news -
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Hello world,
April has been a good month for us so far. Jack and Olly’s birthdays were both in this month, and now I’m the only 21-year old left in the band.
We also managed to spend a few days in April writing new songs together, which are sounding exactly as we want them to. We played them in our barn in the falling snow and it felt like our songs were snowing.
Here are a few small bits of news:
The Rivulets record (You Are My Home) is available for pre-order now. Through the O Rosa webstore here
You can hear some of this beautiful record here.
Also, I have posted a new A Lily song, entitled A Town Like Hurricane, on that myspace. You can hear it here.
Lastly, the Barbican show at which we’ll play the new songs I mention above is selling well. We urge you to buy tickets as soon as possible, this will sell out!
Tickets
Well-wishes to everyone,
yh x
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4/4
Happy birthday Jack
Also, we invite you to:
20 Jun 2008, 19:30
Ólafur Arnalds & yndi halda at Barbican Hall
Silk Street London, UK, EC2Y 8DS UK
Cost: £10 / 15 / 20
Description: Part of Summer 08 Contemporary Events at Barbican Hall. Nearest tube: Barbican.
Box Office: 020 7638 8891 (9am-8pm daily). Online ticket sales: www.barbican.org
We will play new songs.
yndi halda x
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27/3
Dear everyone,
We'd like to thank the ever-masterful C. Scott Hatch for his help with the internet troubles. I think we'll be safe from server difficulties now, happily. Apologies for the boring downtime we've had recently, and more apologies for any email silence that has ensued because of it.
We've been busy writing new songs, which is coming along very well. I'm confident in saying that we're incredibly excited about showing the world these new pieces, they're by far the best we've ever written.
We'll have a chance to debut at least 1 of these songs at an upcoming London show that we're very much looking forward to. We'll confirm details when we have them, but for the moment please keep the 20th of June free in your diaries.
well-wishes to all,
yh x
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6/2
Hello.
Hilariously, we are included in the Insider's Guide to Beijing 2008. The authors refer to our Beijing show last August and describe us as "younger and hipper" than Sonic Youth.
Less hilarious news, our good friends, former tour buddies and my sometime collaborators Meet Me In St. Louis have split up. We are very upset about this.
Expect some new songs soon.
Your friends,
yndi halda
x
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24/12/07
Things we're doing:
21st of January '08 - Felicia Atkinson & Sylvain Chauveau | Roman Anglais. O Rosa Records are releasing this beautiful record. Listen here and pre-order here
Writing a new record.
Things we've done:
15th of December '07 - Electric Lands Festival, Paris, France. All details here.
22nd of December '07 - Holy Trinity Church, Leeds. Tickets available here. We thought about playing all of enjoy eternal bliss at this show, but it was too difficult, so we played a new song alongside a couple of older ones instead.
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We are excited to announce a brand new t-shirt design. This is currently only available in the US, and is printed on high-quality American Apparel shirts.
Three designs were put together for our Asian tour earlier this year, but we've decided to revive our favourite of those as a pre-curser to our 2008 US tour.
The shirt is available from Burnt Toast Vinyl here for $14ppd.
Our good friend Kheira (meedchen.de) designed it for us. She's a clever one.
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26/11
Hello world,
here are a few things:
1 - We are very much looking forward to our final shows of the year.One of which is the Electric Lands Festival in Lagny-Sur-Marne, Paris,on the 15th of December. All details here.
2 - Another last show of the year will be on the 22nd of December at the Holy Trinity Church in Leeds. We tend not to do one-off showsoutside London because they're often difficult to get to, but thisbeing a church and a charity event we couldn't turn it down. We aregoing to make this show as special as we can. We may play the entirety of enjoy eternal bliss in order, and we'll probably film it. Tickets available from here.
3 - We have one more show planned, but not in any detail yet.
4 - We are playing alongside Sylvain Chauveau in Paris on the 15th.He's one of our favourites, and the record he wrote with his partner,Felicia, will be released on O Rosa Records early in the new year.We'll start taking pre-orders soon. You can hear some of that record at myspace.com/orosarecords
5 - There will be a new A Lily release in February 2008 (details soon).
6 - Our friend Hannah is very clever and made this
I think that's everything for now.
Goodbye world.
yh x
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8/11
A huge thanks to everyone who helped with the Luminaire show. We had a lot of fun (in fact, it was one of our favourite shows ever). Extra special thanks to Huw, Audrey, Ross, Andy, John and Elaine, The Monroe Transfer and Arthur.
There are probably some photos and videos up online, but as ever, if anyone has any - please send them to us, we'd love to see them!
Our final show of 2007 will be at the Electric Lands Festival in Lagny-Sur-Marne. We are excited!
