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The Ambience Affair



Last Updated: 12/18/2009

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Status: Single
City: Meath/Dublin
Country: IE
Signup Date: 1/10/2007

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009 
So there's a couple of things I forgot to mention in the last blog.


The first thing is that we've settled on a title for our forthcoming EP.
It will be called 'Patterns'.
We felt the title aptly suited the arrangements of the songs.

It will be officially released at our headline show in Andrews Lane Theatre,Dublin on Saturday 23rd of January.

Also playing on that night will be Puzzle Muteson & We Cut Corners.

If you'd like to buy a ticket for the gig you can do so here.
Tell your friends


We're also playing Dolans Upstairs,Limerick on the 20th.
          somewhere in Galway on the 21st,
          The Spirit Store,Dundalk on the 22nd
    &    Crane Lane Theatre,Cork on the 24th.

I'm really looking forward to people hearing the new EP. I think before,we were too focused on making the songs sound as close to the live show as much as possible,but now we're putting in things that will make the songs sound alot more padded.
Also,we've been going into the studio with a fair idea of how we want the thing to sound.
It's also the first time that i've written guitar and piano lines whilst recording.There are two songs on the EP that we've basically been writing as we go along, which is a method we are not used to at all.

All in all,we hope that it will show we're moving forward with our sound.


Anyway,I best be off writing a piano line that may/may not end up on the EP.

Thanks for reading,

-Jamie
Currently listening:
Intuit
By Ramona Falls
Release date: 2009-08-18
7:53 PM 
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Wednesday, November 04, 2009 
So a fair bit has happened since I last posted.

Mainly we've been recording our next EP,which is actually fairly close to having a title.
Marc and myself are going through a few possible contenders at the moment.
We went up to Donegal on Monday and Tuesday to record drum parts and guitar lines as well as some rhodes parts.
It's all coming together really well and we've alot of mixing & vocals to do but we're beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

As regards tracklisting it is looking like it will be :

1.Devil In The Detail
2.Malcontent
3.Parting Patterns
4.Lost At The Start

We've learned so much from our first EP that I think this one is going to be a lot more balanced and layered. 
I think Marc and myself have a better understanding of each other and how we work together than we did before and it should make for a better EP.
It's also quite a relief to have lots of time to do it in,and to be able to go away from the process for a week or so and have a look back and think 'Oh, I actually don't like that bit at all'.


The official(ish) release date for it will be the 22nd of January.

The Irish tour for that will be finalised soon.

As regards giggage before that date, we'll be supporting Le Galaxie in Whelans main venue on the 18th of this month.

Thanks for reading,

-Jamie

Currently listening:
Curse Your Branches
By David Bazan
Release date: 2009-08-31
8:45 PM 
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009 
Hello all.


So it's been a pretty mad couple of weeks for us.

On Monday we started recording our next EP which doesn't really have a title yet.
We spent a couple of days up in the loft in Malahide with Ian Mc Nulty and got a huge amount of work done.
We've laid down the 4 tracks and put guide vocals and guide drums to them and although they're noway near being competed,we're exited about how they're going to turn out.

Oh,if anyone knows of a Rhodes/Whurlitzer we can borrow for a day,we'd be eternally grateful.
You can either email us here or at theambienceaffair@hotmail.com if you know of anyone.


It's weird because the second two tracks we laid down are still not 100% written.
We had a change of heart on two other songs and dropped them which left us with the two unfinished ones.
Hopefully they'll live up to our expectations of them.Especially the last song tentitively titled 'Lost At The Start'. It's nothing like anything we've done before and i'm personally intrigued as to how it's going to pan out.
We'll be recording proper drums and vocals in the next couple of weeks.

Our EP artwork is coming together and if I haven't mentioned this before, will be done by Alex Synge.
Here's a sample of a) his work & b)what our little EP will probably end up looking something like.


In other EP related news, we've just booked our first couple of dates for the EP tour.
We'll be playing shows with Puzzle Muteson and I don't say this too often but he is geniunely incredible.  Seriously.

The official launch will be on Saturday January 23 in Andrews Lane Theatre.
It's a rather daunting sized place but we're blindly ambitious that we'll get a few heads there. Tell your friends.

