patience is a virtue..

Joe got fed up with looking at the tiled version of this, so has now created a better blog over at tumblr

www.wearespectres.tumblr.com

in theory it will be updated all the time with stuff we do....

Merry January

Hola!

Now that the double-barrelled nuiscance of Christmas and New Year are well out the way, we can settle nicely into the January depression. Huzzah!

spectre-wise, it's a subtle start to the year, with a few real-life, grown-up things to sort out before we tackle 2011 head first in the groin.

So, news. Well, firstly the things what I got for Christmas: Some pants, A thing for wiping the windscreen on your car, a can of deodorant.

The things what I DIDNT get for Christmas: Midsomer Murders on Blu Ray, Turtles Skateboard, Dennis Waterman autobiography. A strongly worded letter is already on it's way to the North Pole.

In lesser important, non-me related news, Andrew Duttford set sail for the new world this week, founding a colony in Bristol, setting up a frontier outpost, Fort Spectre. Joseph is soon to join him and then myself over the next few weeks. Exciting times. Man.

Spectre Heights is rather quiet and a little empty now, with just Barry Curtains and myself in the house. We await fresh meat. And miss Sky Sports. Damn Adrian taking his own bought-and-paid-for Sky away from us. I'll never forgive him for denying me the (crucial) last two days of the final test.

Anyway, some good things to look forward to:

1. New British Sea Power album

2. Spectres first gig of the year 22nd Jan with our good friend Scott's new band... http://thedeadatlantic.tumblr.com/

3. Everton's inevitable inspiring FA Cup run

4. Bristol mega awesome moving times


How about that then? Yeah, I thought so. Anyway, that's enough for now.

D P F out.

Top 10 Albums of the year, bought to you by us, individually.

Yeah. 2010 is over, a year which saw us make our debut, do a bunch of shows, break a lot of stuff, including Ben's leg, and finish the year by ruining alot of people's christmas' by knocking over a cymbal stand. Apparently you have to be 'good' to pull that off, so I'm going into hiding and practicing my 'stage show'. ANYWAY we wanted to publish our top 10 albums of the year, aswell as other highlights, so here we go...

Ben Curtis' Top 10's

Albums...
1. Total Life Forever - Foals
2. High Violet - The National
3. The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night - The Besnard Lakes
4. Crazy For You - Best Coast
5. Romance is Boring! - Los Campesinos!
6. Flaws - Bombay Bicycle Club
7. Disconnect from Desire - School of Seven Bells
8. Winter of Mixed Drinks - Frightened Rabbit
9. Losing Sleep - Edwyn Collins
10. Sleep Forever - Crocodiles

Honouarble Mentions:
Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters - The Twilight Sad
The XX - I was a bit slow getting in to them.
The Drums - for making me want to punch stuff

Sporting Moments:
1. Sheffield Wednesday's relegation on the last day of the season when we drew 2-2 with Palace
2. England at the World Cup
3. Sheffield Wednesday's epic penalty shoot-out win over Rotherham in the JPT. Nicky Weaver = PENALTY KING!

Darren Frost's top moments and stuff...

Albums:

1. This Is Happening - LCD Soundsystem
2. The Fool - Warpaint
3. Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo
4. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
5. Brothers - Black Keys
6. Further - Chemical Brothers
7. Total Life Forever - Foals
8. Teen Dream - Beach House
9. InnerSpeaker - Tame Impala
10. Flaws - Bombay Bicycle Club


Singles:

1. Boyfriend - Best Coast
2. Drunk Girls - LCD Soundsystem
3. Yeah Buddy - Pulled Apart By Horses
4. Cousins - Vampire Weekend
5. Undertow - Warpaint
6. Still Windmills - Sky Larkin
7. California Gurls - Katy Perry feat. chocolate person
8. Swoon - Chemical Brothers
9. Worm Tamer - Grinderman
10. Are You Here - Corinne Bailey Rae


Honourable mention award:

Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters - The Twilight Sad


Things off the telly:

1. Eastbound & Down - Kenny fuckin Powers
2. Shooting Stars - Vic & Bob feat. Angelos epithemou
3. The Pacific - Tim off Jurassic Park


Films:

1. N/A
2. N/A
3. N/A


Sporting moments:

1. 2nd Ashes Test
2. The split second everyone thought Lampard had scored, Germany v England, World Cup round of 16
3. Everton beating Man Utd 3-1, 20th Feb

Joe Hatt's Top 10 Paedo's of the year

1. High Violet - The National
2. Sports - Weekend
3. Hidden - These New Puritans
4. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
5. The Wants - The Phantom Band
6. One Life Stand - Hot Chip
7. Treats - Sleigh Bells
8. Crooks and Lovers - Mount Kimbie
9. Total Life Forever - Foals
10. The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night - The Besnard Lakes

I expect he has more lists to come, think his top sporting moment was watching Sheffield wednesday get HAMMERED at Exeter, 5-1.

