For the final chapter our Kaleide record, I (Katie) travelled to Upstate New York to collaborate with film-maker Ashley Connor. Together we made a video for the song ‘Tiny Heist’ using hand-made visual effects, fireworks from across state lines and this premise;

“Young women in Upstate New York conjure up the spirits of an old whaling town. Lost in time, surrounded by the Hudson River and overtaken by winter, they leave their souls to chance, propagating small victories to stoke the momentum of their journey. All change ’til snow melt, all change ’til the thaw.”

TINY HEIST
Directed by Ashley Connor
Music by Sky Larkin
Featuring Katie Harkin and Matt Charland

Assistant: Zia Anger

Special thanks: Melissa Auf Der Maur, Tony Stone, Mike Adams, Ed O’Brien and Matt Charland


It’s been a productive hibernation and the wheels are turning for new Sky Larkin sounds in 2012, we owe you a more in-depth catch-up but for now here’s some tidbits about how we’ve been hiding in plain sight….


I spent over a hundred shows playing keyboards on stage with Wild Beasts in 24 countries in 2011, very happy occurrences which you may read more about here and have a look into here






I met Patrick Wolf by complete chance in a car park and ended up singing on his beautiful album Lupercalia  (released in June ‘11) that afternoon, what luck. I also composed sounds for animated columns to dance to for British artist Helen Marten’s ‘Dust and Piranhas’ piece for the Serpentine Gallery Pavillion.


As well as shaking up the world of literary academia, Nestor toured the UK and Europe drumming for local hero Napoleon IIIrd (he and I both played on Napoleon’s tremendous record ‘Christiania’) as well tour managing fellow Brits Young Legionnaire, Star Slinger and Johnny Foreigner all over the place. There’s no keeping us from the road.

Napoleon IIIrd flickr link –
Jofo/YNGLGNNR flickr link

Keep warm, we’ll be back after the thaw, and thank you as ever for lending your ears.


Katie

x

Music by Telekinesis (Michael Benjamin Lerner), video cobbled together by Katie.
http://www.myspace.com/telekinesismusic
http://telekinesismusic.com/

As we welcome ten we owe nine a few words.

(ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE BE WARNED: THIS IS A REALLY LONG BLOG…BUT A YEAR IS A LONG TIME)

We realise that today is the 20th of January and more organised types write these things in November, but we’ve been busy for a good reason. Trust.
But we couldn’t just leave things unwritten as thanks to many people, we did a lot of living last year.
Thanks to everyone that invested in us in whatever capacity, it’s been a pleasure to recall the countless way we’ve met kindness this year.

Additionally we’d also like to extend non-thanks to
- Katie’s wisdom teeth.
- An RV rental company that doesn’t accept cash and left us stranded (you fuckers).
-The Noro Virus (that was 2008 but we’re still bitter about it).
-That guy in Edinburgh.
-Traffic.

But I must stress they were all tiny little flies in the ointment at best.
We’ve selected a few choice cuts of 2009, in no logical order. Here goes…

- Firstly, foremostly and most shit-our-pants excitedly; our debut album was released on Wichita Recordings. We had a party at the ever-awesome Brudenell Social Club in Leeds to celebrate.

- Huw Stephens put his name to our album release UK tour, with support by the ever-able party-equines Pulled Apart By Horses.

- We went on our first headline tour of Europe, taking pals Johnny Foreigner along for the ride.

- Our hire van broke down 90mins into said tour.

- We went to IKEA in actual Sweden and had actual Swedish (well, IKEA) meatballs.

- We ran out of gas in the desert in Utah and got saved by a Mormon called Phil

- We saw a man poo in the street in Oslo. Later that night a man asked if he could watch Nestor pee.

- We hid from Hells Angels in Copenhagen with Metronomy.

- We kept the habit of a lifetime and went on tour with Los Campesinos for the fourth time (around North America).

- We accidentally found the most powerful t-shirt shop ever in Aldershot, UK.

-We played the largest UK venue in Larkin gig history, Brixton Academy supporting The Cribs.

