NEWS
Live work at last! January 18th, 2002 Firstly, thanks for your patience! We know it's taken us a while to hit the road and get out and play live - the main reason for this is the depressing nature of the UK live music scene over the last few years. If you're not a tribute band, forget it - and an eclectic band like us is pure anathema! For that reason, we decided to focus all of our efforts on aiming high and attempting to land one of the select number of worldwide festivals where music such as ours is appreciated. Finally, in the wake of the immensely critically acclaimed 'Argot', we've been successful... Thieves' Kitchen will play in the Hotel Araiza Inn in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico at around 1pm on Thursday, March 7th, 2002. We expect to be playing for a good 90 minutes, so at last we'll get to blow the cobwebs off the bulk of the work from the first two albums - not that we haven't already begun writing for the third... For more information on the festival, take a look at www.bajaprog.com FULL DETAILS OF THE TOUR... FRIDAY
FEBRUARY 15th - THE KING WILLIAM, NORTHAMPTON, UK SATURDAY
MAY 18TH – CLASSIC ROCK SOCIETY SPRING PROGFEST,
ROTHERHAM, UK We
are very excited by the line up of gigs we’ve been able to obtain.
It will be wonderful to cut our teeth in the UK before we travel
overseas, and the King William is a very rock orientated venue in the
centre of Northampton. Please try to get along to this, our very first
live show! Orion
in Baltimore is a very celebrated progressive rock gig - a long line
of prog luminaries have trodden the boards there. It is probably the
most important regular prog concert venue on the East Coast of the
USA. DFA from Italy will help to provide a night to remember! Baja
Prog! One of the best known prog festivals in the Americas, and
certainly the most well known show in the West these days. Everyone
who’s anyone in the prog world will be there, and we are delighted
to have been invited to play. More info at www.bajaprog.com The
Peel is fast becoming a haven for prog in south west London, and it
will be good to return from our overseas jaunt with another UK show
before we settle down to writing the third album. Qadesh, our support,
are an excellent up and coming progressive band, too. Finally, the well-known haunt of the HLC in Rotherham will mark our first performance for the Classic Rock Society, which is familiar territory for many UK proggers. This is a all day festival, and should be a lot of fun before we take a break over the summer to compose material for the third album, which is already underway at the time of writing… We very much look forward to seeing you - live, at last - at a gig near you soon! ________________________________________ What are we up to, then? July 6th, 2001 Greetings! Well, hopefully everyone has been following the news in terms of the reviews of the new album and one or two interviews as well elsewhere on the site. We were gratified by the reception to 'Head', but the consensus this time is that we've really gone and done it... the album is being universally hailed as difficult and hard to assimilate on first listen due to its complexity, but a real triumph and one of the most refreshing things to have come out of the UK prog scene for years... check out the reviews here... We've been taking a bit of a rest but also rehearsing to bring everything up to speed for live work. At the moment, we still have nothing planned, but that's because we've definitely decided that the pub circuit is not for us - we'd hope to arrive on the gig scene with a bang, and it's going to take one of the major prog events to do that effectively. We are in discussion with a number of different prospective festivals in the US for next year, where as expected 'Argot' seems to have been received the best of all. As soon as something significant is confirmed, we'll let you know here, but we'll also then add some lower key warm up gigs in England to blow off the cobwebs. You really shouldn't have too much longer to wait! New material - nothing as yet, intentionally, but writing will doubtless progress at a relaxed stage over the next 12 months with a view to album #3 being out there before the end of 2002. More as we have it - in the meantime, thanks to everyone for saying such kind things about 'Argot' - and we will see you live in due course! ___________________________________________
Sorry for the lack of recent news - the huge amount of effort which we've been putting into the new CD (coupled with one or two technical problems with the site) have led us to neglect things here a little bit - but at last, we have the news you've hopefully been looking forward to! Our second studio album 'ARGOT' will indeed be released in April, just 14 months after our warmly received debut, 'Head'. Full ordering details are as ever available here. We remain thrilled with our debut CD 'Head' as an opening gambit. It portrays many of the roots of the band - from Phil and Simon's earlier, more rock-edged excursions with 'Stuff' to Mark's neo-prog stylings from his work with icons Grey Lady Down - whilst melding all the strands into a critically acclaimed and highly original whole. 