Thursday, 13 August 2009

Lavotchkin/ Crocus UK split Release Tour

Alrighttttttt

I'd firstly like to apologise for my lack of updates to our blogspot. I must admit it has gotten side tracked amongst a whole heap of things, though heres what we have been up to the past couple of months.

So we recorded our album in May which was a huge weight off our shoulders in the Lavotchkin camp. Dec 2008 - May 2009 saw us do 3 Uk tours, 1 Euro Tour, writing a further 5 tracks for our album and Record over 2 weeks. On top of that holding down full time jobs also, so needless to say we were up for a bit of a breather come June. So we pretty much did fuck all if i am honest, though it gave us a good chance to catch up with work and general life.

We got our shit back together come the start of July and played Groom Fest in Lincolin, where bands like Brontide, Human Fly and Out Cry Collective played. We were a little ropey due to the break, though it was still a load of fun. If you look on youtube there is a video of a song from our set if you wanna check it out. What was also really cool was by the time Groom fest came we hadnt played a show since mid April, so began to actually miss playing shows. Not that we had started to dislike playing shows, just when you are doing them all the time, you cant help at times taking them for granted a bit! Not playing shows on the other hand fully meant a lot more time at home. That gets boring vvvvvvvvvery fast. We are all for our band to be an excuse to not have to go to our day jobs ;-) We are poor as a result of it, though your only young once.





Meanwhile our Split with our good friends Crocus came out. It got reviewed in just about all the major uk magazines, ezines and got some pretty cool reviews. If you have some spare cash, please pick yourself up a copy! Your money will be going to a good cause and its a pretty sweet split if i do say so myself.


So with the split coming out late July, we did a split release Uk tour with Crocus for a bit over a week. It was a total crease and big thanks to anyone who came out to any of the shows! On tour we managed to stop off in Barnsley for two days to do some last tweeks to our Album, so it was quite a productive tour.





Big fucking shout outs to the following people for making the tour such a laugh!

+ Our boys Crocus. Good band, Good Dudes, what more could you ask?
+ LAKES!
+ All the We Heart Records Family - especially Zak for letting us play his basement! JOKES
+ All the promoters who made food for us or got us food! SO SO APPRECIATED.
+ Jason Sanderson for putting up with ourselves and Crocus partying at his place for 2 days
+ Jenna for letting us take over her house in Brighton and for putting up with being stuck with so many damn handsome men.


This brings us close to now. We got back from our Crocus tour and back to work for two weeks before we head out to Europe with Crocus to begin our Euro Split release tour. We have good news and bad news unfortunately. I always like the bad news first, so thats how i'm gunna roll with it.

Bad News - Unfortunately our singer Si cannot make our Europe tour! This totally sucks, though he has commitments at home that he really cannot get out of. However, all is not lost. We have our good friend Calum (ex:Joseph singer) filling in for us on vocal duties. Calum has known about our problem for just over a month, and has since been drilling that shit into his brain like nothing else. Calum is traveling to newcastle and practicing with us for the tour, so just as we are a man down, do not feel we will be hindered. We didnt just ask anyone for Si's replacement for this tour and Calum is definately the guy we felt most suitable to fill in. Experience'd and with a good voice :-D

Good News - This may explain why we were so keen not to have to drop off the tour and have a fill in for si. We are really stoked to say that this is probably the best euro tour we have lined up and will be playing with the following sweet sweet bands!

+ Darkest hour - The Mark Of Judas, So Sedated So Secure, Hidden Hands of a saddist Nation. ENOUGH SAID! Considering i put Darkest hour on in Newcastle when i was 18 years old and now 24 years old playing with them in prague, its all a bit crazy!
+ Trash Talk - One of our favourite hardcore bands about at the minute.
+ Rent to Kill - Austria's punk rock heroes,
+ Light House - New addition to Ancors away Records
+ Sex Jams - a new band from ex members of Dimitrji


The dates are all on our myspace. Please go check them out! If you are in the area, please please come down to a show. We like to think it will be well worth your time :-D

What i can tell you as far as coming up in the Lavotchkin camp is this, Our album is nearlly fully mixed. Keep an eye out for updates about that. Our album honestly sounds like we have stepped up our game and its killing me the fact that it isnt going to be ready this year. However, beggers can't be choosers and we want nothing but the best for it, so bare with us. We really think it will be worth the wait.

As for the touring side of things, watch this space as we have tour dates for the end of september coming out. Who we are doing the tour with we will let it be a suprise till we put the dates up. Its going to be a Uk tour and about 8 days as far as i know. haha i would tell you about other stuff, though i have a bad habbit of putting things on here and plans changing last minute.

For now though, Cheers for reading another installment of my ramblings. Come and see us fucking live! Get excited about our album.

Martin + The Lavotchkin's









Tuesday, 9 June 2009

Our Debut Album is allllllll recorded

Alright and cheers for reading

I am so pleased to tell you that we have managed to complete the recording of our debut album "Widow Country". We spent a total of two weeks recording with good friend Jason Sanderson in Barnsley and we managed to just squeeze everything we wanted to do in. We began May 11th until May 17th, then home for a week to demo some vocals and then back to Barnsley May 25th to May 31st. I am most of all happy to tell you that it has all come out much better than we expected :-D

As for the recording experience itself, it turned out to be a lot less stressful than we thought it was going to be. That possibly being also down to using intoxication to pass the days in Barnsley and spending a lot of time hanging out with all our friends in the area. Big Big props to our friends in Errander. Its always so good hanging out and its been a dream getting to see you all for a full two weeks.

Heres how things panned out time wise.

Day 1 - Drums + Live Recording
Day 2 - Drums + Live Recording
Day 3 - Drums + Live Recording
Day 4 - Drum Editing + 1 Vocal track
Day 5 - Guitar 1
Day 6 - Guitar 1 + Beginning Guitar 2
Day 7 - Guitar 2

We went home for a week to work and demo the vocals for 8 tracks

Day 8 - Bass + Vocals
Day 9 - Bass + Clean Guitar + Vocals
Day 10 - Clean Guitar + Higher/Bright guitar + Vocals
Day 11 - Higher /Brighter guitar + Heavy as fuck guitar + Vocals
Day 12 - Heavy as fuck guitar, Vocals + Gaffers birthday :-D
Day 13 - Vocal Edits + Vocals
Day 14 - Vocal Edits + Voclas + Feed Back :-D


Key Things To Mention!

+ Black fox ;-)
+ Errander and Cocean hang outs.
+ A lot of intoxication
+ iceland's cheap food
+ Competative boweling
+ Hub got to go to london with Lock and Keys when they played with Polar Bear Club
+ Hubs good cooking
+ A lot of Tea/Coffee being drank
+ Jase working 10 to 12hour days for us
+ The amount of sweet amps we got to use
+ Assistant Joe!


Information on its release will be coming out in the summer fingers crossed, so until then please bare with us. Its going to be worth the wait :-D


Thanks for checking by our page and seeing what we have been up to. We have been having an amazing year so far and hope that it carrys on the same way. Bellow is a shit load of pictures from our two weeks of recording. Check them out and keep an eye out for a video thats being edited together from our experience.

Big shout outs to the following people for keeping us entertained in barnsley

Jason
Gaffer
DAWG
Ryan
Ryan's Joe
Awesome Joe who also assisted in recording us
Ross
Dave
Gibb
Kalvin
Scarlet
Scott
Chris
Tom Beasts
and sorry anyone i have forgotten that feels they should be in the list. My memoury with names sucks.


Good times


Martin + The Lavotchkin's