smiths. I liked Toby's fondness for Bloc Party and all things jazzy.

So far we've spent about three months practising and we've recorded two songs in the process - Oblige and Decimal Places. The drums and bass were done at Pravda, Leeds. The guitars and vocals were done at Tim's house in Morley (have you ever tried soundproofing a lounge using two sofas?!?). The mixing was done in his spare room.

We've set up this Myspace www.myspace.com/iconcurband and this website www.iconcur.co.uk. You can get the tunes from either of those places.

We've got a set of about 5 or 6 songs at the moment. We gigged these at The Packhorse (the one by the Uni) on Monday 15th January in front of a crowd of about 40 mates. The wonderul Peter Wright and Peasman (aka Tom Evans) did acoustic sets to keep people entertained before we came on to spoil it all. Thankfully most people didn't seem to mind. I think some of them even liked what we did.

So that's about it for now. We've got a practice tonight so, unless anything crazy happens, we'll post something back after the gig.

And so it begins...

Blogging seems to be the "in" thing to do at the moment so we thought we'd set one up as a record of how all this band malarky goes.