+ Over it. Burned. Head North and do it again +
Hey all Royal Chantonians,
thanks to everyone for coming out and getting rowdy with us these past couple of months. Drums in the air from the stage on a lonely night in Newcastle, sticky and friendly as always at the Lansdowne, familiar faces at the Oxford Art Factory, and then all quiet on the Western Front at FBi Social following ANZAC Day. Some victories, some laughs, some beers, some fuzz. Ah well, chalk it up to age & miles. Cynic. Anyway, instead of griping about worthless shit we can't control I guess it's verbs better spent on celebrating the things we can. Thanks to Dave Hammer at DefWolf for helping us pound out our latest release, Hesitation Kills. We like it very much, and cheers to all the stations in Oz and around the world who have helped us spread the word. We also headed into TLS Studios with old friend Ajay Bawden to start bashing out new material for our next EP, which will probably come out right as we're leaving for the States in the Spring. By then I reckon we'll need a vacation. That's all from here. Support your local music, live & loud, and we thank all of you for doing that for us. Our latest upcoming tour dates are coming soon, but for now please accept a half-eaten bag of Cheetos to tide you over. X Autumn gets louder
We'll keep this brief, but Autumn is upon us, so it's time to harvest our latest single and put it on the open market. We've got gigs and songs happening, and it's all about to become a cyclone of garage starting....now.
When the Pogues hit town you need to keep yor eyes propped open for a late, late night, as we're taking over The Gaelic Club for a very unofficial after party that will be a giant, swirling mess of whiskey, cider, Guiness, and music. Get your tickets now before the event runs out and you're stuck standing in the gutter looking up with longing in your eyes at the raucous joy emanating from the upstairs frivolity. There's heaps more happening, stay tuned for the latest.... Killing company time...
We don't like to brag (well actually, yes, we do), but we have a boatload of videos over at Royal Chant TV. You could easily soak up the hours on the company clock and get your fill of Royal Chant goodness; with music clips, live footage, tour diaries, drum solos, & streaking. We're not sure when it got out of hand, but somehow the videos turned into rabbits and started multiplying like crazy. There's enough there to feed your alcohol-soaked brain and help soothe your worst hangover. Not sure? Try it, we dare you.
In other news, since we forgot to wish you at the appropriate time, let us make amends and say Happy New Year....and Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/etc. Yeah, we've been a little slack, but that's gonna change, we swear. Mark's got an acoustic solo set at the Macquarie on Australia Day, but since it's at 5 pm there might be a few folks left in Port who aren't completely wasted just yet. The next full throttle band gig is on March 15th at the Lansdowne, which will be a smash since we'll be joined on stage by the amazing Sounds Like Sunset. After that, keep your eyes and ears peeled for our Autumn/Winter tour schedule plus our plans to hit the States. Catch you soon, play it loud. REMIX REMIX REMIX
Wipe that Sound got his dirty mitts on our track 'Bored Awake."
To hear the results head over to our Unearthed page. ....Here's Johnny!
Well, we have said good-bye to yet another residency, this time it was our Sunday sessions at the Town Hall Hotel in Newtown. It ended as all good things must, with Mark naked onstage and Matt throwing his drums. [sigh].
However, if you'd like some news to help dry your tears of forlorn longing, then how about heading over to Innersection and checking out this brand new video of Johnny Craig from Coffs Harbour. Shot and edited by Tom Woods of ST Images, they heard "Syndrome" on the radio one day and asked if they could use it for their backing music. Being avid supporters of all things surfing, it was a resounding YES from the Royal Chant camp. Take a look and listen, cast your vote, and leave a comment. Help support independent surfers and artists alike : ) It's going to be a quiet few months as we head back into the studio to work on a few new singles for the Summer. But, when we do come back it will certainly be well rested and with hearts on fire. We kick off with Trial Kennedy at the Oxford Arts Factory on Friday, October 28th, and then head over for the Newtown Festival on Sunday, November 13th. It will be good and loud and as heartfelt as always. See you soon, peace for now..... + MORE MORE MORE!!! +
It's a breezy, billowing July afternoon. The sun is out but it's still cold enough to freeze your fingers. Even with beggar's gloves and a beanie on (in the house, mind you), it's stil cold and bitter enough to make one feel....well, bitter. We're not exactly sure if the following news & tidbits will warm the cockles of your heart, but maybe, just maybe, your pulse might quicken in the slightest and you will feel just a shade warmer on the inside.
