Monday 19 September 2011

Welcome, welcome, welcome

Good day friends. We are Sunrise Over Europe and we are band that do music’s and that. We would like to welcome you to the Watchfires blog. Here we shall be posting about the on goings of Watchfires and ourselves.

I am William, I do the singing, some string and brass instruments mainly. I will be your writer for this blog but everyone will have a go whenever the feeling takes them.

Ok, firstly Watchfires is our monthly night at the Flapper and Firkin in Birmingham where we curate and choose bands we like from the local area and touring acts that graciously accept to take part.
We’ve been throwing the idea of putting on our own night for while but didn’t really have the knowledge or connections to actually get our collective arses into gear and do it. Enter our gaffer Paul Self, another Halesowenian. We were stumbling about like blind fools just doing everything that was thrown at us (in a musical sense that is) until we did a gig for PWS Promotions (Pauls promotions company) down at the beautiful shit hole that is Plug. We met Paul there, a mons mon (that’s a mans man to out of towners!), instantly remarking “fuck me you’ve got a lot of stuff “

From this we did a few more gigs for Paul after which he asked if he could manage us. Initially we were hesitant but we soon realised that he would keep asking until we said yes so we accepted and we haven’t looked back since. Giving us the drive to write new stuff (such as the gypsy, punk, post-rock, folk crossover romp that is Little Spoken Wars), landing us on some top notch bills and getting Watchfires up and running.

 Right so lets discuss what’s going on come the first night.

First on is our good friend Tim Fletcher. Describing Tim is somewhat of a problem as your not sure how to go about it. He is primarily a real guitarist, by that I mean he’s not like most of us who teach ourselves and get a technique that works for us even though at the core of it we are still shit musicians. He has been taught properly but has gone on to teach himself the Andy Mcgee style of tapping the guitar as percussion over which he adds lyrics of Black Country observation. Watching him you can’t help but be mesmerised by how many different things he is doing at once and the flawlessness in which he is doing it.

Second up is our lock up buddies Mitch & Murray. At college Myself and Chris were taught philosophy by their frontman Benjamin Jones (yet another Halesowenian!), he told the class that studying existentialism would ultimately make you a more angry person, he was right and I still haven’t forgiven him for it. However that aside when we went to see Mitch & Murray perform at (strangely enough) the Flapper and Firkin me and Chris were inspired to start writing music together and the rest, as they say, is history. After a while as a solo act Ben has gathered a troop of likeminded musicians to create something quite spectacular. Despite complex instrumentation and time signatures Mitch & Murray keep it beautifully melancholic and minimalistic that encourages one to relate to the honesty of each song. They have a new album named ‘A Sad Day For British Wrestling’ out on itunes and a video for Bell Oil And Blood viewable below. I would also highly recommend their first album, If we ever get famous and get asked what albums have shaped us “The Bleak End Starts Here” will definitely be in there and if we don’t get famous then you now know that piece of information and can sleep soundly.



Ok now then here’s the big one, our first big name, Spotlight Kid. I’m not sure where to begin here so I’ll start with the obvious. Spotlight Kid have just performed at Glastonbury festival, the holy grail of all bands, to which they have gained considerable critical acclaim and off that got airplay on BBC Radio 1 on Huw Stevens show. When I recall their performance at the Flapper on Royal wedding night I recall it as one would a dream. I remember standing watching them in awe as they took the shoegaze style of My Bloody Valentine, The Twilight Sad and Whirl to name but a few and made it their own. The tell tale sign that they were going to be something else was the amount of Line 6 DL4 effects pedals present on stage, in our book the more DL4’s the more interesting the band (we are the exception to that rule though). Have a butchers at their new video for ‘Forget Yourself In Me’ from their next album ‘Disaster Tourist’ below.





We are also playing but you probably know what we sound like anyway.

If you haven’t confirmed yourself on facebook then heres the event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=238342506204598 Feel free to peruse at your leisure.

Right, I’ll let you get on with your day, and will hopefully see you on opening night on the 1st October!

Adieu
William