We quickly became friends with the NomNom Chocolate gang and they all came to watch us play that evening. Micky conjured up the idea of creating a musical chocolate bar. We spent most of the time at the festival, playing gigs in different venues and busking.
We played several gigs in the Hendricks Gin bus. Where they were making delicious gin-based cocktails, it turned out the brand ambassador was one of the people running at the next festival we were going to play that summer at The Curious Arts Festival. Dorothy offered for us to play a set outside of the gin bus, which we did, we sold quite a bit of merchandise and got some free cocktails too!
Again, we played a series of little guerilla gigs on top of our main performance slot. We befriended the Nyetimber promotional team on their double-decker bus and persuaded them to let us perform a concert from the top deck whilst being supplied with their English sparkling wine. At the end of the summer, we also played an evening of music to raise money for Wateraid Nepal. The evening was hosted by Melissa James and the gig took place at The Lexington , one of my favourite London venues.
Where we had previously recorded some of our tracks for the band. Matt gave Orlando a last-minute call and asked us if we could fill in for Story Books and play at the Shacklewell Arms, Dalston. I had to set up the drums inside a very colourfully painted archway, Micky also had his arch.
It was a very isolating feeling, as my view of the stage and everyone on it was very limited…. Oxjam is an annual charity music festival in the United Kingdom that raises money for Oxfam , whose mission is to fight poverty worldwide. Events are held in multiple cities across the United Kingdom every year in October. Since , more than 50, musicians have played to an audience of more than 1. A little mini almost all welsh tour. Bristol — The Square Club — 7th October Cardiff — Undertone — 8th October Hay-on-Wye — The Globe — 9th October The first gig of the mini-tour was in Bristol, at The Square Club in association with The Institute of Art and Ideas , who were starting a new series of talks at the club.
It was my first time performing in Bristol. I had been to the city a few times before, my most recent visit was when I was looking for a music school. We have much pleasure in welcoming Michael Eavis , founder of Glastonbury. Starting as a small festival on a dairy farm with free milk, Glastonbury has spawned dozens of imitators and become a flagship event for the entire music scene.
Before our concert, we listened to the talk that Micheal Eavis upstairs where he talked about Glastonbury and answered peoples questions. We were given poker chips as a token to get food. But before we had finished playing they had stopped the food and cleared it all up. Luckily for us, the chef was still in the kitchen and managed to rustle something up for all of us before he left for the evening. We left our gear setup overnight and went and explored the city nightlife till the early morning.
Our second gig was in my hometown of Cardiff at a venue that I had never been to before, I had been upstairs to its sister venue, 10 feet tall , but we were downstairs at The Undertone. I organised a concert w ith my parents. Any profit made from the gig would go to a theatre company that my mum volunteers with called Hijinx Theatre.
They are a theatre group that is inclusive of people with and without disabilities. Lots of Cardiff has been pedestrianised and is quite difficult to get vehicles into. We had to lug the gear across a couple of streets and with the help of a trolley from the venue we managed to load-in quite quickly.
There was no sound person there to greet us, which is usually a bad omen and a warning sign of things to come. We set up as much as we could before a young and flustered lady arrived. She told us she had come from Bristol and that she had never been to the venue before, the first of many excuses. Micky eventually ended up sorting out most of the balancing and EQing himself, essentially becoming our sound technician for the evening.
The third gig of the tour was a bit of a disaster. We had organised the tour based around the promises that had been made to us by a promoter at the venue. I and Micky tried to do some last-minute canvassing of the town centre and managed to get a couple of people to come to the venue but it was far from the promises of a well attended and promoted gig that we had been promised.
We played to a handful of people, which included my parents, and played a very good show. We had played there once before without Becky, and again this time she had to leave us because she was off on tour with an Abba tribute act in Germany. I would highly recommend visiting. His parents live on a farm not far from Newport. In the morning Ed took us out with Liam foraging and seal watching along the beautiful West Wales coastline.
Micky had met Lewis Donovan whilst he was working as a stage manager in Proud, Camden. One of the bands he was managing at the time was an indie-rock outfit called Keroscene. Keroscene lived in a small warehouse 2-minutes from Westbourne Park tube station. They all lived, rehearsed and recorded in the warehouse complex. It was split over 2 levels and the whole of the bottom floor was open plan.
This open space was where they held the gig. For the launch of our upcoming single Wrestling, we wanted to get as much promotional material as. We also decided to collaborate with as many of our creative friends that we could think of. We took a mini Swell road trip minus Becky to West Wales to make some social media content at the.
