WELL-OILED MACHINE is Clone Quartet's debut album [let loose on December 3 2007].

First reports are all very positive [see our first reviews below as we post them]. The CD is housed in a bespoke custom board pack design with a tear-off pull tag!
Pre-order from our awesome labels:




SMALLTOWN AMERICA


TIGERTRAP RECORDS






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CLONE QUARTET ALBUM - 'WELL-OILED MACHINE' REVIEWS




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Clone Quartet already blew us off our perches with their debut single 'Carousel' which is coincidently the opening track on this fired up masterpiece of an album. The band have [over eleven tracks] have the pop stamina and song writing chic to impress even the most stubborn muso. Their style shifts between crunching rock, dance inspired indie pop and all out dance floor (future) anthems. Songs like 'Young Foal' twinkle with their retro synth sounds and skipping drums. The songs however have enough shifts to make them superior in every way. Young Foal takes a right turn heading into a more choppy and melodic chorus part. Acoustic guitars creep in under layers of drums synth and cubase trickery. Their general mood can shift from anywhere between cheery pop and dark, brooding & sexy rock n roll. 'Twenty Five (Kane Was A Curse)' is a perfect example of this with it's heavy almost NIN style grind and fairground keyboard work. Vocally catchy and lyrically intriguing, the band comparing themselves and their work to a modern genius like Orson Welles, not in a pretentious way either, more the perils of keeping a steady flow of great work and not folding. Quality is key.



The most straight up dance moment is the bleepy and skipping 'Need Your Love' which also mixes some nice alterative rock moments and tongue in cheek lead guitar work alongside nasty electro pop beats and cheeky melodies.
'Hold On' is probably the heaviest moment on the album. Sounding desperate and forceful, Clone Quartet play the Pavement meets Sonic Youth Indie rock card which nestles nicely amongst their album which is both balanced and infectious.
There's enough variety to keep any listener involved. Their shifts, melodies and performance is excellent. The variety of music within 'Well-Oiled Machine' is immense. The title track again kicking into grinding grunge fueled dance music. They have the perfect blend.




The best track on the whole album by far is the amazing 'Won't Somebody Please' which has every element going to make it floor filler. The first time it caught me I found myself moving in ways I never knew I could. Whether it's the squarks of guitar, the heavy and punchy drumming or the fact it's so damn catchy, you can't fail but fall in love with it.
Clone Quartet have made an absolute classic of a debut album which really has depth variety and fun. This is all capped off with great production and song writing skills. 'Well-Oiled Machine' is indeed slick, sexy and friggin' catchy. This album is an essential purchase this year.




Pete Stanley, ThePlasticAshtray.co.uk




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They've been through so many possibilities, but Clone Quartet have taken a wide tangent, back to the song, to the squelchy emotions, the fuzz and the fever. Sometimes we worried that they would never return home, that they'd be forever abstract or merely odd. But the adventures have been worth the chase because Clone Quartet have brought loads of savvy and style to their first album.



Thus, a tune like Need Your Love is all pained and uneasy. But the guitar lines are instantly attractive and the vocals work on many levels - like those wonderful old Cure and New Order records. You're not sure where the hurt ends and the irony begins, and you suspect that the author may not know either.



The synth lines are charmingly wonky and the piston whoosh of the drums sounds class. Sometimes the melody goes for a meander and in this respect you're reminded of the Pavement method. Twenty Five is the coolest example here.



It's a record to spend time with, to understand and to love those little peculiarities. Even so, the initial wallop of the title track is hard to argue with and the intro to Played To Death is a pesky bonus. All this and the best-dressed record sleeve in town. The Clones are unique.





