Cogwheel Dogs news and updates

Off to squeeze bees...

2011-10-22T11:58:00.000-07:00

Half a Cogwheel Dog (Rebecca) will be making at small guest appearance with Ally Craig and Ruth Goller of Bug Prentice fame at Modern Art Oxford, as part of the all day Oxjam event. Their set begins at 10ish...

Half a Cogwheel Dog at Childish Things...

2011-02-07T07:12:00.001-08:00

Rebecca is very excited today about joining Mr Ally Craig, of Bug Prentice, for a spot of singing, for this fine event:
http://www.newtheatreoxford.org.uk/prod-productions_details.asp?VenueID=103&pid=2481

Ghostwriter, who are you?

2010-08-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm busy working on an edit of our Ghostwriter video, shot at the unspeakably wonderful derelict grain silo outside Oxford.

I hope I'll have finished soon. Meanwhile, though, here are some video stills for you to look at.

Grain Silo Mission

2010-07-13T05:51:00.001-07:00

This is just the documentary footage of our getting in and out.
The film itself is to follow.

Arrival of Greenhorn

2009-09-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

Yes. It is today.

Today.

Our new EP, Greenhorn. Out today.

Here's a download. First of all, a zip file containing the whole EP; then the individual tracks:

Please help yourself, and spread liberally. Like butter.

Does anyone complain about people sharing butter? No. Well we won't complain about you sharing our songs. Indeed, we hope you will.

Don't leave your friends with dry bread, will you?

Oh, yeah, I should probably have mentioned that you can also buy Greenhorn on iTunes. But why would you, when you can download it free? Maybe you're just an anachronistic altruist. If so, far be it from us (humble, deferential us) to discourage you ...

Kitchen

2009-07-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

Greenhorn

2009-07-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

is the name of our new ep, and it is going to be out on the 7th September. I am going to put a short film up on here that I made for 'Kitchen', one of the songs on the record, soon...

Rebecca

Arrows & Asterisks

2008-12-26T11:07:00.000-08:00

Cogwheel Kitchen Cookery

2008-11-06T03:32:00.000-08:00

Sequestered in almost hermitic self-exile, Cogwheel Dogs continue to beat and whisk the mix that is our not-far-from-being-imminent EP.

What ingredients have we tossed into the mixing bowl so far?

One egg, hard-boiled (sliced, by mechanical means)
Several shots (poured)
A handful of leather-skinned retorts
1 litre of Whitewash
Fish (plastic, not cardboard; scaled)

To be served on tectonic plates: a greenhorn dinner for one.

Sharpen your headphones; warm up your speakers.

Cogwheel Dogs' "Ghostwriter" is Song of The Day in Seattle's 'Sepiachord' online zine

2008-11-03T16:34:00.000-08:00

Thank you SepiaChord, for putting 'Ghostwriter' as song of the day...

www.sepiachord.com

http://www.myspace.com/sepiachord
http://sepiachord.livejournal.com/

Rebecca

8

2008-09-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

I've just had 8 grapes
Every clock I have is 8 minutes fast, to keep in sync with the original 8 minute fast one (that I can't change)
Octavia has 8 thousand arms

I feel gr8

That's it. Thanks.
Rebecca

100 Bullets...

2008-09-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

...Back

hi, it's Rebecca here - thought it was about time I logged in on here and said hello. I've been busy making and doing things. But I will say more about these things another time.

I wanted to mention that at the end of last month, I was asked to do some vocals for a piece of music by the band 100 Bullets Back. It was good fun. The song is called 'Anger Management Co.' I was singing about 'insomnia' and 'herbal tea'. I found the lyrics interesting. I will let you know when there is something completed that can be heard. I am now going to have some Dr. Stuart's herbal tea. It's a good tea bag for pranks. Plant one of these in someone's tea caddy. It smells like death.

Rebecca

Thomas Truax support

2008-09-02T05:09:00.000-07:00

A quick little post to let y'all know that Cogwheel Dogs will be playing in support of Thomas Truax later this week:

Thursday 4 September

Thomas Truax + Black Hats (myspace) + Cogwheel Dogs

Bullingdon Arms, Oxford (map)

Frustration abated => productivity

2008-08-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

We continue in dogged pursuit (thank you, ladies; thank you, gentlemen) of our autumnal goal: the recording of an EP.

Having been beleaguered by buzzes (persistent, seemingly unbanishable hums emanating from our recording equipment), we have been frustrated by slow progress. But momentum has returned.

Several songs – Power in Paper, Octavia and Spit – are at preliminary mix stage, with Kitchen hot on their heels. It's exciting business, dear reader, exciting business.

Meanwhile, in evidence of our productivity, here's a photo of Rebecca recording a guitar take.

Dogs in the Cellar

2008-08-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

The following: photos of our underground gig on Thursday. Pun intended.

(All photos taken by Bronagh McCrudden)

Wordle

2008-08-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here is our blog, as rendered by the rather superb Wordle.

Hard Hats Required

2008-08-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the mess.

We're in the process of gutting and rebuilding our blog. The spartan construction you currently see is not here to stay. Think of it as the canvas before the attack of the mad oil-painter.

(Cogwheel Dogs. We Don't Care If We Shift Metaphors Mid-Paragraph.)

We'll do our best to have the place scaffolding-free and spruced-up for your next visit ... We're currently taking a tea-break and wolf-whistling at a few goodlookin' folk (back to the first metaphor, now. Keep up.) – but we will soon throw up a fine new edifice.

(Cogwheel Dogs. We Carve Butter So That You Don't Have To.)

