Interview with Alan from Bearos

Dr Alan Farmer from Bearos Records recently recorded an interview with Brum Radio which you can catch up with on Mixcloud. 

Back in 1999 Saloon were incredibly excited by the noises coming out of Birmingham from bands such as Pram, Avrocar, Plone and, of course, Broadcast which is why we made a concerted effort to try and get in on the action. We played numerous gigs in Birmingham at The Jug of Ale for Alan and Arthur from The Catapult Club. We also made some good friends. 'Electron' our single for Bearos Records was probably the most effortless record we ever put out, and I still list is among my very favourite Saloon releases. Bearos also saw the debut of my ongoing project Rodney Cromwell with the track 'Radaghast the Brown' featuring on their Lord of the Rings tribute album.  

In the interview, as well as spinning 'Electron' Alan talks about how Bearos championed Birmingham bands between 1998-2007 as well as talking about Kushikatsu Records and his current fascination with Japanese pop. 

Rodney Cromwell will be coming to Birmingham as part of the Ohm from Ohm tour, and on the opening 
night on 15th March, Alan will be DJing for us playing entirely Japanese indie and electo pop. Details on the Ohm from Ohm website.

Adam Saloon

New records, new fruits of the 'loon.

It has been a while since our last update. The reason being, well we have been rather busy. 

2015 has been dubbed the year of the Saloon comeback! Ex-members of Saloon have, we hope, three new records out this year, so Loonatics start saving your pennies…(please)….here is the news so far....

RODNEY CROMWELL (Adam)  

Age of Anxiety

The album that I have been tinkering with for about for several years is finally finished. It is very much an extension of sonic area explored with Arthur & Martha (it features Alice / Martha on a couple of tracks too). It is an album of ten songs propelled by hissy analog synths, cheap vocoders, toy instruments, crackly samples, bass riffery and – errr - more analog synths. 

Although the title is a nod to 80's electro (Age of Chance and/or Age of Consent by Bronski Beat) its themes are those of love, loss, grief, paranoia, euphoria in our modern post millennial world of over connection and tribulation That sounds quite ominous - it’s really just a silly indie disco record.  

I’m releasing it under the Rodney Cromwell name – which is a moniker I used once before, during the Saloon days, when I recoded a song Radaghast the Brown for a Lord of the Rings tribute album on Bearos. It is to be released on CD / digital download on 9th March 2015 and distributed by the good people at Cargo Records. The lovely cover was designed by ‘our Matt’. And it will be the first release in five years on the Happy Robots label; hopefully – if we break even – we will be able to put out some more releases (by other bands) in the near future! …oh and you will be able to buy it on our website as well as in the shops and on iTunes.   

Adam

THE LEAF LIBRARY (Matt and Co)  

Daylight Versions

Second album time! We’re halfway through recording another album at Studio Klank in north London – it’s a lovely place, and they’ve even let us build a little shrine on the wall above the mixing desk (the full Happy Robots back catalogue to the first person to name them all...).

It’s all shaping up nicely thanks with tons of guitars, a bit of synth and some piano, lots of drones, some pedal steel and a ride cymbal orchestra all recorded so far. It’ll hopefully feature contributions from some of our mates too including members of The Clientele / Amor de Dias, The Drink, The Left Outsides and Singing Adams. And horns! There are definitely going to be some horns on there too.

The album is called ‘Daylight Versions’ and is inspired by (variously) the sea, commuting, the Suffolk coast, Walthamstow marshes and death. It’ll be out on vinyl via Where It’s At Is Where You Are some point this year. Happy listening.

Matt

That’s all for now. Hopefully more soon. Do get in touch if you need to know any more.  

Saloon's Expanding Rock Family Tree

So it feels like the last few weeks have been a (relative) hive of activity for the ex-members of Saloon and their extended families, with our Rock-Family Tree seeming to spread its branches further.

One of the things I had been putting off for ages was getting the two Saloon synth serviced. The guy I have been using for almost 15 years now is the best in the business; the moog rogue is playing better than ever and the Moog Opus 3 finally has a working string section. The strings have never worked so this is a big deal to me (but probably not of much interest to anyone else reading this.)

Three tracks from the July 2001 Saloon Peel session were aired again by the brilliant Gideon Coe on his 6 Music Show. Someone emailed Gideon to say that he had fond memories of us at Truck Fest (hopefully from the great 2003 show as opposed to the ropey 2000 one where we were compared to The Corrs).

The Saloon ex-members have spoken a fair bit about setting up a Saloon Bandcamp, giving fans the chance to buy enhanced versions of the albums with extra bits and bobs. Hopefully we can make that happen soon. In the meantime I have set up a bandcamp for Arthur and Martha which is looking quite nice. No rarities on there yet (as there aren’t really any) although you can get the singles at a bargain price, as well as downloads of the three A&M videos.  

Alison and Mark have started recording their new album for The Left Outsides. News and links found on their Facebook. They are also playing in a band The Trimdon Grange Explosion which has a new Facebook page also.  I don’t know how the pair of them find the time to be in so many bands!

Matt has been doing some work with his other band The Form Group, in demo-ing some new songs towards a proper album. He is also writing songs for a new The Leaf Library album and they have a new 7" single coming out in June. A picture disc no less. 

Mike’s brother Rob with his Hot Chip hat on, posted a link the other day to a great cover of William Onyeabor’s ‘Atomic Bomb’ that he plays guitar on and will be released for a forthcoming remix album which I think will be out for Record Store Day. Nice moog on the cover too.

The news for me is that although I hinted previously that there might be another Arthur and Martha album in the pipeline, Alice and I have agreed that the record I have been slowly working-on, probably shouldn’t be an Arthur and Martha record. This is in part due to Alice’s commitments to her band Cosines, but perhaps more due to the fact that it really is an Adam solo album, and it’s very hard to pretend that its anything else. So instead I will probably release it under my solo-Rodney Cromwell moniker. Rodney Cromwell was the name I used back in 2002 when I recorded a song– Radaghast the Brown – for the Bearos Records Tribute to The Lord of the Rings (my song was inspired by the Spectum Lord of the Rings game).

I mentioned Alice’s band Cosines who played last night (which I missed due to family commitments / general flakiness) well their new single Commuter Love is out now via Fika Recordings and it’s a glam rock, glittertastic stonker. She originally wrote it for A&M, which might explain the name-checking of the old Moog Rogue, but obviously due to my aforementioned flakiness I never got around to doing anything with it.  Anyway I hope you enjoy it along with everything Alison and Matt are doing – hopefully one day I will have something new to contribute.