Stuart Bailie, BBC ATL







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A co-release from the people that brought you the lovely Oppenheimer (Smalltown America), and the people that brought you Tiny Masters of Today initially (Tigertrap)



The innovative packaging (you have to rip it open and the damage is irrepairable, because it involves tearing a strip of paper off) wil have collectors either in tears or buying two copies (so they can keep a mint one in their cupboard)



Once you braved it and removed the paper, you will soon realise this act of destruction was well worth it, for this is a brilliant albu indeed. For it combines dancey drum machines with lovely indiepop tunes and rather distinct vocals (somewhere between Tim Wheeler and Davey McManus of Crocketts/The Crimea fame)



It's pleasantly loud and energetic in places Twenty Five [Kane Was A Curse], and positively disco! In others (Need Your Love). The latter even has raygun noises, what more could you possibly ask for in a song?



In short, into this Well Oil Machine they put: electronic + fab vocals + some screaming + catchy tunes + noise = Sheer and utter genius



And don't forget to check them out live at the Tigertrap Xmas party (for more info, see www.tigertrap.co.uk ) and catch them before they they catch on and everyone else does!



Julia Vergho, ishotthedeputy.com




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"Dance music is the new rock music is the new dance music. Somewhere in here lies Clone Quartet - a dapper bunch from Belfast who are a quartet. They appear not to be clones of each other, but whether they're clones of some other people, we don't really know. What we do really know is that 'Well-Oiled Machine' is a grammatically perfect title and a deadly efficient long-player.




They're up to that indie-rock-band-with-a-hint-of-electronics thing, which may sound like a half-arsed punt at the 'Nu-Rave' buck, but hear them out: Clone Quartet use their instruments to full potential, creating an intense dancefloor flavour, both bittersweet and dirty in their pop pretensions. Debut single splitters 'Carousel' and 'Played To Death' sounds like a dance-off between Arcade Fire and To My Boy taking place at a 7 year-old's birthday party after too much fizzy orange. They also sound a bit like VHS Or Beta in their 80s-humping Duran Duran camposity – just without the pinstripe blazer and roll-neck sweater combos. Meanwhile, 'Twenty Five' clangs like Hadouken! on the rare day on which they write a melody.




For something which seems the composite of many tried-and-tested formulae, Clone Quartet and their eleven offerings throw up something surprisingly fresh. Undying and unapologetic in its poppiness, 'Well-Oiled Machine' licks you behind the ears like an over-affectionate puppy. It makes you feel soggy and nostalgic, like Múm's Icelandic soundscapes being scythed by the surging, triumphant square wave of progress (see '10 Lies'). But secretly you love it to bits. And this kind of love is a very, very good feeling."




4/5




Richard Bendall-Jones, ThisIsFakeDIY.com

















Buy limited CLONE QUARTET 7" or CD at TIGERTRAP RECORDS with PAYPAL
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CQ - 'CAROUSEL/PLAYED TO DEATH' REVIEWS








"A formidable Frankenstein's musical monster of cascading rhythms, spiralling electro synth"… "Makes good on the promise of their exhilarating live show"… "Electronic blips and bleeps repeatedly stab at the listener like an army of midget robots with nail clippers"… "Reason enough to rhyme foursome with awesome."


Francis Jones, BBC Across The Line









"If Arcade Fire actually got around to writing a song with hooks and pop melody, or if they gave enough of a shit to want to move your feet at the same time as your heart and head, they would have a hard job competing with Clone Quartet."... "For those of us who know that writing pop songs is actually more challenging than 90% of what gets passed off these days as 'experimental', this single will be an essential purchase."


Paul Artrocker, Artrocker issue 62 - (read full review)









"A stomping beat that almost buzzes under the weight of its angry tension"… "Bring the (highly-tuneful, electro) noise! 8/10"


Ben Marwood, Drowned In Sound




[More Single Reviews Here]




CLONE QUARTET on BBC ATL TV, 22 FEBRUARY 2007

Clone Quartet's first UK tour took place 30 June — 7 July. We played NORTHAMPTON, EDINBURGH, IPSWICH, LIVERPOOL, LONDON, BATH, SWINDON, took reels of photos and scrawled pages of notes along the way.

We're currently collating all our photos and scribbles. An edited version will appear in one of our favourite music mags soon, in the meantime enjoy this pic of Steven with his manufactured-on-the-road drumstick (we didn't make it to a music store in Swindon on time and no one would lend the poor boy drum sticks so he had to craft one himself). Aaah, life on the road eh?