With July underway it means that our month-long residency at the TOWN HALL HOTEL in Newtown is underway. Last week we kicked things off with The New Brutalists followed by Sativa Sun. Amongst the other activities of the weekend: Matt & Mark chatting and playing live on FBi 94.5 FM (Sydney), then running all over town having "meetings" with "people" and generally getting silly and losing odd things like gloves and money. Mark woke up in a stranger's car on Saturday morning, walked himself back to the apartment and got ready with the whole band to take the stage at FBi's "Choose Your Own Adventure" at the Factory Theatre. It was dandy. If you want to see a mini-set's worth of footage you can click here and check out this lovely playlist of three videos made by Cherry Faizi. You know, something to watch with your morning cuppa. Since it's been a while, we are also pleased to announce that in issue 415 of The Brag they saw fit to name Raise Your Glass & Collapse their Indie Album of the Week, accompanied by a very nice review by Jonno Seidler. It's probably not really smart nor healthy to dwell too much on reviews, good or bad, but in this case we'd like to say a very sincere "Thanks." He got it. With shows and whatnot, what can we say about TRACKS MAGAZINE? Other than the fact that we're always stoked when they use our music in one of their surfing blogs, we just about damn near fell off our chairs when we saw this banging review by Col Bernasconi. Thanks Col! Very cool. So, ladies and gentlemen, as we ascend to our cruising altitude, if you will look to your right you will see a list of our upcoming shows. We're gonna be out and about quite a bit, and we'd love to see any and all of you there. If you have any requests, by all means pass them along. We get just as restless and bored as anyone, so we're always trying to shake up our set lists to keep us on our toes as well as stave of the boredome that comes as the kms click endlessly over. We'd like to leave you with a public service announcement: ROYAL CHANT WILL BE SHOOTING A VIDEO THIS SATURDAY & SUNDAY, THE 9TH & 10TH OF JULY, AND IF YOU WANT TO BE IN IT YOU ARE MORE THAN INVITED. IN FACT, YOU ARE INVITED. GET IN TOUCH AND WE'LL GIVE YOU THE INFO. Cheers, catch you soon. Play it loud..... Shows + Reviews + Upcoming
The sun came out today.
That was a nice change from the usual drizzle & drear that has been blanketing us for the past week or so. In commemoration of this very welcome event, we thought we'd use our few days off to take a breather and catch up on things. To the fine folks at SYN in Melbourne, we'd like to buy them all a tall pint of cider in appreciation for inviting us to share the stage at the venerable Tote Hotel as part of their Free Kick Final on May 22. We felt slightly honoured to be invited from out-of-town (and not just out-of-town, but out-of-STATE!), mostly because the whole event revolved around AFL, and as we all know, NSW has no claim to that sport even though they do have a fine team in the Swans. (So we're told. We're not picking sides here....if we did, we'd go for ST. KILDA!!!!). It was a smashing night, nice and loud and proper, and we all shared pints (proper again, as that is how pints should be consumed), and generally made merry. Mark got drunk and bored some poor SYN DJ (Dave Crowe) to tears with examples of the finer points of American culture. The next day saw team Ryan Adams (Matt & Mark) wake up early for flights back to Newcastle, while team Rolling Stones (Brendan & Justin) got to sleep in and enjoy the delights of Melbourne well into the afternoon. Apparently this included a long-awaited visit to THE BASS FACTORY, where, to Justin's dissapointment, he found that it really should have been called THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR FACTORY WITH A SMALL SELECTION OF BASSES UPSTAIRS. Just so you know..... CLICK HERE TO READ A BANGING REVIEW OF THE GIG Last weekend we had a chance to hit two towns we don't see enough of, with a gig on Friday night at the Gearins Hotel in Katoomba followed by Saturday at the CDB Hotel in Newcastle. Thanks to both for having us and being so hospitable. The entire band was either a) sick with the flu, b) recovering from the flu, or c) about to come down with it by having caught from someone in group a or b. Still, a warm bed and free booze both do wonders after a gig, and we were grateful to have both. The kids at the CBD Hotel got rather rowdy, as well they should. Also, for the record, we were followed on stage by the LAMEST TRIO OF DJs we have ever encountered, and that is saying something because we encounter a LOT of dickheads who think they have a future in plugging in their iPods and playing their ever-so-carefully-selected playlists. Wankers!!!! After speaking with Adam, the sound engineer, he was happy to concur with our conclusions. Lastly, as we head into Friday night, if you haven't seen the latest album review, you can check it out here. The one is courtesy of RAVE Magazine in Brisbane, and it's another solid check YES in favour of the garage-pop-fuzz way of doing business. Give it a read and let them know what you think. We'll be at the Oxford Arts Factory next Thursday, the 9th of June, supporting Enola Fall during their June residency, so come out and have a few cans of KB lager with us. A new video is in the works, as well as a heap of shows coming up in July. Stay tuned for more, play it loud in the meantime. Have a good weekend, raise one for us.... + Melbourne awaits / Drum Media says YES! +
Happy Rapture Day!
