Prospecting Distant Systems

Falling & Laughing Present… a free gig! It’s a free gig! And we’ve lined up four ace bands for you

There’s a Facebook event here. Write up below…

Kidnapper Bell are an Anglo-American band in Birmingham, they touch upon musical stepping stones such as emo - when it was a genuinely good and not-at-all over-marketed genre. They bring other influences to the party too - such as room filling shoegaze guitars and interesting song structures and dynamics more typical of post-rock bands such as Mono (ooh, who have a song called Kidnapper Bell - coincidence?)

http://www.myspace.com/kidnapperbell

Black Heart Generator are one of the main proponents of the pre-post-new-Birmingham-rabble-core genre. Alright, so there’s no such genre, but imagine if there was and you’d be close to Black Heart Generator’s sound. Combining shouting with Dinosaur Jr influences and ace drumming and rhythms. They put on a cracking live show, you’ve never really experienced them until you’ve seen Greg stood on a stool strumming a guitar into someone.

http://www.myspace.com/blackheartgenerator

Falling & Laughing are us and it’s always hard to write about yourself (other people have here - http://is.gd/60zNI). I’d like to say we’re halfway between indiepop and post-rock but, um, I suppose it’s your call on whether we’ve achieved that.

http://www.myspace.com/duncsfallingandlaughing

Magnetic Four were a fantastic Birmingham band who sadly split up a few years ago, and we held on, hoping that they’d find a new drummer or carry on as a band somehow, but sadly it never happened (though there are free M4 downloads here - http://is.gd/60ApN). However, when bands split up the excitement of new bands and solo projects follow and Cast and Crew are one such solo project by singer and bassist Nick - who composes songs in a similar Hefner inspired, slash, good emo (there’s that phrase again) vein.

http://www.myspace.com/allweneediscastandcrew

It’s all free entry and is at The Victoria - http://www.thevictoriabirmingham.co.uk/

(some of the keys on my keyboard have given up the ghost while typing this. I blame overplaying Realm Of The Mad God)

The night organised by Ace Bushy Striptease is having it’s 3rd (2nd) outing, and the line up’s looking pretty ace, so I’m thinking we’re pretty lucky to cadge a slot at the bottom of it. Here’s the poster and some information from the facebook event below.

The 3rd edition of Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff will include performances from:

INTERNET FOREVER

Gushing fuzz pop hits with shouting and drums all the way from London. They’ve recently recorded a session for Radio 1 and they’re about to put out real life singles and there is a video they have made.
Comparison: Beat Happening and Hundreds, Tens and Units.

KIDNAPPER BELL

Real awesome pop punk from Birmingham. They have guitar all over the place and then these other parts of their songs which are really catchy and brill.
Comparison: Jimmy Eat World and something poppier and with more girl backing vocals than JEW.

MINOR COLES

Harmony-tastic post-emotional pop about girls and stuff like that. They’re from Oxford and quite new but brilliant despite that (lolz). The kind of band Laura Wolf would like listening to I feel.
Comparison: Brand New and Dogs In 1930’s Clothing.

FALLING & LAUGHING

Chordgazing (the gazing is the best part of what they do) band from Birmingham who take pop music to thoughtful rolling-down-hills places it hasn’t been before and post-rock to thoughtful upbeat-and-brief-enough-for-it-to-actually-be-enjoyable places.
Comparisons: Field Mice and something a bit heavier but still lovely.

There’s a fantastic selection of bands playing at Oxjam Birmingham next weekend, it mostly takes place on Saturday 24th.

Tickets are £6 for a good cause and we’re playing at Island Bar. The times for the stage are below…

22:30pm - 23:00pm Tantrums
21:30pm - 22:00pm Idiosync
20:30pm - 21:00pm Is I Cinema
19:30pm - 20:00pm Ace Bushy Striptease
18:30pm - 19:00pm Miss Halliwell
17:30pm - 18:00pm Philly-G
16:30pm - 17:00pm Falling & Laughing (us)
15:30pm – 16:00pm Rob Allen (Little Dipper)
14:30pm – 15:00pm James Rea

So yaaay, we’re putting on another DIY ‘Falling and Laughing presents…’ style gig. This cover star (again on a white background) is Dr Zoidberg if he was going to bemade from a sheet of paper. If you want to make the box you can find the full thing with arms here . While googling round I also found this terrifying Zoidberg image, but also this knitted cuddly Zoidberg hat that counteracts it.

