On Sunday 18th October, North Sea Radio Orchestra will be live in 'the Hub' at BBC 6Music to perform some music from the forthcoming Vernon Elliott concert on Stuart Maconie's Freakzone.
This will be their 4th (count 'em) session for Stuart and they will be playing music from 'Ivor the Engine', the traditional folk song 'Uncle Feedle' from Bagpuss as well as an NSRO tune. Far out!
X X X

October 22nd sees NSRO return to the Union Chapel to take part in the Arctic Circle's Marginalise Concert Series alongside concerts by Max Richter, Gavin Bryers and Michael Nyman. NSRO will be performing the music of Vernon Elliot with arrangements by NSRO's Craig Fortnam and composer Laura Rossi. Vernon Elliot is the composer who scored all of Oliver Postgate's children's TV shows, including The Clangers, Ivor the Engine, Pogles Wood and many otthers. Those 'nutty' guys at Arctic Circle have promised to deck the Union Chapel out in appropriate glittery garb so this will be a feast for the ears and eyes! The fact that the bassoon features in the North Sea Radio Orchestra so much is probably due to Vernon Elliot's music as Craig is of that 1970's Children's TV generation. This was the decade when that mighty reedy instrument was all over the telly like a welcome rash. Craig and Laura will be getting out the pencil and manuscript to do full justice to Elliot's tunes so this will be a great night. All proceeds go to the Margins Project - a charity for the homeless. Details, tickets etc... http://www.unionchapel.org.uk/events.php/205/marginalised_the_music_of_vernon_elliot_oliver_postgate_performed_by_north_sea_radio_orchestra

This July, NSRO will grasp the tiller and navigate the short hop over the Channel to France to perform at 'Les Tombees de la Nuit' Festival in Rennes, Brittany. We will perform in the rather grand Opera House on July 11th - our set will cover the full range of our output, from the miniature to the 13 minute 'epic'. Dust down your classroom French, grab your passport and traversez la Manche! X X X

Our new album 'Birds' (oof010) is OUT! Released! In the SHOPS! Available ONLINE!! HOORAY!!

Apologies from NSRO:
Due to 'systems beyond our control' our 2nd album 'Birds' has been delayed. The new release date is December 1st. We are very unhappy about this, especially as we've been getting some good press that's now in effect a month early.
On a positive note, those of you who come to our album launch show at St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square, Londinium (Nov 18th) will be a ble to buy a copy direct from ourselves. Alternatively, you can pre-order a copy through the usual online retailers (boomkat, roughtrade, amazon etc). We hope to see you at the show and once again, apologies from NSRO x x x

We have just finished recording our 2nd album and we are very pleased with it and hope that upon its release, you will be too.
It has 12 tunes - songs, chorus numbers and instrumentals.
We hope to release it in the summer.
Bye x x x

The Arctic Circle Presents: That Fuzzy Feeling
Cat: LOAF14
Format/Packaging: Limited Edition Box Set/Digipak CD
Release Date: 5/12/07

Arctic Circle has teamed up LOAF records to present "That Fuzzy Feeling" a collection of mostly original Christmas songs and carols. Fifteen tracks from a variety of artists and labels each with a new take on the traditional Christmas hymn. The result is just what you need to rekindle those warm 'fuzzy feelings' that Christmas used to be all about. The release will be available for sale in two formats. The first, a lush limited edition (100 copies) handmade box from much in demand designers Pika Pika (responsible for the eye-catching artwork for all Arctic Circle Events). The other, a snowy-white digipak which will be available in a limited run of 500 copies.

