Hello folks,

Time for an update methinks! Sorry for the radio silence, i’ve been off on my honeymoon, but fear not, we have been busy!

Firstly the bad, and good news – Alan has had to move on from the drum stool to pastures new, accepting a shiny new job in Leicester. Needless to say, we’re sad to see a founding member of the band leave, but thankfully he won’t be forgotten, as I still owe him a tenner….. No seriously, Alan will still be playing an important part in our group by continuing to work on the many interesting visual aspects of the band, so expect more of his work to feature in upcoming releases, stickers, teapots etc.

Since Alan broke the news of his departure our network of spies has been scouring the countryside, and the, erm, cities for a suitable replacement and that man is Michael Sampson. We’re excited to have Michael on board, and in true Escape Act style, there’s little time for sitting around, and Michael’s first show will be in Mid October at HWCH in Dublin. (more on that in a near-future post).

Recording sessions have been going on throughout the summer, and its fair to say that we can see the end of the tunnel. We’ll have a full report and pictures to bring you up-to-date shortly.

So, the summer is over, autumn is just round the corner. In just another couple of months we’ll have completed the recording of album number two. We’ve got so much exciting music for you to hear, and many plans in the offing for bringing Escape Act to a living room near you, so please stay tuned!

Rich

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I’m just back from Unconvention Salford, which took place over the weekend. Once again it was an inspirational, thought-provoking and ‘exhausting’ experience

Things have been pretty hectic for me recently. I haven’t had the time i would have liked to be spending on band matters, plus we’re generally in an altered state of activity at the moment, with the monthly recording sessions ongoing over in Scotland. These factors left me wanting for an actual objective to be in Salford, but that problem was soon dispelled by the ‘Outside the Box’ panel moderated by Andrew Dubber on Friday morning. This saw several artists (including the insightful and very funny Steve Lawson) from outside the ‘mainstream/indie’ sectors describe how they make a living from their love of music and associated talents.

I’m not sure if it was actually important that these people were musically ‘different’, but moreso that the individuals themselves just relished finding fresh, interesting and different ways of developing their careers. As a band, this attitude is something that we’ve shared from day one. We may be a band, and we’ll try to make the best music we can, but we won’t let that stop us being creative and having fun in everything we do. We’ve also been pretty realistic of our definition of success, reviewing and updating our plans and goals every few months, always taking a few upwards steps, and always doing what we feel is best, not too worried about what anyone else is doing or thinking.

So the main panel ‘take-aways’ about taking risks, but being realistic, having an identity, but knowing how to find your place in the big picture, having fun, and not delusions of grandeur, generally chimed with me and the band, and left me ready to get stuck in again. We’ve been working hard on the new recordings for the last six months, Chris in particular, and there is still a good way to go, but we’re enjoying every minute and are getting excited thinking about how we’ll get it all our there!

We realise that we want to connect more with the people that like our music. So far we’ve made many new friends, and they’ve helped us reach further than we could have imagined. We’re always looking for help, and interesting ideas, so please get in touch, and don’t forget the twitter feed: @escapeact.

Rich

PS. I also took part in a panel called ‘Artist as Enterprise’ – we didn’t really talk about that to be honest, but i sat next to Martin Atkins, (former drummer of Killing Joke, and much more) – a very wise man, believer of the ‘one fan at a time’ philosophy and author of Tour:Smart – a book i shall be absorbing over the coming weeks. You can grab an ebook copy from his site: http://tstouring.com/.

PPS. Although it’ll be a while before we’re ready to release new material, we did a session for bandwidthfilms.com yesterday. We performed new song ‘Salt In Your Eye’ and it’ll be online in a few days, but in the meantime, here are some shaky phone pics…

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We’re just back from Scotland and the fourth album recording session. This weekend saw acoustic and electric guitars going down on Gas and bass and guitars on As They Scam. Alan and Ross flew in on Sunday afternoon to listen to the work so far, and we all went home on a boat loaded with football and rugby fans.

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“Day 3 of Session 3… In the morning further energy was put into capturing the emotion of the different sections of ‘Burning Sand’. After a couple of hours with some re-amped guitar work and omnichord we all felt the character of the song was really coming into focus. As we worked through the next track ‘Pressure’ we also took time to reflect on work done over the previous two days, everything we’ve down sounds really together, simple and uncomplicated. For ‘Pressure’ we got some interesting guitar interplay in the chorus and a real highlight was the dulcimer part that Chris recorded – a steep learning curve with an amazing result. We also managed to track basslines for ‘Gas’ and ‘Salt in your Eye’ with Rich nailing ‘Salt’ in just one or two very impressive passes. Now to recharge the batteries before the May session, creativity is exhausting!

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Yesterday we continued to refine Burning Sand and Folded Arms, working on electric and acoustic guitars and percussion. We also added ‘Pressure’ into the mix, working on guitar parts. During the first album recording sessions we more or less worked on each song until it was complete, checking them off the list as we went along. This time we’re nudging several tracks along, following the inspiration as it comes. Its feeling good so far.

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hey folks,

we got into Hamilton late on Wednesday night, and were at Chem19 bright and slightly breezy on Thursday morning to start the third of our new recording sessions. here are some pictures of us hard at work on Burning Sand and Folded Arms….

the session also produced a breakthrough in Anglo-mexican cuisine with the invention of ‘Fajitoast’ a winning combination of mexican chicken, peppers, onions, salsa, cheese, and, well toast. a traditional take on the South American classic.

thanks to David for the heads-up on excellent iPhone app Camerabag and its interesting vintage filters!

Rich

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Here are some pictures of the limited edition booklets we are producing to go along with the Loosely Based On Fiction physical release, and available exclusively through our own online shop. We’ve asked our screen-printing friend Norman to print up some cardboard sleeves, using one of Alan’s design. They have our familiar arrow in black, with a cool blue overprint.

The sleeves will contain the four leaves of the ‘booklet’ that we’ll hand number before they go in the post. These leaves feature notes from the album recording sessions and more of Alan’s artwork on the reverse.

Alan has also created a PDF version which contains lyrics for each of the songs on the album. This PDF will be available to anyone who buys the album from the site.

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Yay! We’re one step closer to the album release now that we’ve received our albums back from the factory! These lovely ‘digipak’ covers really look the part! We’re working on the limited edition liner booklets at the minute – these will only be available from us here on the site and at gigs, then we’ll be ready to let loose! some pics…

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we’ve added some pics of the session we did on Phantom’s I:Con show to our facebook page. We’d like to thank Lynn and Cathal for having us! you may need to be a facebook ‘fan’ to view them…

we’ve also confirmed another Dublin gig, September 18th at McGrudders, Thomas Street, promoted by Dublin Underground.

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check out these pics, probably taken by Tom McShane or Ross Neely

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