On Friday we're playing two shows as part of the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival.
We'll be doing a 20 minute set in Tower Records on Wicklow Street @ 1:00pm and then we'll be playing Andrews Lane at 10:00pm.

We should have a new song or two to play for you by then.

Thanks,

-Jamie




 

2:54 PM 
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009 
Hello again,

So there's been quite major goings on as regards the band this week.

Last saturday we had a chat and a few pints with a guy called Ian Mc Nulty about producing our second EP. I had heard some of the great work he had done previously and invited him to our gig with Lines Drawing Circles last Friday.
He was really enthusiastic about our show and we had a good chat the night afterwards.

We've pretty much decided to do alot of home recording this time round and give the EP some space and time to be made.
It's the way forward that we wanted to go and seems like Ian is on the same page as us.

I cannot wait to start laying down some tracks.
We've got 3 of the 4 tracks for the next EP already written and know that one of the songs will be called 'Devil In The Detail'.
It'll be released on the twentysomethingth of January with a headline tour around the country to coincide with the release.

The next EP won't be so limited but we haven't exactly decided on how many to produce yet.It'll still have the lovely packaging though and will have the hand-made,home cooked feel to it.

In other news, we've been given our slot for this years Hard Working Class Heroes Festival.
We're playing on the Friday night in Andrews Lane Theatre at 10:10 right before Villagers.
We're delighted with the slot.
We'll also be supporting Villagers on the Sunday in our favourite venue the Spirit Store in Dundalk.

We've played a few shows with Sanzkrit recently and the weirdest so far was the Roisin Dubh one last Monday.I finished work early at 4:00,met Marc and we were in Galway for 6:30.
We soundchecked,ate and played a decent set to a handful of people.Immediately after it,Marc drove us back to Dublin. We got home at about 1:30 and I was up for work at 8 the next morning.

We'll be doing the same for our gig tomorrow night in The Pavillion in Cork.
I'm not really complaining or anything,just highlighting how odd some of our gigging experiences have been.

The whole keyboard thing is coming on well.
It's making a slow but steady introduction into the old songs as well as creeping into the new ones.

Anyway, that's about it for now..i'll blog again soon.

Thanks for reading,

-Jamie

PS. The blog title comes from this excellent song.

 


9:58 PM 
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Monday, September 07, 2009 
Hey again,

Just a little blog to tell you of the things that've been going on the past week or so.

So I guess the main piece of news is that I played a show on my own playing re-gigged versions of our songs last night.
Marc had a thesis to write and coulnd't make it so I decided it would be an interesting venture to try and play one alone.
I found it really weird.I hadn't played solo in well over a year and some of the songs just felt so flat without the percussive element.
It's something i'm glad I did but probably wouldn't to again unless I had my own set of songs to play.

We've had not much time to rehearse recently (that damn thesis again) which kinda makes me frustrated, as i've all these ideas I need to show Marc.

There's a really funny video of us being interviewed after our performance at the Hard Working Class Heroes launch,apparently we laugh together quite well.

If you're about this Friday (11th) we're playing a show Upstairs in Whelans with the excellent Lines Drawing Circles. We're gonna use  the digital piano for this one and see how it goes.
We'd really,really appreciate if you dragged yourselves along to this one,we're hoping it'll be a great night.

Lots more happenings that I can't think of right now but i'm sure i'll blog again soon to tell you of them.


Thanks for reading,

-Jamie

ps.the myspace people won't let me tell you what i'm listening to right now so i'll tell you here.

It's these guys and they're quite fantastic.




6:05 PM 
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Sunday, August 30, 2009 
Hello again,

So it's been about a month since I last blogged so there's lots to talk about.

We've been playing a good few shows recently and trying to implement looped keyboards in with some of the older songs as well as a few new ones.
It's kinda weird playing with a new instrument as I was using the keyboard to write riffs that would form the basis of the song and we both realised that those songs were not where we wanted to take the band right now.
So we've put them aside for the moment and are using the keyboard not to form the basis of the songs but to embellish the guitar driven riffs instead.
This seems to be working alot better and we're happier with the results.

