14 May 2008
Bath Fringe Festival 2008
We're very happy to confirm another live date for this summer. We'll be appearing at The Bath Fringe Festival on May the 30th this year. Tickets for us and all the other acts are available from their website here. Further details about the festival are available here and here.
Tickets are now also on sale for the "Voices Across The World" show at the Royal Opera House on the 18th of July. Click here for more information on all the events happening over the course of the event
16 March 2008
Live shows Live Shows Live Shows Live Shows Live Shows
We're so very pleased and excited to announce that we'll be doing some live shows soon. They'll be full band affairs, with more instruments on stage than 3 people can play comfortably at one time; perhaps Al playing guitar, and the chance to hear some stuff that'll be on the new record. The venue's are a bit more special than we're used to too.
First up then is on the 25th of May at the Natt Jazz festival in Bergen Norway. This will be our first full band show in quite a while, and we are currently working our fingers to the bone rehearsing in a room with no windows to make sure we're up to scratch.
Secondly, and just as excitingly, we're playing at The Royal Opera House in the UK as part of the 'Voices from Around the World Festival'. The date is Friday the 18th of July. Also appearing are Jamie Woon and Katie Carr. Which is, frankly, fucking brilliant.
03 December 2007
Something newsworthy!
First up, our debut, 'We Just Did What Happened and No One Came' is to be made available digitally on iTunes, Napster, eMusic, Real Music, Rhapsody and Sony Connect. It should be available from today.
Next, we have our own Facebook page. Should you go in for this sort of thing, and are not put off by the 'Facebook is run by the CIA/FBI' rumors then you can find us here.... Thirdly, we're to be featured on Fiona Talkington's Late Junction on Radio 3 at some point in the week before Christmas, and Fiona will be featuring one of the songs from the new album as one of her tracks of the year. And that brings us neatly to the new album. We're happy to say it's almost finished. Possibilities on the title heap include...'A Man was Born'...'Avanti'...'Twice the spice in a thrice is nice' and my personal favourite 'Refections in Okra'.
06 September 2006 Brand New EP from Sweet Billy Pilgrim The mp3 blogger's favourite mp3 blog, Spoilt Victorian Child have expanded their operations and are now not only introducing us to great music, but releasing it too via their online label, SVC Records.
We've got together with them to release the Brugada EP which comprises two songs not available on our album, plus a hypnotic remix of album track 'Experience' by David Picking aka Rhinoceros. The first two recordings, Brugada and Meantime were amongst the first things we did as SBP, and really only didn't make it onto the album because they were too different thematically, so we've decided to make them available separately. And for free. We hope you enjoy it. Please go and have a look, and while you're there, read the Spoilt Victorian Child blog. Your record collection will certainly be all the better for it.
04 September 2006 Track 15 on this months Mojo Cover CD! "When beauty falls / It finds me here / In summer's bright and dusty smear" begins Sweet Billy Pilgrim's Tim Elsenburg on this joyous slice of British folktronica. Taken from the band's remakable 2005 debut, Stars Spill Out of Cups will convince fans of Sufjan Stevens, Guillemots and Iron and Wine that they have a new set of heroes to discover and hold dear In other news, whilst Al and Bish are away touring with The Boy Least Likely To, Tim shall be collaborating with Steve Jansen on two songs for Steve's solo record, and will be travelling with him to Japan to perform as a vocalist for three concerts in September.
Dates and venues are:
In amongst all that, we are also finding time to rehearse for some live shows, hopefully
we'll be ready to play live before Christmas this year. 09 August 2006 In the June edition of Mojo, the SBP album was awarded a mighty four stars. They said..... Tim Elsenburg, the guitarist / singer of Sweet Billy Pilgrim, is blessed with one of those light, cracked-at-the-edges voices that renders every word escaping his lips seemingly freed from the depths of a broken heart. Opening song Atlantis sets the scene with its shimmering ambience, part-electronic, part-acoustic, in which plucked autoharps and harmonium drones melt into ghostly backing vocals as Elsenburg sings the chilling line, "Sometimes I see a dead man with his dying left to do." When No Jesus in Here ups the tempo slightly, it feels like Linkin Park invading a nursery of sleeping babies, but it's gorgeously languid. Elsenburg's perfectly shaped songs have the same power as magic realist short stories that sieve the emotions and leave you reduced to jelly, even though you're not sure what's going on. Johnny Black Also we've managed to get a song on the Cover CD of the September edition. 30 May 2006 All three of us have set up MySpace pages so you can keep track of what we're up to inside and outside of Sweet Billy Pilgrim. Click on the links to see our pages...
