The Year 2004

Here you find what Turin Brakes were up to from the beginning until roughly the end of 2004.


Releases:

Late Night Tales

A Quiet Night

One can say a lot about 2003, but it wasn’t a quiet period… To end 2003, Olly & Gale did a tour down-under, in Australia and New-Zealand, touring then different venues. By this time the band was frustrated, tired, confused. The question Why are we doing this? kept popping up in the heads of the band members and it was clear they needed a holiday. And that’s what they got: a holiday. Time to work things out.

In February 2004 the band was asked to compile a compilation for Azuli’s Late Night Tales-series. They selected songs that inspired them and did a cover of one of them :Moonlight Mile, originally by The Rolling Stones.

In March 2004 a message was posted on the official site that the band had started building their own studio in South-London. This was later christened as the TB Inc. The band posted photos of the building progress on the website and as soon as the former stable was a suitable studio moved in there to work on new songs in their own time. Some of the songs premiered during a one off show at the Somerset House. It was sold out within a few days.

The gig itself was magic, according to the people who were there. Most songs from the 2nd album were replaced with songs from The Optimist LP and more importantly: new songs! Early versions of Can’t Buy The Sunshine, JackinABox, Come & Go, Forever, Over And Over and Fishing For A Dream were played and suggested a far more optimistic album than Ether Song ever was. The messages on the official website seemed to confirm this all. The Somerset House gig was supposed to be released later on, but this plan never became reality.

There was a bit of stir before the gig in the summer though. The week before the Somerset House gig, Olly and Gale played a secret gig in the Water Rats in London under the name Slightly Fat for the ‘fanclub’ (a wrong report on BBC Ceefax). No fan knew about it, and this made some fans angry (what fanclub?). An apology was posted on the website, and Olly & Gale went to XFM to apologize once again and explained that this was a gig for close friends and family only (there was one journalist there, and he wrote a report for BBC Ceefax). They didn’t play any songs at XFM radio, but they did tell that they almost finished the album.

The final months of 2004 were used to mix the 3rd album together with Mike Spike Stent, and to make a first attempt at mastering the stuff A second master was made just after 2005 begun. Olly announced around the same time that his woman Rachel was pregnant, and due for April (around the same time as the third album would come out). And so a relatively quiet year ended with a lot of good news and high hopes for the future… A new album, a new life… But not before Turin Brakes made a guest appearance on Band Aid 20. They are featured in the video for less than second, but they ARE part of it…

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