A familiar title, you say! This “romantic suspense” book by Jill Sorenson has officially borrowed its name from the Turin Brakes song. Apparently her editor came up with the title after listening to Dark On Fire by our beloved band. No way! Way!

The book is released in September on the Random House imprint Bantam Dell. No, it’s probably not going to win the Booker prize, but hey, at least this book will warm a lot of hearts on lonely, cold Saturday nights. That’s got to be worth something. And it’s got a  proper US release, unlike the original Turin Brakes album.

So as you can see, September is turning out to be a big month for Turin Brakes. Ahh… Don’t you just LOVE Twitter…

Stalker	Dark On Fire

Recording the album
The start of the year 2007 meant business for the band. The year hadn’t begun properly or recording sessions begun in a little studio in South East London. After two weeks they finished a dozen songs and took a break. In this break, Gale and his wife had their first child, a girl named Leia Grace. She was born on the 29th of January.

Mid-february the band continued their recording sessions, this time in a bigger recording studio (Olympia). Most songs were recorded live, but some songs were in need of strings / overdubs:

We have been sifting through the many many live takes from the 1st session and editing the best parts together to make “uber” takes which we will then work on top of.

By the end of March 17 songs were recorded! All this was documented on the official site and Myspace, so fans could always be up to date if they wanted to. The months after were pretty quiet, but early May the band announced they were to master the record: On Friday we master the new record with Ethan and a man with giant satellite like ears that can pick up the faint sighing of a melancholic mouse in a field on the other side of the world, oh and our managers and the label peeps too! What that really means is basically we have to finally commit to a list of songs to live with forever and make something the kids call a “compact disk”. You can also tweak the sound a bit more too and make it LOUDER. Things have been going worryingly smoothly so far.

In that same month it was announced the band would make their festival comeback at the Latitude festival in July and Olly became a dad for the second time. Ruby got a little sister: Daisy May is her name. She made a swift appearance in a horses mouth entry later that year.

Setting the Dark On Fire
Mid-June all the album details were revealed: it would be called Dark On Fire and scheduled for a September release, preceded by single Stalker. In July a tour was announced to commence in September, one week after the album release. This tour would end in the London Forum on 11 October. Before all that however, the band played a hot, intimate and free gig in the Lock Tavern, for Clash Magazine. The band premiered various new songs (Ghost, Something In My Eye, Last Chance, Stalker), while not forgetting to play various old favourites. Originally, the band were scheduled to play 6-7 songs, but they ended up playing twice as much. Nice one!

In August, it was announced that Stalker would be the first single on 7″, CD and download. The b-sides for the 7″ and the CD would be Rise and Time Machine. However, getting closer to the release date, it became clear that EMI wasn’t actually planning on releasing physical copies of the single. Instead, a download only single was released, with an acoustic version sold by some retailers as a b-side. The original b-sides were to be locked away in the archives. Probably also because of this, Stalker didn’t break the top 100, charting just below that. Dark On Fire didn’t do much better… It JUST made the album charts, entering at 36. Not much later the band posted a horses mouth, in which they ask their fans to help promote them, saying that the world gets increasingly tough for bands when they are “not new” in the eyes of the media but you guys, the real fans, are all that really matters. They thanked the fans for their enthusiastic and warm response at the recent live outings.

The album Dark On Fire might be a slow burner, but it’s also the band’s most live and most direct one to date. Ghost, Real Life and Time Waster really benefit from the repetitive, simple structure. Those songs just wouldn’t have worked as well in any other way. And just because a song is really straight-forward doesn’t mean it’s shallow. There’s always the
feeling that there’s more to the song than you hear yourself. And after all those rocking tunes, the final two songs prove that Turin Brakes know what they’re doing… Here Comes The Moon especially is possibly the most simple song of all, but it’s melody is hauntingly real. You imagine yourself sitting in a car after midnight. New Star is acoustic old-skool Turin Brakes. The album isn’t being released in the USA by Astralwerks, since the band felt that label wasn’t in a position right now to release the album. Since then, the album has been released as a download on iTunes, but not in physical form.

Touring Fire
So while Dark On Fire turns out to be a slow burner commercially, the band goes on a nationwide tour. Olly and Gale also appear on Channel 4′s Transmission show. They show the part of London they grew up in and play a gig in an old cinema. The band also play various (acoustic and full band) radio sessions (XFM, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, BBC 6Music and others).