09 March 2006 Saturday 11th March - SBP will be playing (solo) @ the ICA in London this Saturday, supporting the tremendous James Yorkston, whose 'Just Beyond the River' was one of our favourite records of last year. This will be the first of a monthly folktronica nights named 'Roots and Chutes,' and to commemorate and promote this inaugural event, we'll be sharing a 7" limited edition single with the very same Mr Yorkston.
06 March 2006 I just have a handful of MP3s to go on, but they make it perfectly clear that newcomer British band Sweet Billy Pilgrim's debut full-length, "We Just Did What Happened and No One Came," is something very special. The songs are sung in a weak and whispery voice that sounds undistinguished but somehow captivates, in part because the songs are written so delicately and so well, and because the voice is surrounded by silvery, beautifully detailed production, with various sounds -- both familiar and not -- shifting dreamily in and out of focus. "Ain't No Jesus in Here" is a lazy-day-smudged country song with a terrific opening line "This here's no heart of darkness/It ain't no heart of gold", "Forget to Breathe" is an introverted, slightly twisted parlor version of Coldplay-style stadium balladry, and my allegiance has been shifting between them, so definitely download both. Also available for download is the lovely "Experience," hazy and a little bit sinister, and "God in the Details," which is a little bit too explicitly Tom Waits-y for me. Many thanks to Sixeyes for leading me to this band.
13 January 2006 Live concert at The Luminaire on Monday! It's very short notice we know, but Sweet Billy Pilgrim will be doing a live show this Monday in the United Kingdom. Or rather due to us not being quite ready for a full live show yet, Tim will be playing a solo set of songs from WJDWHANOC. The venue is to be the very lovely Luminaire in London on Monday the 16th January. Also on the bill are Revere and Ampop. Tickets are six pounds in advance and are available from We Got Tickets. 01 January 2006 Gently wandering through a landscape inhabited by the Blue Nile, Elbow and Sparklehorse, SBP have put together one of those albums that, given the slightest encouragement, will take up residence in your CD player (or other favoured playback device), stubbornly refusing to make way for anything else. This calm, pretty folktronica is strange but not difficult: there are choruses here that, if Chris Martin had stumbled across them, would have shifted another million Coldplay albums. A rather special debut. 28 December 2005 It's hard to say exactly what kind of music this is, beyond my humble opinion that it is staggeringly beautiful and deeply affecting. Word about who these guys are is hard to come by. Essentially they are a UK-based three piece consisting of Tim Elsenburg on vocals, guitar and electronics, Anthony Bishop on bass, guitars and vocals, and Alistair Hamer on drums and percussion.
When the dissonant vocal harmonies sweep in during the intimate, yearning opener, Atlantis, it feels, just for a moment, as if your soul might be leaving your body. (Actually, I'm exaggerating here, for dramatic effect. And I don't believe in souls anyway... but hopefully you get the idea.) The next cut, Stars Spill Out Of Cups, starts with a brief random sounds section which is then disrupted by an insistently plunking banjo over which Elsenburg sings, 'When beauty falls it finds me here...", and it's a bit like wandering off a busy metropolitan street into a fairy garden. And as for that meandering bassline, and those scratchy fiddles, and that howling Robert Fripp-like guitar... this could be the soundtrack to the best dream you ever had. And, best of all, you can have it any time you like.
God In The Details sounds like 13th century English monks sloshed on Benedictine singing in a chapel halfway up the side of a Tibetan mountain in the depths of winter. Every track conjures up its own peculiar, and peculiarly lovely, mental visions, but there are two tracks, In The Water I Am Beautiful and No Jesus In Here, with lyric ideas and choruses so beautiful that it almost hurts when they stop.