Tracklisting:
1. Fuzzy Lights – Snowstorm in a Snow Globe
2. Canon Blue (Rumraket) – Halcyon
3. Dollboy (Arable) – Look Darling, It's Starting to Snow
4. Vincent Oliver (LOAF) and Isan (Morr Music) – Brave the Cold
5. Peter Broderick (Type) – Family, Giving
6. Ellis Island Sound (Peacefrog) – Christmas in Hawthorne
7. imaginationandmymother – mouth half open
8. Hausckka (Fat-Cat) and Andy Nice – Pulverschnee
9. Rothko (Lo/Bip-Hop) and The Sleeping Years – While December Turns
10. Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas) – Cammy Tack
11. Gavouna (LOAF) – Flutter
12. David Julyan – 67 South
13. Si-cut.db (Bip-Hop) – Winter Cabin (Edit)
14. Klima (Peacefrog) – Sing to Me (Rainy Christmas)
15. North Sea Radio Orchestra (Oof) –O Come O Come Emanuel

Pre-order it now!
http://lorecordings.greedbag.com/buy/that-fuzzy-feeling-0/
(to be sent out for 5th December).


and don't forget our launch event for That Fuzzy Feeling:
Wednesday 5 December 2007, 19.00–22.30 @ UNION CHAPEL (Islington)

Featuring: North Sea Radio Orchestra+ Ellis Island Sound with very special guests Mara Carlyle + David Julyan
and introducing The Dollboy Windpipe Arkestra. Hosted by Jonny Trunk

address: Compton Avenue, London N1 2UN
price: £14
time: 7.30 - 10.30pm (get there early or you'll miss out!)

Where do I get tickets?
www.wegottickets.com/event/22538

Artrocker

North Sea Radio Orchestra
North Sea Radio Orchestra

" there's the inspired swerve from mediaeval chants to Morricone-esque scores..."

It has to be said that the North Sea Radio Orchestra (NSRO) are doing something really quite special. A collaborative of 20 plus performers their music reinvigorates the classical format with arrangements of absolute, and more defined, beauty.

Varying predominantly from acoustic guitar instrumentals to full on orchestral pieces, (xylophones, gongs and all) there's the inspired swerve from mediaeval chants to Morricone-esque scores ('Every Day Hath Its Night') to the heartstring snatcher and exploration of counterpoint in 'Chimes.' Every song is played with assurance and caresses the ear with ease.
The most obvious contemporaries would be to God Speed You Black Emperor or the orchestral compositions of Brian Eno in their 'post' approaches, yet NSRO are far too uplifting to really align with the former, and more substantial in melody than the latter, allowing a more suited comparison in the sonic blankets of Gorecki and the tearfully simple beauty of Arvo Part, even the explorations of orchestral ambience from contemporary Max Richter.

North Sea Radio, in their ability to ebb and sway and permeate through styles without erring away from the constant series of lush orchestrations, have created the most beautiful album of the year and could surely sway even the most ardent distortion-pedal freak to step back and open their minds and hearts to this.



Playlouder

North Sea Radio Orchestra

I do not believe in God. I have never felt his sweet kiss on my cheek or his cool breath upon my fevered brow. This record however, listened to on a long, buttoned-up Sunday evening, sends me into such a reverie as to wonder what, if anything, I am missing. For God is all over this record, or at least the essence that people associate with God, an essence that the great architect Nicholas Hawksmoor would have described as owning an "awe-full majesty."

Huh? I'm trying to put across how somebody without a religious bone in his body can not only be reached across the vast ocean of secular divide, but also be captured and enraptured sufficiently to nestle in the bosom of Abraham for nearly an hour through some kind of divine pollenisation merely by listening to twelve pieces of music. I don't even think that half of this stuff has religious provenance. W.B Yeats is represented with two musical portrayals of his work ('He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' and 'He Gives his Beloved'), although he was more of a Golden Dawn mystic than a holy roller. The latter is a reflective piano floor with high choral vaults "building a sorrowful loveliness out of the battles of old times"; oboes and bassoons chase the tails of the horns as they flit and flutter along the breeze towards an almost unimaginable serenity. 'He Wishes for the Cloths Of Heaven' starts with the hurdy gurdy angularity of Pram and lurches like a rowing boat on a choppy lake as Yeats' poem chimes across its bows.

