The Lost Cavalry's Diary

03/01/2010 : Happy New Year

Well, it was a year ago now that I walked down the road in Dalston to pop to the shop for a can of coke after Boxing Day dinner, and first hummed the melody to 'Oh Sally' to myself. I'd just left Fanfarlo and already knew my plan for 2009 was to start a new band, and I knew who I wanted to ask to be in the band with me. Dave who I'd been in a band with years ago at school, Oliver who was playing in Xup along with me, and Nick who I had written songs with before as 'Meissner' and also in a band we had at university.

We practiced for a few months and things came together well. Since our first gig in May we've played some great shows and had a great year. I think our show at the Buffalo Bar for 'Basement Scam' was the highlight so far, loads of people, great sound and a nice venue. Our weirdest gig was an acoustic show in Beyond Retro, the same night as the Basement Scam gig. We played among the hats and fur coats to a load of guys dressed in Halloween costume and a bunch of confused shoppers.

So, it was a good first year - we have some good recordings, some cool live videos and everyone seemed to like our Christmas 'Stop The Cavalry' cover - I think we'll do more recording like that in future, it was a lot of fun to make. Happy 2010! Mark.x

24/8/09 : Acoustic And Under A Tree

We took a trip up the road to a park in Ealing and recorded a few songs while stood under a big old tree as the sun set. It was nice, and filmmaker Bryan O'Neil and his team videoed it for us. We also recorded some songs playing acoustic in my living room, They'll be posted up soon... in the mean time, here's some great photos of us at Notting Hill Arts Club taken by Underexposed.org.uk.

7/8/09 : The Lost Cavalry - Video Diary

Here's a video of us in the studio a few weeks ago...

4/7/09 : Recording

We're going into the studio to record some tracks next week with Paul from Stolen Recordings, who I recorded the Fanfarlo single 'Harold T. Wilkins' with last year and who has also just recorded and produced the debut My Sad Captains album. I'm excited to be working with him again, he has a great ear for capturing the life of a song and also some interesting techniques - including taping turkish flat bread to the drums to deaden the sound and get them sounding just right!

We're aiming to record a proper version of 'Secret Steps' as well as 'Oh Sally' and 'Up For Air', two of the songs that have been working well live. So expect some more mp3s to be available soon. Can't wait, it's going to be good to get back into recording.