*UPDATE — Unedited tour diary that appeared in AU Magazine

Since teaming up with Tigertrap and Smalltown America, we've been focused enough to score off a few items from our checklist of musical ambitions. So, armed with a new guitarist (Stuart), a somewhat rickety borrowed van and a good few cases of Red Bull we departed on the deadliest of all rockstar pursuits - the UK tour.

A sleepless night on the freezing, wobbling Belfast Cairnryan wreck has us on edge and shivering. Andy is behind the wheel of the Berlingo, confidently musing over the task ahead-2,500 miles of criss-crossing the UK. How hard could it be, right?

DAY 1 – NORTHAMPTON
A Saab driver with caravan in tow cuts out in front of us at 75mph. Two hours later the same guy has jacknifed, his car and trailer trashed, backing up traffic for miles. Famished and close to zombie state, we roll into a Pizza joint across the road from The Racehorse bar. Flanked by strip bars (and bizarrely, a rather decent recording studio), this unassuming pub has a mean setup and a sound engineer who knows his stuff. Club Fandango, a great prospect on paper, yields a disappointing turn-out and a lacklustre crowd. We depart, spirits crushed with the prospect of sleeping in the van. The aforementioned engineer, Max steps to our rescue - offering up his homely studio dorms. We gladly avail.

DAY 2 – EDINBURGH
The Bongo club is a dilapidated neo-classical affair, more akin to a sweaty youth club, than a cool indie club. We enjoy rather wonderful support from scots Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Rising to an energetic crowd, our performance is stronger, blighted only by an amp burn-out complete with thick black smoke. With no accommodation booked and hotels looking pricey, we settle on slumming it and board the van. Four hours later we splutter to a sleepy halt in a factory car park on the edge of a forest, talking trash and falling asleep to the sound of the rain bouncing off the van roof.

DAY 3 – IPSWICH
At 8am we are awoken by workers turning up for work at the factory. Confusion on the M5 has us traveling in the wrong direction for several hours. We bounce out of the van straight into soundcheck and to a warm welcome from Ed the promoter after being cooped up for 22 hours. We absolutely nail the set and have a really good time playing. A good crowd has assembled, not the best PA in the world but it's worked well by CQ and headliners Rosalita (those cheeky blighters have the makings of a pop hit). Ipswitch throws a debaucherous party. Cheap booze, slaps from a local female (for no apparent reason I have to say) lead us back to Ed's place via inebriation. All thoughts of serial killer connections are quashed as Ed turns out to be a gent and gives up his bed for the CQ drivers. Bless.

DAY 4 – LIVERPOOL
Fully maladjusted to life on the road, the hours spent in the van speed by in a blur of identical Road Chefs, Costa (bomb) coffee chain road stops. Steven Quinn has set up a back seat kitchen, assembling wraps and sandwiches that keep us ticking over en route.
We're glad to be in Liverpool but we're appalled by our support band. Every song starts with a whining '1-2-3-4' regardless of tempo. Despite using our backline of drums and bass amp, these rotten punk-poppers refuse to even loan us one measly guitar amp. The booking agent is surprisingly chipper despite his grotty old stale piss and filth surroundings. He assures us these dudes will never play The Barfly again, unimpressed by their attitude/smell. We play another lacklustre showcase affair, if only for the intimate yet enthusiastic crowd who have assembled. With no better plans, we drive to a suburban Tesco car park, sucking on collected inferior rider beers. We fall asleep to the sound of a weary Steven Q, muttering incoherently as he drifts off. The next day, while throwing out van rubbish, Andy accidentally throws the van keys into an industrial bin of doom. Without any further regard for hygiene (days on the road: 4, showers had: 1), he leaps right in to retrieve them.

