DREAMLANDS

SAUNA YOUTH "DREAMLANDS" 12"

A.

1. TOWN CALLED DISTRACTION

B.

2. PLANNED DESIGNS

3. SNAPBACK

4. PSI GIRLS

5. VISCOUNT DISCOUNT

6. HAIRSTYLES

This record nearly never happened. After about 18 months of incessant productivity from when we started the band a series of fuck-ups/accidents/mistakes conspired to bring us to a stuttering, slow wade through a creative mire. This is the third attempt at producing what we envisaged nearly two years ago as "DREAMLANDS". The first attempt, tried in early 2011 was (thankfully in retrospect) lost to the most boring of reasons in this digital age... a mislabelling of files on my computer. 12 songs existed in some demoed form or another, Reza spent a few hours playing on his own, interpreting these through no collective practice, whilst I recorded the results. We recorded some bass and guitar at home for the ones that we knew and this was to continue until one day, after a bit of a clean up on my computer, all of Reza's hard work had gone, blank space now occupied what were once accurate peaks and troughs in Ableton live. The reasons for being unable to retrieve this stuff is so insanely dull that I can't even bring myself to think about what they were. Anyway, we took this as a sign and luckily we did as I fear it may have come out as a "mess" and would have a fair amount of "shit songs" on it. So... we then set about learning our lessons (especially me) and also the songs we liked from those demos, we rehearsed and we played a bunch of shows and at the end of one weekend away we booked in at Brighton Electric Studios (in Brighton). Armed again with the trusty 8-track I would borrow from work and not much knowledge but a lot of enthusiasm AND ALSO this time with an actual proper 'live room' and decent microphones and space separators, or whatever they're called, we set about making the most lifeless, terrible sounding recording we possibly could. I then spent fucking months trying to make it not sound lifeless and terrible, until one day after letting a couple of friends hear it and having no response back (a bad sign) Eddy Frankel took us (metaphorically) to one side and told us we could do better (friend talk for "it's a piece of shit") and the web of lies came crashing down, we knew, we just didn't want to admit it... luckily I had already sent it off to be mastered and I had a week or so of grovelling exchanges hoping we wouldn't get charged hundreds of pounds for something that would go in the digital bin. The recording can now never be heard otherwise we will owe a man hundreds of pounds (yes!).
Then a load of life happened... including in no particular order; 3 of us moving to London, 1 carrying on living in London, illness, Jen joining the band as a member proper, our first (and only, so far) show as a 5 piece at Yes Way, a load of shit jobs, Reza not being in the band anymore, our last show with Reza when Ellis had a really great reaction to the band that headlined right after they finished, a general malaise, christmas, free seafood platters, not practicing, some boredom, some excitement, cinema brawling, a really great show with Total Control, persuasion, salads, eggs, etc.
Amongst this we began in January to attempt once more with vigour the realisation of "DREAMLANDS". This went well, Lindsay & I laid the groundwork in about 3 hours at a practice space, then we pieced the rest together, adding, taking away, twisting, scraping, re-recording all the snare hits on my own in a practice space leaving me only 20 minutes of a 2 hour session to do my vocals, Murphy 1st taking pretty much all of his bass parts, having Henry Withers employ his talent for handclapping during a fleeting visit to our house, getting our friends Bobby and Martha to come and read the story Jen and Patrick had written to help solidify the idea of Distraction, our playground for the characters we have created thus far to inhabit. The music for the first song actually comes from the second recording session... with the mighty Reza on drums, originally a 5 minute long improvised piece in B conceived the morning of recording, it withstood the digital knife... being stretched, cut and layered to act as the counterpoint to the tale. We then, for once, mixed it all together with the help of Bobby to bolster our failings with the low-end. Sent it off to Kris Lapke in NYC to do things I thought not possible with what we sent him, then him and Josh Bonati cut the lacquers (we hope you enjoy the locked groove) and it then began it's physical journey round the world.
Essentially I think what i'm getting at is that we're all very happy/relieved that it now exists and that people can hear it...

 Sauna Youth - Dreamlands by Gringo Records

I guess it would be customary here to go through the themes and ideas contained within the record, but I ain't...

I am going to tell you though that it is out on the 3rd September on 12" 180g black vinyl with a 12 page risographed insert and that both Matt at Gringo and Dan at Faux Discx have pre-orders up for the record, two people we are very grateful to have supporting us as a band.

We're also throwing a party to celebrate it's release on the 1st September at Protein Gallery in Shoreditch, with music, art and dancing. It's going involve everyone associated with helping make the record exist and we're going to play the whole thing. Holy shit.

