RIVER FURY’S BIO
Playing eclectic guitar-based indie pop, they have been described as a mix of The Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire, early-New Order, The Strokes and Sonic Youth.
Raw and exquisitely beautiful harmonies intermingle over driving post-punk pandemonium
Since they got together a few years back the band were plugging away on the London gig circuit, but they knew they had something that was worthy of greater listening, so locked themselves away in consecutive summers both in Wales and London.
It was there that the band were carefully crafting the songs whilst schooling themselves in classic writers. From The Cure and Joy Division to big riff bands such as Queens of The Stone Age, Foo Fighters and even the pop-psych stylings of Tame Impala and MGMT, no hook, trope or trick has been missed.
WHAT DID I DO WITH RIVER FURY?
I joined River Fury around the Summer of 2014. Like Fortnight In Florida, I found an advert on gumtree advertising for a drummer.
The advertisement read along the lines of; “label interest and festival already booked for the summer” so, of course, I was very interested in checking the band out.
They had a few rough demos on Soundcloud at the time including Jewels of The City and 21st Century Man.
I liked the songs so I applied and had an audition with the guys at a now-demolished rehearsal studio in Waterloo called Alaska Studios.
It was here where met Dan Howe (Guitar/Vocals), Pat Nutton (Guitar/Vocals) and Callum Hayes (Bass/Backing Vocals) for the first time and ran through the songs I had practised.
We played many gigs in and around London at venues such as The Good Ship (Kilburn) and The Finsbury (Manor House) as well as a festival on the outskirts of Bath.
At one gig we meet Peter Crouch and Abbey Clancy at The Good Ship as Abbey’s brother was playing with his band Judas.
After our set, Peter sang me the welsh national anthem because at the time he was playing for Stoke City FC and Mark Hughes was their manager.
Our First Festival, Margo and An Album
One of our first gigs together was at Hamswell Festival, near Bath. The festival was headlined by DJ Yoda and was pirate themed that year. The festival tent was down an extremely steep valley which was only accessible via a lift in a Landrover at a very distressing pitch.
I can’t remember how the band met Margo but we started rehearsing at Hermitage Work Studios in Haringey. It was here we started to refine the ideas for an album with the help of Margo.
After a few rehearsals and demo sessions at Hermitage, Margo wanted to record the rhythm section (bass & drums) at a residential studio and she had used the Giant Wafer Studios in Mid Wales. We managed (with a few arguments) to get the rhythm section done over a weekend for the entire album.
Through various different factors, the album took around 3/4 years to complete and was finally completed in the spring of 2018. You can find it on all the major streaming sites and is available for download and streaming from all the usual suspects such as Spotify, Amazon, Deezer and Google Music.
Here are a few videos we had made for the singles from the album.
After releasing these singles we were contacted by Ivan Marziano who had recently started his own record label in Kent called Painted Halo. He was looking for a new band to sign to his label. It was a new injection of life for the band, that felt like it was starting to wind down and grind to a halt.
So with Ivan igniting a new enthusiasm within the band for pushing the record even further with new ideas, energy and a little bit of some much-needed cash, the river’s momentum began to gather pace again. Ivan devised a plan of action to release an EP using songs from the album we had recorded. Releasing two singles (Wasteful & Your Only Comfort (Is Being Fooled) and then the EP (Five Year Plan).
The first single Wasteful was chosen by Ivan. I don’t think any of us thought that Wasteful was a track that was single-worthy when he first presented the idea of it being the first release with the label. It was quickly decided between us that we should just go with Ivan’s idea as it’s a fresh approach to something we’d all been immersed in for so long.
The plan was set. The initial goal was to get at least 10,000 streams on Spotify within the first month of the release along with a whole load of coverage from some influential blogs and radio play.
Week Two of Being Playlisted on Spotify
We managed to smash that target within the first 2 weeks of the release gaining over 20,000 streams by the end of week two and hitting 30,000 in week three.
This was down to being placed in one playlist, the influential PopFltrs – Rocking Indie playlist
We also received a lot of press coverage. Clash Magazine first premiered the track on 24th September 2018. It went on to be covered in other online blogs such as; Patchchord News, Its Not Records, Distorted Sounds, Pure Grain Audio, comeherefloyd.
Also, we recorded a music video for Wasteful at Bally Studios, Tottenham Hale. The video was recorded by Matt from MHG Music Videos. And was premiered by XS Noize.
The second single we released from the EP was Comfort Is Being Fooled. We booked in a gig with a great London promotor Lost In The Manor.
Most of the gigs Chris puts on are at The Finsbury, Manor House, which is where we performed on the 3rd November 2018. We were supported by two great bands on the night. The riotous Mur-man (London) and first-timers Knife Club (Brighton).
This time around the song was premiered on XS Noize. And was also featured in; Alfitude, IndieCentralMusic, Turn Up The Volume, Pure Grain Audio, The Starship Overflow.
The video was premiered by Already Heard and was once again shot by Matt from MHG Music Videos.
RAMSGATE MUSIC HALL
In January of 2019, Ivan from Painted Halo organised a gig for us in Ramsgate Music Hall. He had been an admirer of a record label and promoter working with Kent-based bands called Easter Island Records. We headlined the show and were supported by two groups. Tokyo Tea Room and Keplar. Later in the year, Ivan would team up with Easter Island to start promoting Tokyo Team Room and Easter Island in their joint venture called ‘A Certain Kind Records‘.
Ramsgate Music Hall Gig Poster January 2019
The gig was great, and my first in Kent. The audience was great and even wanted an unplanned encore, which we hadn’t prepared. So we just had to play a song from the set, again.
Callum and I stayed in a local Holiday Express and on the drive there we noticed an orange halo in the sky. It looked like something out of a horror film. It turned out to be light pollution from a giant greenhouse complex for tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. You can read more about it here Thanet Earth here: ‘It’s like The Twilight Zone’ Residents hit out at Thanet Earth for turning the sky yellow’.
MINI TOUR
We did a very short, 2-day tour, of two 93 Feet East and The Victoria in Birmingham. The tour was organised by Ivan through two different booking agents. Hot Vox (London) and Scruff of The Neck (Birmingham). I’m always a bit wary of playing with these companies, as the tickets to payment ratio are always terrible. It’s usually something along the lines of £8 a ticket – £2 back to the band. I’ve always thought if you can get that many people down and paying, then you should just put on your own gigs like I’ve done in the past with bands such as Orlando Seale and The Swell. It’s not a bad business model for the booking agents, you do all the promotion of getting people to the gigs and they get paid for minimal time and effort.
A LESSON – SINGLE – 2019
Dan had written a new song, that was ready in time for our minitour. They wanted to record it sometime in the summer break. However, there was a problem with this plan. I had already been booked for a European tour with the folk-rock band The Wishing Well.
They were looking franticly looking for a recording studio we could find, that wasn’t too expensive, and was easy for everyone to get to. I had a friend who was assisting an engineer in Peckham, London. At a studio called 123 Productions. The studio has played host to a number of amazing artists and albums in recent years, such as Florence and the Machine, Foals, Lady Gaga, Robyn, Daughter and Clean Bandit.
I knew Rob Wilks from playing and recording with him at Square Head Studios. We’d played and recorded together in both Orlando Seale and The Swell and Harpo Smith. I’d messaged Rob to see if he was free on the dates we had arranged and our schedules aligned perfectly.