As regards recording our next EP,we're busy getting funds together & figuring out with whom and where we want to record it.
We've had a good few people come up to us after gigs and tell us the recordings are nothing compared to the live shows so I think that's something we're going to try and address in the next EP.

The second edition will be available as a digital download from the end of September and i've had the idea to give away a hand written lyrics book with the first 20 downloads.
It'll take me a fair while to write them all out i'd say, but I think it'll be worth it.


We've alot of gigs coming up in September including a tour with Sanzkrit and our own co-headline gig with Lines Drawing Circles on Friday September 11th.

Our gig with Codes In The Clouds on Friday night in Cork was one of the best we've done in a while,the lads really liked our songs and the people  there were really into it,which is cool.

Anyway,i'm off to start on these lyricsbooks.Hopefully they won't turn out shite!


Oh,i'm really digging this band if you're looking for something to listen to.

Thanks for reading,

-Jamie












2:23 PM 
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Monday, August 03, 2009 
Hey there,

So we've juat arrived back in Dublin after playing shows in Limerick & Castlepalooza festival.
It was one of the best weekends i've had in ages and was a great band experience.

We started off by playing in Dolans in Limerick on Friday suppoting Kill Krinkle Club.We arrived early and had time to record three tracks for Live95 FM's Irish Music radio show.
Hopefully they sound good enough to stick on the myspace because we played our version of 'Knife' by Grizzly Bear and would like to put it up!
The gig itself was pretty good.We played quite well but I felt the audience didn't really like our songs.
The next day we drove to Tullamore for the Castlepalooza festival.
It was our first festival experience as a band and we arrived on time and loaded our stuff into the storage area.
We're very consious of being a 'difficult' band and had requested that they move the drum kit beside me for our gig.The sound guys and stage managers were brilliant and ensured this was not a problem at all.
It makes such a difference to us when we play alongside each other,rather than having Marc behind me,we feel so much more comfortable when we can focus on each others playing as well as our own.
We walked onstage and did a little sound-check,and I saw that there were people arriving into the tent.
By the time we finished the first song,the amount of people there really astounded Marc and myself.This I feel,spurred us onto giving a good performance.There were a few sound issues but talking to a few bands there,I think it's generally accepted that you will have a problem at some atage.
We gave a couple of new songs an airing,and they seemed to go down quite well.
It all went so quickly and as we played the last note of the our last song of the set,the reaction was brilliant.
I honestly never expected it.
After the show,when we were walking around the festival site,we got stopped a few times by people telling us how much they enjoyed our set.
It's such a great thing for that to happen and it really reassured us.

We spent the rest of the evening availing of the abundance of alchohol that was at our disposal as well as catching David Kitt's set.
I personally would've liked to see him with a full band in festival surroundings but he performed well nonetheless.
Other highlights for me were The Holy Roman Army,Patrick Kelleher & RSAG.
The latter totally blew me away as it was my first time seeing him perform.

In other little bits of news, we're now on  twitter.Come follow us,or whatever you're supposed to to on that thing.


We've also just got our first Foggy Notions show supporting Clues in October.
We're really looking forward to it as they're a great band and doing a Foggy show is something i've wanted to do for a long time.

As regards gigging this week it's Belfast on Thursday,Navan on Friday & Whelans Upstairs on Saturday again supporting Kill Krinkle Club.
Should be an interesting week indeed.

I'm also trying to get to grips with encorporating the digital piano into our live show.
We've done 2 rehearsals with it so far and it's sounding promising.


Thanks again for reading,




-Jamie








Currently listening:
Two Dancers
By Wild Beasts
Release date: 2009-08-04
9:42 PM 
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Monday, July 27, 2009 

Current mood:  hopeful
Category: Music
Hey all,


We're just after recovering from another great show in The Spirit Store,Dundalk.
Everytime we play there it seems to go better and better for us and the sound is always impeccably good thanks to Derek.
It was a great night and instead of us heading back home after the gig,we stayed in Dundalk and had a few laughs,it's been ages since we did that.
It had also been ages since we rehearsed,about a month until last Friday.
That's the longest we've gone since we started playing together.
We actually had our first gig supporting The Minutes a year and a week ago Upstairs in Whelans.
Since then we've played 33 shows (including last Saturdays) and although we've probably not enjoyed every single one of them,each one has got us to the place where we're at now.
As for our rehearsal, I recently bought a stage Piano and have been messing with loops with that as well as guitar and put some of it into practice then.
I think it's going to have a major impact on the future of our sound.
Instead of our songs just having pounding,looping guitar and vocal lines,the introduction of the piano effects means a more fuller 'band' sound,which we think is a good thing.