Here's the flyer...

Ok, cheers see you later.

VERFREUNDUNGSEFFEKT

Hey hey, so that last post was pretty funny huh? AND i didn't even have to make any of it up... crazy. Although i'm pretty tempted by it, especially the possibility of receiving an email report about what we could be doing to get bigger. One thing we thought of all by ourselves was to get Jen Calleja in the band, you might have seen her at our most recent gigs. So far the response has been "You're much better". So far, so good...

Anyway Jen, whilst she isn't improving our band, likes to keep herself occupied with a plethora of other creative outlets and one of these has been creating and editing a German culture magazine called Verfreundungseffekt (it's a playful pun on the term verfremdungseffekt, coined by Brecht, meaning in very simplified terms as "making strange" or "distancing effect" but also containing the German word for 'friend'. Geddit?). Other members of Sauna Youth and our extended creative family are involved in the contents as well as a load of other fine people. It is finally ready to go and be printed and she has organised an event to celebrate its existence... i'll hand you over to her for the details -

HEIMATMUSEUM and BATHYSPHERE EDITIONS presents

Verfreundungseffekt Magazine – Launch and Exhibition
Heimat Museum, 44 Marlborough Avenue, E8 4JR (close to Haggerston Rail) http://g.co/maps/4p68

Verfreundungseffekt is a German-English language magazine exploring ‘Germanness’ and ‘The Angloamerican’ designed by Joseph Hales and edited by Jen Calleja. The magazine and exhibition assume cultures to be mythologies created by the tourist or the emigrant from another nation, with this perspective raising questions about the performance, idealisation and stereotyping of nationalities, as well as the possibility and problems of translation and comprehension.

Verfreundungseffekt is a more ethnographic record of the modern-day émigrés moving from the UK to Germany/Germany to the UK/America compared to the academic, over-analysed and generalised accounts of a country’s history and culture. The magazine was formed from an appreciation of German culture and language and a wish to help promote it, and will stand as a document of the individuals who move between the world of the German and the world outside of it.

The exhibition will run Friday 24^th February – Sunday 26^th February, with the Magazine launch from 6pm – 9pm on the Friday and a ‘Curator’s Talk’ at 2pm on the Saturday.
 

V-effekt Magazine Launch - event page here
Friday 24th February 6pm - 9pm

With live performances from

TENSE MEN
PINES

 V-effekt Curator's Talk

Saturday 25th February 2pm

With

HEIMATMUSEUM
VERFREUNDUNGSEFFEKT

V-effekt Exhibition
Friday 24th February - Sunday 26th FebruaryExhibiting work by

CLAUDIA AHLERING (claudiaahlering.de)
YURI PATTISON (yuripattison.com)
R M PHOENIX (rm-phoenix.co.uk)
THE INTERNATIONAL WESTERN (josephhales.co.uk)
LINDSAY CORSTORPHINE (lostinidea.blogspot)
SIMON MARSHAM (simonmarsham.tumblr)

MY GOLD'S BANGLA

"In 2004 in the UK, following complaints from the public about postal carriers causing litter by discarding the rubber bands which they used to keep their mail together, the Royal Mail introduced red bands for their workers to use: it was hoped that, as the bands were easier to spot than the traditional brown ones and since only the Royal Mail used them, employees would see (and feel compelled to pick up) any red bands which they had inadvertently dropped. Currently, some 342 million red bands are used every year."

Since 2006 i've been picking them up, tagging and labelling them. With with dates, words, phrases, memories, locations, cryptic allusions, precise observations, relevant or completely irrelevant information associated with that red rubber band.

It has been, and still is an exercise in obsessive behaviour. My collection currently stands as a document of a 5 year period between 2006 - 2011. Initially collected as totems and omens of good luck, the compulsion turned into the piece itself. The labelling of the mundane, everyday object to imbue it with some meaning and a sense of it's own time and existence.

It was recently exhibited at the Basement Gallery in Brighton, as part of an exhibition about collectors. People seemed to be interested in it, a lot of people asked a lot of questions and a couple of people thought I was a massive fraud. I even got an article in the local paper and interviewed by a weatherman on tv about it. The people who put the exhibition did a great job of hanging the piece...

I had a tape player hanging from the wall with a loop of the song the piece is named after. The mother and daughter that were quite adamant I was full of shit and a fake collector wouldn't even believe that I was in a band, let alone the singer from the tape. A harsh lesson in the fact that if the aesthetics don't match the sonics then you won't be taken seriously. or something... 