'Argot' however takes very few prisoners and makes very few compromises. With just four tracks comprising the album's 65 minutes, the songs are all full scale workouts. From the tortuous time signatures and near-psychotic lyrics of the opener 'John Doe Number One' to the lusher, more pastoral closing cut 'Call To Whoever', this is a band which is in no doubt whatsoever as to its direction and its objectives. We plan to have MP3's from the album up on site very soon, but in the meantime, the only way to ensure that you're amongst the first to experience it is to head for the ordering page... As soon as the album's out, we will at least be turning our thoughts to those first live shows! More news soon, we hope. ___________________________________________ 'ARGOT' is running to schedule! January 3rd, 2001 Firstly and most importantly - a very happy New Year to everyone, and many thanks for your support in 2000. It shouldn't be very long at all until the second TK album will be with you. As planned, we begin recording 'Argot' this coming weekend, January 6/7, with the drummist scaring all and sundry in and around our spiritual home - High Street Studios in Hungerford (right next door to the chippy!). The whole process is expected to take just over two months, and we still expect to have the album on the streets around Easter if everything goes to plan. The four songs now appear to be more or less christened, and the running order at the time of writing is expected to be: JOHN DOE NUMBER ONE - ESCAPE - PROXIMITY - CALL TO WHOEVER Look out for a new studio diary as the album takes shape, and regular updates on our progress. For the lovers of the more complex material on 'Head' - you are going to LOVE 'Argot'... oh, and if you're not familiar with the title, take a peek in the dictionary - we felt there could be no better name for a Thieves' Kitchen album! By the way, for our American friends, we Brits pronounce 'Argot' with a hard 't' on the end and not a silent one... More news very soon! Our first line-up change - and why! November 12th, 2000 Greetings! If you've got this far, you may have noticed there are now 6 'Heads' on the band members page rather than 5! Around a month ago, with plans for extensive touring and an upping of the band's workload for next year being discussed, it became clear that Paul's family commitments would not enable him to commit to the amount of time necessary, particularly in terms of taking the band overseas. Paul therefore offered his resignation as bassist which we reluctantly accepted - but yet remains as much a part of the band as before! Not only was his the vision behind the band's birth, but he also continues to contribute actively towards composition for the second album and will (we hope!) contribute some woodwind to it as well. Meantime, we've been scouring the country for a bass player with sufficient bravery to take over where Paul left off. After much coercion - and much running away on behalf of other potential candidates on hearing the 'impossible' nature of our music - our new 4/5/6/8 string prodigy, 20 year old Andy 'Way Too Many Basses' Bonham (son of John!) joined us in October. You can find out more about Andy - and his iguana! - here... At the same time, new material has been flowing at a phenomenal rate. Clearly, with the line-up change, it became an easy decision for us to forego any thoughts of live work before Summer 2001 and concentrate on the second album, with the working title of 'Argot'. All the material is now written and currently under rehearsal, and the album looks like it will consist of just four (long!) tracks. The 13 minute 'Escape' is completed, whilst a 20 minute magnum opus of a level of complexity only hinted at in 'Mute' - codenamed 'PM17' at present - is currently taxing our brains. The other pair - coded PM12 and Dance 45 - will be keeping us busy over the next few weeks. We hope to
begin recording at Christmas 2000 and to have the album
on the streets around Easter time. Watch this space for
more details! Previous news.... Our debut album 'Head' continues to disappear out of the door at great speed amid excellent reviews! The release date was 23 February 2000, and you can order it here for immediate dispatch. As we chose to maintain full control and release the CD independently, the best route to obtaining the album is via the band. However, we already have many distributors on board across the world, with fanzines and promoters taking a very active interest in the band and the album. We are about to fire off our second newsletter, both by e-mail and post - would anyone who's found their way here whose e-mail address we don't have please mail us and inform us. It's much cheaper to send information this way... It's only just over a year since the band finally completed the line-up to become an active unti, and it was always going to be tough to complete an album of such complex, original material in such a short time. But we've worked SO hard, and we're very proud of the end result. Please check out the reviews page - many are hailing 'Head' as a CD which will help re-establish the credibility of the UK in the serious progressive rock hierarchy... MP3's from 'Head' are now available here - replacing the previous demo versions and downloading far faster too! We've decided to forego live work this year in the interests of writing and rehearsing additional material, working towards the next CD which already looks as if it should be available by Easter next year. That way we can tour with an entire set of TK stuff. We are looking hard at live plans, including festivals, for next year - especially in the US which, as we expected, has proved to be our strongest sales territory so far. |
© Copyright 2000-2001 Thieves' Kitchen. All rights reserved