Joe Chapman
(Cowley, Oxford)
Saturday 3 Nov 2012, 7:24pm
",,,a deep, dense groove of psychedelic drone-rock" - Nightshift, November 2012.
The Neon Violets is a 3 piece dark, heavy psych drone-rock band which started life as a duo, opened Truck Festival in 2011 on the Last.FM stage for BBC Introducing and has been played several times on digital and local radio both in the UK and the US. The band debuted as a trio recently at The Cellar and received a favourable review from local music magazine, Nightshift.
We were ready to go ahead and make some records and we have people waiting for us to play gigs, our previous drummer was unable to carry on with the band due to work commitments and travel. We are looking for someone youngish to join us on drums. There's lots of information here but once we're back up and running things will be very easy to achieve, we just need someone with a passion for the music and band and someone with the time to put into it.
The band is fronted by a vocalist and bass guitarist. The bass guitar is run through 2 guitar amps and a bass amp plus fed through a range of fx pedals. The guitarist, Rachel, plays a Fender Jaguar.
Following & Influences
We have fans who are into bands like Spacemen 3, Spectrum, Wooden Shjips, The Black Angels, Dead Meadow, 13th Floor Elevators and many more but the appeal isn't limited to that. There's now quite a vibrant scene for 'psych rock'. Friends who run radio shows regularly play our material. 2 PR companies are interested in promoting us both online and in print.
Songs & songwriting.
So far we've released 2 'studio' tracks online, both from the same session, the first was "The Search" (a bluesy, tribal sounding 6/8 track) and "Break The Line". Songwriting is normally just about getting into the rehearsal room and having a jam then refining jams into songs. The songs are groove-based and hypnotic so the main song structures tend to be straight-forward, little or no time changes, something to 'zone out' to.
Gigs.
We like to take people on a journey. The order of the songs in the set is important, there's an intro to fire things off and we aim to minimise gaps between songs. We also like to have lighting and projections but the band still works well without it.
We always aim to have a 30 minute set and a 45 minute set for headline gigs. We have a recent recording of most of the 30 minute set to listen to.
Rehearsals.
We have a free rehearsal room in Cowley with equipment set up permenantly. We rehearse once a week, either in the evening from 7 pm to 9 pm or at the weekend, preferably on a Saturday during the day. An extra rehearsal during the week may be worth it if we've got something extra special coming up or have missed rehearsals.
Recording.
We only plan to produce vinyl as a physical format, CDs don't seem to be worth producing anymore. Vinyl is much more popular and on the rise again. The plan is to bring out a vinyl E. P. or album in the new year and possibly a 7" single. The other main format we release music in is online. There may be a few CDs made for promotional purposes only.
Equipment.
We have a drum kit! This means you don't need one and don't need to transport one for rehearsals. The kit is a 4 piece Premier Artist Birch kit. In addition to this the rehearsal room is equiped with guitar amps, a PA and recording equipment.
We've also got lighting.
Transport.
Owning transport isn't essential. For some gigs we'll hire a van.
Video.
We have 1 offical video which the original duo made in the rehearsal space, with projector, lighting and a single HD camera. The plan is to put out videos with all single releases at least. The video for our song "Break The Line" has been viewed thousands of times since it was released. There are also live videos and fans occassionally upload tracks onto YouTube.
Online.
We have an official website, Facebook page, Twitter profile, Bandcamp, Last.Fm, Reverbnation and numerous other pages. We run advertising campaigns to promote the band, music and videos.
This may seem like quite a full advertisement for a band, it's to give you a good flavour of what we're about. If you're interested it'll be very easy for us to have a jam, there's nothing to lose by giving it a try and you don't even need to own a drum kit.
Best wishes,
Joe.