We’re chuffed to be able to unveil the line up for the second night of the Winter Sprinter as Flowers, Firestations and Deerful. It’s all happening at The Lexington on Wed 8th of January.
Advance tickets are on sale now from wegottickets.com/fikarecordings for £11. The Winter Sprinter runs from Jan8-11th 2019.
There’s something great about a three-piece—think The Cocteau Twins, The Clean, Galaxie 500—and the way that irreducible nucleus takes its strength from its limitations, making a virtue of its purity. Flowers singer Rachel Kenedy's ethereal vocals and Sam Ayres textured guitar is backed by the powerful, metronomic beat of drummer Jordan Hockley. Effortlessly blending pop songs with noise while leaving space for more stripped back elements, the recordings strike a perfect balance between the sweetness of Kenedy’s voice and Ayres’ abrasive guitar stylings. Their musical inspiration from shoegaze, C86 and New Zealand’s Flying Nun label is now evident.
Firestations are Mike Cranny, Laura Copsey, Martin Thompson, Giles Littleford and Tom Hargreaves. They write lyrical alt-pop songs filtered through joyous surges of collective noise-making and bursts of electronic sound from synths and guitars. They released their acclaimed debut album Never Closer at the end of 2014. After much gigging to support it, including festival appearances at Indietracks, Aaaahfest in Germany and Indiefjord in Norway, they hunkered down to record a follow-up. On The Year Dot, Firestations have refined and expanded on their shared obsession – sketching simple pop songs then painting over them with drones, vocal harmonies, electronica and unusual rhythms.
Much as The Year Dot is a true DIY effort in its creation – made over the best part of three years in a small home studio in Walthamstow, the north circular hissing in the near distance – it’s by no means a lo-fi album. “We spent a lot of time obsessing over making it a really absorbing listen” says Mike, “it’s a distillation of dreaming away the days on the outskirts, flickering between dead-end admin jobs, depression, writing lyrics on my phone, running through local woods, recording drums in industrial units, periods of hopelessness and moments of joy.”
Deerful is Emma Winston, a musician based in London, UK. She writes lush, sad electropop about feelings on synthesisers small enough to use on the bus and in tiny live-coding environments, and exists in a perpetual state of being far too excited about making things. Her musical influences include the Postal Service, The Magnetic Fields, Kero Kero Bonito, Emmy the Great, CHVRCHES, Owen Pallett, Grimes, and the DuckTales for Game Boy soundtrack.
