Crafted in the Wiltshire countryside, Long Road Home is the latest offering from littlemen. Intense, passionate and gentle, Long Road Home was born from the experiences that have marked the lives of the musicians who made it, bringing you painfully close to some of the most difficult moments.

The band’s founder Nick Allen has bought his own experience into the lyrics of littlemen’s songs. Following a motorbike accident at the age of 17, Nick was left paralysed from the waist down. “I was in a critical condition for two weeks, then the doctors told me I would never walk again…I just couldn’t believe it,” Nick explains. “I had to make a life in a wheelchair, but never accepted that I would never walk again.
All I used to do was exercise and listen to music.”

Dedicated to a life working in music, Nick worked on a number of projects before creating  NAM studios from a converted cottage in Holt, primarily with the aim of enabling new music to grow and develop.

The studio has since seen a number of musicians record there, including Robert Plant, KT Tunstall and Van Morrison. The studio was also the place the musicians behind Littlemen met and started working together for the first time. The ideal location for writing, the studios
themselves hold a long history for the band. All of the artists involved in littlemen’s 'A Long Road Home' album have written and recorded in the studio with many bands in the past, so it was the natural home for the band.

Bassist Charlie Jones and pianist Phil Andrews were in the first signed band to record at NAM, while drummer Rob Brian and James Newton Brady rehearsed at the studios alongside a number of different artists. Nick and Murph Murphy met while Murph was rehearsing with the Rhythmites, and Nick went on to manage the band for many years, travelling with them across Europe and the UK. Lead vocalist Simon Allen played both in bands and as a solo artist across the South West, again spending time in the studio rehearsing and recording.

This history enabled the musicians behind A Long Road Home to write with honesty; encapsulating their collective experiences, talent and passion in a series of delicately crafted songs. 

Lyrically, littlemen examine the pain of love and loss, the combination of emotive writing with Simon Allen’s unique vocal style results in a powerful but delicate collection of songs.

A Long Road Home is dedicated to all the people who have played and played a part at NAM Studios,  all those that have supported us in making music and most of all to Helen Allen, the mothership, who has kept us all going whatever the weather, including the darkest of days.

Port Erin are an acclaimed alt-indie trio from the West Country (UK). Their prolific recorded output, inspired by trailblazing icons such as Low, Morphine, Radiohead and Talk Talk, has been championed by the likes of Clash Music, The Guardian, The Times and BBC Radio 6 Music.

Since their formation in 2007 they’ve toured extensively – playing over 1000 shows, headlining at venues such as O2 Academy (Bristol), Komedia (Bath), CCA (Glasgow), The 100 Club (London) and they've been invited to play as far afield as Luxembourg, Denmark and Italy. 

Port Erin have supported artists such as Robert Plant, The Soft Moon, Syd Arthur, Liima and Penelope Isles, and have secured slots at major UK festivals and international showcase events like Liverpool Sound City, Glastonbury Festival and FOCUS Wales.

Renowned for their venue-filling cinematic sound, penetrating lyrics and genre-fusing musical style, Port Erin’s hotly anticipated new album will be released Spring 2021, preceded by a series of singles – the first due for release late September 2020.

www.porterinmusic.co.uk

CONTACT

Band - porterinmusic@gmail.com
Bookings - UK/IRL & rest of Europe – music@larafeldmann.com
Bookings - BE/NE/LU – joakim@uphillbookings.com

Lapsed trumpet player, electric bassist, dobro & lap steel player. Jazz, Country and Pop columnist and reviewer, once operator of Listomania gig listing & reviews website… Jack of all trades…

Experimental incantations from the netherworld

As a multi-instrumentalist, collaborator, composer and songwriter, Beth has a passion for creating, an ear for listening, and a pure, unaffected voice that delivers beautifully original, understated yet powerful songs. Imagine Joanna Newsome goes to Nashville and writes a song with Anne Briggs and David Byrne from Talking Heads. She is a member of The Bookshop Band, Spell Songs (with Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Kris Drever) and Red Carousel string quartet. Beth’s cello can be heard on hundreds of recordings, including the Oscar Nominated, and British Animation Award winning film score Robin Robin (Aardman/Netflix) which she composed with Ben Please.

Picked for her songwriting and cello playing, she is one part of Spell Songs (a project inspired by the book Lost Words by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane) with legends of folk including Karine Polwart, Kris Drever and Julie Fowlis. They had a sold out tour in 2019 and were one of Songlines Magazine’s Best Albums of the Year 2019. It was also part of a BBC Prom at The Royal Albert Hall where Beth sang a solo piece with the Southbank Sinfonia. Beth has also toured and recorded with Eliza Carthy, The Unthanks, The Winter Wonderband and many other folk artists. 
She is also one half of literary duo The Bookshop Band (with her husband Ben Please) who spend much of their time writing songs inspired by books and playing them in bookshops and book festivals across the UK, Europe and the States. They have made fourteen albums and are currently recording a new album with Pete Townshend of The Who. 
Beth and Ben wrote the musical score for the Aardman Animation film Robin Robin which was awarded a British Animation Award for the music and was nominated for an Oscar and an Ivor Novello Award. They also wrote music for the audio book of Jackie Morris’ The Unwinding. Other film credits are Far From The Madding Crowd (2015) and BAFTA winning animation The Eagleman Stag (2010) 
In the pop world she has toured with Newton Faulkner, The Heavy and Peter Gabriel and has worked with hundreds of producers and engineers such as John Parish, Boo Herwerdine, Tchad Blake and Stuart Bruce for recording sessions over the last 20 years. Artists include The Proclaimers and Petula Clark as well as Maximo Park and Enter Shakiri. Studios include Real World, Rockfield, Yellow Arch, Castlesound, Moles and Invada. She also does remote sessions from her home in Scotland. 
She plays with Bath based string quartet Red Carousel, who write their own compositions and have been awarded funding to make their debut album. She has also recently joined the The Galloway Agreement, based in her now home county of Dumfries and Galloway. 
She also writes songs under her own name and has also made an album under the band name Marshes. Beth’s own songs are characteristically quirky, charming and ethereal and carried by Beth’s pure and unaffected voice.She has been likened to Cat Power, The Beatles, REM, This Is The Kit, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Radiohead, The Incredible String Band and The Kinks. With a classical background, a venture into folk music, and a love of simple pop songs, there’s nothing quite like Beth’s songwriting.

