Gig in London this weekend!

Hello

Hello Thor are curating one of Rough Trade's legendary afternoon gigs at the Notting Hill Arts Club this weekend. Woop!

An extension of Rough Trade's classic in-store gigs (just with a bit more room, and fewer records), the RoTa shows have been graced / curated by the likes of Hot Chip, The Line Of Best Fit, Warp, Jamie T, Saddle Creek, Fortuna Pop, Truck, Jonquil, Yuck and more.

It's on Saturday (21st May) from 4pm until 8pm and it's completely for FREE.

Warm Brains - new band from ace DIY producer Rory Attwell (Fair Ohs, Male Bonding, Fists).  They make fuzzy, dreamlike, carefully-woven, lo-fi slacker tunes as heard on debut single Old Volcanoes.

Fists - recently described as a "one band John Peel show" Fists' sound ranges from bittersweet vocal harmonies to stomping garage rock. Or as Artrocker put it "they sound like a drunken art collective playing country songs they’ve never heard before. Which is meant to be a compliment.”

We Show Up On RadaR - combining the optimism and joy of the Flaming Lips with the melancholy of Daniel Johnston, WSUOR's music is gentle, mischievious and magical indie pop to dream to.

Not Cool - these gutter pop pioneers specialise in frenetic, melodic and slightly demented post punk.  Think Fugazi or Pavement, but from Downham, south London.

Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=inbox&setup#!/event.php?eid=201457909891967
with super cool poster by Angi from Fists
.
It's gonna be ace!

love Bex
x

He's behind you!

I went to the panto at the Playhouse with Anders & Nick last week. Now, I've got to be honest, at about 2 o clock that afternoon I was feeling really tired and really just wanted to ditch the panto and have a night snuggled up on the sofa watching some dreadful TV and taking it easy. Partly this was down to the tiredness and partly down to my aversion to pantos. I've just always thought they would be bawdy, childish and get infuriated by all the "he's behind you" shouting. I think I went to see a particularly bad one as a child. I have a memory of tiny me all red faced and angry being made to shout "He's behind you" for about the fifteenth time. I used to hate it when people deliberately used to pretend not to know/see things. Sounds like I was an angry child. Weird.

Anyway, off we went to see Mother Goose, rather reluctantly, had a quick bite to eat at Cast (burger, very nice) and loaded up on sweeties for the performance. About 10 minutes in I think the first "Boo!" squeaked past my lips. About 20 minutes in I was laughing along at the one liners and ad-libs. Before the first act ended I was joining in with the singing, cheers and jeers with all my heart. I loved it! It was genuinely funny, the costumes and set were bright and spangly, the songs were fun and I didn't have to repeat chants 10 times to get anything to happen. They had a really nice balance between stuff for kids and adults, between playing it knowingly and getting involved in the performance and between the different characters. I've always been pretty certain that the panto wouldn't be for me, but I loved it and would recommend it to anyone.

On Friday we were hosting two gigs - one a proper Hello Thor gig at Spanky Van Dykes, with Injured Birds & We Show Up On Radar playing live - one a Broadway gig with Anders doing the organising, a celebration of Scandinavian sounds called Nordic Noise, with a Cardigans For Goalposts element thrown in.

Thankfully both  were a great success, with lots of nice comments and some awesome performances. I won't talk about them all, but just want to record that We Show Up On Radar played with their full band for only the 3rd time. They were great. Having a fuller sound just totally makes sense and gives the songs a proper setting in which they can sparkle. The full band brings a bit more power and confidence to the performance as well as the tunes and everything just seems really right. I can't wait to see them again.

Here are a few of my favourite pics from the evening:







See more pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellothor/sets/72157625467734169/

This week I will be:

- Sewing tonight! Yeah! last one before Christmas

- Jumpers for Goalposts tomorrow - not at the Alley Cafe for one month only. Read more here: http://thesecretdiaryofjumpersforgoalposts.wordpress.com/

- Dinner at Angi & James' on Friday

- Daddy Bones' Birthday at Broadway on Saturday - This is going to be great. The Yeah I'll Play It Later DJs will be on the decks, lots of lovely people will be hanging out and dancing. FUN.

- Snoozing all day Sunday please.

See you soon!

