+ Sky Larkin +

Recording and making music at the Crypt.

season’s greetings,

I (Katie) sing on this charity Christmas single, penned by the band Hunks and performed by an assortment of musicians (from British bands and beyond). All proceeds go to the RSPCA so please download it, the critters of Britain will thank you. It’s a fun crimbo ditty, raging only against scrooges. And remember, in the words of my all-time-favourite-christmas-movie ‘it is the summer of the soul in December’.

click on your preferred digital outlet;
iTunes
Amazon
Play.com
Emusic

check out http://awesomeatchristmas.wordpress.com/ for a buffet of festive treats – including the full list of contributors , the accompanying music video (also starring Pulled Apart By Horses and my cat Sammy), a spotify playlist of favourite christmas songs chosen by featured musicians (I couldn’t decide and picked four) and more as yuletide progresses.

oh and the cover (at the top of the page), is by the ever-splendid Sparky Deathcap.

stay warm, and drive safe, there’s no business like snow business.
kxx

Hello there, some news from Sky Larkin on what is definitely the coldest day so far this year (where we are, at least), and happily, the day we all came to accept Snowarama once again.

We’re excited to tell you that all t-shirts up on the Sky Larkin store have been reduced to a wonderful £5 each – and that’s almost perfect timing given the Wichita label have copied of ‘The Golden Spike’ for £5 as well. The timing obviously, is *perfect* for your late Christmas shopping for loved ones. Or yourself.

Be warned though; there’s VERY limited stock available on some of these, so it’s first come, first served.

Meanwhile, the band are stil up in their hometown of Leeds creating their second album which will be released in 2010! Keep up to date with the band on Twitter.

Wichita Store
Sky Larkin web store

Click here for the real life iTunes page

we played a show for xbox and they done put us inside the machine!

On a scale of 1-rad this is pretty much a 9 (-1 for how excited I got about it. nerd.)

Right, I’m off to buy Left for Dead 2, awesome.

nx

festive news everyone- (almost) all cd albums in the wichita online shop are £5 in the xmas sale.

crimbo prezzie bargains a plenty, plus you also get the added warm
fuzzy feeling that comes with buying directly from an independent
record label. mmmm.
http://www.wichita-recordings.com/shop/music/albums.html

includes
The Cribs, Espers, Simian Mobile Disco, Peter Bjorn and John, Conor
Oberst, Those Dancing Days, The Dodos, Bloc Party, The Bronx, Yeah Yeah
Yeahs (Master EP), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Los Campesinos!, Sky
Larkin and more.

enjoy!
we’ve got our thermals ready and are headed back into the crypt. thank you to everyone who made our london show this week so special, we’ll surface with new noises soon we promise. see you on our final jaunt of the year with Los Campesinos and The Cribs. Wichita-tastic.
stay warm
katie
xx

Facebook page

The final action of a hectic but prosperous 2009 for Katie, Nestor and Doug will see them joining The Cribs on their UK tour in December. The band will be joining Los Campesinos! and The Slits (in Doncaster) on the quartet’s huge, end-of-year shows.

A fortnight before these shows, the band will be playing a special one-off headline show at the Hoxton Bar & Grill, East London in conjunction with Levi, as part of their 5-night stand. Support for the night comes from MPHO and Beth Jeans Houghton.

SMARTS is still available to download for free from just over here

November
19th London – Hoxton Bar & Grill – Levi’s Five Night Stand

December
2nd Birmingham – Academy w/ The Cribs
3rd London – Brixton Academy w/ The Cribs
5th Doncaster – Dome w/ The Cribs
6th Edinburgh – Corn Exchange w/ The Cribs

Team Larkin
x

THANK YOU to all the lovely folks we met whilst on tour in America with Peggy Sue.

Huge gratitude to all- whether you came to a gig, lent us an amp, turned a blind eye to seven people showering in one hotel room, brought us unpronounceable shots mid-set, fed us Superman cake or did anything else that contributed to a wonderful tour.

It was also our first experience of touring in such close quarters with another band so it was doubly fortunate that we got on so well with Peggy Sue. They’re a great live band and I’m so excited to hear their album it borders on giddy. Sickening eh? Well if I’m Lyin’, I’m Dyin’. It was amazing fun rambling around the continent as a duo of power trios, so thanks to all that enabled that to happen.

Huge props also to our tour managers Ben and Scuba Steve. There were some truly heroic drives on this tour, and we only ended up teetering on an incline beside railroad tracks by a pile of bones picked clean by a mountain lion in the middle of the night that one time. No photos of that event exist (but I SWEAR every word of the story is true), but here are some snaps from the last night of tour- our first experience of American Halloween in Chicago.

We parked outside Wrigley Field and pretended to be in Vieuphoria for a little while…

…hung out with Superdog…

…wandered the streets of Chicago enjoying Halloween houses…

…and made our way to our venue (The Whistler) where one of the barman greeted us dressed as LARRY DAVID

The doorman;

BILLY MAYS

Tour managing us had however taken its toll on Ben

A few days earlier we found a large selection of hospital scrubs in a Salvation Army in Ann Arbor, so we decided to honour Chicago and perform as the zombie Cast of ER. Pumpkins were carved and dutifully smashed and how we ever made the 7am check-in for our flight home I’ll never know. We have some exciting news as to how we’ll finish the year that will be revealed soon, until then, THANKS AGAIN Y’ALL

katie, Dr Matthews and Dr Adams

x

A grand in-depth interview with Nestor, Katie and Doug. It covers Doug remixing Johnny Foreigner, the Crypt, touring around America and Canada with Peggy Sue, Awesome Pals and the bands plans for the next 5 years.

