Wednesday 29 November 2017

Safe Mode: a demo for a very limited time

Yo!

I'm always a little bit weird when it comes to releasing demos before the actual finished songs are available - many is the time a younger Ben Marwood has been disappointed by studio versions simply because they aren't the demos he was used to, but then again young Ben was quite the idiot.

For the past few weeks, a demo of Safe Mode has been available on Bandcamp even though a studio version won't follow for a while, and we had some t-shirts printed too.

Safe Mode demohttps://benmarwood.bandcamp.com/track/safe-mode-demo
Safe Mode teeshttps://warriorstateapparel.com/products/ben-marwood-safe-mode-tee

And lo, at roughly midnight on the 1st of December, the Safe Mode demo will come back down for a while. I'm a sucker for a holiday special, so perhaps it will be back for Christmas Day. Can't have you getting too attached though.

Thanks to all new friends who came out to the German tour. I am still so full of food. How do you people walk around having eaten so much so regularly?

My final show of the year is at the Rising Sun Arts Centre on 16th December, a holiday blowout with my good friends Non Canon and Band of Hope. Come on down, there are still some tickets. It's in Reading.

I'm off to learn some Christmas songs.
b

Monday 30 October 2017

Autumn for Benjamin in Germany

Hello neighbour!

The clocks have gone back, did you notice? Of course, you did, because we've been stumbling around in the dark all day in tears, bumping into things.

This Saturday I play in Bolton at the Alma Inn. The show is free, it's an all-day thing, and it's the first time I've ever been to Bolton so, hey, there's that.

Since it's so dark over here, my good friend Nick Parker and I are off on a Science Mission to use some Science to work out whether it's darker here, or darker in Germany (and once, Belgium). Our results will be published in secret and never revealed. EVER.

Anyway, here are the dates:


NOVEMBER (w/Nick Parker)
17 Leefdaal, Belgium House Show
18 Rulle, Germany House Show
19 Hannover, Germany House Show
21 Langenberg, Germany House Show
22 Duisburg, Germany House Show
23 Marburg, Germany Molly Malone's


I'm pretty excited about all this, because I get to sample the famous Belgio-Deutsch* hospitality first hand in people's actual houses, able to speak none of their native language, and I get to hang out with Nick Parker. Oh and hot on the heels of having never been to Bolton, I have also never been to Germany. Or Belgium. Or, come to think of France. Or Ireland. Or..

Enough! I'm looking forward to some time on The Mainland and perfecting the art of the European House Show. I'm a huge fan of a songwriter named Will Johnson (you can hear his work here and here) and playing house shows in Texas are pretty much how he spends his time and hey, if house shows are good enough for him..

If you're in the area and you'd like to come to one of these shows, please contact us on Twitter or via Facebook and we'll do our best.

Alles klar, etc
b



*not a word

Tuesday 10 October 2017

Nights onstage, and Nights on a bus.

Hi all!

Tuesday is currently in full swing, and by that I mean it exists and we're alive. Fun! Tonight I'm at Camden Monarch alongside my good friends Quiet Quiet Band, but I thought I'd take a moment to plug a couple of charity shows I have coming up:

OCTOBER 14th
Reading Oxjam Takeover @ Oakford Social Club
Reading, info & tickets etc

NOVEMBER 4th
Alma Inn w/Joe McCorriston & Dave Giles
Bolton, free show

There you go.

Also, back in May we recorded a version of Nights on a bus at the back of the Roundhouse. Xtra Mile have collected up all the sessions that happened that weekend onto a nice easy compilation:



Here it is in the XMR shop.

Toodles!
b

Wednesday 30 August 2017

Got Found

Yes, yes, I know. Months and months and I don't write and I don't call.

I could say I was out planning something huge for your next birthday, but eventually you'll find out that I've just been down the chip shop for five months and I've only come home in search of ketchup.

Oh, that and I finally released my third album, Get Found.