Parading. Tinkering. Stuttering.

2008-07-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

We have continued our aural experimentations and explorations, over the weekend. Our goal: the shimmering mirage-like prospect of our EP. Songs have been lined up, paraded and inspected (like so many toy soldiers), and arrangements sketched.

'Octavia' is beginning to take shape: stuttering cello figures, a pulsing guitar and – now – some pseudo-military snare drumming.

Sadly, though – midnight having passed some minutes ago – these and other myriad sonic possibilities must be abandoned for the night.

Snakes & ladders ... raspberries & sliced eggs

2008-07-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

Cogwheel Dogs have spent the past few days in a caffeine- and raspberry-fuelled fest of musicmaking.

We are setting down the bones of our next opus - provisionally anticipated to take the form of an EP. So microphones were arrayed, guitar strings changed, and duvets strung up like (peculiarly inefficient) sails.

We concentrated on three songs: Power in Paper (a rough, 'unplugged' recording of which is available on our website), Octavia (snakes and ladders to a soundtrack of creaksqueaky chamber cello) and Kitchen (sliced eggs, scritchy electric guitars and dying insect drums).

It's all been most exciting.

Thanks to everyone, incidentally, that came to our Death Disco show on Wednesday. Our throats have just about recovered, now, to the extent that normal speech is possible.

Or whatever passes for normal speech in our world.

Green Chalk and Murdered Daisies

2008-07-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

Two more articles on Cress have sprung up in delightful crannies of the blogosphere.

My New Favourite Band says that our music

... tip toes through the daisies one minute, and is slashing at the pretty little flowers with a big spade the next. It's all everso slightly left of centre. And we do like ever so slightly left of centre.

Cogwheel Dogs have a faint shimmer of Dry period PJ Harvey about them, never a bad thing, and there's a very similar, very strong songwriting sensibility at work here. If we were betting folk (what? Oh), we'd say these two are going places. Ask Alan Mcgee who's booked them to for his Death Disco night at Notting Hill Arts Club on July 16. If you live in London, check them out for us will you and report back? Thanks.

Meanwhile, Scribblings with Green Chalk is enchanted by our attic-based recording habits, and urges us to write an attic-themed song:

I most definitely lack talent to give you a verbal taste of what to expect when you click over here. I’m impressed by Rebecca’s blog, the band’s website – I’m a sucker for visual wit, I’m afraid. As for the sounds: I like where these songs are going. They are going places and can take you there, which is what songs, essentially, should do. That’s a great beginning and I’d love to see where the songs go from here. I hope there’s a song about the attic somewhere along the way ...

Cogwheel Junk

2008-06-25T05:01:00.000-07:00

The fine folk at Junkmedia have reviewed Cress. And they seem to like it, scattering their prose with delightful nuggets such as "primitivism of the most beautiful sort" and "everything a good post-punk single should be".

… [Anticoagulant] really shows off this band's strengths. Feverishly strummed acoustic guitars, brushed tom banging, and beautifully distorted cello sweep across abrupt key changes and dynamic shifts, and the effect is pretty dazzling - try listening to it just once. If the rest of their material is anywhere near as good as what's presented on this single (which, as their MySpace page surely attests, certainly is), Cogwheel Dogs are set to become one of the most exciting bands to come out of the underground in years.

Please do go and read the full review on Junkmedia.

Death Disco - suitably stark images thereof

2008-04-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

We're proud to present a photo or two taken from last week's brace of gigs. On Wednesday, we played at Death Disco (at Notting Hill Arts Club - a venue one can scarcely help but adore) - again, augmented by the inspired percussive antics of Chris Browne on drums.

And on Friday - this time drum-free - we were back in Oxford: an OxJam gig organised by Stuart of Sunnyvale Noise Subelement fame (who also played). Headlining were the Half Rabbits. Oxfordbands.com reviewed the gig thus:

Angular guitar-and-cello duo Cogwheel Dogs got the evening off to a more-than-decent start, with an immaculately played set of occasionally awkward, but often highly potent ballads. Latest single ‘Cress’ is a grower (pardon the pun) and tonight is performed with tremendous bluesy brio. The excellent, misty-eyed ‘Ghostwriter’ doesn’t suffer much from the absence of the hypnotic typewriter which graces the record, and even the underwhelming-on-CD ‘Anticoagulant’ seems better balanced tonight, with Rebecca Mosley’s ever-more-authoritative singing keeping Tom Parnell’s screeching cello from freaking out the squares just that little bit too much.

(Read the full review on Oxfordbands.com)

If you so desire, you can see an assortment of photos of the OxJam gig on Flickr ...

A nice new web

2008-04-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

Cogwheel Dogs are pleased to unveil our new website.

Please - be our guest: explore. Let the adventure begin.

Cress in a Rabeat's Cage

2008-04-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Our song Cress features on Premiere Evasion - a compilation released by independent Parisian record label Rabeat's Cage - alongside songs by Jonquil (MySpace), Eberg (MySpace), Sunnyvale Noise Subelement (website; MySpace) and Hreda (MySpace).

You can order a copy of the compilation via the Rabeat's Cage MySpace page (paypal accepted) - and we'll soon be selling copies at gigs.

Taking words from mouths

2008-03-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

Cress received an extremely positive review in online music magazine Noize Makes Enemies. Reviewer Paul Richards writes about the combination of defined, captivating vocals and experimental cello.

"It's not often you get to discover a piece of music that really takes the words right out of your mouth... This is something truly impressive, something you won't look back from and something as unique as it is beautiful!"

Read the full review