Sharron Fortnam has a voice similar to Kate Bush, but with a liquid crystal translucence. She is occasionally accompanied by Richard Larcombe, whose myriad voices intertwine and compliment, sounding not unlike a young Bert Jansch. It's not easy to write a melody for an already established piece of writing but for the most part Craig Fortnam does it very well, fashioning the music snugly around Yeats' words with the precision of a master tailor.

On a beano to Birmingham one chilly October during the English Civil War, Charles I stood on a hillside and addressed local recruits. The area is now Kingstanding and therein, it is said, lies the last barrow in Brum. 'King standing' opens with the sound of nylon strings, which make way for a regal vibraphone and acoustic riff, spinning like a top while various instruments are introduced, bowing and scraping as they pay their respects. The riff could represent stability; the king unbowed in his knowledge of the crowns surety (obviously misplaced in the case of Charles I), while all around him mandarins and minions flutter and flatter and wars come and go, chaos revolving around the Royal Eye at the centre. There is a build-up of tension and then, after the king's arrogant and still unbelieving head has rolled across the timbered stage at his last gig in front of the banqueting house at Whitehall, there is confusion and an uncertainty that comes with a new consciousness. The coda is unsettling, full of doubt; the original figure still stands, ghostlike as it waits in the wings for the Restoration.

The music on this record has a depth that won't be found on most releases this month. Whether or not that's a good thing depends entirely on the listener but as so-called independent music, particularly rock music becomes more insipid, the vapid 'punk' posturing and slavish adherence to some imagined rock & roll rulebook more obvious and outmoded, it's good to take your brain out once in a while for a light dusting and rewarding to peel back a layer of music and, *gasp*, find another layer. This record transports me back to the weird foreign stuff television used to hurl at us kids back in the seventies, and to long forgotten puppety night Nutcracker Suites. There is a generation out there who were part of a Government/Vernon Elliot sponsored MKULTRA style mind control experiment, where instead of drugs they were bombarded with wind instruments. Whenever you hear a bassoon or an oboe, you can be sure that an atrocity will be hard on its heels, committed by a thirty something muttering "Noggin the Nog told me to do it". North Sea Radio Orchestra splash colour into every corner of the speakers with a regal splendour and effervescent celebration of God, Nature or whatever it is you may wish to call it. And Amen to that.


Live reviews


Sunday Telegraph 5th November 2006

The North Sea Radio Orchestra
*****
Ben Thompson
POP

The North Sea Radio Orchestra is the kind of deserving enterprise the BBC
should really be throwing money at. Having honed its craft in public
libraries and sympathetic places of worsbip, this superbly disciplined
chamber ensemble is now more than ready to step onto a larger stage. And as
sumptuous swirls of organ, strings, guitar and bassoon eddy around a rapt
Spitz, in east London, the pastoral splendour of its debut album comes
magically to life. Craig Fortnam's compositions stake out a unique terrain,
somewhere between Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending and the baroque
meditations of Sufjan Stevens, and his wife Sharron populates it with a voice
of dazzling, pre-industrial clarity.






'What makes the North Sea Radio Orchestra special is Fortnam's gift for orchestration, the deft and original way he puts deceptively simple materials in the hands of sophisticated performers. Melody pours from his pen on every page...They don't sound like anyone else though you might detect echoes of Nick Drake, Peter Warlock or even Vernon Elliot.'
The Guardian

Just a quick message of apology to those of you who receieved fraudulent messages from the NSRO myspace. Needless to say, we haven't branched out into the ringtone or porno industries and have no intention of doing so. We have taken steps to prevent this happening but if you receieve any messages with inappropriate content please tell us and maybe tell the myspace abuse department too. Sorry people. Hopefully it won't happen again. xxxx

'The End of Chimes' EP is out from July 2nd on Oof Records (OOF009). This release is on 7" vinyl and features the following:

Guitar Miniature No2
The End of Chimes
Hurdy Gurdy Miniature
The Tide Rises the Tide Falls

It has a screenprint of our philicorda organ on the front and can be purchased from all good record shops and specifically...

www.oofrecords.co.uk
www.normanrecords.com

NSRO x x