Live Session

Taking time

Back to the desk for the band… New songs needed to be written, but nothing was to be rushed ofcourse. In February the band reported back to the official site that already 6 new songs were written: I’m amazed that JackInABox was so recent yet this stuff feels like it’s from a new place, you dont think you’ve changed but the music shows you really (prove) have.
In March rumours started popping up that the band was to play a festival in Brighton in May, but before that another gig took place: a gig in aid of MacMillan Cancer Relief (23 April). In the end the band raised quite some money and played four new songs (Ghost, Brave New World, Everready & Real Life). They also played The Beatles song Come Together with support act Novastar. One month later the band played the Spiegeltent in Brighton, premiering one more new song, called Other Side (and playing the songs played in London as well). At the gig the band mentions having 16 songs ready so far, and that they plan to head in the studio in September.

In this period of relative quietness, EMI decided to release the third digital only live release in a years time… After the Napsterlive Session in May 2005 and the Live @ The Palladium in November, April 2006 saw the release of the Live Session, an Itunes exclusive. The cover is quite similar to The Red Moon EP (except it just says ‘Turin Brakes’) for EU release, the US version had a photo of Olly and Gale jumping in the air. The acoustic session consisted of 7 songs recorded at the Apple headquarters during the US tour of 2005. It features a mix of old and new songs: Over and Over kicks of acapella, followed by tumbling piano riffs and nice acoustic slide guitar. Underdog is in the same style, minus the acappela and plus the kick ass guitar solo. No flaws! The other highlight of this session is Feeling Oblivion, which feels like meeting an old friend after lots of years and he’s still as great as he used to be.

In July, the band premiered more new songs at a special intimate gig in London (Half Moon Pub) that sold out within 4 minutes time! More new songs premiered: Last Chance, ByePod, Loopa, Something In My Eye & Capsual. The gig was very hot, but very ‘great’ as well. Meanwhile, more good news was announced: Painkiller made the soundtrack of The Last Kiss, playing over the end credits in full and providing some extra exposure for the band. And the band finally decided to tour some more to preview the new songs to their audience. A series of intimate shows was announced for November, on which the songs Timewaster, Here Comes The Moon, Stalker & Dark On Fire got their premiere. The band wrote a little comment on every gig on the website and started a moblog where people could upload their pictures and videos. Also, the band discovered Myspace, which is up till this day still maintained by the band, featuring personal messages and news.

But all this nice communication didn’t help recording the album. Recording was due to start in September, but there was no mention of it, till the day after the tour. The band announced they were going to record with Ethan Johns in January. With rave reviews of the intimate tour and this hopeful news the band ended 2006 on a high note.

For all results check the official Supershorts Festival site.

Congratulations Shelly!

You can vote for the videos by watching the video at Dailymotion.com.

1: I do not have a dailymotion account
In the right top corner of your screen, there should be a “Create an Account” link. Click it and create your account (it’s free and you don’t get any spam, I can confirm). Once you’ve done that, go to step 2.

2: I do! I do have a dailymotion account
Watch the video. On the right of the video there are 5 stars If you hover your mouse over those stars, you can give your rating (hint: 5 stars and only 5 stars is right ). Anyway, when you do that you MIGHT be asked to login (or maybe not, in that case you are done). If that is the case, no worries because you have the account and the password already! So login and click once again on the 5th star. Now you’ve voted! Hurrah!

Now go tell all your friends to do the same. It would be a great way for both Shelly Love as Turin Brakes to gain some exposure. We all know they deserve it!

People interested in attending the festival: it’s all free… Check all info here.

(A dog barks) is a London and South East based production company focused on delivering a wide variety of artistic and commercial projects; encompassing video installation, pop promos, commercials, short film and feature film.

On Sunday 21st of February they organise a short film event at The Roxy in London. Amongst the videos broadcasted will be the Dark On Fire video by Shelly Love (More info):

The evenings programme also features an exclusive preview of Turin Brakes new music video from their Dark On Fire album (released 17th Sept. 2007) by Shelly Love ahead of its official UK premiere at Birds Eye View Film Festival.”

Admission is free.

On our last day at the studio we recorded the final song on our to do list. It was one of those tunes no one was 100% sure of so it got left till the end but actually it came out really shimmering with broken beauty so that left us all feeling bright as we packed up the gear. It will now be a baby break for 3 – 4 weeks (depending on the moon, the wind and other factors) I will do up my house with my dad, G will be getting ready for a very important delivery from mother nature, Little Phil will make long distance phone calls to LA, Ed will simply return to his idillic Brightonian existence and Rob will now be wrapped in cellophane and put back in his “special box” until we need him again. It’s been a superb couple of weeks for us with lots of material committed to tape and the digital. We have decided to move studios for the next session, into a studio with a great control room so we can really hear where we are and where wand where we need to go…. Until then then

Ofcourse now the boys are out of studio, it doesn’t mean I’m packing in as well! I will continue updating the site, bringing you more news updates when I know (so do email to news@turinbrakes.nl if you do!) and I will add fresh content to the site in the upcoming weeks.