Real Deep Blues Website 

(Rick Saunders)

 OK...lets get this straight up and send this out as a warning to every penny-ante-two-bit two-man band out there...It's Go Time. all y'all need to go out and get yrselves suspenders to wear with yr belts and start walkin' backwards and then just go ahead and get yr ass a bass player. If not I guarantee you suckers that The High Plane Drifters and those savvy enuff to dig them will be hunting the rest of you with dogs by 2006. Mark my words. it's over. No more Floridas. High Plane Drifters are Kings of the two-man universe. a stoogian wrayesque sonic powernuthouse guitar vs swangin' slayerific rumpus pounding beatdown drum ackackackshun...Git 'em.

Georgian Theatre - Live Review 

(Robert Nichols)

World class music. A two-piece phenomenon with the power and energy of a full-scale orchestra. Garage band blues and psychedelia with high wire firebrand extravert guitar and vocals anchored with power hammer drumming. Pterodactyl guitar cries and blazes of feedback with showers of cymbals. Hyper Robert Johnson fully plugged in. Top drawer Hendrix moves and guitar grooves.

Hot Property E.P - Single Review

(Losing Today)

 The High Plane Drifters ‘Hot Property’ EP (Don’t Tell Clare). Like having all your birthdays arrive at once, well that’s if you like your toons packed with what sounds like a bastardised concoction of raw as you like early primitive JMC going head to head with the more gritty garage psyche blues ensembles currently causing a fuss on respected and well trusted labels such as Sympathy for the Record Industry and Estrus to name but two. I think we are right in saying that these dudes are a duo based in the North East of England and that this four track debut is by all accounts selling fast based on word of mouth and some incendiary support slots for the likes of the Soledad Brothers and Whirlwind Heat. The High Plane Drifters ransack the whole primitive blues culture, dirty, gritty and without doubt potent, it’s the kind of swamp fest that’d have Tarrantino shitting bricks with its lineage transgressing directly to Gallon Drunk and further beyond to the likes of Link Wray and Muddy Waters. Opening cut ‘Electricity In My Bones’ is a wired up rabble rousing hot road action number found hauled up in a lay by sniffin’ the blue glue, imagine John Spencer and Co dropped dead centre of the 60’s beat / garage scene – yeah that f**king good. ‘You’ve got to try’ trips into the kaleidoscopic world of classic Spacemen 3, repetitive looping chords and that primal mind-melting core so much in evidence on their early classic outings. Flip over and things get decidedly more fraught and animated, the fucked up wretchedness of the beating a path to oblivion ‘Cry like a River’ has that out of it feel as though Jim Morrison was doing extra curricula work fronting a secret underground student psyche band, listen a little closer and the detachment of early Warsaw / Joy Division begins to eke into view. ‘Road Theme’ is your bog standard hillbilly instrumental executed in the best tradition of those classic Perkins Sun discs. Buy on sight – these kids will break hearts, pressed on red vinyl as if you needed any further prods and without doubt Single of the Missive.

Georgian Ghosts, Archer Street Blues and The Candy Factory - Album Review 

(Pete Bell / Cultural Foundation)

Album of the Month, November, is a first from Stockton-on-Tees High Plane Drifters. 10 tracks on black vinyl packaged in a sleeve reminiscent of the best of Blue Note. 

 We’ve already heard the singles / EPs from this extraordinary outfit - all of them sold out within months of release - on this album you get the full picture from a self proclaimed “Psychedelic Garage Blues Band”. Though it echoes “half a century and more of blues n’ roll” heritage the High Plane Drifters are totally original. Maybe the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are in a similar frame but HPD reference a much broader territory. Mark Lamar described the Blues Explosion as the most exciting band he’d ever seen - if that’s the case then Teesside’s High Plane Drifters would totally blow him away.

No surprise that they were recently given the accolade of the prestigious PRS Foundation ATOM award. Only available through nomination this award is given annually to a handful of the most creative musicians in the UK, assessed by industry experts. 

High Plane Drifters are Timothy James Oxnard on guitar and Wesley Stephenson on drums - together they sound like a stampeding herd, like a three or four piece band mixing amazing counterpointing drums and percussion with riffs reminiscent in range from the Ventures to Hendrix (sometimes, as in the opener “Electricity in My Bones”, in the same tune) and vocal delivery as full-on as Hound Dog Taylor at his wildest or Magic Sam or Screaming Jay Hawkins at their most eccentric. Then “Gumbo” and “Meek Damo Caged” take you to the Louisiana swamps, Tim’s guitar break flying above. “Shake, Shake” is stratospheric, “Cry Like A River” is James ‘Blood’ Ulmer territory, “Rendered By Distance Inarticulate” is reminiscent of Mingus in his Mau Mau days. Adventurous instrumentation and Tim’s famed cello-like guitar bowing mixed with Shanai like wailing from an eastern bazaar or the Atlas mountains. “Despair - I Couldn’t Escape the Feeling that it Would End at Any Given Moment” brings us down to roots with Howlin’ Wolf type riff, followed by a live favourite “I Wish I Was a Happier Man”, and the brushes driven, gently driving, “Road Theme” takes us out .... all expertly recorded and mastered by Stephen ‘Nobby’ Norman of Soul Fire Sounds.