Don't believe me? Here it is:





It's been out now for four months and twenty-three days* and just to prove to myself it still exists I'm listening to it right now. As a single piece of work I think it's up there (maybe better than) things I've done before, even if it is probably one song too long. It's always been one song too long - problem was, every time I dropped a song, it suddenly felt one song too short. This is how men go mad.

What else happened? Oh yes, I hit the road to promote the album on a ten-date UK tour, with four of those sold out, making it the Most Successful Ben Marwood Headline Tour ever. I could pretend like that was anything to do with me, but it was probably something to do with my excellent touring friends and opening acts Non Canon (aka Barry) and Helen Chambers (aka.. Helen). We had excellent fun heading to places I personally hadn't been in a while and then it was Easter Monday and it was over and Barry and I went to an Asda and left with armfuls (quite literally) of cut-price Easter eggs for our loved ones.

Barry also made me this video, which is precisely fuck all to do with the tour but has everything to do with the album:





Is that it? Probably not. I also played the Roundhouse as part of Frank Turner's Lost Evenings festival (ta, Frank), played at 10.30 a.m. - yes, 10.30 a.m. in the morning - to some very hungover faces at this year's 2000 Trees Festival and probably some other stuff I've forgotten.

Life continues to be interesting and occasionally admittedly a bit of a struggle, mostly from a limited mobility/maximum exhaustion standpoint, but I'm delighted that I have 15 shows under my belt this year without being even slightly dead. 15 shows! Sure, you punk kids can do that in a week, but for me it's more than the previous two years combined.

I have some more shows coming up, but more on that another time.

I hope you're all well,
b



*(no matter how many years we get past 1990, describing any period of time still puts the start of Nothing Compares 2 U in my head)

Saturday 25 March 2017

Bury Me In The Pantheon. Twice.

Hi all!

We're now less than two weeks away from the new album and tour. Come and join us!

APRIL
Thu 6th HOVE Brunswick // tickets
Fri 7th LONDON The Monarch // free entry
Sat 8th SOUTHSEA Afternoon Show @ Southsea Sound // tickets
Sat 8th SOUTHSEA Evening Show @ Southsea Sound // sold out
Mon 10th BRISTOL Crofter's Rights // sold out
Tue 11th NOTTINGHAM Bodega // tickets
Wed 12th YORK Fulford Arms // tickets
Fri 14th EDINBURGH Opium // tickets
Sat 15th GLASGOW Hug & Pint // tickets
Sun 16th MANCHESTER Gullivers // tickets

Thanks everyone who snapped up tickets - we had to add an extra Southsea show due to demand, Bristol is sold out too and London looks to be busy. In all honesty, I've lost track of it all slightly amidst the promo activity for the album, but somewhere in amongst it all we released a second song from Get Found called 'Bury Me In The Pantheon', included below for your enjoyment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FddmQRSF_Zc
Bury Me In The Pantheon, from 'Get Found'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSI3hIYAmTQ
Bury Me In The Pantheon, live in session at Reading's Rising Sun Arts Centre

It's a bit weird seeing my face in HD, but I'm getting used to it. The video at the RSAC was one of a few shot by Ben Morse with a new toy he'd borrowed from Panasonic, and the results are pretty neat.

Meanwhile, The Ocelot was amongst the publications who had good things to say about Get Found, John Kennedy spun the previously unheard 'The Church of No Commandments' on (don't-call-it-xfm) Radio X plus I sat down and answered questions for PRS' M Magazine and the excellent York bunch One For The Road.

So there. Now we're up to date, my room is stacked high with new albums, t-shirts and other little trinkets to sell and all that remains is to say: see you out there.

xx

Friday 17 February 2017

Tour dates: an update

Hey all,

I'm writing this late at night on Friday, February 17th and tomorrow I have a hometown show, my first in six months. It'll be a try-out show for some of the songs I'd like to play on tour and there'll be favourites too, all part of my mission to make this upcoming tour the Best Tour Ever.