DAY 5 – Camden, LONDON
"Jesus, How long have you been on tour" asks the support band as we report for Barfly soundcheck. We remind ourselves what civilisation looks like as we take a run around the market. Stu has a chuckle at a local paper with the headline 'MANS TESTICLES SAVAGED BY DOG'. Spirits are high. We have a good feeling about this show, we'd been building up to this one. By the time we take to the stage a hip crowd has gathered. Everything sounds great and somehow we muster the energy to throw ourselves all over the stage. We party it up afterwards, selling a few singles in the process. Then it's a drive across town to an old pals house to sleep in a bed and dream of the second shower of the tour.

DAY 6 – BATH
We've been driving around Bath for an hour and a half. Andy cackles like a lunatic on receiving directions from the 'Moles' club's office, "have you passed the circus yet?". Lady, we joined the circus a long time ago. It's day 5 of this lark and while we're still surprisingly laid back, the cracks are on full display. Bath is picturesque and inviting on arrival, stay for ten and you'd probably never escape. 'Moles' is one of those names you would know from NME listings when you were a kid, The Smiths, The Cure etc have all graced it's petit stage. Long past it's heyday and with a limited audience, we really have to push ourselves to deliver this one. Steven and Andy lose the rag and are discussing the direction of the band at great length. Everyone is feeling the strain. The van's brakes are failing and funds are running low.

DAY 7 – SWINDON
We emerge from promoter, Kieran's house at 9am and make our way around garages searching for a quick fix for our brake problem. At one point the garage suggests a three day stop in Swindon to wait for parts to arrive – a harrowing prospect. We plead for a generic part to be sourced and fitted by 11am the following morning. Support bands refuse to lend us an amp and later, even a single drumstick. We tackle the Swindon gig like a football hooligan prepares for the Derby. Pissed up and violent, guitars are swung and thrown around the stage. Lyrics are substituted for insults. By the end, Steven H has toppled his synthiser right off the stand and onto the floor as Andy screams, "HE'S PLAYING THE DRUMS WITH A TWIG!!". The Swindon crowd find our desperate and downright dangerous performance compelling and entertaining. After all that, we actually had some fun and sold some cds!

DAY 8 – SWINDON TO STRANRAER
We recover the van ("functioning at 75% performance") and hit the road. By now nothing can stop us reaching our ferry. If we miss it we'll have to take up residence amongst the harbour community. A repeat of our Motorway-side barbeque ain't happening as we pool our pennies for lunch. We munch on yet more sandwiches as we wait to board the ferry home and reflect on our new mantras; Rock n' Roll means getting on with it in the face of adversity and being on tour is the opposite of being on holiday.

We've been getting so much spam latley we've had to log on two or 3 times a day just to get rid. So we're now manually approving all our comments, but that's not to say we don't want to hear about your stuff...

Generally we will approve comments if you're:
• Just saying hi, while not excesivly pimping your wares
• A band/ club/ promoter we've played with/ at
• Someone we know
• We just like your stuff!

We usually won't approve:
• Posts that are 3 paragraphs long or one random word (we get alot of these)
• Posts with massive pictures (massive image or massive file size)
• Posts about something which doesn't exist ("new remixes coming soon" etc.)
• We just don't like your stuff!

Anyway, I imagine most of the people who this applies to are using spamming software and won't even read this. This is for the rest of yis!:

We've been getting so many good reviews for our single "Carousel / Played To Death" we can't have them all on the myspace page. Here's all the reviews we know of, if you've seen one that isn't here please let us know!



"A formidable Frankenstein's musical monster of cascading rhythms, spiralling electro synth… Makes good on the promise of their exhilarating live show… Electronic blips and bleeps repeatedly stab at the listener like an army of midget robots with nail clippers… Reason enough to rhyme foursome with awesome."
Francis Jones, BBC Across The Line



"If Arcade Fire actually got around to writing a song with hooks and pop melody, or if they gave enough of a shit to want to move your feet at the same time as your heart and head, they would have a hard job competing with Clone Quartet."... "For those of us who know that writing pop songs is actually more challenging than 90% of what gets passed off these days as 'experimental', this single will be an essential purchase."
Paul Artrocker, Artrocker issue 62 - (read full review)