Sweet Poppy Jean / White Star Lightning - Download Review 

(Losing Today)

 The High Plane Drifters ‘sweet poppy jean’ (Don’t Tell Clare). A serious amount of water has passed under the bridge since we last had anything by the High Plane Drifters hot wiring our hi-fi, in fact if I recall rightly its not been since that impossibly crucial debut release of theirs from way a few years ago entitled ‘hot property’ EP that we here have had cause to dig out and dust down our dancing shoes for a spot of blistered primitive boogie. Seems that in that passing period of absence from our ear shot these dudes (Tim and Wesley) haven’t thankfully lost that knack for cooking up some raw n’ rocking brew having released in that time a tour split with fellow label mates Dooley Wilson and a full length entitled ’georgian ghosts, archer street blues and the candy factory’ which sadly we here appear a little light on. Anyhow now comes this dashing slab of frantic ear candy, if I was to say that ‘sweet poppy jean’ sublimely tail gates the Bunny men’s ‘Crystal Days’ - you’d think - mmm sounds dandy. If however we’d suggest for arguments sake the adding of in of elements of Alien Sex Fiend’s ‘ignore the machine’ and the Three Johns ‘Death of a European’ - you’d be searching for a leash to chomp on. By the time we utter early JMC doing their trademark fuzz spliced speed surf - your already out of your gaff in search of your local record emporium retailer demanding with intimated menace that they source said boogie bastard pronto. Frankly kittens I wouldn’t blame you. Of course you realise at this point its not the best cut here. That happens to find itself on the flip. ’white star lightning’ what a beast. Consider yourselves not alone if what you hear hurtling out the speakers is the distant sound of a whole heap of bent out of shape and buckled beatnik tweaked swamp dragged festering fuzz, all raw and primal, which may just have a few of you re-familiarising yourself with your prized Halo of Flies gems from yesteryear, mind you that’ll be rampantly potent Halo of Flies in serious arse whipping mood brandishing a dialect of blues so wired, crippled and corrupting its almost illegal and pitched as though finding Led Zep being beaten to within a skin of their lives. Kicked our asses anyway. In case of any misunderstanding f**kin ESSENTIAL.

God Is In The T.V Zine

(Owain Paciuszko)

 ...tracks being used by C.S.I. Miami and Breaking Bad, so clearly this is music for criminal minds...

Middlesbrough Arena - Live Review 

(Natalie Boxall)

Raw but polished, old yet fresh, The High Plane Drifters elongated blues wig-out stuns the younger audience members, THPD are on top form again tonight.

Tim’s other-worldly whine is beautifully unnerving and Wes’ powerful and concentrated drumming is so base, so primitive, and so sensual that a pair of knickers are promptly thrown at him. And then there’s a stage invasion.

BBC 6 Session - Live Review

(Van Campbell)

Listening to your BBC 6 thing i got fucking chills man!  It sounds amazing!

Sweet Poppy Jean / White Star Lightning - Download Single Review

(The Gazette)

THE HIGH PLANE DRIFTERS are off touring the USA this month and release a single next week that I would describe as one of the best EVER releases by a Teesside band.

Sweet Poppy Jean/White Star Lightning is frighteningly good. Psychedelic, garage, blues - whatever tag you want to give, it is just a phenomenal outpouring. A sonic sound storm, it leaps out of your speakers and demands to be played again and again and again.

Sweet Nothing - Demo Review

(Simon Keeler)

“more nuts and bolts and balls than most other UK stuff I have heard in years”

The Yorkshire House - Live Review 

(Alex Brookhouse)

Now: imagine the nascent Led Zeppelin rising from the primordial swamp minus Plant and Jones. Imagine Chuck Berry choreographed by Balanchine and Jimmy Page. Imagine a two-piece rock'n'blues band contest in which the White Stripes are thrashed into second place by a howling neanderthal brickie and a drummer with genuine versatility (and a haircut last spotted on ex-England goalie Ian Walker circa 1994). Congratulations, you have just imagined the High Plane Drifters. Sort of.....

