North For The Winter

We’ve been booked to play a set on an all-dayer gig at the Facebar as part of the Reading Fringe Festival (in the run up to Reading Fest) on the 22nd of August!

Roughly speaking the event runs from 4pm-11pm, entry is £5 and there will be probably around 10(ish) acts playing. More details to follow shortly…

NFTW are playing some kind of crazy BOTB competition at the rather wicked Plug-N-Play (RG1 8LG) in Reading on Friday 24th of July.

Entry is a massive 2 quid if you mention our name. Running order is at random on the night. So we could be on at any point. Doors are at 7.30PM. Do it!

The ’stoner rock’ webzine, NineHertz, have recently reviewed our new album. If you haven’t had a listen yourself yet, here’s what ‘Rob Himself’ thought:

Incredibly, despite playing maybe ten or twenty gigs in their 5 year + existence, Hampshire post-hardcore types North For The Winter have released FOUR (count ‘em) full-length albums. What they lack in live experience (with the exception of bassist Andy, formerly of Mfkzt and largely studio-bound stoners Cicadas), they make up for in prolific songwriting and you have to admire their tenacity.

‘Perfect Automation’ is an 11-track slice of succinct, melodic indie, displaying all their tricks in one handy, highly listenable package.

Benefiting from the recent addition of a teenaged, female vocalist, the songs are well layered and dynamic - album highlight ‘She Self Medicates’ is built nicely round an bizarrely Cranberries-esque vocal line. Sharing singing duties with guitarist Chris, the two-part harmonies tend to waver at times, but the solid, busy drumming and sturdy basswork keep things moving.

Four albums in (it makes less sense the more you say it), the band bare their influences a little too much given their longevity, with Biffy Clyro being the most obvious and prominent. That said, the likes of ‘You’re Ruin’ call to mind parts of the Deep Elm roster and elsewhere there’s an honesty to Chris’ songwriting that outshines any lack of originality. There’s no pretension or desperate image maintenance here.

‘Perfect Automation’ is the sound of a band struggling against a tide of apathy, but if honestly tuneful, ambitious indie-rock is your bag, you’ll be rooting for them on first listen.

The album is available to download for free at www.northforthewinter.com

Click below to view the article on their website:
NFTW - Perfect Automation Album Review @ NineHertz.co.uk

Good day to you!

We at NFTW HQ are finally pleased to announce the release of the band’s 4th album to date, entitled: Perfect Automation. This production is available FOR FREE in both CD and Digital Download format.

To grab a free CD, come to any of our upcoming gigs we’ll be handing them out, or track down and shout at one of us until we surrender a copy to you. If you’re an interwebz fan, visit the Media section of the website to download the album zip.

Enjoy, and if you like it, please drop us a line!

Jim - NFTW

North For The Winter, A Downfall To Last, The Last Words, Flyright, The Clarity.

Interesting mix of genres here. Should be a good night, hope to see you all there! NFTW x
Tickets: £4.00 (ADV) or £5.00 (DOORS)

It’s rocking along. We’re nearly there with the album, here’s some artwork!

Okay, so I’ve now run out of “other” things to do besides mastering this thing. Damn. Next post I make will contain a link to the finished product…

…unless I can find more things to do…*thinks*

Jim - NFTW
x

As promised, I’ve uploaded a couple of the tracks from the new album:

She Self Medicates, Talking Until Dawn, One Year Longer, Always.
You can listen to them (not in great quality) here: www.northforthewinter.com/audio.php

If you happen to own any previous NFTW albums may recognize the odd song - we didn’t want to give too much away at this point! We’ll be releasing the entire album in the next week or so…

Jim - NFTW

Well the thought of doing more mixing and mastering is just making me feel ill so I thought I’d post a blog up first (no-one wanted to talk to me on fuzzbook!).

It’s been around 4 days since the rest of the band left the studio to return home while I’ve been left here to finish work on the tracks. So far I’ve managed to complete 8 out of the 11 tracks, come up with some funky album artwork as well as complete the single player of TrackMania. Umm. Can you spell productive?! Pot noodle cans litter the room…

The website update is next on the to-do list; you can expect that to happen somewhere between track 9 and 11 - I’d say in the next few days. We’ll also be releasing the album artwork shortly in conjunction with the website once we’ve settled on a track list.

This album is easily the best sounding set of recordings we’ve done, we hope you’ll like it.

Jim - NFTW

P.S. oh, and the beard is making its return.. ..slowly.

So we’ve been mixing for a couple of days, I’d forgotten just how repetitive this shit can be. However it’s all been worth it, the mixes are sounding great and certainly a big step up from anything we’ve done before.

I saw crank for the first time last night, its retarded but in a good way. After spending 8 or 9 hours mixing it was the perfect antidote, no really. We’ve watched a several really shite films this week, but the medal has to go to “Hercules in New York”, Arnie’s first movie. On its original release it was dubbed by an American as ¼ of all of the lines are completely indecipherable but we managed to watch the real 100% Arnie version. Epic! Seriously, go and watch it… do it, do it now.

Chazz hinted at the departure of the bands fifth member yesterday. Well, I can confirm that it is a sad day here in NFTW’s secret midlands recording HQ. The photo below should explain all.

Jim is beardless, I repeat, BEARDLESS! Defcon one people, batten down the hatches, lock up your daughters, deploy smoke, repent! REPENT!

This was my reaction:

… and for the purposes of fair a balanced reporting, here is a picture of a fish.

The next post by one of us should actually contain some worthwhile news on the progress of the album. By then we should have confirmed a track-listing and the thorny issue of what to name it. My suggestion of “Stolen From The Granary” was dismissed, although Jim was dead keen on “2” Maximum Diameter”.

Rock On
Chris - NFTW

Well hello again all you fine people!

Good news- the album is now done! All we’ve got left to do is mix down and pick an order for all the awesome tracks to go in… let the arguments commence!!
Still, to have done all the vocals in 2 days isn’t half bad, even if we did nearly bite each other’s heads off about MORE harmonies….Oh well.

There was sadness in the early hours of the morning as our fifth member sadly left us, but more on that later.

But I do have a question to pose you, and what of your loyaltea? Yes, tea is no longer the loyal beverage as we once thought, and shall soon come to dominate the world; at least it will in Chris’ eyes, as opposed to loyaltaay, which is just lovely =]

Anyway, Chris will be back later with a vengeance and some shocking photos for you all!!

Peace. Chazz - NFTW