The Lost Cavalry's Diary

13/5/10 : Meat Sweats

It's been a busy week - it's all been building up to our deadline for sending our debut EP for manufacturing. I've been working to finish off the final mixes of the four tracks and Toby's been hard at work getting the cover art done. It's looking really nice. Then there's all the form-filling work associated with the boring stuff like barcodes, duplication forms and so on. We've also spent today having our photos taken for press shots - which was actually a lot of fun. My friend Amy kindly let us use her boat for the location and the nice gardens around the canals near Kings Cross station. Claudia Burlotti was the photographer, and I can't wait to see how the photos turn out.

We've also been playing some gigs - last weekend we played a small one that we thought would be fun - and we were right. It was at the Low-Fi Fayre, at Harvest Cafe in Kendal Green, and we played it acoustically. We have plans over the summer to play more totally acoustic gigs, and after the Low-Fi Fayre gig I think it will work well. A guy in the audience drew a picture of us too. Then last night we played at the premiere of the new short film 'Red & Cyan', which also features our track 'Oh Sally' on the closing credits. The launch party was at Bardens in Stoke Newington, and it was possibly the loudest gig we've ever played. We made the mistake of going for dinner just before hand around the corner in a Turkish restaurant and eating too much. This was Oliver's dinner:

...Not quite to my vegetarian taste, but impressive all the same. Toby managed to eat a similar amount despite having eaten one dinner already - even more impressive. We all managed to get through the gig without having to have a break for a sit down, though I think Oliver was struggling against the Meat Sweats...

13/4/10 : Video Diary: Down On The Farm

9/4/10 : The Lock Tavern with Dave Tattersall from Wave Pictures

Last night the Cavalry rolled into the Lock Tavern in Camden for a stripped down (musically, not physically) set supporting the brilliant Dave Tattersall of the equally brilliant Wave Pictures as he launched his new solo album. Based on last night's offerings it sounds like it will be brilliant too, so check that one out.

First on the bill, Silent Paper Radios also impressed with a nicely melancholy collections of songs to set a tone for the night that was a bit more inkeeping with our own style than last time out where we followed on from a selection of dubstep craziness (I still have no idea what that is, but the kids seem to like it. See Nick's post below for more on that).

Sadly lacking Toby this time, who is off enjoying himself in Japan, the remaining 4 of us squeezed onto the, erm, diminutive stage and set about unleashing some acoustic-pirate-folk on the impressively packed-in crowd. We played a familiar set but with the added trials and tribulations of trying to cover for Toby - it's amazing how indispensible he's become after such a short amount of time, and after juggling glock, snare, harmonica and the proverbial kitchen sink for this gig I will be delighted to have him back.

Big thanks to monkeysuit-Dave and sound-Dave for organising and making everyone sound great, seriously it was like Night of the Living Daves - a bad horror film where everyone shares a name.

Dave, obviously.

6/4/10 : Recording on a farm by the sea

And so to No Recording Studios, in deepest rural Essex, to record drums and guitars for two new tunes. The rustic surroundings and overpowering smell of horse manure belied a cool studio and we managed to get things sounding frankly rather awesome, in a nice lo-fi kind of way. Producer John was extremely patient with our requests for a guitar sound that was simultaneously bright, warm, crunchy and growly, and despite the inevitable rush to finish at the end of the day we're well pleased with the tracks we got done. Vocals, bass and assorted bits, bobs, bells and whistles to be added at home as soon as poss.

Next was a late-night gig on Easter Saturday/Sunday at Jack's in London Bridge. The Wonderland Ball was a bit surreal, with face-painting and flowers and cakes and Alice-themed costumes, but despite feeling a bit underdressed we thought the set went down well (a special mention goes to Dave for soldiering on seamlessly as his drum kit came apart around him). Our folky charms were a bit different to the rest of the bands and djs, who were a lot more dancey than us; as Easter morning wore on, your correspondent headed off to his bed, but various other band-members were still to be found enthusiastically throwing shapes on the floor to the heavy dubstep, or something.

Next up for the Cavalry? A (mostly) acoustic set supporting David Tattersall of The Wave Pictures at the Lock Tavern (April 8th), and, before too long, getting the fruits of our recording labours out to the music-buying public... Whey, and indeed, hey.

Nick