Bex
x

Rene Gruau

Last weekend we went to visit Chloe & Jamie and see our other friends in London. On the Friday we went to see a 12 piece band who play DJ Shadow's Endtroducing through from start to finish and do all the samples live. I was really excited about that and thought it was going to be super cool, it turned out to be super lame. Lewis likened it to when his teachers formed a "rock band" at school. At times it was toe-curlingly uncool. Shame. However, we did get to go to Koko, which looks like this:

Lovely!

Over the weekend we also ate lovely food, caught up with Lewis and Emma, did a bit of shopping at a vintage market and went to see a great exhibition at Somerset House.

The exhibition was of work created for Dior by the illustrator Rene Gruau. His work is so beautiful and luxurious I just wanted to live in that world. You can imagine it feels like silk and smells amazing! He created pieces such as these:

His illustrations are incredibly stylish, yet minimal, confident and sophisticated. I could've looked at them all day. There were some 80's influenced ones which didn't really work for me so much (airbrushed style faces and angular cheekbones etc), but the 50s-70s ones were so good that didn't matter. Even his signature is beautiful. Look:

Anyway, enough wallowing in the glory of bygone days.

Stuff coming up:

2nd Dec - Studio sale at I Dress Myself to say goodbye to Han & Pete. I still can't believe they're leaving Nottingham, and so soon! They'll be missed.

10th Dec - We Show Up On RadaR @ Spanky Van Dykes. This looks set to be a great show and only the 3rd time they've played with their full live band in Nottingham. Look for the event on facebook for full details.

16th Dec - Jumpers For Goalposts @ Tether - For the first time we're leaving our Alley Cafe home and venturing out into the big wide world for a special Christmas edition of Jumpers to help Tether celebrate their final night of the studios. This is going to be FUN.

I reckon there's probably loads of other good stuff coming up too, but I can't remember everything!

Bex
x

Stuff What Is Happening

This went out to the Hello Thor mailing list earlier, and there was such a lot of nice stuff on there I thought I'd post it up here too:

THREE BANDS PLUS CRAFT AND FOOD IN A GALLERY FOR FREE

This Saturday night (29th May), our good friends Yunioshi are launching their new 5 track EP “How to survive a robot uprising” at Nottingham Contemporary. As well as Yunioshi and their super-fun brand of electro funk, there will also be the sunshine pop of Spaceships Are Cool and the indie-folk of the brilliant Japanese Sleepers. Plus a craft competition and, no doubt, something scrumptious courtesy of the Yunioshi catering corps. Free.

TWO BANDS AND US DJING IN ANOTHER GALLERY


Then, the Saturday after (5th June) we’ll be DJing at the launch of the new single by Hhymn at the Refectory (Hooton Street, off Carlton Road, Nottingham). Also playing will be one of our own…the very wonderful We Show Up On RadaR. £3.

TEN ACE SONGS INCLUDING ONE CALLED "LEGO RULES" TO DOWNLOAD FOR FREE


One of the greatest bands we have ever had the pleasure of putting on was the much-missed Death By TV - two 16-year olds from Loughborough who enjoyed drinking lemonade, jumping into each other, and making very exciting, very immature, very fun casio-punk in their bedrooms. They played a few gigs, changed their name several times and then split up to be famous, or clever, or something. We’re super happy that their entire discography is now available to download for free from http://www.methodistleisure.com/deathbytv/. Do it, you won't be sorry.

AND FINALLY

Actually, that’s about it for now. We’ll be back soon, but in the mean time, look out for Fists and We Show Up On RadaR at various festivals this summer (Summer Sundae, Y-Not, Splendour…plus more to come), and don’t forget you can buy their records from our website.

Also remember that we hold court at the Alley Café on the third Thursday of every month with Nottingham’s finest, funnest, free-est felt tips & folk night, Jumpers For Goalposts. Next month (Thurs 17th June) Japanese Sleepers are playing live. Hope to see you there.

 
Bex
x

Over The Wall, LIVE, tomorrow night

Hi Everyone!

Just a quickie to let you know that Hello Thor are putting on a gig tomorrow night at The Chameleon with Over The Wall, Three Blind Wolves & We Show Up On Radar all playing LIVE for just £3. Plus there will be HT DJs and lots of pre-friday-off-work fun to be had!

See you there!

Bex

p.s. Over The Wall are a great Glaswegian band. Have a look at http://www.hellothor.com/ for more info

p.p.s. Here's a fun game: 3D Pong: http://www.newsandentertainment.com/zFcurveball.html

Hello Thor News

Thought it would be good to pop up a bit of Hello Thor news, seeing as things have been so busy and exciting with the label in recent weeks.


