Welcome to your second instalment on Leeds music, where we’re going to introduce you to four cracking bands / artists creating a storm in their home city and beyond. Here they are, in their own words – musically, as diverse as the city.
PARTY HARDLY
Years active : 2016 – present
Describe Your Music : Brit Pop Wooze meets Post Punk (once described as “Blur with a bit of Beach Boys shoved up its arse”)
Party Hardly began in the bedroom of Tom Barr’s student flat in early 2016, originally starting off as a DIY writing project with a friend, before merging into a fully fledged live outfit, after meeting the rest of the band (Lachlan Banner, Matt Pownall and Stan Braddock) at University.
In the short space the band has currently been alive they have managed to support an array of subterrenian talent including the likes of The Magic Gang, The Orielles, Trudy & The Romance, Diet Cig and Drahla, and two slots at Live at Leeds 2016.
The band recently put out their third single release this year, ‘Mindchanger’ recorded at The Nave studios with Alex Greaves of Leeds band Forever Cult which is available to stream on spotify, iTunes & Apple music. The band have also been back in the studio this month with Matt Johnson of Hookworms at Suburban Home Studio recording more singles for future releases. The first of those is “Living In Moths” which they are immensely proud of and has just been released.
Creatively the band draws on a lot of influences and inspirations in both music and art to help create the music and image they wish to portray. The band list some of their musical influences as Blur, Pavement, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Spaceman 3, The Damned, and Joy Division.
SYTERIA
Years active : 2015 – present
Describe Your Music : Energetic punchy rock with lots of vocal harmonies and tight leather.
We are a female fronted rock band that was born in 2015. SYTERIA is Jackie Chambers from legendary band Girlschool (Lead guitar, Backing vocals), Julia Calvo (Lead Vocal / Rhythm guitar), Keira Kenworthy (Bass guitar, Backing vocals) and Pablo Calvo (Drums, Backing vocals). SYTERIA is a musical deity that prompts us to sing loud when things are wrong. Our beloved cyborg, the Rant-O-Bot, was born with the rise of the revolution in a future time when the sheeple started to wake up. Check out our album “Rant-O-Bot”, available on CD and Vinyl > http://syteria.bigcartel.com/ We all LOVE rock music but have very different influences. Jackie is a Punk, Julia is a Goth, Keira likes Funk and Pablo likes Prog. SYTERIA does not sound like this or that – oh but we all love Alice Cooper.
LAST NIGHT’S TV
Years active : 1999 – present
Describe Your Music : Melodic, sometimes folky acoustic-indie-pop
Last Night’s TV was formed by songwriter Spencer Bayles and guitarist Owen Marriott in late 1999, experimental early recordings taking a more acoustic indie-folk leaning with the addition two years later of Sarah Jones on violin and Natalie Long on additional vocals. The band were selected for Leeds City Council’s Bright Young Things project in 2002, leading to ‘From The Top Of The Watchtower’ being recorded for the annual CD compilation distributed with the Leeds Guide. The same year, LNTV won the BBC’s Re:Covered contest with their straight-faced re-interpretation of The Offspring’s ‘Why Don’t You Get A Job’.
A planned gig in New York in 2002 was unfortunately cancelled after Spence suffered extreme abdominal pain on the train to the airport. On the plus side, once removed, the offending appendix got him into the following year’s Guinness Book of Records for Largest Appendix Removed (8.26”). Alas the record was broken again shortly afterwards.
Regulars on the city’s live scene throughout the 00s, LNTV’s frequently changing line-up has self-released six albums to date. Their festive single from 2010, ‘No Tinsel On The Town Hall’, picked up airplay on BBC Radio 2, as did ‘12th June’, the lead single from their most recent album, The End Of The Measured Mile (2013).
October 2017 saw the release of ‘Century’, the first in a series of new stand-alone singles.
Outside of Last Night’s TV, there have been many and varied off-shoots and other projects. Natalie teamed up with guitarist Amelia Crouch in the duo Amelia & Me, who were selected for Bright Young Things in 2003. Sarah teamed up with vocalist Emma Gatherer to form the landlocked sea shanty choir the Ocean Loiners, and Sarah, Emma and Spence later combined forces to form folk trio Low Moor Rising, whose songs saw traditional lyrics set to new melodies and arrangements. Two singles were released in 2015-16. Emma’s solo EP was produced by Spence, and released in 2016.
Spence played bass with Ric Neale for a few years before forming folk-pop conceptualists The Housekeeping Society with Ric and percussionist Ivan Mack. Alongside a series of themed albums, the band were featured on a Word magazine CD, and also toured with theatre company 154 Collective across the north of England in 2013 in support of their production ‘Dancing With The Orange Dog’.
Spence spent a few years playing in indie-rock quartet Nikoli in the mid-00s, forming a strong collaborative partnership with Tim Hann, who has mixed and worked on numerous LNTV releases. Spence and Tim teamed up in 2016 to release an EP under the name Navigation Day; the video for lead track ‘Town’, a love letter to the changing face of their home city, was selected for screening at the Leeds International Film Festival.
Finally, in late 2016, the first 60 Second Recordings compilation was released. Initiated and compiled by Spence, it saw a selection of mostly Yorkshire-based artists write and record one-minute-long songs, the aim being to create a ten-minute album consisting of ten songs that could be listened to in a tea break.
The Housekeeping Society Bandcamp
break_fold
Years active : 2015 – present
Describe Your Music : Self-produced, vaguely experimental electronica from a home studio
I have been in bands around Leeds since 2002. The ones I’ve been mostly responsible for were a band called Nikoli and then later, I Concur. I’m really proud of the two records we made ‘Able Archer’ and especially ‘Burial Proof’ which we released as we effectively broke up. Kelvin is my favourite Concur song, if I had to choose one.
Concur ended in 2012 and I spent a good while trying to figure out what to do next. I had the fortune to work with some really good engineers and producers while in Concur so I thought about trying my hand at something similar at home. Recording technology has come on massively in the last decade or so and there are so many learning resources available to research production techniques. I’m fairly technically minded so I’m naturally interested in technology and learning new skills.
I later had the recording equipment I needed to start working but I still spent a good few years trying to work out what sort of music I wanted to make. I felt I was done with the narrative songwriting style that defined Concur and wanted to try producing something well outside my comfort zone. In 2015 my brother Michael set me a task of producing an album that he would possibly release on his DIY label, Reject and Fade – if it was good enough. So I went away and spent a year working on what would become a 6 track album that I released in February 2017 called ’07_07_15 – 13_04_16’. Making the record was a huge learning exercise in recording technology and production. I felt I was documenting where i was in that process with each song. Each song title refers to the date that an idea changed from a random drum loop or synth sound into a tangible idea. The album title refers to the start and end of the creation of the ideas that formed the record and is a document of a period of time.
I don’t think i’ll ever play any of this music live because I don’t know how I would do it without standing/dancing behind a laptop. And while I’ve really enjoyed some groups and artists at events like the Golden Cabinet in Shipley that do that, I just don’t think that’s me, so break_fold at the moment is just a recording project.
My main current influences are Four Tet, Plaid, Aphex Twin, New Order, David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine.
https://breakfold.bandcamp.com/track/13-04-16
https://iconcur.bandcamp.com/track/kelvin
And if you missed the first instalment of “Music In Leeds”, here it is in all it’s glory …
