Recent Happenings

It’s been a while since our last post (don’t we always say that?) so we thought it was time to add some of our recent goings on to our website! It’s hard to avoid the fact that things have gone a little quiet recently but even though the live shows have become a lot less frequent, we’re still hard at work behind the scenes doing our best to make this album as amazing as possible! However, there’s a few things we need to get you up to speed on first…

A few weeks back (the 25th of October to be precise) we played possibly one of the most amazing and inspiring shows we’ve ever played. Supporting the incredible Kyla La Grange at Edge Hill University‘s brand new Rose Theatre, we had the surreal experience of performing every song we’ve ever released to a near capacity venue. After we’d finished our set there was even a small crowd lining up besides the merch table to grab a signed EP! It may not sound like much but when we’ve been used to playing small scale gigs in front of hardly any people (including the other bands), for us to turn up in Ormskirk and be greeted the way we were was absolutely incredible and we can’t thank everyone who made it happen enough!

Luckily a group of extremely talented individuals, who go by the name of Papertwin, were on hand to film the entire event. Not only that, they decided to use our music on not one but two official videos for Edge Hill University! Have a look below:

Finally, we’d like to just let you know where we all are at the moment. Although Kez and Finney have been living together in Manchester since July (regularly visited by Paton of course), Elle has been living and working in London for the past few months. Naturally, this means it’s a lot harder to arrange things like practice and gigs, but the fundamental structure of the band is still strong and the writing process is still ongoing. As soon as we have any news or updates to announce then we’ll be plastering it all over our Facebook and Twitter pages, thanks for your patience.

Recording in the front room

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The Next Few Months

It’s been a while since we last surfaced on here and many things have been going on, both with the band and with our personal lives too (you can blame Facebook for us not updating this websitey thing too often).

First of all, congratulations to Elle who’s now finished university and has been having a great run of gigs with her new project Elinor Alicia Gray and The Merry Pranksters (including the Paul McCartney Auditorium at LIPA and Attic as part of Liverpool Sound City). Also, next week Finney and Kez will be both moving in together in Manchester so you can probably expect many writing sessions and lots of new material soon.

Speaking of which, those of you who can remember a few months back may recall a little thing we did called The Betnav Sessions where we recorded a few songs in a tiny hallway with a vintage piano. Well, we’re happy to say that we’ve now got all the videos back (thanks Rob!) and, even better, we’ve stuck them on our Youtube page in a handy little playlist. Go make yourself a cup of tea, put some headphones on and check them out below.

We also want to say a big thanks to everyone who came to watch us at our last few shows! It was nice to go back to our spiritual roots at The Fox and Goose in Southport for Band Royale 2012, The Kazimier in Liverpool was magical (thanks again to The Fifth Movement for putting us on) and Night & Day in Manchester was an absolute blast! By the way, if you weren’t there on June 1st and you’ve not already heard Yarbo’s new EP then you definitely need to get on his free download right now. That guy stole the show that evening and it’s easy to see why.

For now though, it’s time for us to go and make an album. It’s been a while coming but these next few months will be our best opportunity to knuckle down and really make some progress. Sadly that does mean we’re not going to be playing too many shows in the near future (if any at all) but we promise to keep you up to date with what’s happening, probably by posting several silly ‘vintage’ photographs and profoundly artsy time lapse videos like we usually do. Who knows, we may even actually put some music out there for a change!

Either way, we’ll be back gigging in the autumn when we’ve got some new material ready and maybe a few extra members too. Until then, much love!

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The Betnav Sessions – Same Thing After All

A few weeks ago you may remember us mentioning something on our Facebook and Twitter about us filming a few of our songs in a tiny hallway somewhere. It’s been a bit quiet since then but it’s all been for a good reason. Our video guy has been hard at work and now we’re proud to be able to show you this!

The first of a series of videos from The Betnav Sessions, we play a completely brand new song not featured on any of our EPs in a stripped down acoustic style on a vintage second hand piano. We hope you enjoy it! Keep an eye out for the next video in the series in the next week or two.

Filmed and Edited by Robert Myler.
Audio by Daniel Finney.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Andrea and Frank Mathie.

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12 Months!

It’s hard to believe that exactly a year ago today it was our very first show and debut EP launch at The Zanzibar loft in Liverpool. Well, not exactly right now. If you want to be pedantic about things, right now at this time last year we were driving back from Leeds after picking up a last-minute run of CDs because the original shipment has been sent to Ireland. That’s a story for another time though…

But yeah, where did those 12 months go? It only seems like last week when everything was just an idea in a bedroom in Manchester. It’s been a pretty amazing time for us all here though, finding our feet and getting to take our music to some pretty special places. We’re hoping this next year has more of the same in store and that we get to carry on playing our songs around the country and meeting lots of awesome new people.

However if it wasn’t for you guys coming to our shows, listening to our music and just generally being lovely people by sparing us a few minutes of your life then we wouldn’t be anywhere at all. So to say thank you, and to mark its year anniversary, we’ve decided to make our debut EP available for free download!

We know how much you must get bombarded with new music from all directions every day so for you to take the time out and give an unsigned and unknown band like ourselves a listen really means a lot to us. No, really, it does. We massively appreciate the support and hope to see you by our side as we now start work on our debut album.

Much love!

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Happy New 2012 and Things.

Happy New Year everyone! We hope you all had a good festive season and consumed a ridiculous amount of food like we all did. It’s been a bit quiet here on the blog recently for one reason or another so there’s quite a few things to catch up on even though 2012 is barely a week old.

First off, we’ve been back on BBC 6Music! Things move quickly in the radio world (we only found out last week) and Tom Robinson has played another of our tracks on his Fresh On The Net show which you can check out here. We strongly recommend you listen to the entire show if you get chance because there’s some great new music on there, but if you’re tight for time then you can skip to 16:30 and get your Creatures fix.

Secondly, as if getting some airtime on the BBC wasn’t enough we’re also included on this month’s Sentric Music podcast! When the opening line is “How Do!” you know it’s going to be a good one and Simon Pursehouse is on form as always. Again there’s some quality new tunes for you to listen to so check them out in the nifty little embedded player below. We’re on at about 45:15 (by the way, we don’t have any mugs yet).

And last but most certainly not least, we’d like to give a big shout out to The Cape Race for giving us a support slot with them at MOHO Live in Manchester last December for what was quite possibly the single most epic gig that we’ve played so far! Thanks to everyone who turned up (even Kez’s parents came along) and to all the people who’d never even heard of us before but still stood right against the barrier at the front and enjoyed the show. It was something special.

Anyway we hope that you’re having a good year so far and that if you haven’t already got hold of our new ‘This World Of Ours’ EP (and why not?) then you can download it for FREE from our Bandcamp page here. Much Love!

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