Poster -

This gig is again upstairs at Island Bar with…

Waldo Jeffers
Hillary & The Democrats
Ben Calvert
Falling & Laughing

Ace. Doors are at 8.30. Hillary and the Democrats are coming down from Liverpool so there’ll be donations (suggested donation is £1 or £2) to cover their travel costs.

Hurrah, so far Falling and Laughing have played two gigs outside of Birmingham - one in London and one in Stourbridge - so we’re looking forward to our trip to Bristol!

It’s on Saturday 3rd October at The Mother’s Ruin on St Nicholas Street

Big Pink Cake are hosting. There’s a facebook event here.

£3.00 in. Think we’re on first, probably sometime soon after half past eight. Also playing are Hi-Life Companion and Phil Wilson. Ace, hopefully he’ll pull out a version of No Place Called Home.

Mother’s Ruin is one of the strangest (in a lovable way) venues I’ve ever been to. The bands play upstairs on the right hand side of the stairs, and the audience stand on the left on a balcony which sort of overlooks the stage. There is a little bit of space to stand in front of the bands, but it involves balancing precariously at the top of the stairs.

I sat at the front last time I went, and here was a picture of Manhatten Love Suicides that was taken from there -

Genuinely looking forward to Moseley Folk Festival this weekend. Lime Chalks are playing on the Bohemian Jukebox stage at 6.45 on Saturday if you’re going and want to see us. Looook - here’s words on the Moseley Folk Festival website to prove that it’s not just a figment of my imagination - like the time I tuned up with a uke and demanded to headline V Festival. Now *that* was embarrasing.

It looks like the best Moseley Folk Festival line up ever - Friday is borderline popfest, with Saint Etienne, The Pastels & Tenniscoats, El Perro Del Mar, Seeland and Rose Elinor Dougall.

The Bohemian Jukebox stage is full of some great bands who have played at BoJo over the last few years too - Hatchlings, Gemma Quarterman, David Leach, Pete Green, Theatre of the Absurd, Superman Revenge Squad, Friends of The Stars, Perrots Folly, Ben Calvert, Mitch & Murray, Cat Green Bike, Richard Burke, James Summerfield and Fox are the ones I’ve heard of and am looking forward, though clicking on some random links from the folk fest website is comming up with other great bands.

Ace!

The videos for the London gig at Totally Acoustic keep popping out of the woodwork. Here’s Hey Sleep!

Rob Howard has just popped up a Lime Chalks video on YouTube. It’s the start of the recent Totally Acoustic gig at on 30th April with Dunc’s Skiffle trickling into B.A.B.E.

Do you ever see videos of yourself and worry that you don’t look like how you thought you look like? Why was I not smiling? It’s a Uke, the happiest of all intruments. Smile me, smile.

Now really I should have posted this up before Indietracks Festival where it was on sale, but you can still get hold of the recent Oddbox Records sampler from their website, which excitingly features Thank You Daniel by Falling and Laughing.

I think the idea that as well as being able to buy it on its own for £4, it also goes out as a freebie if you buy other stuff from Oddbox, it’s worth having a shuffle through their back catalogue they do have loads of ace releases on the label already, despite only being a few months old.

Full Track list

01 It’s Always the Quiet Ones – The Kick Inside
02 2000 & Something – The Sunday Reeds
03 Deerland – Pinkshinyultrablast
04 Four Day Week – The Give It Ups
05 Shine – The Crack Babies
06 You Should Be Your Light – The Monorals
07 Soft Silver Young (Single Mix) – Golau Glau
08 Thank You Daniel – Falling & Laughing
09 If You Lived Here – Play People
10 Are You Dead? – The Humms
11 Sun Don’t Reach – Lovelust
12 Ooh Wee – The Millipedes
13 One 2 One – Sparky’s Magic Piano
14 Oso Panda – Papa Topo

Fans of the multimedia popshow experience will hopefully be delighted to note that Falling and Laughing have started to use a whiteboard to write stuff on during the gig. If ever you want to jot down ideas, or present a thought graphically, then it’s more handy to have a whiteboard on you than to not have a whiteboard on you, as the saying goes.

This whiteboard from the 18th July gig contains a good list of anwers to the question which has troubled generations “what can you look through unclearly?” (thanks everyone) and there’s a few ideas for suggested things to between songs jotted down here - jokes, impressions and a pub singer competition. I’m not sure what a pub singer competition is? I’m guessing it’s like Singstar, in a pub?

The barman suggested we do a drum roll which was also added to the board and ticked off. A is for action.

Thank you to everyone who came down to the gig, and of course the other bands who played!