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.