I figured now the album announcement is out of the way, I might give the tour a little extra push. Here's a reminder of the dates and an update on ticket links etc:

APRIL

Thu 6th HOVE Brunswick // tickets
Fri 7th LONDON The Monarch // free entry
Sat 8th SOUTHSEA Southsea Sound // sold out
Mon 10th BRISTOL Crofter's Rights // tickets
Tue 11th NOTTINGHAM Bodega // tickets
Wed 12th YORK Fulford Arms // tickets
Fri 14th EDINBURGH Opium // tickets
Sat 15th GLASGOW Hug & Pint // tickets
Sun 16th MANCHESTER Gullivers // tickets

All shows with Non Canon
All shows with Helen Chambers exc. Scotland

For those of you who missed out on tickets to Southsea - I feel your pain. Tickets sold out within a few hours for it, so we're working on a solution. I'm told that if you want to register your interest/stay up to date with things for a potential extra Southsea show: usernametakenmusic@gmail.com is the address to email.

Other than that, the amazing Banquet (my favourite indie store) now has 'Get Found' up to order. I've added that link to the previous post, but here they are again:

Xtra Mile Recordings: http://smarturl.it/GetFound-XMR
iTunes: http://smarturl.it/GetFound_iTunes
Banquet: https://www.banquetrecords.com/ben-marwood/get-found/XMR130CD

Stay tuned for more gubbins,
b

Wednesday 8 February 2017

NEW ALBUM KLAXON!

Ladies and Gentlemen and Gazorpians,

It is with great pleasure that I, Benjamin Marwood, announce at last my third full-length album, herein referred to as Get Found.

Get Found is out on 7th April 2017 on CD/download via the good people at Xtra Mile Recordings, who continue to put up with my shit.

Get Found has thirteen songs on it, and at forty minutes long is at the absolute maximum of my musical attention span:

------------------
Tracklisting begins
------------------

1. Punched In The Mouth (Part 1)
2. The Church Of No Commandments
3. In Black and White
4. Enraptured
5. DNFTTTS
6. Nights
7. I'm Wide Awake It's Boring
8. Bones
9. Baby You're A Mess
10. Bury Me In The Pantheon
11. Kick Out Kick On
12. The Devil Makes Work For Jazz Hands
13. Friends, Close

------------------
Tracklisting Ends
------------------

All songs were written by me, except for Baby You're A Mess which was written (and initially recorded and released) by Tom Crook/Band of Hope. Naturally, the one I didn't write turned out to be the best one and you can hear it on Soundcloud right now:

https://soundcloud.com/benmarwood/baby-youre-a-mess


You can order stuff right over here:
Xtra Mile Recordings: http://smarturl.it/GetFound-XMR
iTunes: http://smarturl.it/GetFound_iTunes
Banquet: https://www.banquetrecords.com/ben-marwood/get-found/XMR130CD


I have various things to say surrounding the writing and recording of this album but that's for another day or maybe never (or, at least, for the liner notes). Suffice to say, I'm incredibly proud of this album and what it represents - so much so, that I'm actually going to try and take to the road for the first time in three years:

APRIL
Thursday 6th BRIGHTON Brunswick*
Friday 7th LONDON Camden Monarch*
Saturday 8th PORTSMOUTH Southsea Sound*
Monday 10th BRISTOL Crofters Rights*
Tuesday 11th NOTTINGHAM Bodega*
Wednesday 12th YORK Fulford Arms*
Friday 14th EDINBURGH Opium
Saturday 15th GLASGOW Hug and Pint
Sunday 16th MANCHESTER Gullivers*

All dates are with Non Canon
*dates are with Helen Chambers too
Tickets are hopefully available already, from wherever places normally do tickets.

Thanks massively to the XMR gang and to Barry Dolan for getting the record & tour off the ground.

Hitting publish on this post and actually telling people about it marks the end of a long road for me, though hopefully not the kind of road that your sat nav guides you down, swearing blind that this is the way to Leeds and all of a sudden you're in the sea. Hopefully at the end of this long road, there'll be ice cream.

To ice cream,
Ben