NEW RELEASE: “First Light” single 21/06/26

Apr 20 2017

Spring 2017 gig updates!

Following on from our previous announcement of our spring/summer gig programme, we are saddened to announce that the Gene Loves Jezebel tour has been cancelled. Therefore, our York appearance is not happening unfortunately. Hopefully we can re-arrange something at The Fulford for a later date since we were looking forward to playing there.

However, we will still be playing on Thursday 27th April a bit closer to home at The Packhorse, Leeds. We have been kindly invited to headline Goth City’s “Black Mass Against The Cuts III” event. Also on the bill are Viet-Bong, Jan Doyle Band and DWB13X which will make for a fun and varied bill. Entry is £5 and as is usually the case for Goth City events, all proceeds go to PAFRAS, which is a cause we fully endorse.

The 29th April gig at The Underground, Bradford still stands and we will be bringing you a full headlining set, containing some of our new material as well as old favourites from the album. Support comes from Bradford newcomers Crawlform. DJ Mark (Songs of Preys) will be finishing off the evening with a goth/alternative set until the small hours. Entry for this one is FREE and the venue is open late, so get down for a bank holiday weekend party with us.

Regarding the 8th July gig at Wharf Chambers in Leeds, we can now confirm that the event will be Goth City’s “Day Of The Goths”. This is an all day event, which is a fundraiser for this year’s Goth City Festival. We were honoured to appear at last year’s festival as well as enjoy many of the other bands and bills. It’s a cracking line-up, which also features scene favourites Zeitgeist Zero, Quasimodo, The Lost Souls, Jan Doyle Band and The Black Riders Cult as well as DJ’s to follow well into the night. Door price is £10 and doors open at 5pm. We are really looking forward to this and are hoping to have something brand new to release on this date. More news on that later.

Details of these and all other dates can be seen on our gig list so please do keep checking back.

Mar 19 2017

Upcoming gigs and studio progress – spring 2017

2017 has been a little bit of a quiet year for us so far but we’ve been steadily piecing new music together in the background. We now have five new pieces in the works from this wave of material, two of which we have aired live so far. Demo sessions and writing continue.

Our intention was to curtail live activity for a while. However, every band needs to keep its hand in and not turn great offers down and so therefore, it is our pleasure to be able to announce our little programme of spring/summer dates.

Firstly, we have been kindly invited to open up for Michael Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel for two dates of their UK tour.

“Gene Loves Jezebel (GLJ) are a British rock band formed in the early 1980s by identical twin brothers Jay Aston (born John Aston) and Michael. Gene Loves Jezebel’s best-known songs include “Heartache”, “Desire (Come and Get It)” (1986), “The Motion of Love” (1987), and “Jealous” (1990), as well as their broody dark alternative club hits “Bruises” (1983), “Influenza (Relapse)” (1984), and “The Cow” (1985). “Desire” (1985) was GLJ’s most successful single in the UK.”

Almost four decades and many line-up changes resulted in there being two versions of the band, each being fronted by one of the respective brothers, one being UK based and one US based. Michael’s version is the US based version of the band, who are over the pond for a rare UK tour.

On Thursday 27th April, we’re at The Fulford Arms in York. It’ll be our first time both at The Fulford and in York and both which have been on our “to do” list for a while.

Saturday 29th April sees us on home turf at our new favourite Bradford venue The Underground. This show will be followed by a full alternative club night until the wee small hours.

For both dates (and indeed all of the tour dates), the rather excellent Grooving in Green are also on the bill whose live shows are a sight to behold. Ticket prices vary depending on venue and watch out for more bands being added to the bill.

On 8th July, we return to Wharf Chambers in Leeds. Details for this show are yet to be announced but we can tell you that it’s going to be a fantastic event and to keep all day free for it. We will let you know more details when the event has been announced but for now, keep an eye on announcements from the team over at Goth City.

26th August sees us venturing to Manchester’s Star and Garter for the first time as special guests of London rockers Terminal Gods. This will be our first time in Manchester and we’re very much looking forward to bringing our music across the hills. More details on this show to be announced.

We’re hoping to air some of our new material at most of these dates and hope to have plenty of merchandise to peddle. We also hope to have an EP out over the summer as previously announced and work on the album continues steadily. We hope to see you at the shows. Have a great spring!

Keep an eye on our gig page for up to date news of these and any other dates.

Oct 31 2016

2017 and the next chapter

2016 has been another good year for us, which saw us playing a fair few gigs and finally completing and releasing our first album. Goth City Festival on 26th November will be our final live appearance of 2016 and presently there is nothing in the calendar looking forward. This has not been completely by design but we are welcoming a period where commitments are kept to a minimum, in order for us to progress with writing and recording our next batch of material.

