Filed under: YANU

Yanu is Broke / Gig Looming / New Song / Guitar Trivia

Sadly the £50 that Yanu has so far earned in its vainglorious career has run out. We spent the last tenner yesterday at our regular practice room The Muse Rooms. We had an excellent practice in which we sounded tight, and ready for the Louisiana gig on Thursday. As mentioned before we will be supporting EMI-signed The Corrections.

It should be a good gig - we've always wanted to play the Louie as a band. The other band Ali drums in, Kabuki Mono, played there a week or two ago and he said that the sound-desk did a wonderful job - so we should be sounding good - for those of you who were dissapointed at the aural soup on offer at the Fleece gig.

We also worked up a new song yesterday, working title: "Ben's Pop." It's based around an arpeggiated A Minor with a traditional verse chorus structure and Yanu's trademark dynamic build. It then breaks down to an unexpected A Minor/F Major 'chill out room' before vamping out on an equally surprising A Minor / D7/11 curve-ball. As yet, no lyrics.

In other news, I've reinstated a my blonde Telecaster as my guitar of choice, having replaced the unwieldy 11-gauge strings with some 10s.

Blonde Tele

I'm now putting the whole guitar and pedal board through my ART Tube pre-amp, which is giving it warmth, tonal fullness, and a little overdrive. It was sounding really good.

ART Tube Pre-Amp

Gig News

We've got a couple of gigs lined up to see out the year.
The first is a local band showcase sponsored by local, reactionary, rag The Evening Post at The Fleece - one of the cornerstones of the Bristol indie/rock scene - on Tuesday, December 4th (which, I should mention, is Simon's birthday), and it's free to get in.

Here's the poster:

Media_http1bpblogspot_oadff

Yes we are bottom of the bill - it's run a bit like a league table. If you get loads of people to come along to the gig you get to play higher on the bill next time.

The second gig is supporting EMI signed London and Bristol based band The Corrections - who sound pretty good from what little I've heard - on thursday, 20th December at The Louisiana (which we've wanted to play for ages). Once again we are second support, but we are not precious and are just enjoying the experience of playing to an audience and getting more comfortable on stage.

Come along to either or both - but the plan is to have some new material ready for the gig on the 20th. Hope to see you there.

Gig Video

We've got a few videos of our debut gig to upload in the next few days - here is the first. It's an extract from '3over4' - the show openner. I beseech you to use earphones or decent speakers to watch and listen as the sound quality isn't great (recorded through handycam mic) and will sound awful on tinny computer speakers. Alas, Ali's drums, Ben's bass, and my guitar are barely audible in this clip - but you may get the idea.

A huge thanks to Jody for bringing his camera along and shooting it.

More to come very soon.

Oppo Gig - Photos and Lowdown

As first gigs go that was a pretty decent one. We shared a bill with punk-band Seven State (also their first gig as a band) and nu-metallers Merrick - I think this was due to the fact that Ben described our music as satanic rock on our myspace page... a joke that backfired when we ended being billed as "Yanu (satanic rock)."

The other acts were all very polished and set the bar quite high, but we managed not to drop the ball and pulled off our headline slot playing and sounding pretty good to our ears at least.

Media_http3bpblogspot_oabkc
Media_http4bpblogspot_tooov
Media_http1bpblogspot_tcqcd
Media_http3bpblogspot_yqvsy

WAGS and friends and members of the other bands added numbers to the audience, not to mention goodwill. We rattled through our set in just over half an hour.

Media_http1bpblogspot_iwrea

Media_http4bpblogspot_icfhn
Media_http4bpblogspot_mueva
Media_http2bpblogspot_brgko

Media_http3bpblogspot_rtldi

With two songs left to go we were told that the council were complaining that we were making too much noise - naturally we turned up for the finale - suitably a song called 'Noisy' (also trades under the name 'Fuck You).'

Media_http1bpblogspot_djbhe
Media_http2bpblogspot_ylebb

Media_http3bpblogspot_ynocz

Media_http3bpblogspot_icsdg

People seemed to genuinely like our brand of satanic rock - one drunk man tried to join the band.

We're trying to sort out some more gigs and have irons in some pretty healthy fires.


Media_http1bpblogspot_krhnm
Media_http3bpblogspot_svhci

Media_http3bpblogspot_fghlb
Media_http4bpblogspot_rvhjn

G-Day

The day has come - the 10th of October 2007 will not just go down in history as the day Radiohead hammerred another nail to into the coffin of the record industry - in just over twelve hours Yanu will be taking to the stage for its inaugural gig.

We had one last, frantic, practice last night and sort of settled on a set list which has now been lost. With new amps, we played loud and hard - so much so that as Simon summoned a wall of feedback for the intro to what will be our set closer, I was forced to say "you just can't do that to people." He promises to be good tonight - but it may just have been me feeling grouchy and stuffy with a hideous cold. I'm going to have a box of man-size Kleenex at the end of my pedal-board this evening.

It turns out that our set may be a little shorter than the allocated 45 mins - but size isn't everything. Not only do we have fewer tunes, that the world is ready for, than we thought but we played them rather fast, such is our pre-gig excitement.

Whether it lasts 15 minutes or half an hour, it should be a lot of fun, so see you later!

Gig Time Announced / New Amps

The details of our gig have now been made public and we can tell you that we will be going on stage at 2300. The place is Oppo on Park St and the day is tomorrow, Weds 10th Oct 2007 (but you already knew that last bit).

Simon and Ben have been busy buying amps and bass cabs, both of which will be on display at the show. Simon settled for a Laney LC30 MKII combi amp to replace his Marshall half stack:

Media_http4bpblogspot_favty

While Ben opted for the Hartke 115 cab for extra bass weight:

Media_http4bpblogspot_kbiqa

Debut Gig - 10th Oct 2007 - Oppo

The YANUs have been booked to play Oppo. This will be our first gig. Oppo doubles as a poetry venue and coffee shop, but apparently we can be as loud as we want.

Having spent the summer doing everything apart from jamming and practising we are making last minute efforts to get match fit. We got together for the first time in months last night at Muse Rooms and found that a summer of slacking had matured our sound and lent a certain tightness. Hopefully this will last until the 10th.

We are due to go on stage at 2300Hrs.

We are very excited.

Indie Love-in

Found on the internet:

Peter Bjorn and John are joined on stage by Satomi of Deerhoof and Sean of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to perform Thatcher's-favouite 'Young Folks.'

I think it is at Fuji Rock - all three of those bands were supposed to be playing there.

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo