And, if you go down to the iTunes store today, you’ll find Cabin Fever and Sullied Behave for the Moon have been re-released by 17 Seconds Records!

To celebrate the release, we’ve created a very limited edition screen-printed version of the artwork….

We’re only creating 10 individually numbered and signed prints at £10 each including P&P. They’re hand printed on lovely thick cartridge paper, cut to about 6 inches square, and very beautiful if we do say so ourselves! To order yours, please click here to pay through Paypal. The price includes posting and packaging.

Please hurry if you’d like to order.

This will be the last in the series of the Loosely Based on Fiction physical products.

^{* Escape Act takes no responsibility for any surprises you might find in the woods today.}

So all sorts of fun has been happening since my last post. You may have caught up with some excerpts via our twitter feed…

We had three excellent inaugural gigs with Michael behind the drum kit. Our HWCH Dublin show had a great atmosphere and a warm, attentive crowd. We had a chance to bump into many good friends in Dublin, and make a few more new acquaintances. All in all it was another cracking festival, kudos to the HWCH/FMC for all their hard work. We also had a chance to chat to the nice ladies of the InkyWrists blog, read all about it here…

That was quickly followed by a Radar show at Queens Belfast. It was another step up performance-wise. Then it was on to the 13th Note in Glasgow for a 17 Seconds label show with Chris Bradley, X-Lion Tamer and The Dirty Cuts. We had a lovely time, particularly since it was my first, and long overdue show in Glasgow. The set got a nice mentioned on the Girls Sold Out blog too.

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So this weekend, we’re back in Scotland, this time for 2 days of recording. We’ve more days booked in later in the month for mixing, and, well, we aim to have album number two in the can by Christmas! Plans are already afoot for next year. In fact, we need your help! If you have a Google Wave account, and are interested in shaping some of our release plans for next year, please get in touch.

Finally, the guys at 17 Seconds are re-releasing Cabin Fever on iTunes etc next week and we’ll have some very limited edition screen-printed artwork to mark the occasion… More news on that shortly!

Firstly, we’re proud to be playing the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival in Dublin. We’re playing the ‘4 Dame Lane’ venue (map) at 8pm on Saturday 17th. Check www.hwch.net for full details and ticketing. Over 100 bands play throughout the weekend, so its worth every penny!

Next up is an excellent line-up for Radar at Queen’s Speakeasy on Thursday October 22nd. Headlining are our favourite melody merchants Cutaways, with Dublin’s Robotnik bringing some electro-tunefulness to the mix.

Lastly and by no means least is an exciting 17 Seconds Records line-up at Glasgow’s 13th Note venue, on Friday 30th October. We’re be playing alongside Aberfeldy’s Chris Bradley, X Lion Tamer and The Dirty Cuts.

Hope y’all can make it to some of these shows!

Rich

Time for an update methinks! Sorry for the radio silence, i’ve been off on my honeymoon, but fear not, we have been busy!

Firstly the bad, and good news – Alan has had to move on from the drum stool to pastures new, accepting a shiny new job in Leicester. Needless to say, we’re sad to see a founding member of the band leave, but thankfully he won’t be forgotten, as I still owe him a tenner….. No seriously, Alan will still be playing an important part in our group by continuing to work on the many interesting visual aspects of the band, so expect more of his work to feature in upcoming releases, stickers, teapots etc.

Since Alan broke the news of his departure our network of spies has been scouring the countryside, and the, erm, cities for a suitable replacement and that man is Michael Sampson. We’re excited to have Michael on board, and in true Escape Act style, there’s little time for sitting around, and Michael’s first show will be in Mid October at HWCH in Dublin. (more on that in a near-future post).

Recording sessions have been going on throughout the summer, and its fair to say that we can see the end of the tunnel. We’ll have a full report and pictures to bring you up-to-date shortly.

So, the summer is over, autumn is just round the corner. In just another couple of months we’ll have completed the recording of album number two. We’ve got so much exciting music for you to hear, and many plans in the offing for bringing Escape Act to a living room near you, so please stay tuned!

Rich

Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goHEXNXauwc

as you can see, this was recorded before Ross joined the band, but we love the live version, and the edit, so we wanted to share it with you. the song itself is Burning Sand, a new tune we’ve been developing in recent months, among the others that are being recorded. we’re really pleased with how it’s turning out and can’t wait to share the recordings too… more news on that as it develops…

please leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Look out for this issue to read the full review:

Thanks Guys!

after organising Unconvention Belfast, the folks at the Trans festival asked me to help deliver a mini-conference event, and the result of that is happening this Thursday 9th, 3pm at the Waterfront Hall. It’ll take a ’speed-workshop’ format, following on from the highly successful speed-networking at Unconvention. It means that folks will have the chance to speed time speaking with mentors in various areas including Touring, Recording, Marketing & Promotion, Labels, Music Management, and Publishing & Synch. [Trans Website]

The July Music Meetup happens directly afterwards at the Waterfront, so there’ll be plenty of time to have follow-up chats with mentors and other attendees. [Facebook Meetup Event page]

In Escape Act news, stay tuned for details of another release on 17 Seconds, pictures and notes from the recent session at Chem19, and also some video stuff too.

Rich

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l86kQVK8_LI

Will plans to record a series of songs under the ‘In Stores Now’ banner, so keep an eye on bandwidthfilms.com/instoresnow for more.

Enjoy!

“John Richards searches for the perfect summer song as he plays a
number of his recent favorites from the Morning Show.”

1. Miike Snow – Animal
2. Arch Cupcake – Rubix Dude
3. Iran – Buddy
4. Wussy – Muscle Cars
5. Phoenix – Listamania
6. Escape Act – Cabin Fever
7. Threatmantics – Big Man
8. Bell X1 – The Ribs of a Broken Umbrealla
9. Erik Blood – To Leave America
10. Akron/Family – The River
11. O + S – We Do What We Want To
12. Bill Callahan – All thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast
13. Faunts – Alarmed/Lights
14. Fever Ray – If I had a Heart
15. Alaska in Winter – The Homeless and the Hummingbirds
16. We Were Promised Jetpacks – Ships With Holes Will Sink

Each podcast usually reaches about 40,000 listeners, so we’re pretty pleased about this – thanks to John for his support!

Download it using iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=76069540

or grab the feed and more info from
http://www.kexp.org/podcasting/podcasting.asp

Things have been pretty hectic for me recently. I haven’t had the time i would have liked to be spending on band matters, plus we’re generally in an altered state of activity at the moment, with the monthly recording sessions ongoing over in Scotland. These factors left me wanting for an actual objective to be in Salford, but that problem was soon dispelled by the ‘Outside the Box’ panel moderated by Andrew Dubber on Friday morning. This saw several artists (including the insightful and very funny Steve Lawson) from outside the ‘mainstream/indie’ sectors describe how they make a living from their love of music and associated talents.

I’m not sure if it was actually important that these people were musically ‘different’, but moreso that the individuals themselves just relished finding fresh, interesting and different ways of developing their careers. As a band, this attitude is something that we’ve shared from day one. We may be a band, and we’ll try to make the best music we can, but we won’t let that stop us being creative and having fun in everything we do. We’ve also been pretty realistic of our definition of success, reviewing and updating our plans and goals every few months, always taking a few upwards steps, and always doing what we feel is best, not too worried about what anyone else is doing or thinking.

So the main panel ‘take-aways’ about taking risks, but being realistic, having an identity, but knowing how to find your place in the big picture, having fun, and not delusions of grandeur, generally chimed with me and the band, and left me ready to get stuck in again. We’ve been working hard on the new recordings for the last six months, Chris in particular, and there is still a good way to go, but we’re enjoying every minute and are getting excited thinking about how we’ll get it all our there!

We realise that we want to connect more with the people that like our music. So far we’ve made many new friends, and they’ve helped us reach further than we could have imagined. We’re always looking for help, and interesting ideas, so please get in touch, and don’t forget the twitter feed: @escapeact.

Rich

PS. I also took part in a panel called ‘Artist as Enterprise’ – we didn’t really talk about that to be honest, but i sat next to Martin Atkins, (former drummer of Killing Joke, and much more) – a very wise man, believer of the ‘one fan at a time’ philosophy and author of Tour:Smart – a book i shall be absorbing over the coming weeks. You can grab an ebook copy from his site: http://tstouring.com/.

PPS. Although it’ll be a while before we’re ready to release new material, we did a session for bandwidthfilms.com yesterday. We performed new song ‘Salt In Your Eye’ and it’ll be online in a few days, but in the meantime, here are some shaky phone pics…