First off, Fists were featured in the NME! AND they got 4/5 in Artrocker! This is all down to the new EP Olympic Hits, which has also been getting airplay on 6music, BBC2, NME Radio and more. Brilliant news and SO great to see a great band getting coverage despite not being from a hyped city/scene. Let's hope the same happens for more of Nottingham's talented musicians.


We Show Up On Radar played a Maida Vale Weekender for the BBC! You can hear the tracks here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/introducing/sessions/maidavaleweekender/2010/  They sound Awesome.  Plus you can download the WSUOR EP from http://www.hellothor.com/, it's ace.


Then, last week Fists played at Rough Trade in London to launch their Counter Culture 09 compilation, which Cockatoo is on. Here are some pics:

They played some old favourites (Finger, 6-5 etc) and the tracks from the new EP, which will be released on 29th March. The new tracks sounded awesome, Weekend and Ace is the Way just work so well live and have a really full, fierce sound.


So, you can buy the new EP Olympic Hits on http://www.hellothor.com/ or you can buy an advance ticket for the launch gig, 9th April @ The Rescue Rooms, and get the EP for free. Not a bad deal. Get the advance booking deal on alt-tickets or maybe on Hello Thor's website.

The EP Launch Party is going to be a huge celebration of Nottingham music, with Fists joined by the wonderful Swimming, the marvellous Escapologists and the mythical Pilgrim Fathers. Hello Thor DJs will be on the decks and there's an after party up in the Red Rooms featuring Frank's Vintage Metal Disco and special live guests. Buy your ticket in advance and get the EP free as a thank you, so that's £5 for a ticket for a mega gig and a free EP worth £4. Good times.

We're so pleased with how everything is going with Hello Thor and are even more pleased that we've had such support from people in our hometown here in Nottingham. Thanks everyone.


Bex
x

Stuff we've been up to

Isn't it nice when people visit and you have a special reason to do fun things at the weekend instead of boring chores? We had friends up from London this weekend and we:

... cooked goats cheese and onion tarts and drank wine on Friday night.

... slept late and then wandered round town drinking "the best hot chocolate in the world" (TM) from Aubreys (the crepe place), before heading up to Nottingham Contemporary for the Star City exhibition. I made a "hilarious" joke about the big wheel in the city centre and how our visitors would never have seen anything like it. I'm funny. Anyway, the exhibition, firstly, don't see the exhibition backwards, we did and I regretted it afterwards. Secondly, it's pretty big/long, so don't linger too long over stuff you're not bothered about. Highlights for me included:
- the machine making noises as water droplets fell - it was like a dystopian sci-fi scene, a bit menacing, like it should be in the basement of a multi-storey car park in a horror film.
- the old Russian posters promoting space travel, really made you imagine how people must've felt about space in the old days. It was such a magical, almost spiritual place then.
- the collages of religious icons & rockets - I love icons stylistically and I really like space imagery, so this just really worked for me!
- the 'doctor's surgery' bit made by a husband/wife team who were some of the first installation artists
- And finally, the quote from Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, near the giant spacesuit in the bottom of the building:

"Those who have already been in space yearn with all their heart and soul to return there again and again. With every single day passing, time leaves my flight in the past. Occasionally the wind will whisper something from the tops of tall pine trees and then everything becomes silent. In such minutes I remember the most bright and wonderful experience in my life: the flight into space."

I can't get over how beautiful that is, and how well she captures a moment and a feeling that pretty much no-one else has experienced.

... saw the most random performance I've seen in ages at Nottingham Playhouse. It was called Pregnant?! and involved a PowerPoint animation with a live performance from a Japanese artist which was about being impregnated by rabbits. I can't really explain any further than that to be honest, as that's pretty much the extent to which it made any sense. Despite that, it was brilliant, really funny, the interaction between the animations and the artist was great, surreal and confusing but great. Plus we learned that bunnies ovulate even when pregnant, so that's a new fact for us all there. It was insane, like someone saying "I had this really weird dream, right", only without it being the most painfully boring conversation in the world, because it actually recreated that dream world for you. Ace.

