MOSKVA The 4/4 project

First gig featuring members of Whispering Bob

In 1999 – 2000, as well as doing Saloon, we were also putting on a lot of gigs (culminating with the Happy Robots festival in 2001). Although we had no problem getting headline acts, we struggled to find decent local support bands and Saloon could only play so- often before everyone would be sick of us.

From that came Saloon offshoot-band Moskva.

 Matt and I had always been keen to pursue our Krautrock side, but Mike just wasn’t into it - we could never persuade him to just play the drums from ‘Mother Sky’ for 20 minutes. Initially working under the title the ‘4/4 project’ (although strictly speaking 2/4 would have been more correct) with Matt on guitar, me on synth and with my housemate the brilliant avant visual artist (and occasional piss-artist) Philip Newcombe on bass, we threw together three ‘songs’ and Moskva was born.

Second Gig Flyer. Supporting Electrelane

Before we had even rehearsed, I earmarked us to support Oxford band Whispering Bob (who included the founders of Truck Festival and who morphed into the successful (by our standards) band Goldrush). The one problem was that Moskva had no drummer and time only for one rehearsal before the first gig. Matt met some guy in the Purple Turtle who had ‘band-hair’ and claimed he could drum. Unfortunately we discovered during our one-rehearsal that the guy couldn’t keep a beat at all. He could just about shuffle through an approximation of the funky drummer – badly. But what we wanted was something between Jaki Liebezeit and Volkswagen building industrial automaton.  So Matt sacked the drummer on the day of the gig and we turned up to the venue with just a just a Casiotone MT-60, and the plan to use the ‘rock’ setting as the drums for each track. 

Thankfully after Whispering Bob finished their sound-check, Robin the lead singer asked if we wanted to borrow anything. I cheekily replied ‘Your drummer please!’ and they agreed! With the Whispering Bob drummer (sorry I can’t remember his name) and with Robin improvising and adding extra melodies on the flute, Moskva muscled our way through a 3 song set of noise, 2/4 beats and errr more noise. It was a great gig, with an audience of about 20 people there to see it.

Second Gig. The Classic Line Up

It was at least six months before we played again, this time to support the fantastic Electrelane who we put on at the Rising Sun 2^nd March 2001. This time we were more prepared and made sure we had a drummer of our own, this time Clare a friend of Amanda’s from Reading College. With a new song in the repertoire (the originally titled Neu-One) and with Amanda completing the line-up on the melodica, we played another barnstormer of a set. Although there is no recording of this gig either, we do have a recording of the rehearsal which I have included here.

The final gig was in support of Printed Circuit from Leeds, also at the Rising Sun. By this time most of Saloon were living in London and busy enough with the main band so, despite not having even been in the same room for at least 6 months, we didn’t bother having a rehearsal. Someone did video it and clearly we got through it without hiccups somehow. God knows who had the bright idea of dressing us all like Italian waiters (probably me).  Once I stopped putting on the Rising Sun gigs and once the Saloon album came out there was no time for side-projects, and Moskva never happened again. I wish we had gone into Wired Studios and knocked up a 12” EP or something, but at the time we didn’t even think about it.

Now as all three of us live in London, there is talk of Moskva reforming. I suppose you’re never too old to be in a Krautrock band, right?....

DIETRICH



NEU 1



SAFETY CUT



FLIGHT CASE



And here is a playlist of a few of my own Krautrock faves.

If we meet in the future (10 years later)

GOOD: NME Review

A message from Matt reminded us that this week is the 10 year anniversary of the release of the second (and last) studio album by Saloon.

A combination of passing time and failing memory has been unkind to our second album.  I can’t speak for the others, but it’s fair to say that I have never looked on it as fondly as (this is) what we call progress.

There are loads of reasons why. The plan had always been to make a fast and noisy record that was more like our live sound, but by the time we had finished the second record it had become a lot more restrained and polished and more of a tiwwcp part 2. This was partly because of the track listing; some of the louder songs we were working on (like ‘I have found the way’ and (the unfinished and unreleased) ‘World War III’ we just couldn’t get to work right. Perhaps it was because it was a slightly somewhat more rushed affair as we didn’t want a long gap between albums, certainly where with tiwwcp we demoed all the tracks before, with iwmitf we didn’t have the chance. So instead of being a collection of fast noisy ones, we fell back to the more polished and restrained type of song, like ‘Dreams Mean Nothing’ which we knew we did well. Also, as control freaks, we chose to record and mix the album ourselves and, in hindsight, that was perhaps too much work, particularly for Amanda, who did the brunt of the work.  I certainly still can’t listen to it without thinking about all the little things we should have changed.

BAD: Branded Review

We also felt a massive amount of pressure after the whole Festive 50 thing to deliver something really special, although now we had even less time to write and rehearse due to all the gigs people wanted us to do, and we had no more money and support than we had ever had. We still had full-time jobs to hold down, which many of our contemporaries didn’t. Of course the real reason I like this album less, was the fact that we split up so soon after it; the tour to promote the album was a horrible slog and I don’t think any of us were in the best of places at the time – at least with the band.

But, as ever on this blog I am accentuating the negative. The record still sold pretty well, and at least half of the songs production-wise are as good as anything else we have done.  I think ‘Vesuvius’ ‘Kaspian’ and ‘Intimacy’ are up there with the best things we ever did. The sleeve – which I was not that keen on at the time – I think looks pretty cool now especially the gatefold vinyl version. If the sleeve of ‘progress’ (recorded in May 2001) was about building an optimistic future, the sleeve of ‘if we meet in the future’ (recorded post 9-11 and depicting something akin to a ravaged nuclear wasteland) captured a far more period-appropriate dystopian aesthetic.

Also the reviews were for this album were almost entirely glowing, with 8/10 in the NME which for us at the time it was all that mattered (finally making up for the terrible live review in 1999). I’ve posted on here the best reviews – the NME – and the worse (from something called Branded magazine).

In terms of audio goodies, I do have some demos from this album but we only demoed 6 songs and all are without Alison’s viola and many without vocals. So instead I have posted a session we did at the time, recorded live in our own studio, for Aligre FM (French radio station) which includes some decent versions of several of the tracks from that album. I have also posted two remixes done by AUW (aka Dom Cresswell, my brother).

Unbelievably I have now sold all the remaining copies of ‘If we meet in the future’ but I am quite sure you can track it down on ebay for a few of your hard earned pennies.