Our track Kitty is BBC6 'pick of the year'

Massive thanks to Tom Robinson of BBC6 Music, who played our track Kitty as one of his picks of 2012. 

Tom called the song an 'understated gem' and has played the track a few times now.

Straw Bear among best bands of 2012

We were delighted to hear that A New Band a Day had picked us as number 2 in their countdown of best bands of 2012.

ANBAD’s Joe Sparrow has been massively generous in his support of the band, and our place in the countdown follows a fantastic review of Kitty a few weeks back. 

ANBAD

Blue Barn on Black Bank

A few people have asked us where we made the album, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to shamelessly plug the Blue Barn, the studio in which we made the recordings.

It’s close to Ely in Cambridgeshire, and there’s not a great deal around, which makes it fantastic for concentrating the mind and getting things done.

Blue Barn is actually on Black Bank Road, which is where we pinched the title of the album from.

I think the atmosphere in which any music is made will find its way into the recording; in our case, the sessions for the album were (usually) fairly relaxed affairs, and we were given the space by the Blue Barn to get things the way we wanted them.

We sometimes stayed over at the studio so as to get as much work in as possible over a weekend (it didn’t always work out this way), and in the past, we’ve played gigs on the stage there and had a load of friends in.

Chris Taylor, who runs the studio, is not only an incredibly nice man, but he’s got a fantastic ear, and was always honest with us when things were sounding a bit crap. He would tell us when we were overthinking things ... which I think we probably have a tendency to do.

As someone who’s never going to be the best musician in the world, I think he got some really good performances out of me, and some great ones from the rest of the band, who are infinitely better musicians.

Sometimes Chris T would just leave us to it, popping in once in a while to provide a fresh pair of ears. We did some of our best stuff later at night, and sometimes he would disappear for a bit, and then come back to make the odd suggestion here and there.

We’re very proud of album, and we don't think it'd sound the same without Chris T.

Ian

blue.barn@virgin.net

www.facebook.com/bluebarn.mixing

First reviews of Black Bank

Some early promo copies of Black Bank have been reviewed by arts journalists, and we're very pleased with the response thus far ...

Do have a read.

Artswrap

Oliver Arditi

Black Bank out 10th December

The new Straw Bear album - Black Bank - is out on the 10th of December on Oilbug Music. It's going to be available to buy as both the sumptuous gatefold CD you see below... and as a digital download from iTunes etc...  Watch this space to get your copy.

Straw Bear on Oilbug Music

We’re releasing Black Bank through Oilbug, a relatively new label that already has a really strong blend of acts on its roster.

http://www.oilbugmusic.com/

It’s worked out really well for us to licence the record to Oilbug, in that they see themselves as collaborators as opposed to the usual (and rather skewed) label/artist dynamic.

We’ve long had connections with Dan Donovan (of King Kool, and one of Oilbug’s founders) and Archie of Burning Codes, so we feel pretty fortunate to be working alongside people we genuinely admire.

When Black Bank is released, you’ll be able to buy it from the Oilbug site.

Our new album out in Dec - release date soon...

“To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality.

Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens ... How do you surmount reality, children?

How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings?”
Waterland, Graham Swift.

Forgive the pretentious intro, but we wanted to get across just how much our new album has been informed by the place in which it was recorded.

The Cambridgeshire Fens are rather unfairly thought of as a bleak place, full of inbreeding and odd folk who eat their young.

But those who can get past all that stuff discover a genuinely beautiful part of the country. Some of photographer Bob Davis's pictures show the enormity of the sky in a place where there isn't much going on in the land ... http://bobdavisphotography.co.uk/p358993249

Other photos point to the weird in-betweenness of a place that's neither solid land nor water.

Bob very kindly agreed that we could use a stunning, Turner-esque image on our album cover ... we hope that the minimal design work lets this beautiful photo speak for itself.

More on the album shortly ... including (hopefully) a release date.

Straw Bear