nEiLo
Well-Known Member
This Sunday, at Lazybird, Peter Jackson presents: QUEEN KONG
Doors at 9pm
Tax: 5 Euro
Peter Jackson on the Decks
www.lazybird.org
Listen: http://artists.cpu.ie/bands/337/index.php
QUEEN KONG Bio:
Queen Kong meet their Waterloo with The Leech. This, as John Astin would have said, is IT; The finale, the endgame, the last call. Queen Kong are releasing their new CD "The Leech". Never ones to underplay something, the project was announced a few weeks back with much fanfare by the posting of a short video, not unlike a trailer for a Hollywood blockbuster, on
www.freakscene.com/queenkong.htm.
The trailer set the Internet music forums, dubbed a moronic inferno by band members, ablaze as people tried to make sense of it all. As a result of the trailer the band have been asked to contribute to a DVDproject later in the year, but for now, synth-player David Jeremiah wants to proceed on the carefully mapped plan for promoting The Leech.
"We very consciously set out to create the impression, if only in our own heads and on a very small scale, that our CD coming out will be similar to a major film being released"
And to an extent, that is what they have achieved, with the trailer, and the bands quasi-legal postering campaigns, you do get the feeling that release of The Leech is nothing short of an Event. However, we all know how turgid, hackneyed and disappointing over-hyped cineplex duds can prove, so Queen Kong had better make sure they deliver A New Hope, and not a Phantom Menace. David responds reassuringly,
"We spent the best part of a year, 5 years if you count man-hours working on this, and when you eventually hear the music you'll realise understand what our work has been about.
Outside the band we deliberately sought out the most talented and imaginative people we could to help put this together. David Gordon worked like a dog on our videos, and we should probably be in prison for the pressure we put Colin Murphy under to make the enhanced part of the CD, but they both came up trumps because they are geniuses,as well as raising the bar considerably for ourselves in terms of work rate and creativity.
In the last few years, much has been heard about the music industry dying, merging and morphing into a handful of superpowers, which are slowly buying up all the minor resistance. Were all aware that the singles charts rarely reflect the tastes of a music-listening public, but instead prove the power of publicity. The introduction of widespread file sharing was quickly quashed, leaving Apple & Co to sweep up the download market. These days it seems clear that to reach a mass audience, you must first buy into the rules of the industry. There is no devil to sell your soul to any more, only shareholders. Those that tread outside this path do so with the knowledge that many others will romp down the road to success simply because of the size of their bank balances.
Queen Kong, as ever, defy this luxury-packaged wisdom. The manufacture, packaging and sale of their CD, The Leech, was done with the only money changing hands being used on materials. Even more daring is the inclusion of every track theyve ever made. Usually, when an artist ploughs through their back catalogue, their choices are restricted to the weirdest B-sides, or the radio-friendly singles, never providing more than a glimpse of the full picture.
Ruby Moore speaks of the significance of the CD to herself. The Leech, to me, is simply a continuation of my personal rejection of the 9-5 society, a departure from the rat-race. To put all of our material on one disc with minimal packaging, and then sell it for the same price as an EP, must seem like commercial suicide to most. The release and sale of music has been in the hands of the record companies for too long. I think this release is a far more realistic approach to how music should be distributed. Its a shame we have to charge for the disk at all.
The groups imminent relocation to Dublin is the culmination of the inevitable. The band seem almost bewildered at the constant requests to play in the capital, and the move is more to save them the constant travelling than a desertion of Cork City. Ive been living in Cork for the last few years, says Ruby, and coming from London, I found it a beautiful size, more like a big village than anything else. But its also much more than that, because its incredibly vibrant, especially for its size and population. Hopefully well be able to turn people nationwide on to other Cork bands, like Violent Jack, The Loser Lounge, The Little Band That Could. If theres one thing Ill miss, itll be the constant eruption of mini-music-scenes musical ideas in this city are just so healthy
The plan, on relocations is to hunt down every venue in the city, from grand halls to tiny pubs, and play them all. Constantly. Then to invite their friends from Cork for a gig or two.
Amy Stephenson speaks of what The Leech means to her. Its a loaded title, something that we decided on after much deliberation. The Leech is that something that sucks everything out of you, leaving you lifeless and dry. This works on a grand, global scale, through war and politics, right down to the personal level, people you know, jobs you have to do, problems that worry you until you spend all your time feeding this leech, making it happy, just to get a little peace. I was raised as part of a very judicious religion that dictated heavily on matters that most would consider to be beyond the concern of religion, from the clothes they consider appropriate to wear, to the friends you keep. This means that the term leech has perhaps a greater resonance for me that most. But I think that everyone has their own leech in one form or another, so youll all be able toidentify with that.