Adrian Dutt's Top 10 10's

1. The National - High Violet
2. Pulled Apart By Horses - PABH
3. Weekend - Sports
4. Warpaint - The Fool
5. Foals - Total Life Forever
6. Bombay Bicycle Club - Flaws
7. She + Him - Volume 2
8. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
9. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
10. Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

Singles, hmm, I liked Kesha, and Veronica falls.

Top 5 Birds spotted this year

1.Red Kite
2.Lapwing
3.Tree Creeper
4.Black Kite
5.Jay

Top 5 Vomit's

1.On my bed, half on my face, half in a cake bowl
2.On the kitchen Floor...in a cake bowl
3.In a snowy car park....in a cake bowl
4.In the sink...I can't take responsibility for this, it was Amie Kewley
5.In the street, near some piss

Top 3 Alter ego's

1. Joe Hatt as 'Hors Lebanese' covered in kebab, with a bevvy of bottles in his arms and misty eyes
2. Jamie Harper as 'Geoff' lying face down in the couch, clutching a pint sized can, as glasvegas beckoned
3. Myself as 'Kestrelkid' going to sleep whilst clutching a mug of water, a very bad choice

So yeah that's that, it's new year's eve and tonight we party, then we move, oh and we are recording some new songs in the meantime. We will have news soon I guess...

tata

nuff said...newz

Greetings from Europe! well England...but it's still Europe! Spectres have been quiet on the blog front, but that doesn't mean we have been quiet on the 'other stuff' front! I've just got back from France, where I was lucky enough to see a beggar lady from Bosnia called Ian, she had a nice cup collection. Joe and Darren have been straddling the late night trains and having alot of fizzypop and doing karaoke versions of such hits as Aqua's 'Barbie Girl' , those boys! Ben has been busy finishing his auto-biography entitled 'My life with Sheffield Wednesday' , it's a heart wrenching tale of the ups and downs of lower-league football, mixed in with a bit of free jazz and poetry. He had Richard and Judy on the phone the other day apparently. In real life I've been working on the artwork for the new Big scary monsters/Alcopop compilation, aswell as my thesis, and the boys have been doing grown up things. We have also been writing songs and planning, which leads me nicely onto...THE FUTURE!

We are taking a month or so to relocate our scrawny frames to the city, from where we will then unleash our noise until the world accepts us. We will be putting some free stuff up to tantilise new releases, and also making new videos for our other songs. So bear with us whilst we do this....it's going to be great, Tony the tiger told me.

xx

Team Spectres guide to the essential gig...

Yeah so like, did you know we are cursed when it comes to gigs? Using the power of elimination apparently I'm the sole purpose for the curse, so maybe it was a bad idea to sacrifice that baby in the skin of a sacred goat back in the day. So I have compiled some of the events and things that we have been through, and things to consider when booking us....

1) THE LINE-UP/BILL

We are essentially four bratty boys making alot of noise, think cerebral crushing feedback, screeching delay that will push your eyeballs out, walls of noise akin to a tsunami and vocals that tell you about rape, murder and burning alive.
Therefore the best bill to have us on seems to be...
Folk - whimsical tales of love and happy things, mainly solo artists
Shit Metal - must have long hair, shit scarves, guitars in the shape of a penis
American Pop - you know, jocks, proms and all that jazz
Ambient Electronica - because people like nothing better than having their face and ears melted after some nice ambient beats

Seriously, we have only ever been on a few suitable bills, note to promoters...we don't suit a folk bill. This harks back to the day when LCS! were sandwiched between two jazz ensembles, I think they miss read our 'spazz-pop' tag....