“Time and Tide” essentially comprised all of the material which was written from the band’s beginnings up until its recording (2012-2015) and whilst we’re very proud of it, we’re keen to progress and move onto the next chapter. We already have three new songs in the works, two of which we’ve introduced into our live set in the last couple of months.

Our plan is to release an EP in the first half of 2017 which will loosely follow the same format as “Trust”, featuring a brand new single, a remix/alternate version of an existing song or two and something else. This will coincide with a period of writing and working towards a second album, the release date of which is very much unknown. It is very early days but the album has the working title of “The Perfect Storm”.

Of course, we’re not intending on calling time on all live activities in 2017 and as always, we’re open to any opportunities. So if you would like us to come and play then please do feel free to get in touch.

Sep 22 2016

Time and Tide – complete!

“Time and Tide”, our debut album is finally finished. We received the CDs earlier this week and although our official release date is 1st October, we’ve started selling them in passing. Also, it is available for download and streaming from Bandcamp, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Spotify and a whole host of other online outlets. Prices vary between sites.

To mark it’s release, we are playing at the next Carpe Noctum night, which is held at The Library in Leeds. We’re on with two fantastic bands in the shape of The Danse Society and Berlin Black.

“Time and Tide” represents a culmination of the first three years of the band’s life, comprising all of the songs we had written and refined between our conception and the recording of the album. It contains all four songs from the Sense of Belonging EP and the track Smoke and Mirrors, which we previously released as a standalone track. However, these are all brand new recordings with each song meticulously reworked and produced by Martin Hawthorn.

We would like to thank everybody who has helped and supported us over the last 4 years. We really hope you enjoy the album and here’s to many more!

Love,

Alec, Emma and Charles.

Jun 14 2016

It’s an Elysian summer – gigs and releases 2016

Summer 2016 is shaping up to be a good one for us with a single release last week and some great gigs coming up.

As we reported a few days ago, we released a second single from the forthcoming album “Time and Tide”. “This Rising Sun” is a song which we’ve been playing live for a couple of years or so and one which has been very well received. We initially released it via Bandcamp and shortly afterwards, it was made available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Google Play and a host of other online outlets. This was shortly followed by our previous EP “Trust” being added to the same outlets. So, give us a spin on Spotify. If you like what you hear, show us some love and buy the songs. If you are a DJ who is interested in giving us some airtime, either live or on the radio, then please get in touch and we will provide you with free promo copies. This Rising Sun is an online release only until the album comes out and we have limited copies of “Trust” left on CD which will be available at the gigs whilst stocks last.

Saturday, 9th July sees us return to The Exchange, Keighley for the first time since 2013. The Exchange is a great little place, tucked away in the back streets of Keighley town centre. The team who are behind it are some of the nicest people you could hope to meet and the main guy Michael “Mouse” Watmough has been a good friend of mine for about 20 years now. He does a fantastic job. We are lucky enough to once again be playing with the fantastic The Danse Society, whom we were fortunate enough to support back in January at our last visit to Carpe Noctum. Also on the bill are the fantastic Haworth band Black Horse Fairy with their spellbinding mix of steampunk folk rock. This will be a night of great music. We’re on first so try and get there early doors. Tickets are £5, which is very much worth the price of admission for The Danse Society alone.

Saturday, 23rd July, we are introduced to great new Bradford venue called The Underground. Situated on Duke Street, the building itself has in the past been no stranger to live music. However, after being left in a severely dilapidated state for many years by the previous tenants, it was recently taken over by brothers Nigel and Matthew Booth and given a brand new lease of life and some much needed TLC. We are very much looking forward to playing and checking out the venue. We are playing with up and coming band F.A.N.S. who have been wooing a few key music industry bods over the last couple of years including 6Music’s Steve Lamacq. Their style is modern dark indie with shades of post-punk very reminiscent of Joy Division.

Saturday 30th July we return to The Fenton in Leeds. We love The Fenton as a favourite Leeds drinking destination and great small venue. The event has been put together by Goth City Promotions, whom we are very much in support of due to not only their grassroots support for bands but also their work for PAFRAS, which is a charity very much close to our hearts. Also on the bill are Leeds goth trio Quasimodo and Staffordshire’s The Glass House Museum.

Saturday, 20th August sees us back at our regular stomping ground, The Black Swan in Bradford. Also on the bill are Stoke-on-Trent gothic rockers Lupine, who are celebrating 18 years of existence this year. As is often the case at The Swan, it’s an Under The Gun night with DJ Pinkabelle playing a wide selection of goth and alternative tunes until 1am. As always, entry is free.

