Mixed Cases

White Heat and The Windmill

2010-03-22T19:24:00.001Z

This week we played our first gig at White Heat - the club where Oliver and I used to visit every Tuesday back when it was at Infinity and our mate Jon used to DJ downstairs. Half the people I know in London I met through White Heat, including our new band member Toby. It was good to be back at White Heat - I'd played there before as the drummer in Wolfie and guitarist in Fanfarlo, but this time I got to be the singer and stand at the front, which is of course the best place to stand. I'd forgotten how high up the stage is at Madame Jo Jo's.

We had to rush round the corner after sound check to meet a PR company so we missed the first band, but the headliners were a brilliant band called Foreign Office, who's song 'think about leaving the house' is still stuck in my head now. It was a fun gig, we played our new song 'The Flood' and it seemed to go down pretty well. I get to play my new concertina on it, which hopefully everyone could hear ok - I need to get a built-in mic for it maybe but I bet they're expensive.

Thursday night we played at The Windmill in Brixton. If you've ever been to The Windmill you'll know that from the outside it looks a bit dubious - someone described it to me as looking like a hippy scout hut - but I have never been to a night at The Windmill that hasn't been brilliant. There's something about the place that just has an amazing, friendly vibe, and despite the slightly strange stage layout the sound is always really good. Thursday night showed that to be true - Tim had put together a great lineup that really worked together - Twin Falls were beautiful, and Heliopause had a lovely rich sound. And they were all great guys too. We played one of the most fun gigs we have played so far, despite a few entanglements with ukulele leads and the especially hot lights!

Our next gig is for Wonderland and will be a bit different - playing at around midnight in a club inside some of the arches near London Bridge. Then we have a good acoustic gig coming up at The Lock Tavern supporting Dave from The Wave Pictures. Apart from that, we're going back into the studio over Easter Weekend to record two new tracks, more on that later...

Mark.x

Sea Monster

2010-03-01T20:41:00.002Z

On Friday we had our first gig as a five-piece - Toby is now officially inaugurated as our melodica, glockenspiel, guitar and ukulele playing fifth member. And he sings some mean backing vocals too. The gig went well, thanks in no small part to Mike from Offline Club who organised the PA and mixed the sound for us and was generally brilliant (thanks again Mike!) and we played a new song called 'The Flood' as our final tune - where I get to play my new concertina.

We've got some good gigs coming up in March including White Heat and The Windmill, Brixton. White Heat kind of feels like the place that it all started. Half of the friends I know in London are via some kind of White Heat connection, including Toby in fact, and it was because of White Heat that I played drums in Wolfie and guitar in Fanfarlo. Oliver is the same I think - it's going to be good to play at White Heat with The Lost Cavalry!

And here's a drawing I did last night of a sea monster attacking a ship... no reason, just thought it would look cool...

Mark.x

Royal Cafe invites: The Lost Cavalry, performing live and acoustic

2009-10-05T23:33:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago filmmaker Bryan O'Neil recorded us performing some of our songs acoustically in my front room in Ealing, West London. If you're extra observant you may recognise the room from the video I made a while ago for Fanfarlo's 'Outsiders' :-)

Here's a couple of the videos from the session that we recorded especially for Portuguese music site the Royal Cafe, of 'Oh Sally' and 'Secret Steps'... royalcafe.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/royal-cafe-convida-the-lost-cavalry/

Enjoy! More to come at a later date! x

Flow Machines - We Are Starlight EP

2009-07-04T16:21:00.003+01:00

The Flow Machines remix EP 'We Are Starlight' is released on Monday exclusively via digital download.

The EP features a version of 'Mio & Mao' remixed by The Lost Cavalry (that's us folks!) as well as remixes by people like Martin Carr, Akira The Don and Cian from Super Furry Animals.

We remixed the track last month, taking the original track (from the 'Every Last Drop' album) and adding ukulele, concertina and echoey guitar to make the track more atmospheric without loosing the catchy and upbeat melodies.

You can get the EP by going to www.twitter.com/flowmachines and spreading the word...

Red & Cyan and Booked Out

2009-06-26T17:00:00.005+01:00

As well as singing, I recently seem to have become an actor. At the moment, I'm in the middle of filming a cool short film called Red & Cyan as 'Ross'. Red & Cyan is "A modern day tale of an innocent descending in a dark murky world where nothing makes sense". Filming has been going well and we have just one day of shooting to go.