-A man in New York paid Katie $20 to play the saddest song she knew.

-We kept the habit of a lifetime and went on tour with Los Campesinos! for the fifth time (around the UK with The Cribs, and for one night only, The Slits).

-We played glow in the dark mini golf near Niagara Falls. Oh and we saw Niagara Falls.

-Nestor broke a cymbal clean in half in the pouring rain at Latitude Festival.

-We started a new habit and went on tour around North America with Peggy Sue (now official label mates).

-Our American tour manager Ben drank every brand of energy drink under the sun, including a Californian one formulated for women called “Go Girl!”

-Christoph in Germany made a Lego version of our album cover!

-We met Adam Buxton AND Newton Faulkner AT THE SAME TIME.

-We squatted in the corridor of a hostel in New York for about 14 hours when we got screwed by an RV rental company. With all our gear.

-We played with Los Campesinos! in Portland on Katie’s birthday and went to a vintage video games arcade bar afterwards, pleasingly called ‘Barcade”.

- We lost our dignity at a Nu-metal clubnight in Aberdeen with Copy Haho.

- We visited the real life Golden Spike in Utah. Ranger Ken, the gift shop lady and us were the only people for miles around.

- Inbetween touring, in order to make new noise we took up residency to in the crypt of a Victorian church in Yorkshire (the church is mentioned in a Bronte novel apparently, literature detectives.)

-We went to LA, home of the beautiful people, and got very muddy. (This is a bucket of Hollywood grade mud.)

-We hung out with Nardwuar the Human Serviette in vancouverbritishcolumbiacanada thanks to twitter!

-We drove (and just about survived) the beautiful highway 101 with Peggy Sue. Only 1/3 of us was sick down the side of the RV on the windy roads.

-We stopped off along the 101 to hang out with these seals.

-We played the zombified cast of ER for Halloween in Chicago with Peggy Sue

-We completed the triple crown at La Botanique in Belgium when we headlined the small room (having played the middle room with Los Campesinos! and the large room with Conor Oberst).

-We played the court house of a small town in Ohio and had to wait for traffic court to finish so we could soundcheck.
Joe and his family in Ohio adopted us, ran our merch stand and fed us superman birthday cake.

-We snuck into a Nintendo party in New York and ate all their tiny food.

-Due to a broken card reader, we got locked outside our hotel in deepest darkest France at early o’clock, the whole time being serenaded by a troupe of Spanish folkers who were also stuck.

-Denise Van Outen and Richard Hammond were outside our gig in Tunbridge Wells (shooting the Morrisons Christmas ad).

-At the end of The Cribs tour we all went to a karaoke bar in Edinburgh, Neil Campesinos! made a convincing Beastie Boy and Gareth Campesinos! sang a Beautiful South song. One of Copy Haho got thrown out.

-We had to drive directly through protesting racists to get to our gig on John Peel day in Manchester. The event was well attended despite the hostile mood of the city that day, thanks again to everyone that made it.

-We recorded a single in a day (the free download ‘Smarts’) in Wales in a room once used by Black Sabbath. Apparently there’s pentagrams drawn on the walls by Ozzy under the soundproofing \m/

- We played a festival on a cliff in Cornwall and got to look out to sea whilst playing. Dreamy.

- Mike of Mechanical Owl drove us around some European festivals and we invented Gin-cendiaries and Rum Grenades. Tasty. Dangerous. (Here is a photo of Mike unable to comprehend the sheer awesome-osity of the Channel Tunnel).

- We played the Wichita showcase at SXSW and Katie threw up.

And at the end of the year, this happened

Ta itunes!

Plus lots and lots and lots and lots of driving.

We ended the year with a New Years Eve gig at Nation of Shopkeepers in Leeds, messy messy good times.

ta very much, there’s more pictures of us in various stages of undress from 2009 at http://myspace.com/skylarkinskylarkin if you need more evidence.

we are lucky sods and hope to have even more fun with you all in 2010.
pretty massive news soon this way comes

Katie, Nestor and Doug

x

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

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

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

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