2) On stage accidents

I will cut myself, if you are standing close I'm afraid you will more than likely be sprayed with my blood. It's ok, I don't have aids, I've had the tests and all that YEAH! It's not my fault, I just have a weak spot on my finger that explodes everytime Joe hits his pedals.
Also Ben has a weird bunion on his hand, that seems to be from playing bass, although I think it's from all his limp wrist posturing, chances are puss will be present, so don't shake his hand.
Joe, ahh, sweet innocent Joe, basically, he is like a seal thats been hung and is writhing around the stage splashing saliva and blood. He once knocked over a cymbal stand that severed my guitar lead...underneath a carpet! WORK OUT HOW THE FUCK THAT HAPPENED. cus we like, totally can't. must be his incredible strength.
As for Darren, he likes to throw sticks, puss, blister jizz, snares and insults at anyone who crosses his path. Oh and once he shot a baby fox right between the eyes by accident.

3) On stage electronics - i.e pedals, amps, leads

these will all break, fact. Every gig, except the one with future of the left, we have broken something and had to pause. It's usually Joe's pedals or Ben's Bass, "How the fuck does the lead come out the back?" , good question Ben...Good question....

4) Everything else..

you may get injured, your ears will definately be left ringing, you probably will get 5 minutes of silence whilst we work out which pedal has broken and you more than likely will not 'get' us. But we always provide fun and are a happy bunch, so come along anyway YEAH?!

5) DO NOT TAUNT US...

we played a party, in a gazebo, in a field, the guy who introduced us baited us with this ' these guys reckon they're too hardcore for us, so let's show them they aren't' , we then unleashed 3 minutes of noise to which the crowd reaction was.... 'turn it down, no one wants to listen to that..' which thus proved that crowd weren't 'hardcore' enough for us. They even went and stood in the rain to get away, they did ask us to play a jack johnson cover though. Interesting. Jokes on them as after we left their gazebo collapsed....narf...see I TOLD you we were cursed! You don't have to be hardcore to come watch us, just be ready, and don't be a hiphop lover..

So yeah. Fun huh.

Also Joe see's dead cats

love love
x

Joe's work experience report by Ben. Part 1

Hello. I am Ben and on yesterday (Monday) Joe came to 'experience work' in the place that is where I do work on a 'work experience' placement. I have decided to diarise the whole experience to show how much fun doing work can be.

Monday: Joe and I had a tea break together. He's not in my department so we have to 'do lunch' and other lady like things. Takes a lot or organising though. I made Joe tea. He had milk and one sugar. He asked lots of questions like that annoying Ginger kid in that advert in the tv which I think is for not having Ginger children. Or something like that.
We did not 'do lunch' though as I had to go home to get mine. Joe had fish and chips. In the afternoon he came to say goodbye and said he'd spent the day interviewing a 10 year old girl. I'm not sure if this was a work experience thing though. Another term for interview is grilling. Grilling is a form of cooking, like roasting. I suspect this was actually what Joe was doing all afternoon.

Tuesday was a super good day although we did not tea break together. At lunch time we had packed lunch. Joe had cheese, ham and tomato sandwiches and a whole baby roast chicken. He likes to roast he told me. I had a cheddar cheese sandwich on stale bread. Then we went to a supermarket. I bought cheese and bread and a get well soon card. Joe took pictures of semi naked babies doing their favourite sex positions. My favourite was the 'doggy style' baby whereas Joe preferred the 'cowering in the corner' position. Joe came to say goodbye and I told my work colleagues that I had no idea who he was and I think he's a mental kid on day release who has taken a shine to me.

The Beast - A video what we mades and stuffz yeahhhh, cuz we iz releasing our EP . Details Below

After a few weeks of keeping these shrowded secrets, we can finally unleash them into the world, above you will see our first ever video, lovingly crafted by some rather special Tom's. It's main function is to promote my beard, Joe's nipples, Ben's guns and Darren's posing, but also it promotes our DEBUT EP ------- 'LIMBS'

It features 4 tracks -

Shiver
Silent Cell
Come A Little Closer
The Beast

and we have only pressed 100 of them. you can follow the link below to pre order, to guarantee yourself a copy. They come lovingly housed in brown parcel paper with some lovely art on it, and you could even Pre Order one of the 20 special T-Shirt/CD bundles, which contains some really nice art and stuffz. GEDDIT? The tracks are all currently being processed for digital release, so we will let people know when they are on spotify/itunes/amazon etc, and you can totally fill your ipod with them.

Go HERE to pre order stuff from our little shop

There's some well nice T-Shirts on there, which if you wear you immediately become initiated into our gang. We have monthly meetings where we go on days out to zoo's, and museums. I really want to start an old fashioned fan club, like by post, so if you wanna get cool paper based art/posters/zines, send me your address yeah?

Enjoy this news overload, I'm sure I've forgotten something....but oh well!

xxx

Buy our cd, and we won't look so thin and ill anymore.