Commercially Inviable Records

dear chums!

february FOX update

on me shed, son…

last summer me and a bunch of the commercially inviable chaps headed down the m5 to a shed in somerset, where we recorded some lo-fi live acoustic sessions. it’s taken a while to get the videos online (the shed has taken on a life of its own and jon, the genius behind it, has been way busy keeping on top of it all!) now they’re online, i’ve posted them up on my blog so you can have a look for yourself!

other artists to have graced the shed include micah p hinson, roddy woomble, even steve harley! you can have a look at their sessions here: www.songsfromtheshed.com.

i’ve got a brace o’ nice gigs coming up in the next week, too:

2nd march
island bar
suffolk st queensway, birmingham

tour support for eux autres, who are a fine band from san francisco (think ‘beach house‘ but with better songs). also on the bill is sheffield indiepop hero pete green’s new outfit, the sweet nothings. it’s going to be lovely, so come on down.

8th march
totally acoustic
the lamb
94 lamb’s conduit st, london wc1n 3lz

this is one of my favourite gigs to do. free in, with a whip round for the acts. run by the hardest working man in indie, mj hibbett! when he’s not touring the globe doing comedy musicals dressed as a dinosaur, mj hibbett has a lovely little acoustic night where invited guests play in a room above a pub with no p.a., no mics, nothing. intimate, friendly and always good fun, totally acoustic is a quiet revelation. me and mj will be playing with peter buckley hill and jenny lockyer.
(early gig - starts 7pm)


cheers,
FOX

–
www.worldoffox.com
www.ruthgreendesign.com

Some months ago we sent a crack squad of Commercially Inviable artists to Somerset to play some songs in a garden shed. All of the bands had a great day and one of them, World of Fox, wrote about it on his blog and we re-published it here. (LINKY)

The reason for the journey was for the bands to record sessions for Songs From The Shed, a brilliantly quirky folk music website that does exactly what it says on the tin - Bands arrive, they are filmed playing in a shed and then the videos go online.

It seemed like a perfect fit for the bands on the label and so when got in touch with Jon, the owner of the shed, we were delighted when he invited us down.

Jon has been plodding along at his own pace for a while now and has quietly gone about recording almost 60 separate sessions. However, and for reasons apparently unknown to Jon himself, it seems that this week the rest of the world has started to cotton on to the great things happening in his shed.

Earlier this week Jon mentioned on his Twitter feed that The Daily Express had written about Songs From The Shed.

This was swiftly followed by an article in The Times, which no-one can link to because of Rupert’s paywall and so therefore may or may not exist, and then there was a mention and an interview on Tony Livesey’s BBC Radio 5Live show. You can listen to Jon on the wireless by clicking on this BBC iPlayer link. The interview kicks in at 54 minutes.

With all of the press attention heading Jon’s way it’s rather lucky that we’d previously agreed this week to make the first of our four Commercially Inviable sessions available online.  We chose the marvellous folk collective Gurdan Thomas to appear first in order for their session to coincide with the release of their album, “The Fat Lady Sings”. Here’s on off the 4 videos in the session:

You can view all 4 videos over on the Songs From The Shed site.

We hope you enjoy the session. We’ll keep you posted on when each of the other 3 from World of Fox, James Summerfield and Richard Burke appear online.  We also hope to send Friends of the Starsdown to Somerset at some point in the near future to complete the Commercially Inviable set.

We were asked to contribute to an article by journalist Luke Morton for The Linc and answered a few questions via email. Luke informs us that the article is now online. Read it here

From World of Fox…

dear chums,

a couple of bits of news for you this month:

primitive painters: if you’d have asked me what my favourite song was at any point from the mid 80’s to mid 90’s. i’d have probably said this one. ‘primitive painters’ was by birmingham legends felt, in collaboration with cocteau twins’ robin guthrie and elizabeth fraser. truly a match made in heaven.

you can download my version here for free during october.

respect due: more exciting news on the respect front! we’ve agreed a release for the whole project with those lovely, lovely folks at where it’s at is where you are records. early in 2011, all the songs featured during the year - plus a few extra tracks - will be released as a cd. the plan is to have two versions: a basic cd release, featuring the tracks in a nice, simple sleeve, which will be available at a special reduced price; plus a limited edition deluxe version which will come in bespoke extra-special packaging, including hand-printed artwork by ruth green, plus the chance to win a very special prize! more news as it’s confirmed.

cheers
fox

gigs coming up:

17th october
world unlimited present a commercially inviable showcase
hare & hounds, birmingham
(i’ll be playing solo, and as one of the james summerfield  band)

7th november
the sunflower sessions
the sunflower lounge, birmingham
there’ll be plenty more gigs in the new year to promote the album…

“The Fat Lady Sings“, the wonderful new album by Gurdan Thomas, is available now!

You can purchase a CD copy direct from the Commerically Inviable store. CDs are £8 and shipping is free to anywhere in the world. Click ”Add To Cart” to purchase.