Anyway, the exhibition went great, thanks for asking. Now, luckily for you we're putting up the piece for sale. It's available from our shop here. 

The piece comes with the 300 red rubber bands attached to fishing-wire for ease of display.

It also comes with a signed, framed original copy of the lyrics to "MY GOLD'S BANGLA". 

Also by purchasing the piece you will receive a lathe cut 7", which will be the only one in existence, the a-side being the original version of "MY GOLD'S BANGLA" and the b-side a re-working completely exclusive to the 1 of 1 pressing.

The cost includes delivery to anywhere in the world.

"Crimson plastic, 

flecks of internal luck lie 

amidst the cracks, 

the broken greys, which hold 

no interest 

except for those looking from the shoes up. 

I’m looking for omens everywhere. 

Rituals that hold no weight, 

follow our own rules and our own fates, 

unclean digits aren’t a direct cause but 

an effect,

constricted wrists stop the flow with a

band of red.


I’m looking for omens everywhere."

"LISTS" - ARTIST EDITIONS

Bear with me... 

as part of the "LISTS" project we collaborated with 9 artists to produce 9 images, which The Positive Press then screen-printed for an exhibition (which finishes this weekend BTW)...

We then also created 'Artist Editions' of the record we released, these are limited to 10 of each version. (so 90 limited records in total) It consists of the original sleeve with an extra edition tab, hand-stamped and numbered, with a wrap-around riso-graphed poster of the artists image (those of you that own an original 'Teenage Kicks' 7" will know what this looks like) and a cute little sticker on the front.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

They look bloody swell & half of these have gone already, you can purchase the other half RIGHT HERE. (let us know which one you want)

Here are what they look like, apparently Canon cameras like rotating things...

R.M. Phoenix

Alicia Raitt

Will Exley

Chris Pell

Dan Reeves

James Hines

Cheska Hill

Lucy Jones

We Three Club

MAHOGANY MAN

Hey, so thanks to everyone that made it out last weekend and thanks to all the bands for coming & playing... it was great. I think Peebs took some photos, so if you see him ask him about them yeah?

Just a reminder to say the exhibition is on for another week, Magnum Opus is open from 11 till 6 from tuesday. After that the prints will be available from Murphy.

ALSO... "LISTS" is now being stocked in the following fine establishments -

Rough Trade
Banquet Records
Art For Blind
Resident Records
Edgeworld Records
&
Sorry State Records in the US.

 

False Jesii part 2 (cover) by Distractions

WHAT A JOKE

We're releasing our second 7" on the 1st of April. It's called "LISTS" and has 3 songs on it. We recorded it ourselves and me and my brother did the artwork, i'll tell you all about it real soon I promise. The current pressing matter at the moment though is letting you know about what we've organised to celebrate our investment in 300 pieces of black polyvinyl chloride. 

The first event is on the 1st of April and is the (not so) private view of an exhibition of screen-printed posters of drawings and illustrations which have been created in response (or lack of) to the concept of lists. Organised and curated by The Positive Press the exhibition will feature work by R.M. PHOENIX, WILLIAM EXLEY, DAN REEVES, JAMES HINES, WE THREE CLUB, LUCY JONES, CHRIS PELL, RICHARD ARDAGH & MARK PAVEY AND CHESKA HILL.

These prints will also form part of a series of a limited run of the LISTS 7" which will be available that night and the following night. 

This is being held at the Magnum Opus Tattoo shop, 33 Upper North Street, Brighton, BN1 3FG

It's free entry, there will be stuff to drink and The Norwegian Pine Forest will be providing aural delights. The exhibition will then run for the next 2 weeks at the gallery space in the tattoo shop.

The second event is the following night on Saturday the 2nd of April & is an all-ages show. We're going back to the Hanover Community Centre again because we had so much fun there last time. Playing on the night will be - 

SAUNA YOUTH - us, with our new record, duh.

Fair Ohs - Blissful world music from the grey streets of London

Atentado - Raging noisy hardcore from Barcelona (members of Destino Final. oh yes.)

Prize Pets - Uncomfortably great party jams from London

State Icons - 90's hardcore punk worship from Brighton

With projections by Pines and DJ's. 

At The Hanover Community Centre, 33 Southover Street, Brighton, BN2 9UD

They're using one of their 12 alcohol licenses for this show so there will be a bar. 

The doors will be at 7PM, first band on about 7:30PM. 

It'll be £6, and i'll be dropping of some tickets to Resident Records in Brighton this week if you want to secure your place in the F.U.N.

ALSO, your ticket/stamp will get you into the club night 13 monsters that night for cheap. 

"We like lists because we don't want to die"