For up to date information on all of our gigs, please keep checking back. We’re always on the lookout, so if you would like to make a booking enquiry, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

In other news, work on the album continues in the background. It’s now at a reasonably advanced stage and all being well we should be able to get it somewhere near finished over the summer. In addition to this, the follow up release is currently being demo’d as new material continues to develop.

We hope you are enjoying your summer as much as we are enjoying ours!

Jun 10 2016

New single release – “This Rising Sun”

Work on the album is at a fairly advanced stage now. However, there is still some work to do. We thought it might be fun in the mean time to release a second track as a single. Since we have been playing it live “This Rising Sun” is the one people have probably asked about the most. It’s up on Bandcamp for now but it will be available on iTunes, Amazon and a plethora of other online outlets in the coming days as will our previous EP “Trust”. We very much hope you enjoy it! 🙂

Apr 20 2016

Goth City Festival (26/11/16)

We are extremely pleased to announce our inclusion on the first Leeds Goth City Festival. This is a project which is being organised by Goth City Promotions whom we have played numerous gigs for around the city of Leeds. There are some fantastic acts on, spanning three weeks in November. We are on the bill for the main event on the 26th at Wharf Chambers. Stage time is still TBC but keep checking back for details.

Feb 27 2016

Pictures of Matchstick Men

This is our take on the Status Quo classic. It’s already becoming quite a live favourite. If you ever get to hear this Mr Rossi, we hope you enjoy what we’ve done with it 🙂

Feb 22 2016

Trust EP now available on Bandcamp

Last autumn, we aimed to release our debut album but unfortunately external circumstances dictated that this would not be possible. In fact the album still remains unfinished, although more progress has been made in the last few weeks. However, we really wanted to release something on CD at the Carpe Noctum gig on 3rd October of last year so we put this EP together.

Entitled “Trust”, it contains “The Last Time” – a song from the album, the DJ Cruel Brittania remix of Smoke and Mirrors described in our previous post, the original recording of Smoke and Mirrors from 2013 and our version of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men”, which has very quickly established itself as a live favourite.

The CD has been on sale from the band at gigs since October. We’ve uploaded it to Bandcamp for those who wish to download it. We hope you enjoy this little taste of the recordings to come as well as one or two special tracks and alternate mixes.

Sep 14 2015

Recordings and remixes

As we continue the countdown to the Carpe Noctum gig on 3rd October, there is a lot of studio activity in the background consisting of mixing of the forthcoming album, further recording which will surface as part of an EP and more interestingly, remix work of existing recordings.

On the subject of remixes, we are delighted to announce that DJ Cruel Britannia has completed a remix of our song Smoke and Mirrors and we think it sounds great!

We gave him some rough mixes of the forthcoming album and asked him if he would be interested in working on a remix of a song. He chose Smoke and Mirrors, we passed him the raw tracks and he went away and created the remix.

In his own words “rather than me going to town with the drum loops, samples, synths & the usual technical fuckery I indulge in, I went for the ’12” club remix’ approach instead, opting to leave as much of the original track intact, but a bit longer and shinier…yes, it took a shedload of will power to stay away from the gadgets”.

Well, we would have been happy however many gadgets he used and we are really pleased with what he has achieved. Many thanks for a fantastic job.

There is also another potential remix in the pipeline which will surface at a later date, more news on this later. We are always up for having remixes performed on our music, so if you would like to contribute then please feel free to get in touch. Make it as radically different as you like. Full artistic license and credit will be given naturally.

Work on the album continues unabated. As previously alluded to, we were hoping to release this on 3rd October and whilst there is still a chance we may do, we don’t want to make any promises, which is why we have not made any big announcements to this effect. The recording work has been completed. However, there is a lot of production work which still needs to go into it and external circumstances are not currently on our side. Martin Hawthorn has been immersing himself in the project and taking every opportunity to work on the mixes. What he has achieved so far is sounding amazing to these ears and he is certainly pulling out all the stops to complete as much work as possible. However, he is adamant that we should not release it prematurely for the sake of releasing it as it needs to be right. We do apologise for any inconvenience and we accept full responsibility for any misleading announcements.

That said, we are keen to release a CD at the gig, so an EP is being readied which will comprise a single from the album (as yet undecided), the Cruel Britannia remix of Smoke and Mirrors, the original 2013 Voltage Studios recording of Smoke And Mirrors and something else we have been working on which we are not yet in a position to announce.

Stand by for further news on both the EP and the album.

To listen to DJ Cruel Britannia’s remix of Smoke and Mirrors, visit the Soundcloud page.

Dawn of Elysium