Doors at 9pm
Tax: 5 Euro
Peter Jackson on the Decks
www.lazybird.org
Listen: http://artists.cpu.ie/bands/337/index.php
QUEEN KONG Bio:
Queen Kong meet their Waterloo with The Leech. This, as John Astin would have said, is IT; The finale, the endgame, the last call. Queen Kong are releasing their new CD "The Leech". Never ones to underplay something, the project was announced a few weeks back with much fanfare by the posting of a short video, not unlike a trailer for a Hollywood blockbuster, on
www.freakscene.com/queenkong.htm.
The trailer set the Internet music forums, dubbed a moronic inferno by band members, ablaze as people tried to make sense of it all. As a result of the trailer the band have been asked to contribute to a DVDproject later in the year, but for now, synth-player David Jeremiah wants to proceed on the carefully mapped plan for promoting The Leech.
"We very consciously set out to create the impression, if only in our own heads and on a very small scale, that our CD coming out will be similar to a major film being released"
And to an extent, that is what they have achieved, with the trailer, and the bands quasi-legal postering campaigns, you do get the feeling that release of The Leech is nothing short of an Event. However, we all know how turgid, hackneyed and disappointing over-hyped cineplex duds can prove, so Queen Kong had better make sure they deliver A New Hope, and not a Phantom Menace. David responds reassuringly,
"We spent the best part of a year, 5 years if you count man-hours working on this, and when you eventually hear the music you'll realise understand what our work has been about.
Outside the band we deliberately sought out the most talented and imaginative people we could to help put this together. David Gordon worked like a dog on our videos, and we should probably be in prison for the pressure we put Colin Murphy under to make the enhanced part of the CD, but they both came up trumps because they are geniuses,as well as raising the bar considerably for ourselves in terms of work rate and creativity.
In the last few years, much has been heard about the music industry dying, merging and morphing into a handful of superpowers, which are slowly buying up all the minor resistance. Were all aware that the singles charts rarely reflect the tastes of a music-listening public, but instead prove the power of publicity. The introduction of widespread file sharing was quickly quashed, leaving Apple & Co to sweep up the download market. These days it seems clear that to reach a mass audience, you must first buy into the rules of the industry. There is no devil to sell your soul to any more, only shareholders. Those that tread outside this path do so with the knowledge that many others will romp down the road to success simply because of the size of their bank balances.
Queen Kong, as ever, defy this luxury-packaged wisdom. The manufacture, packaging and sale of their CD, The Leech, was done with the only money changing hands being used on materials. Even more daring is the inclusion of every track theyve ever made. Usually, when an artist ploughs through their back catalogue, their choices are restricted to the weirdest B-sides, or the radio-friendly singles, never providing more than a glimpse of the full picture.
Ruby Moore speaks of the significance of the CD to herself. The Leech, to me, is simply a continuation of my personal rejection of the 9-5 society, a departure from the rat-race. To put all of our material on one disc with minimal packaging, and then sell it for the same price as an EP, must seem like commercial suicide to most. The release and sale of music has been in the hands of the record companies for too long. I think this release is a far more realistic approach to how music should be distributed. Its a shame we have to charge for the disk at all.
The groups imminent relocation to Dublin is the culmination of the inevitable. The band seem almost bewildered at the constant requests to play in the capital, and the move is more to save them the constant travelling than a desertion of Cork City. Ive been living in Cork for the last few years, says Ruby, and coming from London, I found it a beautiful size, more like a big village than anything else. But its also much more than that, because its incredibly vibrant, especially for its size and population. Hopefully well be able to turn people nationwide on to other Cork bands, like Violent Jack, The Loser Lounge, The Little Band That Could. If theres one thing Ill miss, itll be the constant eruption of mini-music-scenes musical ideas in this city are just so healthy
The plan, on relocations is to hunt down every venue in the city, from grand halls to tiny pubs, and play them all. Constantly. Then to invite their friends from Cork for a gig or two.
Amy Stephenson speaks of what The Leech means to her. Its a loaded title, something that we decided on after much deliberation. The Leech is that something that sucks everything out of you, leaving you lifeless and dry. This works on a grand, global scale, through war and politics, right down to the personal level, people you know, jobs you have to do, problems that worry you until you spend all your time feeding this leech, making it happy, just to get a little peace. I was raised as part of a very judicious religion that dictated heavily on matters that most would consider to be beyond the concern of religion, from the clothes they consider appropriate to wear, to the friends you keep. This means that the term leech has perhaps a greater resonance for me that most. But I think that everyone has their own leech in one form or another, so youll all be able toidentify with that.