ES: Earlier this year you encountered Nardwuar The Human Serviette. How did you all first come to discover him? Is he really that famous all the way out in Britain?

Nestor: No, no, he’s not popular there at all. Katie had this DVD that she had ordered of him, so whenever we were in London, we would all watch it together. This crazy man going around interviewing all of these really cool bands that we really liked.
Katie: I had searched for bands on the internet and came across him, and I ordered DVDs of him from the internet. It was the thing that we would throw on in London and say “Hey, come watch this guy interview Snoop Dogg!” We had asked people in Vancouver if they knew him, and someone got back to us and we spent our whole day with Nardwuar.
Doug: We tried that in Toronto with Kenny and Spenny, but nobody really knows those guys. SOMEONE must know those guys.

Read the full interview over here

Aloha,

I am currently stealing the internets in the lobby of a Hilton in Canada, the RV is parked outside and we have invaded like a plague of unshowered musical locusts. Shhh.

We played one of the loveliest gigs of our lives in Ohio the night before last, we were taken in by the amazing Austin family who fed us pasta and Superman cake (for Nestor’s 22nd birthday). We piled back into the RV and then woke up at Niagara Falls to continue celebrating with the power combo of astounding natural beauty and glow-in-the-dark mini-golf (many thanks to our driver Steve for the night-time miles). Many words about this tour will come soon, but now we must push on to the dear people of Toronto, so for now here’s some photos…

katie (and the gang)
xx
PS THANKS JOE!!

We’re pleased to announce Sky Larkin are playing a FREE show with Pulled Apart By Horses + Dance To The Radio DJs + Huw Stephens at EIGER STUDIOS in Leeds on November 5th.

Space and tickets are highly limited and you’ll need to sign up. So head over here to do so.  Naturally there is a Facebook page with a complete run down of the crossed bits and dots

Grab tickets fast

Premieres 21:00 GMT 9th October 2009

on weareskylarkin.com

Smarts was recorded in one day in Wales with our Golden Spike amigo John Goodmanson. It just so happened that for 24hrs our paths crossed, so we decided to use the time to reignite our musical flame. It’s certainly the loudest number we’ve created, so as a counter point we also recorded an acoustic version of Matador back home in our Yorkshire writing space; The Crypt (NB, an actual crypt). This version of Matador features upright bass, downright slinky drums and a hundred year old pump organ with pleasingly wobbly pipes. We invite you to download them for free and hope to see you at a show this autumn before we go into hibernation to write Sky Larkin 2.0 - Sky Larkin

Download the digital single of Smarts by clicking on the image below. All in all to celebrate a new Sky Larkin tour across mighty counties and cities of the UK and across the Atlantic to Canada and America with Katy, Rosa and Olly of Peggy Sue – see the gig list here

Art by: sinabecker.blogspot.com/

Hello world,
It’s a fine day indeed for all involved when we can finally unveil a beautiful set of American and Canadian tour dates for us, supported, and supporting (alternatively) Peggy Sue

We’ve been racking our brains trying to think of a heeeelarious pun for the name of the tour, following on from our personal best “Losky Camperlarkinos!” (our first tour ever, with Los Camp! and we all know how long ago that was).
So far we’ve got as far as Peggy Sue.S.A. If you’ve got any ideas then let us know.

Here are the dates as they stand, with more dates to add hopefully, particularly on the East Coast.

(Boston anyone?)

I actually can’t wait for these, especially the Chicago show – last show of tour, and all of our first experience of Halloween, US style. Costumes will be made on our side, so let’s see some from you as well yeah?

14 Oct |  KCRW presents @ Spaceland, Los Angeles, California
16 Oct | Hemlock, San Fransisco, California
17 Oct | TBC, Seattle, Washington
18 Oct | Neptoon Records Instore, Vancouver
18 Oct | Pub 340, Vancouver
21 Oct | Sidewalk Cafe, New York, New York
28 Oct | Cameron House, Toronto, Ontario
30 Oct | Painted Lady Detroit, Michigan
31 Oct | Halloween Party@ The Whistler, Chicago, Illinois

Here’s some video of Peggy Sue in action.

AMAZING scenes.

Byyyyee,
Love Doug.

14 May | The Great Escape Festival, Brighton
21 May | Stag And Dagger Festival, London
22 May | Stag and Dagger, Glasgow, Glasgow
14 Jul | Highbury Garage London
19 Aug | Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
26th Jun | Birmingham 02 Academy 2, Supporting Broken Social Scene
9th Jul | Sheffield Corporation, Supporting Broken Social Scene

NEWS!
First, a quick update from the Crypt.
I found this keyboard on the street in Williamsburg, and it sounds like an 80s Juno, just so Ju-No. (rofl)

Writing is going super well, and to celebrate we’re piling into the back of our (not very well) van and playing some shows round the country.
Needless to say, we’re taking some amazing bands with us, details to be announced.

Get your tickets (for some of the shows) here.

05/09 | Fell Foot Festival, Lake Windermere, Cumbria
26/09 | Bradford, The Polish Club
27/09 | Derby, The Royal
29/09 | Bristol, Cooler
30/09 | London, Cargo
02/10 | Tunbridge Wells, Forum
03/10 | Aldershot, West End Centre
05/10 | Aberdeen, Café Drummond
06/10 | Glasgow, Classic Grand
07/10 | Newcastle, Mr Lynch
10/10 | Manchester, Night and Day

And finally, 3 words.

SMARTS 21st September.

Dougx

Louise Roberts

www.louiseroberts.co.uk

Here’s some of you at Latitude at the weekend, get facebook tagging yourself.

Dougx

New gig+ excellent supports

Exeter Cavern, Thursday 6th August [tickets]