A (love) letter from Manchester
"The sun set heavy, sobered our kids eyes to the concrete truth. 4 sad eyed puppy dogs; Tommy G Lungs, Jeau Manningi, Ellery Juicier James and the kid Van kati rolled as a pack, after a year spent crying and fighting there skinny firsts played out heavy pop. Go tell fire to the mountain, a funny thing to say to friends, a story of lost brothers looking for a place to call home. To not feel at home in the dirt of the wild wild west, a neo western for stray dogs and little cats. It was never about anonymity, mystery. Narcissism seems to have become such a cultural norm that if a kid doesn't care to publish his face, print his name and publish his biography then they pin you up for the easy way out. Go Tell Fire had a story, we just didn't know how to tell it. I have nothing to say, so I’m saying it.
So we put all shit into establishing Play Heavy Pop, our monthly residency in an outlet café. It became our first attempt at creating an environment we felt ya couldn't find in most night time dives, a place we call home. to pay top dollar to face expensive drink, real wild neo hipyipies (hipster; yuppies) worrying about their expensive shoes, their hair, real self conscious, you spend 3 years hanging around in it and it make you want to start spitting blood in their sterile faces. And then yr alternatives are meat heads in sparkly shirts groping tangerine queens or stinky lil dub step anarcho-punks squatting in their pants weighed down by all the bull shit that keeps talking out their asses. On another fucking level.
Basically the kids and kings behind the LYF are all people who didn't subscribe to any of these (somewhat quickly and ill considered sterotypes), we want to enjoy ourselves and live as authentic and free as lil puppy dogs in the yard. We killed An Outlets PLAY HEAVY POP because all the cats we were trying to escape from started turning up, pissing on our fire with their arms folded and their faces cynical. The first couple of months were real swell, I say we got to number 3 before the atmosphere grew sour.
The only intent we have is to allow the things we create to uphold whatever qualities they have, without glossing and polishing them in an attempt to try and sell them to an ever spectacle sedated audience. The LYF aspires to create things that have a genuine connection with people. And if they connect with it then its there’s for the taking. And If they don't, can go cry into their “blog” or look the other way. I’ve heard talk that WU LYF bangs out a cynical marketing technique, but all we have ever done is presented and created things in a way in which we, as four 19/20 years olds would want to see them. Weve always been more interested in the shop that has no window, has a buzzer to get in, than the shop that is spewing out neon $houts of “BUY ME BUY ME” “WANT ME WANT ME” “NEED ME NEED ME” yah dig me? You can’t always get what you want, but you try sometimes and you might get what you need.
Anyway, back to this lil story all about how my lyf got flipped, turned upside down. Ellery got the slow boat to Marseille with his lover girl to go do some crimes of passion in front of girls at 2007 MIDI festival. Now his 2 year old son wanted to go look see where the magic happened; a secret garden in Hyres. We are pretty free in the L Y F, i.e didn't really fell the need/ wanna go push our seeds to apathetic audiences around the summer festival run, just to expand popularity, I mean we planning to make a life out of this game not just the months new flavor. So we decided to make a lil holiday of it; 40 hours in a metal box on wheels to 4 hours on a French beach is ratio that was only remedied by a cathartic 45-minuet release on stage. We killed each other several times over the trip but came out grinning our crooked teeth.
Riding real wild waves of hype has never been our sport of choice, so we ignored the circus, declining to become the latest attraction in the ol big top, dropping anchor to what we held as real. So we stopped the game and started to work towards laying out our lil tale in full Technicolor. Using the initial currency from the LYF 12” we set to make a home of our own; We done the studio experience and found it sterilized your soul. And man that's all we got. The stagnant airs of professionalism blowing through an engineers conditioning aint they way the LYF role. So we set sail in search of a rawness, an empty cave where reverb explodes the smallest clap. Guy dropped us in search of Duende, the dark notes of southern Spain, on a far fetched exploration Tommy G, jay bone and St Paul cathedral headed over to the city of Jerez to scout out broken buildings where the devil lurked, where we could set up live and keep callin until our broken voices found the blue note. But the true dirt had become the powderd relics of tourism, a quaint Spanish chapel to kiss your bride in. It took a Spanish inquisition to give a moment of clarity; Duende might be in our guts, its just a Spanish term. And as a English me we call it Heavy Pop. The enrichment of a lifestyle of dispora aint gonna be found by 6 white boys in 3 weeks. Tho the romance might be there it so weighed down in pretense that nothing true is gonna break thru.