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26/10
We've confirmed with the Electric Lands Festival in Lagny-Sur-Marne, Paris for the 15th of December. We'll be playing alongside our friend Sylvain Chauveau (more on Sylvain below), Port-Royal and All Angels Gone (among others), and then again in Paris for a headline show on the 16th. More details when we have them.
Speaking of Sylvain Chauveau, O Rosa Records will be releasing his most recent record, a collaboration with Felicia Atkinson. We are excited. Details to follow...
yh x
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3/10
I've joined our good friends Shady Bard, and we're touring soon:
10.10.07 Glasgow Buff Club
11.10.07 Edinburgh Art College
12.10.07 Dundee Westport Bar
14.10.07 Newcastle Cluny
15.10.07 Birmingham Town Hall
16.10.07 Luton George II
17.10.07 Brighton Hope
18.10.07 London Metro
19.10.07 Bristol Cube Cinema
20.10.07 Nottingham Social
see you there!
J.V.
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6/9
It's approaching university term-time again, and so we'll all be scattering, geographically, and ready to start writing on our own again. This means:
-new A Lily songs
-new Lunch Time Sardine Club songs
-no live shows for a little while (unfortunately)
-new yndi songs being prepared individually, which means new yndi songs being ready when we're all back at home again.
-the yndi arm stretching to Brighton, Cardiff, Farnham, Cambridge and Broadstairs.
We played at the Dream Machine festival a little while ago, it was great! Thanks very much to everyone involved, especially John, Laura, Flo and Chrissie.
Better news is coming.
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14.8
We've been home from the Asian dates for a week now, and the jetlag and post-tour exhaustion is starting to subside. The whole trip was a great success, and we're completely indebted to (among others): Gary, Nic, Sabina, Loou, Miyuki, Jackie, Jason, Ken, Graham, Chang and probably lots of other people that I might have forgotten.
I've been maintaining the tour blog here, and we're trying to keep a photo archive, so if anyone has photos they'd like us to see, please email them to yndilivephotos[at]googlemail.com. Thanks!
The Asian audiences were the first to hear our new song, which is somewhere around two thirds completed (the structure is mostly done, but the movements need some more work). We're excited about finishing it.
We also printed some new shirts for this tour, but unfortunately they all sold out, so we don't have any to bring back with us. The designs, though, are our favourites so far, and we'll print some over here to sell online and at shows.
Our future plans are something along these lines:
-DVD - live footage or extended videos for the enjoy eternal bliss songs.
-12" EP - maybe of the song we're working on at the moment, to fill the time before we have a full-length ready
-North American tour
Hooray!
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Our flight to Hong Kong leaves today. See you in the East!
26.7 - IMNet, Kowloon, Hong Kong
27.7 - 29.7 - Formoz Festival, Taiwan (we play in the evening of the 29th on the Mountain King's Peak Stage)
30.7 - The Wall, Taipei, Taiwan
31.7 - O-Nest, Tokyo, Japan
3.8 - The Star Live, Beijing, China
yndi
xxx
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9/7
thank you to everyone involved with the shows on Saturday and Sunday - especially Claire, Paul, Dave and Colin - and to Cats and Cats and Cats, Meet Me in St. Louis and 65 Days of Static.
also, thanks to everyone who came, and everyone who said hello.
We're playing at the Metro in London (Oxford St.) on Thursday the 12th, supporting the Strange Death of Liberal England. We're looking forward to it.
See you there,
yndi xxx
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24/6
we'd like to say thank you to:
John, Robin, Tom and the rest on Friday, and Mike and Drowned in Sound, Neil, Duncan, Shady Bard, These Monsters on Saturday. everyone who was at those shows.
We had a lot of fun, and we're so glad that the new half-song was so well-received. We will be doing more things with Shady Bard and with Drowned in Sound soon!
We have two more London shows before we head over to Asia for some shows in that part of the world:
7th of July - ICU, Badge of Friendship Festival
8th of July - Cargo (with 65 Days of Static)
26th of July - IMNet, Kowloon, HONG KONG
27th-29th of July - Formoz Festival, Taipei, TAIWAN
(we play at 9.30pm on the 29th on the Mountain Stage)
30th of July - The Wall, Taipei, TAIWAN
31st of July - O-Nest, Tokyo, JAPAN
3rd of August - The Star Live, Beijing, CHINA
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12/6
hello all,
lots has been happening over here in the past couple of weeks. We've been very busy finalising the details for our short set of Asian dates, which we're very excited about!
In the next couple of days we should have the finished schedule and we can make a proper, official announcement.
also, great news!: the merch site is back up and running with our new shirt and poster designs and the Whip EP - O Rosa's first release!