The drama. The narrative arc. The pay-off. Listening to Love Form, it’s all there. From the opening tantalising tendrils of ‘The Messenger’ to the blaze of distortion, intimately conversational piano and persistent snare keeping things tight that follow, the debut album by the West Country’s Charlie Jones immediately puts you in the mood.

“A piece like that is a kind of selfish gospel music,” says Charlie. “It represents the emotion of undertaking something which is deeply enjoyable, yet you know to be very bad indeed to be indulging in. That very fact feels so good.”

Charlie Jones is what we call a musician’s musician. His bass playing has been called upon by the likes of Robert Plant, Page & Plant, Siouxsie Sioux and, latterly, Goldfrapp. His talents as a composer saw him win a Grammy for co-writing on the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album Raising Sand.

On Love Form, Charlie finds his own métier, stretching out to two sides of instrumental languor and tension that only a well-seasoned writer and player could conjure. Stylish, intellectual and sensuous noir of this ilk is at best hinted at or sampled these days but here we are blessed with the talents of a composer able to fully immersive himself in the depths of such kaleidoscopic dimensions.

When asked about the influences that inform his sound, Charlie recalls the creaking of the boat swing in the playground next to his Grandmother’s house as keenly as Sundays spent listening to his father’s jazz and classical LPs. When asked whether years touring with Robert Plant have rubbed off, Charlie – who revealingly refers to himself as a ‘blue-collar’ musician – recalls the feedback from his monstrous stack during stadium sound checks. It’s the bits in between that count for Charlie as much as his love for everyone from Messiaen to Miles, from Bernard Hermann to Barry White.

Each successive track on Love Form offers evidence of a muscular and musical brain that crackles with invention. While the iridescent shimmer and Swingle Singer-style vocals of ‘Dove Magic’ might evoke a darkly glittering demi-monde located somewhere between 1965 and 1972, for Charlie this track is a nostalgic paean to childhood.

Conceived as an account of his adventures in rock ‘n’ roll, the squalling drone and driving jazz drums of ‘Big Hair’ channels the Master Musicians of Joujouka and Jack de Johnette jamming in a Moroccan souk, evoking an inner landscape redolent with meaning. Elsewhere, such as on ‘Silver’, the presence of jazz percussion, strings and a soaring soul voice – generated entirely by electronic distortion – momentarily suggest different eras before taking you somewhere else entirely.

The choice of musicians he has assembled says much about the care with which Charlie approached the making of this remarkable album. They include leading harpist Ruth Wall, Portishead and Massive Attack collaborator Johnny Baggot on piano, Alison Goldfrapp on whistling duties and no fewer than four top-tier percussionists in Rob Brian, Chris Hughes, Clive Deamer and Tony Orrell.

The emphasis on live performance, often recorded in one take, is complemented by the absence of samples, loops, synthesizers or digital manipulation of any kind. Electronic sounds are generated using Charlie’s collection of pre-1970s, valve-driven equipment which Charlie maintains are at their best after warming up for at least eight hours. Tellingly, his favourite chunk of vintage machinery is the Rhode & Swartz Resonant Filter Amp, as used by Karlheinz Stockhausen. This wholly tactile approach is carried through to the mixing of the album by veteran producer/engineer Stuart Bruce, resulting in a deeply visceral sound.

Love Form is an album of singular vision, unfettered ambition and an oceanic musicality, the likes of which is currently in scarce supply. Finally stepping out from the shadows, Charlie Jones is going to quietly blow your mind.

Formed in spring 2013 and based in the Bath area the band comprises of

Gary Say : guitars/vocals
Ben Thomas : guitars
Haga : bass
Rick Jones: drums

Joe Mountain is a songwriter, producer and composer living and working in Wiltshire, UK. He played guitar in Elixir, Afterglow, Levin, & Maddicott Mountain and is currently the guitarist in The Blood Choir and Mute TV. 

The Blood Choir have released two albums (No Windows To The Old World, House of the Sun), and an EP (Dartmoor). They have toured with Arbouretum and opened for The Magic Band, Silver Apples, John Parish, Dylan Carlson & The Handsome Family. 

With producer/engineer Jon Walker (Hot Chip, Tom Misch, The Heavy), he recently scored music for the documentary 'The View From Above'. The soundtrack was released via Wessex Recordings on 27/01/23.

Joe Mountain is following