We're playing Dolans,Limerick on Friday supporting Kill Krinkle Club and then Castlepalooza Festival on Saturday.
I'd say we'll learn a hell of a lot this weekend.

The new songs are going down well at gigs and it won't be long 'till the Piano makes an appearance in a live setting.We're just quite not ready yet.

We've had a good think and we're gonna try and see if it's financially possible to record and release a second EP before the end of the year.
We have the songs,just need to scrape up enough cash.
Hopefully it'll happen.
Worst case senario is that it'll be released in Jan of next year,which we know is a long time since the first EP but again,the finances are dictating it,rather than our desire to put out new material.



Anyway,thanks again for reading & we hope to see you at a gig of ours soon.

-Jamie
Currently listening:
Moon
By Clint Mansell
Release date: 2009-07-21
8:43 AM 
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Sunday, July 12, 2009 
Hey all,

So i'm just back from being guitar tech for The Angel Pier who played a blinder last night at Oxegen.
It was a brilliant,brilliant experience as St.Vincent were playing before them and I was pretty much in awe of the whole band.
I've never been a guitar tech before and didn't really know what to do/expect to do.It kinda felt like I was thrown in at the deep end but I think I survived it!
decided to try and blag my way backstage in the main arena.I suceeded.
We watched Bloc Party from the side of the stage which was cool,but before I had arrived,my friend told me I had missed Natalie Portman watching the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
That was pretty sickening!

I learned so much in the space of a few hours.The main realisaiton I had was that the whole thing is just a conveyer-belt of music as each act gets their gear on and off stage in the quickest time possible.
The whole thing really is remarkable and has made me want to play them in the future.
We're very much looking forward to Castlepalooza festival in a couple of weeks so that should gain us some more valuable experience.

You can buy 2 day camping tickets for €89 here.

I've bought a new delay pedal which i'm going to try and use in a couple of new songs as well as implementing it into some ones we've yet to write.

That's all for now really,i'm sure i've left out some important stuff but it can wait until the next post.

Thanks for reading,

-Jamie


Currently listening:
Life On Earth
By Tiny Vipers
Release date: 2009-07-07
5:41 PM 
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Thursday, June 25, 2009 
Hello all,

Marc keeps saying he's going to post one of these oneday soon but i've yet to see even an attempt!

So we played a headline show for the first time in a while last Thursday,and it turned out well.
We threw in a couple of new songs which really,really need new names.The names are actually so bad that I won't even write them up here.
Anyway,they seemed to go down pretty well and everyone was complimentary afterwards.

We've just had to re-stock again in Road Records.I've no idea who keeps buying our EP,but whoever you are,thank you.
Speaking of Road, we're going to scratch off one of the 'things to do before I die' when we play there next Tuesday as part of the Hard Working Class Heroes launch.
We did a little rehearsal last night and it seemed to work out okay.Marc's got percussion strapped to his feet and i'm holding back on the guitar 'noodling' overload which tends to happen when we play live.


We're also playing the State Presents night in the Purty Loft in Dun Laoighre on Saturday week.
It should be a great night as i've heard great things about that venue lately.

Oh yeah,I was practicing on my own the other night when the power wire of my loop pedal (which has been dodgy for a while) decided to make the pedal turn on and off about 10 times in 2 seconds.
This resulted the pedal loosing 95% of its memory and all the little ideas I had saved on it.
I'm desparately searching now for a new pedal and I think I may have located one.I'll keep you posted.

Anyway,that's about it really.
No word back from those at Electric Picnic yet.It transpired that when they asked us to play they were only asking,not inviting.
We'll know for certain in the next wek or so.

Thanks for reading,

-Jamie


Currently listening:
Wooden Arms
By Patrick Watson
Release date: 2009-05-05
10:11 AM 
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