Thanks to Robin and Tom for help with t-shirt design photoshopping.
more to come soon...
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17/5
hello,
sorry for the lack of updates on this site. It's been a while since we've had enough free time outside of our academic committments to dedicate to yndi business (we have busy lives).
good news first:
the European tour was the most fun we've ever had. We met some amazing people and visited some amazing places. We will come back before too long. I wrote some things on our new journal here.
we have confirmed with the Formoz Festival in Taiwan, which will be very exciting. Mercury Rev and Yo La Tengo recently confirmed too, both of whom feature highly in our record collections. Explosions in the Sky pulled out, sadly (more below). Details here: Formoz.com. We are also playing at The Wall in Taipei, The Star Live in Beijing, O-Nest in Tokyo and IMNet in Hong Kong while we're over in that part of the planet. Details on our tour page.
enjoy eternal bliss vinyls are finally in the country! I only have 5 in my possession currently, but the rest of the box is being looked after by my parents at home, and will be on sale before too long.
we're playing at the ICA or ICU (I've forgotten which) on the 7th of July with lots of other Big Scary Monsters bands. Details soon.
our friends, the rather lovely Bella Union Records have started a new online journal (copying us perhaps), which can be found here. Notice our presence in Simon Raymonde's top 3 records of the moment.
bad news:
we sold out of every single thing on the Europe dates, so we have no t-shirts, cds, posters, badges etc etc etc for sale. There are a handful of A Lily cd's left, but not much else. We'll restock everything asap and get onto the outstanding merch orders. Apologies for any delays.
Explosions in the Sky had to cancel their dates this summer, because of an illness in the family, which sounds very sad, and we send well-wishes.
we may not have time to do the full North American tour we had intended to at the end of the summer. I'll do my best to keep the site updated if we hear anything.
that's everything for now I think. Hopefully we'll have more good news and less bad soon.
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hello all,
Whip, from O Rosa Records (yndi-owned and run record label), will be playing at the Water Rats on the 7th of May supporting Suburban Kids with Biblical Names, hooray!
The EP R. Mutt's Blues (the first O Rosa release) will be available at this show.
tickets and info are available from here and Whip's myspace is here. The label can be found here.
see you there!
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26/3
to celebrate the fast-approaching Europe dates, we have set up a new online tour journal that will serve as more frequent (and trivial) updates than the 'news' part of this site, every day that we're on the road, if we can.
also, in O Rosa news, the Whip record arrived today! We'll take copies on tour with us in Europe, and sort out an online ordering function on our return. O Rosa Records website.
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15/3
hooray! we've almost finished booking our Europe tour for next month:
1.4 - NL - Utrecht, dB's
2.4 - GER - Koeln, Kulturbunker Muelheim
3.4 - GER - Berlin, NBI
4.4 - GER - Braunschweig, Nexus
5.4 - GER - Hannover, Cafe Glocksee
6.4 - GER - Esslingen (Stuttgart), Komma
7.4 - BE - Cotil-Wodon (Fernelmont), Rhâââ Lovely Festival
8.4 - FR - La Rochelle, WBC
9.4 - AVAILABLE (Spain)
10.4 - SP - Don Benito, Rincon Pio Sound
11.4 - SP - Madrid, Freeway
12.4 - SP - Barcelona, Sala Sidecar
13.4 - FR - Angouleme, Le Mars Attack
14.4 - FR - Reims, La Cartonnerie - Festival Capharnaüm
15.4 - FR - Paris, (DATE NEEDED)
if any promoters can offer any help with the missing days - the 9th, 11th and 15th - please get in touch with Paper and Iron Booking
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26/1
we've confirmed with the Rhâââ Lovely Festival in Belgium for the 7th of April. there are some wonderful bands playing, and we're very excited to be included.
well wishes from all.
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23/12
apologies for the time between news updates. things have been busy.
tour-time was a great success and we saw some beautiful towns and we ransacked some beautiful houses. a very short mini-diary of remembered events is this:
tuesday, 12th of december: southampton was fun. we met our touring buddies Secondsmile (who we hadn't met before) and Meet Me In St. Louis (who we had) at the uninspiringly-named Unit 22 and shared cold pasta and couscous. jack broke a string in the middle of 'dash and blast', so the rest of us played a little idea i'd been working on that morning while jack repaired the damage, and the bootleg recording of it sounds pretty nice. we were promised a party afterwards, but there was none.
wednesday, 13th of december: we were stuck in traffic on the way, so we watched robocop and high-fived at the explosions. mike, the driver, knew almost every line of dialogue from memory. the venue was nicely-sized, and there was a beautiful pizza takeaway nearby, but we didn't play so well. Secondsmile were excellent, though.
