FIGURINES + Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia + The Unbending Trees + Ben Watt (DJ)

Wed 13th Feb 2008

BUZZIN' FLY vs
STRANGE FEELING presents FIGURINES
+ Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia
+ The Unbending Trees
+ Ben Watt (DJ)

Doors 7.30
£6.50 via WeGotTickets

“As far as stripped back guitar-pop goes, this Danish indie quartet do it damn near perfect. This is a lesson in awesomeness.” [PlanB]

Ben Watt's twin labels, the award-winning house and techno imprint, Buzzin' Fly, and its alt-indie variant, Strange Feeling, showcase both the live and DJ-based strength of the two rosters.

Copenhagen's widely-acclaimed Figurines hype up their brand new Strange Feeling album, 'When The Deer Wore Blue' (the follow-up to the 5-star 'Skeleton') with their first UK show of 2008 since headlining the Radio 1 stage at Bestival.

'When The Deer Wore Blue' is the latest album from Figurines, the band tipped as Denmark’s answer to blogosphere favourites The Shins, Modest Mouse and Tapes ‘n’ Tapes. Their third album proper, it follows the critically acclaimed Skeleton, which was finally released in the UK in March 2007. Where Skeleton was packed with instantly gratifying tunes, this album, say the band, is a tougher nut to crack, but even more rewarding.

“People should have a bit patience with the album,” they say. “If people can dig out this album in a year from now and still find new stuff in there, we have succeeded in making the album we had hoped for.”

Named after a lyric from album track Good Old Friends and co-produced by Chicago-based producer/engineer Jeremy Lemos (Smog, Jim O'Rourke, Loose Fur), 'When The Deer Wore Blue' was recorded in Silence - a Swedish studio located in the middle of the woods where the band could capture an old, organic sound on the vintage tape-based recording equipment. Given the constraints of the medium, most of the album is recorded as live.

“We wanted the album to sound as if it's actually played and not cut and pasted tracks,” say the band.

The resulting album is an ambitious whole, full of the kind of quirky, melodic songs we’ve come to expect from the Great Danes, but, with its ever-changing time signatures, mysterious sounds and epic tracks, it feels like the band’s opus. This, quite feasibly, is their Smile. Listen to the majestic, harmony-led The Air We Breath, the pop-tastic former single Lets Head Out and the stomping, staccato Drunkard’s Dream to hear the full range of this expansive album.

Figurines formed in the mid-‘90s as the project of childhood friends Christian Hjelm, Claus Salling Johansen and former member Andreas Toft. Like so many small-town bands, they began making music because there was simply nothing else to do. Before long, they hit on a winning sound and released a debut EP in 2001. Chalk another one up to boredom. A move to Copenhagen and some personnel changes followed (the addition of Kristian Volden on drums, Mads Kjærgaard replacing Andreas on bass and Jens Ramon on keys and guitar), resulting in the fully formed Figurines line-up we have today.

Debut album 'Shake A Mountain' followed two years later, with 'Skeleton' following two years after that in 2005. On its UK release in 2007, it impressed with its catchy, unconventional melodies. But 'When The Deer Wore Blue' looks set to start a new chapter for the band.

“The Beach Boys in 1966? No, sublime Danes, right here, right now.” [Sunday Times]

Mlle Caro and Franck Garcia and their band play the middle set (see above) and Budapest's gorgeously gothic The Unbending Trees bring their cathartic slo-core pop to open proceedings in advance of their spring debut album. As if that weren't enough, label guru, Ben Watt will be spinning eclectic cuts in the gaps.

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