Because it seems to exist within its own world where the usual rules of music-making don't apply, this isn't an easy album to get to grips with but stick with it because it repays repeated plays many times over to the point where it could become addictive. Sweet Billy Pilgrim have given themselves one serious headache. How on earth can they follow this debut up with something better? I'm already waiting with anticipation. 20 December 2005 Angry Ape Review
The debut album from Sweet Billy Pilgrim, due for release on 17 October, has stardust sprinkled all over it. Opening with a track called Atlantis, possessed of wheezing harmonium, gently strummed acoustic and the most poignant vocal this side of hopefulness, this is an album that will stop you rushing around and force you to sit in simple awe of the purity of the music.
Imagine the most reflective moments of an Elbow album, pare them down and add a whisper of Sea Change-era Beck, and you get Sweet Billy Pilgrim. There are no gimmicks here, just pure music straight from the soul, or the heart, or whatever metaphysical synonym you wish to use for the core of existence.
That the album is to be launched in the church that holds the bones of Samuel Pepys is apt. Just as Pepys chronicled all life around him, so this album documents the human condition.
There are similarities to Elbow, in that SBP's vocalist has more than a hint of Guy Garvey to his voice, but where Elbow can be clinical and detached, SBP drip warmth and rawness.
The album is full of wonderful moments, built from familiar acoustic sounds, but skewed by the use of subtle electronic buzzes and twinkles. The lyrics are peppered with observations that get straight to the matter at hand. Rhythms are off-kilter, so that you never really get settled, can never really just let it wash over you. These songs demand, gently but insistently, that you listen to them. Really listen to them.
Stand out tracks are God In The Details, with its avant garde jazz moments that sweetly slide towards the kind of choral works produced by John Tavener and its ending that is almost a modern take on plainsong, and the wonderful Black Flag.
Skittering snare drum and slow pulsing bass on this track create a rhythm like two ends of the heartbeat scale. "Words so black they stain my lips, so white they hurt my eyes" tell a tale that one minute pines for love, and the next longs for death. Cleverly, this song is as much about the pauses as it is about the melody. It's as though the song is holding its breath at times.
In The Water I Am Beautiful swings from scratchy folk-pop to heavy bursts of post-rock and back to pop again, while No Jesus In Here is the kind of Anglicised country you find on a Peter Bruntnell record - all the elements of country are there, but there's a brittle Britishness about it as well. Haunting piano and faraway strings in the middle-8 give way to slide guitar before the song rides out on a wave of bass, piano and acoustic guitar.
Beautifully minimalist and rich with emotion, only the shallowest of hearts will fail to fall in love with this record. 6 December 2005 Record Collector Review Record Collector a magazine here in the UK has reviewed WJDWHANOC and given us 3 stars! In their words..."A band happy to sit in their folk-house meanwhile is Sweet Billy Pilgrim.
WJDWHANOC shows an introspective almost sacred voice - SweetBillyPilgrim songs certainly lend themselves to the humour of melancholy. Accompanied by a guitar, ukelele and various rumblings of rhythm and effects from a laptop, they're 21st Century Boys with a nod in the past.
Stars Spill Out Of Cups has an air of elbow to it, but In The Water I Am Beautiful is where they really shine. It may sound like it's been recorded in a shack in the 20's but there are mixes with distorted guitars filling Soundgarden-like breaks.