This pair, however, sound like a three-, even four-piece band at times, and they achieve this more subtly than by just blasting the room with wall-to-wall racket. Drummer Wesley John Stephenson's fulsome and varied percussive palette is crucial to this illusion - as is frontman Timothy James Oxnard's use of his guitar alternately as rhythm engine, lead instrument, surrogate bass, even as a kind of modernist cello when he grinds a bow futuristically across six strings on a song written for Can's Damo Suzuki and propelled by appropriately Krautrock express-train drums.

It's one of several intriguing reference points for a "Psychedelic Garage Blues" band (as they label themselves) that lovingly patrol half a century and more of blues'n'roll heritage, select only the twangiest riffs, throw in some loopy loops of their own, and distil the whole glorious stinking mess into a heady, muddy brew, to be served up on their forthcoming album this summer. 'Despair', the fifth of only seven songs played tonight, is everything the blues should be: the well of unhappiness as fuel for a careering, sexy bassline to bring you out of that trough, with tomtoms-as-pneumatic-drill coda topping it all off.

Real Deep Blues Website 

(Rick Saunders)

The High Plane Drifters, our men from Stockton-On-Tees, frkn WAiL! They wail like a two-man riot squad. Like it's goin' outta style. The High Plane Drifters Bring that beat back. The down beat and the beat down. The rump shakin' racket. The damned abandon. Punk rock has never been terribly sexy. It was always pretty swagger and freak-out free. High Plane Drifters bring both. The stony head trip locks step with P rock energy and makes DANGER. Enough danger that C.S.I. Miami and Breaking Bad have used HPN tracks. High Plane Drifters bring that dirty danger stateside for the first time to this years Deep Blues Festival (playing saturday July 18th) wedged between Italy's Black Smokers and East Nashville's Black Diamond Heavies. A short U.S. tour will ensue as well.

Hot Property E.P - Single Review

(Miscellaneous)

Coming from the North east might not be the greatest rock'n'roll credential there is, think Wildhearts, Chris Rea, Lindisfarne....Fortunately a host of talented upstarts are doing there best to change the face of the north east music scene, led out by there bakers dozens by Brit-punk funksters the Futureheads.  The High plane drifters hail from Stockton on Tees, where this bands debut e.p was faithfully recorded, yet they are anything but a segment of the new wave of the typically british, north eats offerings.  Fact is they sound more like they arrived in their quaint market town via Detroits 8 mile road and the bowery district of New York stopping somewhere on the banks of Lake Erie to bash out this four track single. 

A rollicking onslaught of the rawest rock you might ever hear two men play, "Electricity in my Bones" sets the tone with some hard hitting blues thunder, but it is a complete contrast to the psychedelic oddity that completes the side with an eardrum splitting closing note.  The pearl in this varied foursome is the catchy "Cry like a River" , Tim Oxnard laying down the lyrical torment 'all this moaning and complaining/don't you know it brings me down' and riding the mysterious crest of psych-rock like an old hand, firing out a ripping guitar hook as he goes.  Closer "Road Theme" is another journey down the 'Drifters many avenues, a country style travelling song that sends your imagination cruising on a sun soaked trip to the Missisipi Delta.

The High Plane Drifters and Dooley Wilson Split E.P - Single Review

(The Link)

More crucial vinyl from Don't Tell Clare.  This e.p features 'Trouble in mind' and "Keep on Dancing"(with Johnny Walker of the Soledad brothers guesting) from the High Plane Drifters.  If James'blood' Ulmer met up with Keith Moon it still would not be as good as this.  Very heavy.  Timothy James Oxnard (guitar and Vox) and Wesley Stephenson (drums) bring total energy to the party - Psychedelic garage blues is what they call it.

Several tracks off both e.ps have been played on various radio stations in Holland, France, Croatia, Malta, England, Scotland and Ireland aswell as Texas.  The venerable John Peel played their first demo on his show shortly before his death as they had had no releases available. Both of these e.p's have turned up in shops around the globe and have sold regularly and well, the first e.p is now sold out and deleted.

They have now shared stages with many different bands and solo artists from both sides of the Atlantic and Europe, some of these The Black Diamond Heavies, Benjamin Wetherill, Modey Lemon, Whirlwind Heat, The Bravery, Das Wanderlust, The Soledad Brothers, The immortal lee county killers and Damo Suzuki, there are more but this is just a selection of names.

Georgian Ghosts, Archer Street Blues and The Candy Factory - Album Review

(Brian Ellis)

I wanted to say how much I enjoyed your album, it is tremendous. As a document of what can be thought up using the rawest of rock/blues essential tools it is high octane and intelligent. But it is as a self contained, somehow untouchable image of a most uncommon band that it is best. A variety show. A passion play. A lot of fun. Live and studio thinking. Its got heart and a head brothers, real heart and a rayt chuffin' head of steam on it. Thanks for its creationment.