... ate breakfast late, enjoying John's discovery of bacon and eggs on crumpets instead of toast. Super nice, especially when you get lovely local bacon from JT Beedham's instead of horrible, watery, over-salted bacon from Tesco. Then we wandered round the cemetery next to the forest in the snow. It was lovely. I took some photos and me and Anna Ray made this tree:

... Finally, on Monday night we saw Hot Horizons at the Social. They're really good, strong vocals, interesting guitars and some really good tunes. I'm looking forward to hearing the recorded stuff later in the year. Then we popped over to say a quick Happy Birthday to Andy from We Show Up On Radar who was celebrating with an apple juice at the Orange Tree. We heard about his visit to Maida Vale at the weekend to record tracks for the BBC, it's really exciting! Don't know when they will be on the radio yet, but we've heard that they sound really good.

Anyway, enough rambling from me, hope you have a nice week!

Bex
x

We Show Up On RadaR - New video for EP out on 15th Feb

We Show Up On RadaR's new EP "A Loaf of Bread, a Container of Milk and a Stick of Butter" is out on the 15th Feb on Hello Thor Records.

Here's a little video for the very lovely "It should be you and me":

We Show Up On Radar - It Should Be You And Me from Joe Hardy on Vimeo.

You can buy the EP on www.hellothor.com or on I-tunes, Amazon etc. If you buy on Hello Thor's website more money goes to the label & artist, so do them a favour and buy it on there!

Love
Bex
x

p.s. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

WSUOR EP Launch @ Library

Thanks! to everyone who came along as Hello Thor Records launched their latest release at Nottingham Library last week. We Show Up On RadaR's new EP ("A loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter") is fabulous, a wonderful magical twinkling and yet slightly melancholy gem. You can buy an actual physical VERY limited edition copy at We Show Up On RadaR's gigs, or you can download it from all major download sites. Put it on and hear it sparkle! Go to www.hellothor.com to find out more.

The gig was super fun. We sold out of tea, cake AND handmade limited edition EPs. A resounding success. Plus the small group of saturday afternoon drunks enjoyed the show, so everyone was happy. Make A Halo had lovely funny songs and very nice shoes, the Escapologists' new stuff sounded great and We Show Up On RadaR were as charming and melodic as always.

Anyway, here's some pics from the party at the Library:
















Hope you enjoyed it tooooooooo!

Becky
x

Hello Thor Library Gig on Saturday!

Afternoon All,

Just taking a quick mini-break from working hard to mention the Hello Thor Library Gig this weekend. I have been coerced into producing cakes for the occasion. I'm thinking Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes. They went down really well at the Chrismoustache party and I really don't mind eating up any leftovers, so I reckon they're a good bet. Any other requests?

Anyway, here's all the info for Sat from Hello Thor:

We Show Up On RadaR
@ Nottingham Central Library
Saturday 6th February (4pm - 6pm) FREE ENTRY

We had such a great time when we launched We Show Up On RadaR’s single at Nottingham Central Library last year (if you don’t believe us have a look at this little film) that when they asked us back we couldn’t refuse. Heck, we even booked a tour of other libraries to follow.

That’s right, this Saturday (6th February) at 4pm we’ll be introducing the world to We Show Up On RadaR’s beautiful brand new EP - A Loaf Of Bread, A Container Of Milk & A Stick Of Butter - in the company of a whole load of books, a heap of cake, a box or two of wine, and, of course, plenty of amazing live music:

We Show Up On RadaR is Andy Wright. Andy makes melancholic, mischievous acoustic pop to dream to. It’s full of contradictions - childlike and sweet, but a bit wrong; terribly sad, but hopelessly uplifting - and is, in our opinion, blimin’ marvellous. Check him out in a recent BBC session here.
www.myspace.com/wsuor

Escapologists are three very talented gentlemen who produce gently reflective post-rock, informed by the likes of Pavement, The Cure and Stereolab. We last saw them tearing it up at the Christmas Covers Party, and can’t wait to see them again.
www.myspace.com/escapologists

Henry Parkinson makes lovely introspective folk pop, kind of like Nick Drake...from Nottingham.
www.myspace.com/makeahalo

It’s all totally FREE to get in and you can read as many books as you like between bands. It’s going to be loads of fun!

We Show Up On RadaR’s 6-track A Loaf Of Bread, A Container Of Milk & A Stick Of Butter EP is released digitally through iTunes, Amazon etc. on Monday 15th February. It will also be available as a strictly limited handmade CD at the library gigs and from www.hellothor.com.

