After nearly 4 years, 37 releases and countless gigs as well as securing synch, distribution and PR deals for Sotones’ artists, I will stand down as MD of Sotones Music Co-op as of 6th Feb 2011, to focus on other projects.
Thanks to all the people who I’ve worked with over the years – you’ve all been great, and I’m glad we’ve been able to help your music to a wider audience. I believe in this organisation, in our model, and in you! Good luck.
Andy Harris (Haunted Stereo) will deputise for one month while a replacement MD is found. I will record an LP in March 2011 with Dave Wade-Brown and Dave Miatt at Furnace Studios in Bulgaria, to be mixed in London.
‘1,313: A Sotones Sampler’ is the second Sotones Records compilation, featuring some of the best music from across the south coast, spanning indie rock to dubstep, folk to electronica. Featuring smash singles by Moulettes, Moneytree, Haunted Stereo, Peter Lyons and Fresh Legs, as well as new works by artists including rude_NHS, nato, Ann The Arc and Jeffisalive. Artwork by Billy Mather (billymather.co.uk)
Tracklisting:
Moulettes / Horses For Hearses / Horses For Hearses EP (Licensed from B.alling The Jack)
Fresh Legs / Julian / Julian EP – Deluxe
Moneytree / Medicineland / The Great Indoors Part III
Haunted Stereo / Lock The Doors / On A Pin/Lock The Doors
Anja McCloskey / Newton / Turn – Turn – Turn
Jackie Paper / All The Wine / What’s Wrong With Broken Glass
Acoustic punk-in-disguise Lonely Joe Parker began his career with indie-rock kids The Power, but after festival appearances and national airplay he put down his electric guitar and set out alone last summer to discover ‘a more interesting way to tell stories in sound’.
His bold, performance style harks back to Billy Bragg, while musically he owes more to Pavement, Broken Social Scene and The Clash. “I quickly realised that I wasn’t very good at the guitar,” he explains, “at least, not good enough to be a “guitarist”. But that doesn’t mean it has to be boring, either – you can make just as good a racket with two fingers on a fretboard, you just got to know which ones!”
As his growing live reputation across the UK proves, melody, harmony and performance make a potent combination and Lonely Joe Parker has already supported significant artists such as Band of Skulls, My Luminaires, Stornoway, The Moulettes, Edward J Hicks and Thomas Tantrum in his burgoning solo career.
Joe recently released a split EP, What’s Wrong With Broken Glass, on vinyl and download with Sotones label mate David Miatt a.k.a Jackie Paper. The EP gained the pair a “Track of the Day” accolade on the Q Magazine website, an extensive interview on Fairtilizer, features on The 405 and a great review in The Fly. All proceeds from the vinyl copy of the EP went to Oxfam.
Shanty is taken from the aforementioned EP and gloriously encapsulates Joe’s sincere lo-fi folk sound, with nods to greats such as Nick Drake. His ability to take you on a journey far, far away with heartfelt vocals and simple, beautiful strums will more than charm you into submission. Lonely Joe Parker is defintely set to become one of the most enchanting, underground songerwriters of our generation.
Tracks:
1. Shanty
2. Mary Rose
3. Shanty – Live At Den Of Iniquity
Press release (c) Sotones / A Badge of Friendship, 2010. All rights reserved.
“A split release of jaunty confidence and empathy. It’s worth buying a turntable just to hear this.” Matt Golding, The Fly
“intriguing melodies and playful composition… highly alluring.” Track Of The Day 15/12/09, Q Magazine
“Gentle finger picked guitar and stream of conscious lyrics.. like a late night busker serenading the drunks staggering their way home… Get it for the Indie kid in your life.” Singles Round-up 14/12/09, Clash Music
“a strange, yet fantastic collaboration” Will Slater, The 405
Itinerant bum, romantic, and songwriting-genius-in-rags Lonely Joe Parker stumbled on a brilliant idea when he made it back to the UK last year, fresh from a busking tour of the eastern US seaboard. A planned tour following the Obama campaign trail had threatened to derail when a robbery in Miami left him penniless with 1000 miles to home.
