Long Dead Sevens

The White Waltz & Other Stories

Beta-lactam Ring Records

About Long Dead Sevens :

The Long Dead Sevens has been a long time coming, an accident waiting to happen. As teenagers, vocalist Nick C. and guitarist/noise maker Paul collaborated, two artists producing music and imagery, always unusual, explorative and experimental. Originally forming an avant-garde punk band, and always interested in using song form as the expression of art and ideas, they gradually developed a strong writing partnership. Later, amongst other events, they could be found traveling the London underground, choosing random platform waiting rooms to improvise song and sound to random audiences.
Then there was silence. It was 15 years later when they met up again - the only obvious course of action was to begin making music again. One afternoon of improvisation generated most of the basic ideas that ultimately led to the creation of The White Waltz and Other Stories. Paul then began working on these fragments with Jenny, a classical pianist and composer. The two had been composing together for many years, in bands and as composers of music and sound for experimental theatre and contemporary dance.
The seeds grew, but more ingredients were needed. Paul took the work in progress to another collaborator from the past, Ian Turner. Ian had played bass guitar for Psychedeliasmith, a rock/dance band who had collaborated with Fat Boy Slim. Ian's passion for the delta blues and bluegrass music tied in nicely with The Long Dead Sevens’ deliberate referencing of American culture.
The next step was to bring in Jenny’s brother Nick H. on drum kit, bringing with him an organic, evolving percussion.
Paul carefully pieced all the elements together and produced demo versions of the completed concept, working individually with each band member until the songs for the album were complete. Remarkably, at this stage the band had never been in the same room together, some members never having even met!
In stepped Beta-lactam Ring Records who were aware of Paul and Jenny’s previous work on the arts/junk band album ‘Rubbish Music’ by the arts collective ‘Pickleherring’. Beta-lactam Ring Records offered to release The Long Dead Sevens debut album, after hearing some of the demo versions on ‘Myspace’.
The next step was to re-record final versions for the release. Paul’s inclusion of noise sculpture, found sound, junk/home-made instruments, and the aleatoric nature of some of the compositional processes was partly inspired by 20th century sonic exploration - these influences can be traced right back to Pierre Schaeffer, musique concrete, John Cage and more recently the work of leading avant-garde noise makers/ song writers Einstuerzende Neubauten (Collapsing New Buildings). With this in mind Paul cautiously approached Einstuerzende Neubauten’s producer Boris Wilsdorf to ask if he would produce the album. Boris loved the demos and immediately agreed.
Finally, the band all met together for the first time just before going into the recording studio. The final piece of the puzzle was to add backing vocalists, the chamber choir Cantemus, and Sarah Miller, also currently touring as a backing vocalist for Tony Christie!
Four rehearsals later they spent ten days recording the album in England with engineer Matt Fisher.
Paul and Nick C. then travelled to Berlin, taking all the recordings with them, and spent two weeks at ‘The Bunker’, intensively producing the tracks with Boris ‘Mephisto’ Wilsdorf, who weaved his fabulous magic. The Long Dead Sevens were born.

About the White Waltz & Other Stories:

Produced and mastered in Berlin by the respected Boris “Mephisto” Wilsdork at “The Bunker.” Somewhere betwixt the brooding, 10 gallon groan of 16 Horsepower; the baroque drawl of Blue Ruin; the whiskey smell of Bad Livers and The Bad Seeds’ beef scented brand of western gothic hangs a wanted poster offering reward, dead or alive, for the atmospheric, detailed twang of Long Dead Sevens. Oh death and grief and sorrow and murder shine like a tin star polished with the bullets of Nick Cliff’s baritone croon. Yet deep in the black heart that lies beneath banjo, fiddle, slide guitar, piano and derringer; somewhere near the unmarked grave of the coward Robert Ford; in a place that smells of salt peter and rancid tonic, the high lonesome is joined by the growling din of collapsing new buildings. A theatrical steam-industrial moan echoes through the mesa heralding an age not quite ancient and not quite modern. Colts and Mausers unite to shoot ‘em up in this dark, enveloping, weirding wild west operetta. Yippee Ki-Yay!

Track Listings and Times:

1. Pigface
2. God's Own Movie
3. The Blue Waltz
4. Mother's Song
5. Church
6. The White Waltz
7. Seven Levels
8. Our Lady Damned
9. Riversong (He Set Me Free)
10. The Black Waltz/The Red Waltz

Check out the Long Dead Sevens myspace!
and thier official site here!

Listen If You Like:
Nick Cave, Einstuerzende Neubauten, 16 Horsepower