if you're reading this, we can only assume that you were one of the multitudes of sinners who got left behind. If no one is missing, however, I think we can assume that a) we're ALL screwed in about 5 months, which is supposed to be the mandatory waiting period or something like that, or b) the Rapture was a pile of S#%! and some unfortunate people have wiped out their life savings for no good reason. They could have accomplished pretty much the same thing by going to Vegas. That way they would have at least got to enjoy themselves whilst going bankrupt. Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone for getting behind Raise Your Glass & Collapse. If you haven't got your hands around a copy yet, you can now get them at our live shows or through any music retailer in Australia and abroad. If you want that home-town touch, you can also get one from the counter at Coastal Music in Port Macquarie (that's hometown pride! All they need to complete the package is a football team and a mascot that can do gymnastics). If you're a lazy sack of skin who can't be bothered to care about getting the real thing, there's always iTunes and about a zillion other sites. Many thanks to Kate Atkinson for having us at the Valla Beach Tavern last night, as well as all the folks who stayed late getting rowdy and busting out those weird rural dance moves that people do when they're drunk. It was a pleasure, and we hope to do it again sometime soon. Next for us is a turnaround jaunt down to Melbourne, where we have been fortunate enough to be selected to be part of the SYN Free Kick Final at the Tote on Sunday, May 22. For those who don't know, SYN stands for Student Youth Network, and they are one of the closest things to US college radio that you will hear in Australia. Besides having superior taste in music (which just so happens to include Royal Chant), they are very friendly and support independent and underground music in a very hands-on way which is increasingly rare these days. If you've got the Sunday afternoon off and happen to be in Collingwood, then get down to the Tote where we'll be cranking out the tunes. We take the stage at 5 PM, and are going to debut our version of a Nick Cave song. You'll have to be there to find out which one we have chosen. And now, we'll leave you with a tasty bit of reading. Aussie music journalist Giselle Nguyen was kind enough to review our record, and her thoughts were a welcome surprise to us in this weeks' issue of Drum Media (#1060). Read it for yourself on page 44 and let us know what you think. That's all for now. We are out of here and in the skies soon enough. There's LOTS of shows coming up in the next few months, and you'll be sick of hearing about them all by the end of it. More soon.... + Raise Your Glass & Collapse +
Here it is, at long last.
On May 6, 2011, Raise Your Glass & Collapse, the debut LP by Royal Chant, will be OFFICIALLY released to the world. For some, it will their first introduction to the band, while for others it will seem like a secret that was revealed long before. No matter, it is here, and we are happy that the day is nearly upon us. It's hard to say what a debut LP means to a band these days, because the lines between what constitutes a "release" and what they even mean has considerably blurred in the last decade or so, for better or for worse. When it comes to us and our music, I guess it's safe to say that this does represent a statement of sorts, but we'd be the last to explain or even try to explain what that might be. If we say that we are hungry and impassioned and hope this music reflects this, that will be enough. There is no overarching "statement" to the album, only a collection of 10 songs that are written with a similar outlook, verbal tics, and distortion pedals. It lies in an uneasy no-man's land of garage rock/pop/fuzz, but isn't that the sound of our unconscious? Or is it just us? To celebrate the release, we are offering it to YOU, our dearest fans whom we are enternally indebted to, at a discount price of $10 over at Royal Chant Bandcamp. And yeah, that means you can get your hands on it now and have a listen and hopefully wrap your ears around it and see if it draws you deep and makes you want to stay. Honestly, when making this album, if you asked us what we were trying to do, we would probably answer that we were hoping that the engineer remembered to press record and that we all managed to stop and start together while hopefully playiing the same song. We had songs we wanted to play, so we played them. Any reasoning or rationale will reveal itself of its own accord, if at all. Otherwise, we hope you put it on and leave it on and let it seep beneath your skin, like an amazing album is supposed to. To help sew this album into the fabric of Australia, we have a busy Autumn and Winter planned, including a rather salubrious residency at the Town Hall Hotel in Newtown, NSW. That's right, BAM!, another residency. We certainly do enjoy settling in to places, don't we? We are currently drawing up a list of bands that we would like to share the stage with us, but if you have any that you think we should know about then by all means let us know and we will give them a listen and get in touch with them. Thank you to everyone who has supported us in any way, shape, or form. Whether you have bought our music or come to a show, thrown us a few bucks or a kind word, it all means very much and is greatly appreciated. That's it for now, but say hi if it's been a while. + [other] unleashed +
Yar maties!
We have just thrown our latest single onto the world, and [other] is making it's way across the various airwaves of Australia. The nebula of US college radio stations is next, followed by Top 40 FM and Wal-Mart. You should be a real sport and get your hands on it by snagging it off Royal Chant Triple J Unearthed, or by heading over to Bandcamp and nosing around there for a while. We've haven't been at this for long, relatively speaking, but we've been rather diligent and managed to crank out a fair number of our humble but noisy releases. Whenever and wherever you can, your help in spreading the gospel of Royal Chant and breaking the disco chains of the befuddled masses means more than you can ever know. Cheers for now. Play it loud. 
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