"A stomping beat that almost buzzes under the weight of its angry tension… Bring the (highly-tuneful, electro) noise! 8/10"
Ben Marwood, Drowned In Sound


"Clone Quartet are more indie pop with underlying synths and bleepy moments. Not quite the slut wave to whip you into a frenzy but with the type of tune and delivery that will have you singing along before you even realise everyone else on the bus is looking at you."
Aidienn Ellison @ mapsmagazine.co.uk


"a real bright and refreshing blast of synth rock… Infectious, simple and fun…The Clone Quartet are a tight and inque group who have made a single to wake up any jaded muso. I expect to hear this in all the clubs, FROM NOW ON DJ'S!"
Pete Stanley @ theplasticashtray.co.uk


"'Carousel' is your streamed tenaciously infectious pop hooks type affair - think of the drama pop of the Sparks spliced with the Associates mindset and riffs supplied by mid 80's New Order - impossibly gorgeous."
Mark @ losingtoday.com


"A crookedly alluring portion of schizoid electro candy pop… succulent slices of summer sound… Classy stuff."
losingtoday.com

Northern Irish CQ fans will get the chance to ask themselves "what the hell was that editor smoking?" all over again as our ATL TV live performance of Carousel (complete with seizure inducing kaleidoscopic effects) is re-broadcast in full television definition next week. Yeah, we know it's on youtube but it's nice to be on the telly every now and again!

Carousel, which was originally on ATL TV in February will be broadcast as part of the "Best of the Sessions" programme on the 22nd of May.

Also on the show:
Duke Special, Kowalski, The Tides, Cold War Kids, Panda Kopanda, Nice 'N' Sleezy, The Q, The Immediate, Fast Emperors, and Boss Volenti.

It's on at 10PM on BBC2 NI

Well, it's done... finally. Our album will be called "Well-Oiled Machine" and will be released on Smalltown America / Tigertrap later this summer. Here's the tracklisting:

1. Carousel
2. Young Foal
3. Twenty Five
4. Need Your Love
5. Hold On
6. Well-Oiled Machine
7. Cold To The Core
8. Played To Death
9. 10 Lies
10. Won't Somebody Please
11. You Don't Need Me
 
It's just over 40 minutes long, 40 minutes of awesomeness .

Eyo, we've just uploaded two songs from our forthcoming album Well-Oiled Machine. Young Foal also features on the new Smalltown America - Public Service Broadcast #9 CD... You can read about that here!

Yeah, It's cancelled... Again.

One of them got arrested in manchester last night and they missed their flights to Belfast. If you bought a ticket you can get a refund at the Pavillion or by contacting Mark at Ordinary Days (http://www.myspace.com/ordinarydays)

"ATTACK OF THE CLONES"
CQ PREPARE DEBUT SINGLE RELEASE
Belfast indie rockers Clone Quartet will release their official debut single – a double A-side of 'Carousel/Played To Death' - via London record label Tigertrap on March 23.

What's more, the band have been beavering away on and refining, a full-length album on and off for the past year and a half. While we have to remain tight-lipped the album is currently pencilled in for a Summer release, with some very exciting but top secret indie labels showing interest in helping the band and album find the audience they deserve.

As to what fans of the band can expect, chief Clone Andy Henry explains thusly: "The album will have a lot more variation on it than you might expect for anyone familiar with our live show. I guess we've kinda cynically approached the live sets as a showcase, so the emphasis has been on making it punchy and making people stand up and take notice. Over the course of the album that could do your head in though so expect some slower songs on there. There's an instrumental song, 'Ten Lies', which is like Yellow Magic Orchestra meets Modest Mouse."

In the meantime, anyone itching for a taster of the new material can check out the songs from the forthcoming 7" on the Clone Quartet Myspace. The CD single release however will also feature bonus tracks, including a characteristically reworked version of 'Carousel' by Belfast's remixer du jour Skibunny, and instrumental 'Unlock It'…

AU Magazine, MARCH 2007

It's us playing Carousel on ATL TV!
Broadcast on Thursday 22 February