Here’s our short film ‘Striking The Balance’. It charts the making of our second album ‘Balance’ during 2009. [watch on youtube]
The film was screened at ‘So You Want To Make An Album’ an Open Music Media Meetup/Discussion at the Black Box Cafe on Sunday 31st January.
Many thanks to Tim Newell for all the effort and time that went into helping us tell the story.
‘Balance’ is released on July 5th, and you can listen to it in full, and order it now! Click to listen or buy.
‘Balance’ is an incredible piece of work, and our proudest moment so far. Recorded during 2009 over 15 sessions at Chem19 and Gargleblast Studios in Hamiton, Scotland, it features 11 tracks recorded and produced by Andy Miller.
Limited Edition – Art Print Package
We’ve created an interesting and extremely limited edition package to celebrate the launch. We’re almost as proud of this album packaging, as we are of the record itself. Lovingly designed by ex-drummer Alan, its a double gate-fold CD digipack, with 28 page booklet. It feels amazing! Click here for more info and to pre-order your copy.
The package also includes a beautiful hand screen-printed 9″ art print matching the ‘Balance’ theme.
Full Package Contents:
- Beautiful ‘Balance’ double gate-fold cardboard digipak
- 28 page booklet
- Numbered, limited edition hand screen-printed 9″ art print.
- Stickers
- Instant album download
Watch Rich reveal all about the CDs and art print…
The album is also available as:
- high quality digital download
- CD+Tshirt+Download package
- CD+Download
Please visit http://music.escapeact.com/album/balance for full details, pictures and prices.
We hope you’ll enjoy listening to the new album, and hope to see you at some of the gigs. Please tell your friends about our new songs, and help us spread the Escape Act word!
Don’t forget our album launch gigs!
take care
Rich
Fancy a brand new Escape Act song? Well….
Our good friend Kevin of mp3hugger and Indiecater Records fame recently asked us to contribute a track for a World Cup compilation and the results are now online for all to hear!
Fast Forward is our most ambitious project to date and it has taken over a year to come to fruition. The premise was simple; we asked some of our favourite bands to write about one of the 32 countries participating in South Africa 2010, the only stipulation being that the song be themed on their chosen country and if possible be football related. As you can imagine this definition was interpreted in about 32 different ways but the results are as colourful, imaginative and exciting as the event they will be used to showcase.
We had the distinct honour of joining World Cup Group F as sonic representatives of footballing stalwarts Slovakia. We’re pretty pleased with the result, recorded and produced by our very own Michael.
To listen to all 32 tracks, or buy ‘em all for only €5 please visit Indiecater Records.
Escape Act have pretty much been off the radar for much of the last 12 months, but we haven’t been resting on the laurels of our first album, even though we were more than chuffed with the response it got. Instead we got stuck into a new album almost right away, and the first fruits of that labour can now be heard on our music page, and even downloaded in return for an email address.
Throughout this period we’ve been capturing video footage from the studio, gigs and other exploits. With a little help from our friend Tim Newell, we’ll be producing a series of video blogs and retrospectives on the recording process. The first one is on our youtube channel: www.youtube.com/escapeact
After the release of ‘Loosely Based On Fiction’ we realised that in order to keep things moving along in between work, life and what have you, we had to go straight back into another recording process. This started with Chris, a hard drive recorder and many late nights towards the end of 2008 – the result being 14 songs demoed. Several of these had been knocked about by the band in the practice room, but many were brand new ideas for what is now an album entitled ‘Balance’.
February 2009 saw a three-day stint at Chem19 in Hamilton with our friend and producer Andy Miller. This session was basically a drumming marathon and saw Alan putting down the foundation that would be built upon over the subsequent 11 months. Between March and July we returned to Chem19 five more times, building up guitars, vocals, bass and many other parts. At the same time Chris was working with musicians in Belfast writing, arranging and recording various parts for strings and brass.
By the end of July, Andy Miller had finished work on his own masterpiece – Gargleblast Studios, not far from Chem19. Gargleblast would be our home from that point forward and five more sessions concluded the recording process and 11 songs, finishing up in December.
2009 also saw some line-ups changes. Firstly we were joined by Ross Neely on guitar, keyboard, vocals and melodica. Ross has been helping us develop our live sound and add a new dimension to that experience. During early summer it became clear that drummer Alan, would have little choice but to follow his career over to a new post in Leicester. This saw the extremely talented Michael Samson join the band in time for a show at Dublin’s HWCH festival. Alan’s role in the band always reached beyond the drum stool however, and he still contributes distinctive artwork to our activities. (look out for new stickers at gigs!)
We’re really proud of what we have achieved with the creation of this new record. It was been a challenge, it has been a lot of hard work, it has tested every bit of musical motivation we have, but it has ultimately left us with a profound sense of gratitude and achievement that we look forward to sharing over the coming months.
