Water Pageant
Oxford, United Kingdom | Established. Jan 01, 2012 | SELF
Music
Press
...before we witness the show-stealing performance of the night with WATER PAGEANT at Fusion Arts, tonight playing as a duo and creating a pensive, haunting atmosphere with an understated and frankly gorgeous form of folk-pop that occasionally reminds us of The Low Anthem – mainly for Nick Tingay’s sweet, almost keening voice – and is deceptively passionate for all its innate stillness. - Nightshift
The endless change of textural colour from Water Pageant, playing ahead of their Oxford Punt set, is a headrush as much as a questioning of the voices inside your own head. A fragmentation that for once feels warranted as these starlit elegiacs teeter against the crossover loop pedal, electric guitar and Moog piano sample triggering, with wishes for the wind to blow the city into space. It’s a real trip of a sound, picking up where Chicagoans Zelienople left off and My Bloody Valentine signed the envelope with some spilled claret. There are no definites, only destinations ahead; let’s hope it’s not underwater OX4. - Nightshift
Two thirds of Water Pageant have called in sick tonight, so it’s just singer Nick Tingay and his guitar opening the show. But even without the rest of the band’s understated backing – particularly Lizzy McBain’s vocals – Nick’s voice is something to marvel at, a quavering, occasionally keening instrument in itself, with a proneness to drama at times, one that will inevitably draw comparisons to Neil Young and Jeff Buckley, but in reality closer to The Low Anthem’s Ben Knox Miller. His songs, each resolutely downbeat, feel like tender lullabies, but lullabies to send infants into slumber by way of a whole heap of heartache. - Nightshift
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Bio
WATER PAGEANT are a boy/girl duo from Oxford and have recently concluded work on their first full length album.
Like a sped up Mazzy Star or slowed down Shins on a discoloured Sony Walkman cassette player, they specialise in a realm that lurks somewhere between alt-folk and 80s synth dreamscape. Seemingly pretty on the surface dive a little deeper and their lyrics betray a darker side of singed dreams and yearned for pasts. They’re reaching out their arms to you but are they pleading for rescue or beckoning you into their majestic horror?
Having previously played & toured with RALFE BAND, songwriter Nick Tingay formed WATER PAGEANT during the dying embers of 2012 when he was visited upon by a Shamanistic courier who suggested it might be time. He has since closeted himself away and devoted time to his own musical creatures & endeavours, the crystallisation of which forms this new collection of songs: OUTLINES.
The collection of 12 songs were predominantly recorded at home in Oxford over the last 3 to 4 years and the album was produced, mixed & mastered in studios in and around Oxford & London throughout summer 2015. They hope to release their debut album toward the end of the year / early 2016 no doubt followed by some intensive group therapy.
Band Members
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