Friday, August 15, 2008

New Adam Franklin album with the help of Sophia drummer

A few words from Adam on the new album:

We've been recording the new 'Adam Franklin' album and loving how it's sounding - it's the best record I've made, and that's regardless of the fact that the latest is always the favourite.

It's not ever so often you find yourself recording two albums back-to-back and the fact that the Bolts of Melody and Magnetic Morning sessions have come straight after stepping off the Swervedriver tour and letting rip on stage for a month has meant that one's "ripping capacities" have been finely tuned!

The Toronto recording session went really well. We tracked all guitars and keys and we got some cracking sounds - there are some fucking heavy guitars on there.

We had already recorded the drums in London before the Swerve tour - Sophia's Robin Proper-Sheppard supervised getting Jeff Townsin's drums down at the Joint in King's Cross. Jeff, who of course played drums in Bolts of Melody on the last tour, was in sterling form as always and nailed 11 songs in 3 days and Robin got it sounding really warm and kinda 'woody' ha ha. It's all about the warmth and the wood!

Charlie Francis and I will mix the album at Charlie's gaffe in Cardiff, South Wales early September and we should have a fully mixed album completed by the time Swervedriver plays its UK shows.

Release date will likely be early in the new year and in the meantime we'll post a little sonic taster or two at the www.myspace.com/toshackhighway and www.adamfranklin.com pages for people to check out.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

More Flower Shop releases

I'd like to share some news I gathered at last month's Sophia gig at the Cactus Festival:
- A date has been set for the release of the SISTER 7". It will be out September first.
- In my previous post I mentioned that SISTER's bass player Steven (who played with Sophia this summer) already played with Sophia in the Summer of 2004. I failed to mention that their guitar player Alan (who also played with Sophia this summer) has also played with Sophia in the past. He was the bass player when they did 'The Infinite Circle' for the Don't Look Back gig in London.
In a previous life Alan used to be a member of the fabulous Sultans Of Ping FC. Their 'Teenage Punks' is one of my favourite singles from the nineties. Check it out here: http://www.myspace.com/thesultansofping and do check out their albums too.
- And there's another Flower Shop Recordings release coming out soon. It will be a 10 inch vinyl mini album from By The Fireside. It will have 6 tracks and is called 'Day of the Burning'. The cd version was released in the UK by Red Deer Club in a 500 copies limited edition.
By The Fireside is the band of Daniel Lea; the very same Daniel Lea who produced the Dark Captain, Light Captain album.