Whilst we were there we finalised the design of the chocolate bars and even got to make some chocolate ourselves. We met Brit through a friend, Brit has a very unique style and is an amazing illustrator so we asked her if she would like to collaborate with us on the design of the chocolate bar wrapper. She said yes. There was a lot of back-and-forth with NomNom, The Swell and Brit to get smaller details of the bar right.
We do hope you can come to join us, The Graphite Set, and our other special guests for this epic celebration. Putting our thinking hats on for different ways to promote the single, we asked Joe Sarah to help us take some shots of the chocolate bar.
At the time he specialised in food and drink photography and had just finished working with Jamie Oliver.
Joe had just set up his studio in a warehouse he had just move into, near Dalston Kingsland, London. I and Micky went along with a few of the chocolate bars to get a bit creative with different ideas. I learnt a lot about photography that day, especially the importance of good lighting. Wrestling was one of the first songs that me, Micky and Orlando wrote together back in The Enterprise rehearsal studio.
It was a new process, for a restructured band. The music thunders along to the remorseless rhythm of a life that never gives you time to breathe, and the Tom Kingsley -directed video sees Seale scrambling through a dark and joyless house party, struggling to find a way through and escape. As he scrabbles along the floor and over the shoulders of guests, the song builds to a crescendo as the instruments detune and the video reaches its disturbing and energetic climax.
We self-released the single and it premiered on the very popular music blog Clash UK and the video premiered on The Blue Walrus UK and was featured in a number of other online blogs. Orlando being an actor and a very likeable person, he has many creative, intellectual and interesting friends. Tom Kingsley is an established director and long time friend of Orlando.
He has made music videos for the band in the past such as the video for Hyde. It required getting a lot of friends along and plying them with free food and booze. Stage Times. Adam Beattie and Brooke Sharkey — 7. We do hope you can come to join us, The Graphite Set , and our other special guests for this epic celebration. As a band, we like to come up with themes for each of our gigs. Orlando befriended the lead-singer Stu at a BBC 6 music song-writing weekend a few years before.
Stu runs the band independently and was consistently selling out larger venues and organising his own tours of the country. Micky and I attended an event in London for independent artists run by Pledge Music.
It was speed dating for music industry contacts. There were lots of different disciplines of the industry there from lawyers, accountants, publishers, labels and PR.
We showed her our chocolate bar single, and she loved the idea and we forged a relationship. We played a couple of acoustic songs live on the show and there was a couple of other guests. This is where we met Vikki Stone a composer and comedian. It was also a lovely surprise to hear the amazing, multi-talented Vikki Stone on the show.
The radio appearance inspired Orlando to ask Vikki if her choir would like to perform with us at our upcoming show for a few songs. She, of course, said yes. We rehearsed a few times with them at the Global headquarters in Leicester Square. We helped Lux Lisbon to sell out the capacity venue.
The concert was great, we split the cost of our friend Adam, who has done our lighting design for the last couple of concerts. Doors are at 7. And after us, you can look forward to a set from the unstoppable Lux Lisbon. June was no different. We once again were offered a slot to play at the festival, this time we would be performing in the main room The Globe.
Through Sacha, we were offered a last-minute slot at Cornbury Music Festival. There was a pretty stellar line-up of bands from the 80s and 90s. Before our set, Micky and I walked around the festival site. In their tent, you could purchase a freshly stone-baked pizza and a glass of prosecco.
There was one flaw in this plan. I felt pretty bad afterwards. After our set we whisked off to the press area to meet Sasha, she had arranged a number of press interviews with some local newspapers and blogs.
After the interviews, we were again swiftly guided to the BBC Oxford cabin for a quick interview before playing in the tiny BBC introducing tent, next to the main stage before All Saints were about to play. So if we push the boundaries of truth slightly, you can say we opened for the All Saints at Conrbury Music Festival. We organised a small tour of our Italian adventure. We set off from a rather desolate Dover. Union Jack bunting and boarded up shops.
Everything must go. At 10 pm we boarded an enormous ferry and Micky raided the make-up counter for bright red lippy and coal-black eye-liner. He stepped off the boat in Calais a new man. Mandrea Festival — 28th July Le Pop In — 30th July We drove past lake Garda and up a steep mountain road to the festival. Bandcamp Album of the Day Sep 13, Underneath by Calicoco. Tough, tense songs from this Rochester group, where slashing guitars go head to head with sneering vocal melodies.
Jana by The Vovos. Nothing not to love about the jangly sounds of the Vovos, who blend catchy melodies with whip smart lyrics. Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp. No matching results. Explore music. Get fresh music recommendations delivered to your inbox every Friday. Thomas I'Anson. Purchasable with gift card. All music performed by Orlando Seale and The Swell.
Produced, engineered and mixed by Julian Simmons at Din, London.
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