BAANEEX

In lieu of May's podcast I'm going to witter on, somewhat selfishly, about myself. Well, not about myself, but about myself and three other people who all make musical noises at the same time.

When I was living in Cardiff I started writing for the website God Is In The TV (still do, I'm sub-editor there) and in early 2009, maybe late 2008, a CD came my way by a London based band called Muarena Helena. I reviewed it on the 15th January 2009 and said nice things about it. As is usually the case I befriended the band via my MySpace profile and also through my own musical MySpace profile, which didn't previously admit to any 'human' presence.

To my surprise, Muarena Helena - more specifically singer and lead guitarist - Joel began sending my musical profile messages via MySpace, and we can began a dialogue that ultimately lead to me sending him a CD of my some songs. In return he sent me a cover version of one of these songs (Song to Self) and eventually suggested we collaborate on something...

So, it began by him e-mailing me some musical ideas, I'd put stuff on top, e-mail it back, and the whole relay would continue until we felt we had something. We ultimately came up with 7 tracks and put them up on MySpace under the name Neuschwanstein.

In late August I moved from Brighton, where I'd been living since February, and so it was somewhat inevitable that Joel and I would meet face to face. We had a drink and he suggested we meet up and jam somewhere, potentially with Andy who had been playing bass in Muarena Helena. After I met Andy in late October this was all confirmed and we had a three piece session on November 12th. What was ultimately decided was the need for a drummer.

Sometime in late 2009 Joel and Andy got Rosie to drum, but I didn't return to the fold until a rehearsal on February 12th 2010! At this point they'd got three songs together (Magic Square, Saskatchwen and The Punk Song) and I did my best to slot my keyboard playing in here and there. Over the following sessions we came up with another five songs (Weird Dance, Football Round-Up, Hoovering Concrete, Jumpin' Chinese Restaurant and Weird Dance II) and started discussing playing live sometime in the Summer.

And so, on Wednesday 2nd June 2010, we had our first gig - and my first ever gig - as BAANEEX at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury & Islington. We wound up head-lining and eventually went on stage around 11pm, it was very nice to see that people had stayed on till the end of the evening, so we got to play to a full room who were very receptive towards our songs. I can't really judge how it went, but - currently - you can hear some recordings taken from the Buffalo Bar gig on our MySpace.

We've got another gig booked for late July, so check the MySpace regularly to find out the details as and when and we'll hopefully be playing some more dates and going on a little tour before the year is out...