We Show Up On RadaR is also playing gigs at Leicester Central Lending Library (8th February, 6pm), Leeds Central Library (9th February, 6pm) and Norwich & Norfolk Millennium Library (11th February, 6pm).


Sounds great! See you there!

Becky
x

Brimming over with post-party festive fun

It's been a great run-up to Christmas what with the Christmoustache Party AND the Xmas Covers.

We'll post some pics from the HT Party soon to show the kind of furry fun that ensued. In short though, we were treated to a We Show Up On Radar set that was short but very sweet and a wonderful version of Blue Christmas from Andy (sporting an equally wonderful moustache). Then Fists rampaged all over the stage. They'd been in the studio all day and drinking for at least a few hours so were considerably looser than usual - but all to the good as they tore into their ever-brilliant set (with a couple of new tunes in the shape of Angi's 50s-style swoon, Endlessly and Pete's Cramps-like Squeek Squirl - I'm completely guessing at the titles). James' onstage banter was AWESOME and Dave's rock stances (foot on bass drum, groin uncomfortably close to Tez's eyeline!) was the shizness.

Finally Hot Horizons took to the stage. I was taken aback by just how HUGE and ANTHEMIC they were. This was stadium pop. Bloody brilliant it was too!

After that, me and Bex got on the decks and caused a bit of a commotion to the likes of Passion Pit and Jay Z by way of Ace of Spades and Killing In The Name Of*

It was a great way for Hello Thor to round off a great year.
Even that though couldn't hold a candle to the institution that is the Damn You Christmas Covers Party. Now in its 6th Year (seems like more than that, no?) this is an opportunity for bands to do unlikely and thoroughly entertaining covers in the name of Mr Claus. My brother came along one year and even though Our Gaz doesn't often attend gigs once the Hellset Orchestra got stuck into Eye Of The Tiger he was loving it!

Some of my highlights from this year's Xmas Covers have to include: Wander Phantom's version of ODB's I Got Your Money, Fists' Breaking The Law & Kids In America, Din Din's whole set (gimp-masked electro!) and Burly Nagasaki's Winds Of Change of course

x Anders

* Christmas Number 1 - HELL YEAH!

Amazing news

A-maz-ing...

BOTH of Hello Thor's single releases in 09 have made the Artrocker Top 100 singles of the year list. Well done guys!!

Check out the full list here:
Artrocker.com

There's lots of new music to get for free on the list, enjoy!

Bex
x

Hello Thor's Christmoustache Party!

On the 12th December Hello Thor are holding their Christmoustache Party at the Chameleon. Here's the poster:



Hot Horizons will be playing (people in Seattle like them) alongside Fists, We Show Up On RadaR and probably the (whisper it) Tom Tomas Club... oh dear. Latest news is that Super Fun Team Go! will also be joining this line-up! Amazing!

Brilliant. It's £3 to get in, £2 if you are wearing a moustache. The bigger the better.

Oh, and Me & Anders will be DJing too. When I say I will be, I mean I'll be selecting songs and demanding that Anders plays them.

See you there!

Bex
x

The Craft-Off!

So, it's been a little while since the Craft Off but I finally managed to load the pics up onto the computer and now I will pop a few up here. It was a really fun/strange evening. I mean, first off it sold out in about an hour, which was random and completely unexpected! Then people were SO into the craft, which was really nice, but made you realise that what we do with Jumpers for Goalposts is more like playtime than craft! The performances were really good, with Poppy Seed starting, We Show Up On Radar next, the Tom Tomas Club performing as Craftwork and ending with the Red Shoe Diaries who played a cracking set surrounded by wool.

Donna and the girls from Spinsters Emporium (check it out online!) had done an amazing job decorating the place, as I hope you'll be able to tell from some of the photos.

Here's some pics:



Winner of the "colouring in" competition!


Anders & Tom compering and the venue looking magical


Red Shoe Diaries


Tom Tomas Club


We Show Up On Radar


Poppy Seed


The creative competition winner - the "Canonbert" - beautifully modelled by Nick


Donna from Spinsters Emporium & second place winner "Cheeseman!"


Victorious team "Say Cheese" with their canonbert


As a judge of the competition may I add a final note... the canonbert was incredible. It worked with the cheese theme, looked great and had party poppers which went off like the flash! Great work!

See you soon,

Bex