the amber herd
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the amber herd

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"the amber herd - golden fleece - thursday 5th febuary"

It's definitely a pub gig night tonight; the promise of a cosy room and a chilled Guinness keeps us going through the ankle-high snow up Mansfield Road, and the Golden Fleece's genial atmosphere is, thankfully, the perfect antidote to the big freeze outside.

Resplendent with washes of Joni Mitchell-esque introspection - 'Lightbulbs', for one, is a modern take on Mitchell's 'California' - Flo Rowland's lean, almost rushed set belies the depth of a regular on the Worcester grunge circuit, while her giggling commentary's a welcome relief from the elusive stage shows of many a singer-songwriter. A steady opener to the evening then, and a sign of things to come.

You'll remember it's only a week since we last saw The Amber Herd - so effortlessly was their usual set transferred to the acoustic-only confines of the Loggerheads caves, their name was scrawled straight in the TC little black book and plans made to see their next gig as soon as it was confirmed. It's convenient (or fate, depending on how you look at it) then, that they're shoehorned into a Golden Fleece headline slot so soon afterwards, and as we settle down by the corner radiator, it's evident their Loggerheads set wasn't a mere flash in the pan; the technicolor early New Order on which they pride themselves gets a shot in the arm in these minimal settings, with tracks like mid-set highlight 'Bonfires' and soon to be re-recorded closer 'Stage Fright' stretching the venue's PA to its limit. It's a fine, polished performance, a half-hour of both blissfully melancholic indie and uplifting stripped-back folk and comes to a sprawling, open-mouthed finish with an almost Velvet Underground-esque wall of sound, acoustics flitting between prog keyboard stabs and all buried under Neil Beards's darkly overdriven Mary Chain guitar. Nottingham's best kept secret? We won't tell if you don't...

The Amber Herd played:

Foot-Tapper
Apple
Thursday
Bonfires
Magnolia
Catching Time
Stage Fright
- http://www.thiscitymagazine.co.uk/


"wire and wool Friday 30th The Loggerheads"

And... we're back. For the more attentive of you out there, you may have noticed the relatively hushed nature of the website for the past few weeks - unfortunately exams, illness and the typically quiet January gig calendar conspired against us meaning that, in what is now rapidly approaching February, we at TC Towers are finally able to offer you a belated Happy Christmas and New Years wishes. Resolutions still being kept on the back of a postage stamp to the usual address, if you will.

We return to you on the last Friday of the month and the very first of (hopefully) many Wire and Wool mini-festivals, in the cavernous surroundings of Cliff Road's Loggerheads Pub; we're not usually ones for wiling away bitter Friday evenings in inner-city caves, but with a bill as extensive and, perhaps more importantly, local as tonight's, it was a chance not to be missed........



.....Meanwhile, back outdoors The Amber Herd take to the erm... cave for a slow-burning set of dense and atmospheric post-rock, at times hushed, at others fist-clenchingly anthemic. Far from the Fly-era U2 it evokes on record, 'Stage Fright' here becomes a scene of almost Nick Drake-esque storytelling, ditching the soulless drum machine for a pair of well-worn bongos, while the sprawling Smashing Pumpkins likes of 'Magnolia' and 'Bonfires' fill the sandy room.

The night, at least for us, ends with the brutal reverb of Apparatus of Sleep, whose arresting IDM/shoegaze fusion and reverb-heavy sound veers from a laptop-wielding My Bloody Valentine to a dub Fields, via Broken Social Scene and Glasvegas. Their set consists of them knocking seven shades out of the main room while somewhere precariously balancing saccharine acoustics on top, and concludes with singer Stoney launching oranges at his stood-up, overdriven guitar from the other end of the room. It's a fitting end to a varied and exciting evening, and we're already looking forward to this time next month.
- http://www.thiscitymagazine.co.uk/


Discography

A 10 track CD of original songs, ‘TAILS OF WASPS’, was finished in 2006 and features ‘Stage Fright’ and ‘Apple’ and others from the current live set.

In 2008 The Amber Herd recorded ‘Magnolia’ for the Neptune Pink Floyd website ‘DOUBLE CORE’ originals album project and a cover of Floyd’s ‘The Gnome’ for Volume 3 of the NPF tribute series. ‘Double Core’ has just been released and is a 60-odd minute continuous piece featuring tracks from bands in the USA, Croatia, Sweden and the UK, to name but four. The full ten-minute version of ‘Magnolia’ forms the centrepiece of this album.

In February 2009 The Amber Herd entered the studio to record their first real single release - a re-imagined version of ‘Stage Fright’ backed with the formidable ‘Foot-Tapper’, which is now freely available worldwide on self-release, and is getting airplay on BBC Radio Nottingham.

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Bio

The Amber Herd formed in 2006 and includes ex-members of Sheffield’s Beulah Kop and Nottingham’s Wide Eyed Wonder. The band formed following a call for tracks for a Pink Floyd cover project CD and live shows by the Neptune Pink Floyd (NPF) website. Having recorded a couple of tracks which were included on the CD, the band were asked to play two big Pink Floyd tribute shows in Autumn ’06, in Brighton at the Komedia and at Glasgow’s Jumpin’ Jacks, supporting some of the country’s best Floyd tribute acts (Breathe, Us Not Them and Darkside).

As the recorded tracks and gigs had been so well received and the band had a large amount of original songs, they decided to drop the cover versions, and develop their own material

The Amber Herd; Widescreen atmospheric rock with a bit of trippy mellifluous acousticity. Notts-based five piece who’ve spent the last 3yrs clawing their way through the soft white underbelly of the local Nottingham scene and are now sliding their way up through the ether to deposit themselves somewhere near the stars....

The Amber Herd have been busy over the last twelve months, playing venues in Nottingham and further afield with some great bands such as Arms and Sleepers (USA) Jacobs Stories, That Petrol Emotion, Made of Leaves, Model Morning, Sound of Guns, White Belt Yellow tag, Hijak Oscar, The Silver Tongues, Fat Digester, BlackBud, Satnam's Tash, Breathe, Curtis Whitefinger, Lisa de'Ville and Ying.

2009 has been great for us so far and we've played some really well- received shows at The Loggerheads, The Golden Fleece and a headline show at Seven, Support slots at The Bodega Social And The Rescue Rooms and even a 2hr set on the Restaurant circuit!!

We've just recorded our debut, double A side single- Stage Fright/ Foot Tapper at Stuck On A Name studios in Nottingham soon to be followed by the recording of the follow up single and indeed the Album!.

We also recorded a live session for Dean Jackson at BBC Radio Nottingham on 11th March and Magnolia from this session was played out on The Beat on 14th March as well as the worldwide debut radio play of our single. The single got its second radio play on 30th March on John Holmes' show, again on BBC Radio Nottingham.