Up and Coming Gigs:
14/05/08: Headlining at The Electro-Acoustic Club @ The Slaughtered Lamb. Support from the wonderful The Sound of Bailey:
www.myspace.com/thesoundofbailey and the equally wonderful City Reverb www.myspace.com/cityreverb A night of class music!
25/05/08: Off The Tracks Festival @ Donington Park Farmhouse. The festival equivalent of 'Late Junction' also
playing will be: Transglobal Underground, Banco de Gaia , N’faly Kouyaté (Afro Celts) and Dunyakan, as well as many many more...
Self-Songs Project:
Shadow Orchestra composer and producer Chris Bangs has been working with special needs students students from Pendragon School, south London, to produce a CD of songs about themselves and their experiences both inside and outside of the school, as part of a ground-breaking project from AIR (wwwartistsinresidence.org.uk). Self Songs will be released independently in April and the fifteen tracks take their names from the children who not only wrote the lyrics but also took a hands on approach to their song’s creative direction, Chris says of the project:
"As a musician, I am used to working a fairly contained world, but through this project I have realised that, by being available and providing a platform for the students’ self-expression and creativity, it has allowed something unique, and far richer than I would have imagined, to emerge"
Behind the project is AIR (Artists in Residence). Run by professional artists from various disciplines, AIR use their belief in art as an educational and therapeutic tool to help disadvantaged children, with Self Songs being a product of this practice. Previously published is a poetry book entitled In Our Own Write, also by pupils of Pendragon School. Check out the album's Myspace page at www.myspace.com/15selfsongs
Album Get's Loads of Airplay!
It's great to see the new album's getting loads of radio play, including Huw Stephens on Radio 1 last week, and our favourite radio show, Late Junction, just before Christmas. Verity Sharp choose to play Creaking and Bowing and Plucking and Bowing, which we think are the perfect tunes to play on that show! For more details go to the press page here:
Autumn's Gone and Winter Keeps on Coming On…
After a successful first summer as the Shadow Orchestra, we'll be heading into the studio for a couple of months to perfect our live set and work on new material. In addition, we're in the process of putting together a small UK tour for the end of this year to promote our debut album, so watch this space.
We'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who came down to support us at the Big Chill in August and the Minichill last month, we all had an absolutely incredible time, and it was great to see such an amazing turnout! In addition we've had such great feedback both through the website and on the forums, so thanks to those of you who took the time to write such lovely comments!
Album Now Available For Download:
Yes, Shadow Orchestra has joined the digital download revolution and the debut album is now available from I-Tunes and Napster, as well as whole bunch of other mp3 download sites. I have included the full list here: In addition, the CD album is currently available from a large number of retailers across the country. Full list is also available here: page):
Honey and Razor Blades Soundtrack:
Chris is also developing a sound track for an exciting new film from guerrilla filmmaker and BAFTA award winning director Tinge Krishnan. Shot on location in Thailand in a unique documentary style amongst real backpackers, tsunami volunteers and go-go bar girls, the film follows a naïve young couple whose love is tested for the first time when they befriend a jaded and sexually precocious couple; a story of betrayal and a young woman's search for herself.
Music from Man Made Landscapes:
I'm currently working with artist Anna-Lucie Feracci on a really interesting project which looks at patterns in man made landscapes; for example, the arrangement of houses in a Spanish hill top town or the shape that the lights make at night in a tower block. Anna then transcribes those patterns to music box score by tracing the images onto long scrolls of paper and punching wholes into it (similar to a 'player' piano). I am in the process of remixing several of the resulting musical pieces and hope to produce a CD of both the original music and the remixes in the coming year.