The Faustian titled Ain't No Jesus In Here is a good example of the talent and one that really should net them some fans. 26 September 2005 We Just Did What Happened And No One Came Well the promotional copies have been delivered and we're finally starting to see some reviews of our album on the Interweb. And very positive they are too. Check it......... The album will be released on the 31st October and is available in all good record shops and on most CD websites such as Amazon.co.uk and Play.com Catalogue number WLMCD002 24 September 2005 Sweet Billy Pilgrim Album Launch Date Change We're very sorry, but due to a manufacturing error the release of our album will be put back to the 31st of October 2005. 06 September 2005 Sweet Billy Pilgrim Album Launch Concert Latest... Things are now all set for the album launch concert so we can give you some more details. Entry to the concert is free, and we'll be on stage at 8pm sharp. Just to re-cap the concert is being held at St Olav's church, Hart Street, London, EC3 7NB. Click Here For A Map 09 August 2005 Sweet Billy Pilgrim Album Launch Concert To mark the launch of our long awaited debut album, Sweet Billy Pilgrim are to perform a one off LIVE showcase performance on the 21st of September this year in London. The venue is to be St Olav's Church, Hart Street, London, EC3 7NB. For more information, or to join the mailing list EMAIL HERE 07 August 2005 New Album Launch Sweet Billy Pilgrim will be releasing their debut album, "We Just Did What Happened and No One Came," this year! It's set for release early October. It'll be coming out through Wonderland Avenue, all remixed and mastered and in some rather attractive packaging. More details as and when..... 04 August 2005 SBP will be performing material from their forthcoming debut album this weekend at the TMF festival in the UK. It will be a very special performance as they are playing on the acoustic stage, so for this appearance they will be a stripped down two piece. We'll be filming it and hope to have some of the material online very soon 19 May 2005 Now that we have finished our exclusive with Spoilt Victorian Child. we have added our new track "Forget To Breathe" to our own download section of the site. This track will not be available on the album, and we've already had well over 2000 downloads so far, so if you haven't heard it you can find it HERE. 04 May 2005 - EXCLUSIVE FREE SINGLE AVAILABLE SBP is making a free single available for download from Friday 6th May. Our track "Forget To Breathe" is initaially going to be EXCLUSIVELY available from our friends at Spoilt Victorian Child. This track is not going to be featured on SBP's album (which will be appearing later this year), and for the moment will only be available online. Please go to Spoilt Victorian Child to download it. We hope you enjoy it. 02 May 2005 Tim from SBP is going to be touring the UK as guitarist for Martin Grech. He is currently blogging the rehearsals in our own blog Pilgrims Progress. 15 March 2005 From the new issue of 'The Wire' magazine on SBP's work on David Sylvian's record: "Sweet Billy Pilgrim's treatment of 'The Heart Knows Better' preserves the intimacy, fragility and tension of the original through it's delicate and disparate instrumentation". - The Wire 14 March 2005 Here's another review of our work on the David Sylvian album: "Sweet Billy Pilgrim has firmly imprinted "The Heart Knows Better" with a completely new and individual identity. The album is an astonishingly accomplished, cohesive piec of work that stands side by side with and in many places actuallu surpasses Blemish, and receives the highest recommendation it is possible to give". - IglooMag 12 March 2005 Our blog is now up and running. You'll get the opportunity to hear some of the things that inspire and inform what we do. We'll get the chance to champion music we feel needs to be heard, and rant and rave as is our want. You can read it Here 11 March 2005 What I will say is that Stars Spill Out of Cups is by quite a margin the best single I have heard this year, and unless someone pulls something pretty damn special out of the bag in the coming ten months, I have a feeling it may well be firmly lodged in my (and I can only hope many more) end of year lists. - Tasty Fanzine 10 March 2005 Sweet Billy Pilgrim are adventurous and experimental on the 3 track single featuring 'Stars Spill Out of Cups', along with the main track are 'God In The Details' and 'Atlantis'. This music doesn't jump up and bite you; it doesn't pick you up and spin you around. It ekes and seeps it's way into your unsuspecting head -- like subliminal shock treatment or timed-release 'ecstasy' masquerading as a tranquilizer.