You can purchase digital copies from all good online retailers including iTunes, Juno and Amazon.

Over on our Bandcamp pagewe have special deal. You can name your own price - paying as little as £5 for the entire album download in the format of your choice.

Keep you eye out for some short films inspired by the album. They’ll be appearing online over the coming week or so, along with some other goodies.

Have your pennies at the ready! The next release on Commercially Inviable hits the shops this coming Monday.

Gurdan Thomas - “Todd” EP - COMIN009 - 13th September 2010

Recorded with legendary Birmingham producer Bob Lamb (The Lilac Time, UB40) the “Todd” EP consists of 3 songs from our favourite travelling folk troupe, Gurdan Thomas. This EP finds them at their multi-instrumental, break-neck best and the lead track “Todd” is a heady, crazy journey into the mind of Sweeney Todd, the fabled demon barber of Fleet Street.

There are only a super limited 100 CD copies of the EP available from Commercially Inivable, and once they go they will stay gone. To order your copy for £5 (inc P&P) visit the release page or click on the logo below.

If dots and zeros are more your thing, you’ll be able to buy from iTunes as of Monday morning.

The single is also available at the following digital retailers: 7Digital, Juno & eMusic

Additionally, and finally, you can buy the EP from our Bandcamp page. We’ve done something slightly different here in that YOU can name the price you want to pay. The minimum price is £1 for the entire EP but should you wish you can pay more. Since Bandcamp do not take a cut of  our transactions you can rest assured that all of the additional money you pay goes directly to the band. Click here or the Bandcamp logo below to visit the page.

If you’d like to help us spread the word about the “Todd” EP then please feel free to do so. You can do this by clicking on the green “Share This” logo below, or by pasting the following link into Facebook, Twitter or your email client: http://is.gd/f5qTi. Either method of sharing will bring people to this page.

The Todd EP is a taster for the band’s forthcoming LP, “The Fat Lady Sings”, which we’re releasing on 27th September. More news on that soon.

Thank you for listening and enjoy the songs!

A few weeks ago the internet went crackers for a strange remix. A musician going by the name of Shamantis took a track by teen-sensation Justin Bieber and decided to slow it down 800 times. The result was a thing of great beauty. A bubblegum-sweet, pointlessly throwaway tune by perhaps the least credible artist on the entire planet was transformed into a 30 minute symphony of pure harmonics and gorgeous tones. Ain’t the internet marvellous?

We were curious as to what our own output would sound like given a similar treatment, so here’s the first in an occasional series of Commercially Inviable acts, for the want of a better word, ‘Bieberized’

This is World of Fox’s “Please Take Your Time”, renamed for the purposes of this exercise as “Pllleeeessse Taaaaakkkke Yoouuur Tiimmmme”

Enjoy!

Plleeeaaassseee Taaakkkeee Yooouuurr Tiimmme by commerciallyinviable

(Readers of the RSS feed will need to click here to listen)

From Friends of the Stars…

We had a great day playing at the Moseley Folk Festival last weekend. It was our 4th appearance at the festival but the first time as a full band and the friendly atmosphere and crowd inside the Bohemian Jukebox tent really made the day. We also played pretty well too, which is always a bonus.

We recorded the set, so if you missed it and want to hear how it sounded, or were there and would like to hear it again, here it is as a free download. The entire set is about 25 minutes long and the download is about 40Mb.

In truth, it isn’t the greatest quality live recording we’ve ever heard - it was taken from a mobile phone placed somewhere in the tent - so, if you’d just like a taster before you download it all, here is the 2nd track we played on the day, The People’s Express

Friends of the Stars @ Moseley Folk Festival 2010 (40Mb ZIP FILE)

TRACKLISTING

1: Leaves & Stars

2: The People’s Express

3: Wagons

4: Stagger Home Safe

5: Drunk on my Porch

6: I Don’t Love You Anymore

7: Brand New Morning

Our good friend Sophia also took some nice shots as we played…here they are as a Flickr set.

(For people reading this via RSS - here’s the link to Flickr)

Hope to see you at the 2011 festival!

The Reeperbahn Festival takes place in Hamburg, Germany between 23rd and 25th September. In association with festival sponsor Simple Shoes the organisers have been running an online competition for a place on the bill and Commercially Inviable’s Gurdan Thomas have made it down to the final few!
 
As part of the competition the band were asked to make a video, which they did, and this went live on the competition site last week to mark the beginning of the final stage, which is a first-past-the-post vote.

Click here to VOTE GURDAN!

It only takes a moment to vote and the competition runs until 16th August…and remember, kids, you can return to the site each to day to vote again, so please do so and tell your friends to do the same.

Here’s the video

Mixing….

Campbell and Craig from Friends of the Stars spent Friday locked away in a Shrewsbury studio with producer Beth McGowan mixing the band’s second LP. We’ll have more news soon but by all accounts the LP is sounding great.