Summer 2010 will see the release of ‘Balance’ along with ongoing activities surrounding particular songs. In the spirit of the new, empowered, independent music industry we intend to continue our policy of novel and interesting release and promotional activities. Our regular video blog updates, email newsletter and twitter will keep folks up to date on what we’re doing, but we’re eager to hear from fans who’d like to get involved in helping us release songs, make video, packaging, remixes, hold listening parties or anything else we haven’t thought of.
Rich Dale
- Feb 2010
Links:
New mailing list subscribers can download 3 exclusive live tracks from our Radio1 session.
For video blogs and more visit: www.youtube.com/escapeact
Facebook fans: www.facebook.com/escapeact
Follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/escapeact
Back in the cold, dark depths of winter Rory McConnell from BBC Radio 1 – Introducing asked us to come in to record a session for his show. We recorded three tunes which were broadcast at the time, one of which was ‘Burning Sand’. We also shot some video footage, and our good friend Will McConnell has edited it into the opus you see before you…
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goHEXNXauwc
as you can see, this was recorded before Ross joined the band, but we love the live version, and the edit, so we wanted to share it with you. the song itself is Burning Sand, a new tune we’ve been developing in recent months, among the others that are being recorded. we’re really pleased with how it’s turning out and can’t wait to share the recordings too… more news on that as it develops…
please leave a comment and let us know what you think!
We’re pretty pleased that our tune Cabin Fever has been included on Seattle’s KEXP Music That Matters podcast… in reasonably good company too…
“John Richards searches for the perfect summer song as he plays a
number of his recent favorites from the Morning Show.”
1. Miike Snow – Animal
2. Arch Cupcake – Rubix Dude
3. Iran – Buddy
4. Wussy – Muscle Cars
5. Phoenix – Listamania
6. Escape Act – Cabin Fever
7. Threatmantics – Big Man
8. Bell X1 – The Ribs of a Broken Umbrealla
9. Erik Blood – To Leave America
10. Akron/Family – The River
11. O + S – We Do What We Want To
12. Bill Callahan – All thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast
13. Faunts – Alarmed/Lights
14. Fever Ray – If I had a Heart
15. Alaska in Winter – The Homeless and the Hummingbirds
16. We Were Promised Jetpacks – Ships With Holes Will Sink
Each podcast usually reaches about 40,000 listeners, so we’re pretty pleased about this – thanks to John for his support!
Download it using iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=76069540
or grab the feed and more info from
http://www.kexp.org/podcasting/podcasting.asp
The release of God Says through Edinburgh’s 17 Seconds Records is now available from iTunes, Emusic and other online stores. Here’s the iTunes link: 
For a mere £2.37 you can get God Says, plus two exclusive and rather excellent remixes by Exmagician and Uber Glitterati (check the 17 Seconds blog for a preview of the Uber Glitterati mix).
Let us know what you think on twitter, we’re @escapeact
Rory McConnell from BBC Radio 1′s Introducing show asked us to come in to the Blackstaff Studios on Monday to record some live tracks for his show. The results are here! bbc.co.uk/radio1/rorymcconnell. Being close to our new recording sessions we decided to perform two new songs in addition to Kings Have Fallen, and all three really blew us away. We should have the recordings available shortly, but for now please listen again to Rory’s show on his website. Check out the blurry picture….
The main studio at Blackstaff is like a giant hangar, but with some cunningly positioned foam boxes and a lot of curtains there’s no reverb, you could be in the cupboard under your stairs… anyway this excellent sounding room made the recording process all the more enjoyable, as did the dedication and enthusiasm of recording team Davy, John and Trish. Thanks to them and Rory and assistant Steven for having us along 
Lots of things are happening at the moment as we near the point of releasing the CDs. You’ll notice that the escapeact.com site has had a minor facelift for a start!
Earlier this week Ed over at 17 Seconds kindly released the last of our tracks – Broken Chin, head on over to read his thoughts on the album…
“Rather like the Strokes, here is a band who have realised that less is definitely more. Pure punky joy.”
We’re getting near the end of our little blog release journey, but there are still a few tracks left, including a personal favourite of mine – ‘Everyone Got Shot’. It has kindly been released by Paul, aka, The Devil Has The Best Tuna, click below to check it out!
http://besttuna.blogspot.com/2008/11/houdini-would-be-proud.html
“They effortlessly straddle the jangling, punkish new wave of The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers (‘God Says’, ‘Laid Open’ and ‘Jupiter Storms’) and the more melodic harmonies Irish Americana (Irishcana?) of The Thrills (‘Broken Chin’ and ‘Sullied Behave For The Moon’). “
Buy It Now or listen below
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