But down on his luck amid the squalour and splendour of an American election, he sat down with a $20 pawnshop guitar and wrote a new clutch of songs inspired by his surroundings. Motivated by the chink of change in commuters’ pockets, he dug deep into americana, conceieving a twisted soundtrack to his predicament that took Tom Waits-ian observation and St. Vincent or Feist’s sonic vision, blended with a streets-eye view of the USA. The songs earnt their creator enough change to make it up to NYC, where gigs in the East Village and Williamsburg followed.
Back in the UK he began to wonder why the songs that had earnt his own keep couldn’t help others too. Hitting the buffers in the docklands of his native Southampton, he ran into guitarist and songsmith Jackie Paper – better known as David Miatt – himself taking time to decompress with a raft of misfit songs written following a hectic six months with his band Thomas Tantrum. Critical acclaim had seen them catapulted from rehearsing in a garage by the docks to the Reading, Bestival, SGP and Latitude festivals and national radio appearances (including BBC1 and 6Music), but now winter had bitten and an older, folkier impulse led him to pen a book of wistful, almost melancholic songs that didn’t fit in with his day-job-band’s indie-pop template, referencing Elliot Smith and Nick Drake more often than YYY or the Pixies.
Whilst browsing for vintage Lemonheads in their local Oxfam Music Store, the two hit on the idea of a split EP to shamelessly showcase their songs while raising money and awareness for Oxfam Music. It seemed deceptively simple: do a record on tick, release it through the UK’s network of Oxfam stores specializing in vinyl (touring them to promote the release), get new punters into the stores themselves (essentially great local indie record shops that happen to be benefit empowering development projects worldwide) and walk off with the memories while letting Oxfam pocket all the filthy money.
Six months later, after many long hours waiting outside friends’ studios (Furnace, The Ranch) for spare time, instruments and beds to sleep on, these six songs are the fruit of that collaboration. Friends in Modernaire, Peter Lyons Band, The Moulettes and Moneytree also perform, while the record was mastered by Thomas Tantrum drummer Dave Wade-Brown. Co-operative indie label Sotones release the EP, with original artwork commissioned from local illustrator Billy Mather.
Tracklisting:
1. Brooklyn
2. Shanty
3. Raining
4. All The Wine
5. Natural History
6. Down Among the Dead Men
Press release (c) Sotones, 2009-2010. All rights reserved.
they are well rough – did about 11 tracks in an hour at the fabulous RANCH studios with mister neil kennedy cos he was in a hurry – and mainly they’re there to help me learn the songs.
you see i’ve got no way to record anything here. and my memorys fucked so learning songs once ive written them (don’t laugh..) is hard. but now i can go to sleep listening to them, learn the words, and work out what they mean
i hope you do too.
.. the background to all this is me and dave (who you might know better from thomas tantrum) in his incarnation as jackie paper are going to have a split 12″ out on sotones in the near future. yay
My debut for Sotones (with Joe Parker And The Power) was this 4-track EP made up of the title track (“a slice of poppy exuberance Nightshift magazine praised as ‘… a summery pop thrash with some great pots and pans drumming…'” according to the press release), perennial LJP standard Number Nine (an oddly restrained version, in fact) plus the obligatory live version and demo. We thought we were gonna take over the world back then, and it kind of captures that youthful arrogance, even if the highlight of our career was supporting a late-decline Voodoo Glow Skulls. I quite like it.
Not available any more – CDs were limited and distribution deal with 7Digital has lapsed.
(‘Vol.11′ was a scene on a CD – Sotoness’ first proper release and a showcase for everyone involved…)
Original blurb:
Featuring the best bands in the south there’s something for everyone as post-rock jostles with glitchcore, drum’n’bass rubs shoulders with indie. Uniting the music and the musicians is a belief that good music is better put together and released by artists who care about it, about their fans, and each other. Every single copy is individually put together and numbered by hand, by one or more of the bands making this a truly historic release.
