The Clientele

Event information

The Clientele first formed in the early 1990s in the backwoods of suburban Hampshire, playing together as kids at school remote from any kind of music scene, but hypnotized by the magical strangeness of Galaxie 500 and Felt and the psych pop of Love and the Zombies. During a pub conversation the band collectively voted that it was OK to be influenced by Surrealist poetry but not OK to have any shouting or blues guitar solos. From that moment on they put their stamp on a kind of eerie, distanced pure pop, stripped to its essentials and recorded quickly to 4 track analogue tape.

These recordings were released as lovingly packaged 7" singles at the
tail-end of the 90s, and compiled as the millennium ended into the debut album, 'Suburban Light', now hailed as one of the finest records of that decade. From the faded pop art of 'Suburban Light' came a move into the fog with the 2nd LP, 'The Violet Hour', released in 2003. An attempt to create a deeper, more mysterious sound, it was an archetypal Clientele record: hypnotic, self-enclosed, meticulously creating its own world.

The Clientele re-invented their music with Strange Geometry (2005) and God Save the Clientele (2007); Brian O'Shaughnessy (My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream) and Mark Nevers produced (Lambchop), and El Records legend Louis Philippe provided typically gorgeous string arrangements. The sound was bigger, brighter, and clearer, MacLean's ringing, classically-influenced guitar style and James Hornsey's melodic bass combining to create a different kind of depth and atmosphere for the newly sparkling songs, which now came complete with crossover appeal; incongruously, one of them even featured in the Keanu Reeves / Sandra Bullock weepie, "The Lake House".

Released to rave reviews in the UK and the US, their final album 'Bonfires on the Heath' was in a sense a return to the Clientele's roots; the dreamlike suburban landscapes first encountered in the early singles, their trippy sense of menace stronger.

Instantly identifiable The Clientele sound like no one else - although they are cited as an influence by contemporary bands as diverse as the War on Drugs, Panda Bear and the Fleet Foxes. The band have played only one gig in the UK since a sold out show at the ICA in 2010, however, interest in the Clientele has remained strong with last year's reissue of their debut album being awarded a 9.1 score by Pitchfork, rumours that they are recording again and an upcoming 'best of' compilation album.

- Orson Absence, Carshalton Beeches, 2nd June 2015

"A perfectly realized amalgam of time, place, sound, and subject matter ... music that is unfailingly gorgeous" - Pitchfork - best reissue, 9.1

"A twilit suburb of English pop, as though a young TS Eliot had fronted The Zombies." - Uncut

"Moments of majesty, mystery and magic" - The Independent 4/5

http://www.theclientele.co.uk

MARK FRY
Singer, songwriter and painter Mark Fry is best known for his 1972 debut album Dreaming with Alice, recorded in Italy when he was just nineteen. Rediscovered in recent years, Alice has achieved the status of a psych-folk classic, with original copies of the album changing hands for thousands of pounds.

Encouraged by friends, Mark returned to recording in 2008 after a break of 36 years with an album of new songs entitled Shooting The Moon. Two years later he teamed up with Dorset-based The A. Lords for a further album, I Lived In Trees, released in 2011. A rare performer, Mark played three sell-out concerts in Tokyo in 2013. He last appeared in London in September 2014.

"Can't stop listening to this album", said Lauren Laverne of his most recent release, the elegiac South Wind, Clear Sky (Second Language, 2014).

http://www.markfry.co.uk

THE HANGING STARS
Featuring members of The Eighteenth Day Of May, The See See and Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards, London quintet The Hanging Stars are a loose collective whose transatlantic influences blend 60s Americana with their pastoral English folk roots. The missing link between the California desert sun and the grey skies of London Town, they bring soulful fuel to what is a gloriously fluid psychedelic tapestry.

"You'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just unearthed a rare deep cut from the late sixties / early seventies boom of psychedelia-infused Americana." - The Line of Best Fit

http://www.thehangingstars.com