I've also recently got the part of 'Jacob' in the indie feature film Booked Out due to start filming in September - I'm really looking forward to it, it's going to be good to spend a full month really getting to grips with the character.

In the mean time here are some photos from the filming of Red & Cyan...

Krankenhouse

2009-06-24T23:35:00.002+01:00

We played a gig last weekend at a place called Krankenhouse in Crouch End - it's a kind of legal (ish) squat that used to be a nursing home, now transformed into a centre holding things like drum workshops and life drawing classes. We took it over for the day for a Wonderland party and The Lost Cavalry played outside, our first acoustic gig.

We decided against playing up on the stage that had been constructed on the outside of the building as it seemed that playing down on the ground nearer to people might be a bit more fun. It went well! It's good to know that our songs work well stripped down, and it was good to re-work them with some accordion added and plenty of percussion... and it's always nice to just sing really loud :-)

Our next gig is acoustic too, at The Fellow in Kings Cross, for NoOneDied - it should be a good day. Hopefully we'll have a new song 'Only Forward' ready to play, we were working on it tonight and it was going well, it's about sailing away to an Island called Antillia...

Sign of Death

2009-06-20T23:51:00.003+01:00

Every time I drive along the A40 at the moment I get a weird reminder of a day that I nearly died. Well, I could have died anyway... I certainly thought I might at the time.

I was on holiday after my a-levels with my friends and we took a day trip to Greece. There's a beach with a wrecked ship washed up on it that you can only get to by boat, so we had to swim from the boat to the beach. It didn't look too far and I'm an ok swimmer so I jumped in and swam from the boat - but about half way along realised that I was no where near as good a swimmer as I had thought.

I probably would have been ok, except that I thought I would probably be near enough to the beach to stand already, so tried to put my feet down... and instead went under. I remember really vividly opening my eyes under the water and seeing the floor still quite far below me, and knowing I was in trouble. I managed to get up to the surface again and shout for help, and keep afloat, but by that time I was knackered and had swallowed a load of water. Fortunately a guy from the main boat zipped out in a small dinghy and literally rescued me.

So now they've decided to use a photo of that beach on an advert for holidays to Greece - so every time I drive into town I have to pass a huge picture of it. But at least it makes me remember it's good to be alive!

The Lost Cavalry web site

2009-06-03T13:51:00.003+01:00

While everyone else was out enjoying the sun at the weekend I stayed in and created a web site... this one... www.thelostcavalry.com ...hope you like it!

And we also have www.myspace.com/thelostcavalry complete with a demo of our song 'Secret Steps'... take a listen and enjoy! :-)

We've also started booking gigs, take a look at the web site for up to date details...

Xup in Manchester

2009-05-29T12:17:00.003+01:00

I've been playing live drums at gigs for my friend's solo project 'Xup' for a while now - we used to be in Wolfie together and it's good to keep up with playing the drums - I think out of every instrument I've had a go at, drumming is the most fun - it's kinda like dancing while sitting down. Actually, singing might be more fun, but drumming is a close second. Anyway, this weekend we went up to Manchester for a gig.

Ms Xup herself and Oliver (guitar player in Xup) had headed up the day before, so I caught the coach and slept most of the way as I always seem to on coaches and trains. The venue was a bit dingy but outside the streets of Manchester were sunny, loud, vibrant and predominantly full of gay men drinking and (for some reason) line dancing. I had a wander and a drink, Manchester is nice and though I've played there three or four times now I never seem to recognise where I am. In an effort not to get lost I was wandering around trying to follow my sat nav... I felt a bit stupid but it did seem to work. I met up with Oliver and we had a drink and a chat in the sun. He's a really good guy.

Down into the darkness and extreme smelliness of Retro Bar we played our set, which went ok, though the sound on stage was terrible. Also the drum kit was HUGE... a crazy over-sized one kindly lent by the headliners 'Elvis In Disguise', who turned out to be absolutely great - Elvis covers complete with lip-curling and knicker-throwing. Then there was more drinking, then there was dancing and eventually there was going back to someone's hotel for even more drinking. The next morning I staggered into the sunlight and tried to eat some fried eggs, then Oliver picked me up and drove me back to London. It was a good trip and I met some great people.