So we set to find a space in the dirt where we don't feel at home. A walk thru the industrial wasteland of Anocats let us stumble upon a gutted out chapel in the built by the former Italian community. Kati’s people. After cutting a deal with some people we never met, we got keys and all hour access to a dark cavernous space with its religion smothered in concrete. 3 weeks spent hollering until we hit the true note; a narrative told of broken boys turned bold, turned concrete gold 10 songs to tell our tale. Our brothers in arms Jay Bone and Saint Paul Cathedral accompanied us to bring out the room, cut it real clean but keep it sounding mean. Professional but no polish, we spent 21 days locked up tight, howling at the moon until it broke to daylight. With the cuts down it took the Noble savage to mix it into hi fi. We deserted our bust out computer of years younger, (we’re real big boys now mommy) and headed up to Paul savages studio in the Glasgow green.
The record will be released across the globe via L Y F recordings, the musical arm of the Lucifer youth foundation. The LYF is completely self sufficient through it’s strength in numbers and the involvement of the War God. Record labels are becoming more and more of an archaic concept; you can do everything they do with out them, if you use yr lil brain hard enough. The main thing they provide is cash flow and know how, and if you can source these elements from some where else and can retain total freedom and integrity, then you got the L Y F. We never wanted to join any one else’s gang; we have our own gang. Of course the war gods involvement has been central to this and we are incredibly privileged and thankful for the facilitation to the position we are in, but in our position we can see no reason to sign to a record label.
You know maybe were being brave, being dumb. But we aint sailing this ship as some DIY punk outfit, We make heavy pop. Popular music with its soul creeping out its mouth, not auto tune balloons following fashion. We want to work towards something real not just the flirtations of fame. We only care that WU LYF is popular for the reasons that we do it. The whole “hip new thing” music culture; have yr 15 minuets of fame and then get yr skates on son, because you mean bull shit to me; I got the hot brand new hipster pop on my iphone. And we’re certainly sure a bunch of people hold that opinion of us, because they read about us on some flash website that nurtures the super hip-latest-cool-thing model. Its something that we have never aspired to, and when it happened to us we just tried to ignore it. We want WU LYF to be more than a band, in the same way FC Barcelona is “more than a club”.
To raise the cash flow to truly establish the LYF as a legitimate enterprise, we cut a deal with the big buck bruisers at Universal Publishing. The war god pushes a mean hustle and we pumped it all back into the L Y F creating a battle fund with the strength of 10,000 men. It aint the money you got, its what you do with it that serves its morality; kids still starving whilst we sink our teeth into some juicy meat, I cant go to sleep… Then we done some more dollar talk with distributors, we made a prime time piece of shit, amd we want people to hear it. So some fellas with vans, PIAS in the UK and Europe, Hostess in Japan and Liberator in Australia, gonna make sure the records in all record stores, because that's how this shit works.
We own everything. No record deal. No license. We own the rights to our recordings – the four baby boys of WU LYF. We control what we create and how we release it. And that’s all I got. Shit. The record drops on the 13th of June, attached is the opening track LYF, its yours to do what you want with, keep it good kids, because you know I love ya, I’ll always love you forever."
So we put all shit into establishing Play Heavy Pop, our monthly residency in an outlet café. It became our first attempt at creating an environment we felt ya couldn't find in most night time dives, a place we call home. to pay top dollar to face expensive drink, real wild neo hipyipies (hipster; yuppies) worrying about their expensive shoes, their hair, real self conscious, you spend 3 years hanging around in it and it make you want to start spitting blood in their sterile faces. And then yr alternatives are meat heads in sparkly shirts groping tangerine queens or stinky lil dub step anarcho-punks squatting in their pants weighed down by all the bull shit that keeps talking out their asses. On another fucking level.
Basically the kids and kings behind the LYF are all people who didn't subscribe to any of these (somewhat quickly and ill considered sterotypes), we want to enjoy ourselves and live as authentic and free as lil puppy dogs in the yard. We killed An Outlets PLAY HEAVY POP because all the cats we were trying to escape from started turning up, pissing on our fire with their arms folded and their faces cynical. The first couple of months were real swell, I say we got to number 3 before the atmosphere grew sour.
The only intent we have is to allow the things we create to uphold whatever qualities they have, without glossing and polishing them in an attempt to try and sell them to an ever spectacle sedated audience. The LYF aspires to create things that have a genuine connection with people. And if they connect with it then its there’s for the taking. And If they don't, can go cry into their “blog” or look the other way. I’ve heard talk that WU LYF bangs out a cynical marketing technique, but all we have ever done is presented and created things in a way in which we, as four 19/20 years olds would want to see them. Weve always been more interested in the shop that has no window, has a buzzer to get in, than the shop that is spewing out neon $houts of “BUY ME BUY ME” “WANT ME WANT ME” “NEED ME NEED ME” yah dig me? You can’t always get what you want, but you try sometimes and you might get what you need.