thursday, 14th of december: rachel, who promoted the newcastle show, is one of the nicest music-businessmen we've ever encountered, and although illness slowed us down, we were pretty happy with the show. this photo of dan was taken by mark greenbaum, and is very good. the night offered too much vodka, a jacuzzi, naked st. louis, shouting along to modest mouse and a broken bicycle at the bottom of stairs.
friday, 15th of december: coventry is an odd town, it seems too new, and they call sandwiches 'batches'. the venue was lovely, though, and the promoters had christmas presents and free mince pies for the audience. an interview i did with In It For The Money Zine will be online here and there shortly. Benny St. Louis established himself as winner. meet me in st. halda established themselves as team yazoo.
saturday, 16th of december: the Bridport Arts Centre was probably the nicest venue we've played, and mike filmed our set, which was quite successful because of the high ceilings and accompanying rock-out-space accorded by the large stage. Arran from Capital Girls and Capital Pearls was more drunk than anyone had been on tour thus far, and was rewarded for it. jack was caught sticking plastic stars to his face, and pouring cider in dan's sleeping ear.
sunday, 17th of december: the london show represented such ill-health for me; i cut my fingers and made my guitar look like a battlefield, and then collapsed for some bizarre reason and lost the entire evening in my memory. mike blamed london. the show was good, though, apart from a tempermental delay pedal at the very beginning, and it was nice to meet the important city folk who had come to see us.
monday, 18th of december: we stayed in a hotel in ipswich, which was a lot more comfortable than the wooden floors we were getting used to. the booking had to be moved from its original venue because of a shooting (!) that shut the first place down for police investigation. the town was too quiet during the night, and there were police cars everywhere.
tuesday, 19th of december: the final tour date was a very good one. the noodles at the Boileroom were beautiful, and the venue itself was no doubt the cleanest and nicest-smelling we'd ever played. we finally performed the ragged yelps in 'dash and blast' live, which was amazing, and a million thanks to all of secondsmile and meet in me st. louis for helping. jack fell over at the very end of 'illuminate my heart, my darling!', but managed to finish the song.
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18/11
hello all,
yesterday's release show was a lot of fun. thank you everyone involved, especially Robin and Kev, and definitely definitely thank you to everyone who came. there was a huge saga of disappointment and worry when we heard (after being several hours late already) that our driver was stuck in liverpool with a broken van. we ended up driving through the night in a single car with no equipment, and then spending my entire overdraft on new equipment when we arrived (which we'll be putting on ebay soon). i broke my effect pedal power supply with a badly-placed rock-out, and olly smashed those borrowed cymbals to pieces, and the show sold out and left some friends in the rain, but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless and hope everyone that was there did too.
a couple of people asked us about the short set-length; we're really sorry if we disappointed. what happened was: the venue (i.e. not promoter, who was superb) booked two shows for the same evening - the second of which started at 11. although we planned and intended and expected to play a full-length set, we couldn't argue our way around the fact that another set of bands had to come onstage. next time, though, we'll do our best to play for longer.
apologies again if we didn't deliver.
please email us any photos you have!
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9/11
enjoy eternal bliss 2xLP is ready for pre-order from here!
O Rosa news - the myspace page has been updated with all the current goings-on, including the (almost) complete current roster list, and mp3s by:
Whip - Portland's Jason Merritt writes songs for both himself (as Whip), and for his band (Timesbold). while all are rich and melancholy Americana, the former are much softer and more delicate than the full-band arrangements, and fit the O Rosa sound perfectly. Too-obvious comparisons would be to Bonnie Princy Billy and Smog.
The Soft Disaster - probably O Rosa's only 'band'. The Soft Disaster's sweet, indie charm can be compared to Death Cab For Cutie, their graceful energy to The Arcade Fire (Jeremy Gara of that band recorded their songs), their subdued, understated vocals to Kepler. Expect a European tour from these well-bearded Canadians soon.
Eli Moore - organic, gentle northwestern folk with genuine 80's pop sensibilities and introverted sotto voce vocals; has played alongside Damien Jurado, Little Wings, Norfolk and Western, Mt. Eerie among others - which should provide a suitable musical reference point. one of two artists borrowed from the brilliant Bicycle Records.
the O Rosa site will be ready soon, and will have links to purchase all of these fine records.
other news - Burnt Toast Vinyl have announced their new signings today - the great Korean acoustic/electronic force Byul, who are really very good indeed.
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1/11
Rock Sound are running a competition for unsigned bands to open for us, secondsmile and meet me in st. louis on the 17th of December at the Barfly in London.
to enter, click here:
thanks, and good luck.
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