The Lost Cavalry

2009-05-22T13:56:00.002+01:00

So, since February I've been hiding myself away, working with my new band, who I can now reveal as... The Lost Cavalry. So far, there's four of us, and the nice thing is that they're all friends who I've been in band with before - Nick from my uni band 'Amber', Oliver from Xup and Dave from my first ever band at school. I'm playing mainly guitar, uke and concertina and most importantly - I'm singing too.

Our first gig was last night at a bar in Camden - we'd been keeping it quiet to see how it went, but it was a definite success so now we're ready to unleash ourselves into the world! ;-)

So expect some demos and photos on a new web site and myspace very soon...

NME loves Fanfarlo

2009-04-11T13:49:00.002+01:00

Check it out! NME only went and gave our album 8/10... quite right too I say.

Duke Of Uke

2009-02-27T21:49:00.003Z

I bought myself a cheapo yellow Ukulele last year and I've been playing it a bit so thought I'd treat myself to a proper one.

I'd been to The Duke Of Uke near to Brick Lane in East London before as I'd recorded in Soup studios which is downstairs and in fact we used to have early Fanfarlo band practices there. I had a look at a few and was only really intending to have a think about which one to get, but there was one that was just right and kept winking at me, even though it was £100 more than the maximum I wanted to spend ;-)

I tried to pretend I wasn't going to buy it but then gave up and handed over the cash. Now I'm home and get to open the case and smell the new wood smells... mmmm! Now I just need to put the effort in to get good at playing it! It's a soprano with a spruce top, walnut back and sides, 17 frets and a shadow piezo pickup. The best thing of course is that you can actually tune it, as opposed to the yellow one I had before!

The Duke Of Uke is a great little shop by the way, really friendly guys who know everything about Ukuleles. They do stuff like in-store gigs too and Uke lessons, everything a music shop should be these days to survive against the big Internet shops.

Loop pedals are ace

2009-02-18T00:14:00.001Z

It's my next solo gig on Monday and it's acoustic, so I've go to work out how to play my songs without the drums machines and so on... but I can't resist just a few pedals...

Spending money on new things

2009-02-07T02:00:00.000Z

It's all about physical possessions... well, it's all about trying to own every type of instrument that exists anyway... recently I bought myself a Xylophone (I think it came from a school as it had 'Xylophone' written on the side on a laminated label!) and for Christmas I got a new mellodica, a stylophone and an e-bow (which I've always had my eye on since I started playing guitar all those years ago) and then yesterday my new microphone arrived an SE2200A. Very nice. It even comes with it's own special silver carry case, mmmmmm....

This will of course make everything I record an extra 50% better. At the moment it's just demos being recorded, so we can learn the new songs with my new band (which is going well by the way), but I'll get down to some proper recording soon so you can hear the new material in all it's folky glory.

Good gig

2009-01-20T02:00:00.000Z

My Notting Hill Arts Club gig went well. Kelman and The Tamborines were great guys too. Thanks if you came down. I played three new songs as well as two older ones and a cover of bravecaptain's 'Good Life'. One new song included my debut concertina performance onstage, which almost went wrong when something got caught on the side of it meaning it almost wouldn't play. (photos: Ellie Atkins and Underexposed):

R.I.P. The London Astoria

2009-01-15T23:54:00.000Z

I always hate it when places that I love close down, but the Astoria being demolished is particularly sad. It was the venue I went to my first proper gig at - I went to see Manic Street Preachers there on their Holy Bible tour, the gig that turned out to be Richie Edwards' last before he vanished.

Since then it was always one of my lifetime ambitions to play there one day, and in 2007 I achieved it, even if it was just playing one song with Candie Payne rather than playing with one of my own bands. As I walked on stage there that night and picked up my guitar I remember trying to take it all in and enjoy it and remember it - but as with anything like that of course, it all seems like a blur afterwards - I wish I'd videoed it or something. I'm just glad I got to play there.

New video for Fanfarlo's 'Harold T Wilkins'

2009-01-12T00:00:00.000Z

The video that we made back in the summer for 'Harold T Wilkins' at MTV Studios in Camden is now online - watch me transplant my head into a TV and turn into a small flashing blob... and enjoy this new version of the song, taken from the forthcoming album we recorded!

2009

2009-01-05T00:05:00.000Z

It's 2009 and I have a lot planned for this year, it's going to be a lot of work but I'm excited and ready for it. Step one is to form a new band, already underway... Step two will be to put together a great set of songs... also well underway!