- SixEyes 09 March 2005 Experience is not a single track the way the others might be, but I think it's the most powerful. It's something that you can find yourself unconsciously replaying on your ipod and comfortably resting in your head while you're at work and trying to mentally escape for a while. - Radio Babylon 06 March 2005 If Sweet Billy Pilgrim can play to their singularities, treat their music as a set of opportunities like Picassos cardboard and string guitar, rather than a granite block repeatedly chiselled away to reveal something less, then they have a chance of finding their individual voice, contributing something original to the sea of sound lapping at our doors. - Eleventh Volume 26 February 2005 Experience by Sweet Billy Pilgrim is beautiful downtempo folktronica from this new uk band. - FatPlanet.au 22 February 2005 Tantalising, only three tracks on this lovely little ep, and a world away from the check shirt by numbers alt-country scene, this is great songwriting and spellbinding arrangements, beautifully played and sung. Enchanting stuff, very highly recommended. - BoomKat.com 14 February 2005 With a little more edge than James Yorkston, and more subtlety than The Earlies, Sweet Billy Pilgrim's hushed tones are soothing and full of character. - HighVoltage.org.uk 7 February 2005 On tracks like "Ain't No Jesus in Here" Sweet Billy Pilgrim go the pop route not unlike Grandaddy or Sparklehorse, and "God in the Details" sounds as if Nick Cave chilled out and toned it down a bit. Sweet Billy Pilgrim hold their own and are definitely newcomers to keep your eye on. - 3Hive.com 4 February 2005 There is a fantastic review of the David Sylvian remix album at BoomKat.com "Shining Newcomer Sweet Billy Pilgrim" 1 Februaury 2005 Sweet Billy Pilgrim succesfully traverses the journey between the earthy (Wilco, Iron and Wine, Sufjan Stevens) and the ethereal (Blue Nile, Eno, David Sylvian) on their track "Ain't No Jesus In Here". The track starts off with a Neil Young "Harvest Moon" type acoustic shuffle before the keyboards transport the listener into Grandaddy space land. What comes next will really surprise you. Great Stuff. - Mansion On The Hill 31 January 2005 "Thats nice, really nice in fact..." Stuart Maconie on Sweet Billy Pilgrim after playing two SBP tracks back to back yesterday on his BBC 6 Music show Freakzone. 27 January 2005 Pre-orders are now available of the forthcoming single. From today we are going to be shipping out copies of the single to fans who have been pestering us to send out CDs. So, we have decided to start selling the singles in advance of the official release date exclusively through our own mail order. Simply click one of the "BUY" buttons in the shop window for more info. You can purchase securely with the really easy to use PayPal. Also, Stuart Maconie will be playing us this Sunday (30th) on 6 Music. 26 January 2005 Acclaim for SBP's remix of David Sylvian's track continues: "The radically re-worked tracks include Sweet Billy Pilgrim’s striking version of The Heart Knows Better" HMV 25 January 2005 Sweet Billy Pilgrim is somewhere between "Peace at Last" period Blue Nile, some twists of latter day King Crimson, and a nudge of Elbow." Kelvin Hayes - Buzz Magazine. 20 January 2005 A review of our forthcoming release has been written by Simon at Spoilt Victorian Child 04 January 2005 Oxford based label Shifty Disco have decided to release one of our recordings. Atlantis, a song which they describe as "Achingly Beautiful" will be available for download to subscribers of their singles club. Atlantis is also featured as track 3 from our second single, set for release on the 14th of Feb. Our remix of The Heart Knows Better by David Sylvian has finally seen the light of day. Marcus Boon had this to say about it, "Sweet Billy Pilgrim's lovely rebuilding of The Heart Knows Better brings out a fiercely pop quality to the song". We're going to make a video for Stars Spill Out of Cups and it will be online soon. If you are interested you can send us an e-mail to info@sweetbillypilgrim.com and we'll keep you on the mailing list. 16 December 2004 The last six months have been spent mostly in the studio inventing, recording and re-inventing Sweet Billy Pilgrim. We think we now know what it is, for now at least. We've an album's worth of songs in the bag, and it seems that some people really like what we've been doing in the studio. Having managed to sell out our first single, we've been encouraged to release another. More about that later.. This news section is a little incomplete but since we're re-launching the website, and preparing for our next single release, we thought we'd start afresh. What follows is just a hint at the full picture. We will of course be adding to this as things happen. 28 November 2004 Sold out our first single! 11 October 2004 Released Ain't no Jesus in Here with Black Flag as the b side through LuxorPurchase. September 2004 Finished remixing The Heart Knows Better for David Sylvian. It's due for release early 2005. August 2004 Played a few gigs to see if it can be done live. The days of simply plugging in and playing are over! Recreating our music on stage takes a lot of gear, but it does make for something spectacular. That said, the logistics of gigging are not easy for us now, and that will be reflected in the number of live shows we'll be able to do. July 2004 Recording Recording Recording Recording. June 2004 WritingWriting Writing Writing.
25.09 LIQUID ROOM (Tokyo)
27.09 Namba HATCH (Osaka)
30.09 Shyowa Women's University Hitomi Memorial Hall (Tokyo)
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