Anyway, back to this lil story all about how my lyf got flipped, turned upside down. Ellery got the slow boat to Marseille with his lover girl to go do some crimes of passion in front of girls at 2007 MIDI festival. Now his 2 year old son wanted to go look see where the magic happened; a secret garden in Hyres. We are pretty free in the L Y F, i.e didn't really fell the need/ wanna go push our seeds to apathetic audiences around the summer festival run, just to expand popularity, I mean we planning to make a life out of this game not just the months new flavor. So we decided to make a lil holiday of it; 40 hours in a metal box on wheels to 4 hours on a French beach is ratio that was only remedied by a cathartic 45-minuet release on stage. We killed each other several times over the trip but came out grinning our crooked teeth.
Riding real wild waves of hype has never been our sport of choice, so we ignored the circus, declining to become the latest attraction in the ol big top, dropping anchor to what we held as real. So we stopped the game and started to work towards laying out our lil tale in full Technicolor. Using the initial currency from the LYF 12” we set to make a home of our own; We done the studio experience and found it sterilized your soul. And man that's all we got. The stagnant airs of professionalism blowing through an engineers conditioning aint they way the LYF role. So we set sail in search of a rawness, an empty cave where reverb explodes the smallest clap. Guy dropped us in search of Duende, the dark notes of southern Spain, on a far fetched exploration Tommy G, jay bone and St Paul cathedral headed over to the city of Jerez to scout out broken buildings where the devil lurked, where we could set up live and keep callin until our broken voices found the blue note. But the true dirt had become the powderd relics of tourism, a quaint Spanish chapel to kiss your bride in. It took a Spanish inquisition to give a moment of clarity; Duende might be in our guts, its just a Spanish term. And as a English me we call it Heavy Pop. The enrichment of a lifestyle of dispora aint gonna be found by 6 white boys in 3 weeks. Tho the romance might be there it so weighed down in pretense that nothing true is gonna break thru.
So we set to find a space in the dirt where we don't feel at home. A walk thru the industrial wasteland of Anocats let us stumble upon a gutted out chapel in the built by the former Italian community. Kati’s people. After cutting a deal with some people we never met, we got keys and all hour access to a dark cavernous space with its religion smothered in concrete. 3 weeks spent hollering until we hit the true note; a narrative told of broken boys turned bold, turned concrete gold 10 songs to tell our tale. Our brothers in arms Jay Bone and Saint Paul Cathedral accompanied us to bring out the room, cut it real clean but keep it sounding mean. Professional but no polish, we spent 21 days locked up tight, howling at the moon until it broke to daylight. With the cuts down it took the Noble savage to mix it into hi fi. We deserted our bust out computer of years younger, (we’re real big boys now mommy) and headed up to Paul savages studio in the Glasgow green.
The record will be released across the globe via L Y F recordings, the musical arm of the Lucifer youth foundation. The LYF is completely self sufficient through it’s strength in numbers and the involvement of the War God. Record labels are becoming more and more of an archaic concept; you can do everything they do with out them, if you use yr lil brain hard enough. The main thing they provide is cash flow and know how, and if you can source these elements from some where else and can retain total freedom and integrity, then you got the L Y F. We never wanted to join any one else’s gang; we have our own gang. Of course the war gods involvement has been central to this and we are incredibly privileged and thankful for the facilitation to the position we are in, but in our position we can see no reason to sign to a record label.
You know maybe were being brave, being dumb. But we aint sailing this ship as some DIY punk outfit, We make heavy pop. Popular music with its soul creeping out its mouth, not auto tune balloons following fashion. We want to work towards something real not just the flirtations of fame. We only care that WU LYF is popular for the reasons that we do it. The whole “hip new thing” music culture; have yr 15 minuets of fame and then get yr skates on son, because you mean bull shit to me; I got the hot brand new hipster pop on my iphone. And we’re certainly sure a bunch of people hold that opinion of us, because they read about us on some flash website that nurtures the super hip-latest-cool-thing model. Its something that we have never aspired to, and when it happened to us we just tried to ignore it. We want WU LYF to be more than a band, in the same way FC Barcelona is “more than a club”.
To raise the cash flow to truly establish the LYF as a legitimate enterprise, we cut a deal with the big buck bruisers at Universal Publishing. The war god pushes a mean hustle and we pumped it all back into the L Y F creating a battle fund with the strength of 10,000 men. It aint the money you got, its what you do with it that serves its morality; kids still starving whilst we sink our teeth into some juicy meat, I cant go to sleep… Then we done some more dollar talk with distributors, we made a prime time piece of shit, amd we want people to hear it. So some fellas with vans, PIAS in the UK and Europe, Hostess in Japan and Liberator in Australia, gonna make sure the records in all record stores, because that's how this shit works.
We own everything. No record deal. No license. We own the rights to our recordings – the four baby boys of WU LYF. We control what we create and how we release it. And that’s all I got. Shit. The record drops on the 13th of June, attached is the opening track LYF, its yours to do what you want with, keep it good kids, because you know I love ya, I’ll always love you forever."
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