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HOT GIG TICKETS

THE EPSTEIN + Ox + Sweet Bamboo + Matt Kebbell + Bimbo Squad DJs

Thu 22nd Oct 2009

Electroacoustic Club presents
THE EPSTEIN
+ Ox
+ Sweet Bamboo
+ Matt Kebbell
+ Bimbo Squad DJs

- Please note that Viarosa have had to cancel

£6 via WeGotTickets
TicketWeb (08444 771 000)
and SeeTickets (0870 264 3333)
£7 door

Doors 7.30
Matt Kebbell 8.00 (20)
Sweet Baboo 8.30 (25)
Ox 9.10 (30-40)
The Epstein 10.00 (40-60)

The Epstein was born out of experiences on the plains of Wyoming where frontman Olly Wills once farmed. He and the rest of the band have fused an intrinsically American sound with an endless English folk history that seeps out of the fabric of rural Oxfordshire. The result is a band that are doing as much to update their genre as any of their contemporaries in the city. Like the spirit of the county's independent festival Truck, the band are seemingly instilled with an ethos of making music that's the sound of participation, of inclusiveness and pure unadulterated joy. When the alt-country scene starts getting the attention it so richly deserves it will be The Epstein that shine as its brightest lights.

The Epstein were delighted to perform at Glastonbury 2007, having won their slot through the festival's Emerging Talent Competition - as one of five winners from 3,000 entries. They made three appearances at the festival, including a slot on the dirty great Acoustic Stage on the Sunday.

In late 2007 The Epstein completed their self-produced debut album, Last of the Charanguistas. The album was recorded at the band's farmhouse HQ, and at bass player Rowland Prytherch's second home - Truck Studios, where he also recently recorded the new Danny George Wilson (Grand Drive) album, Danny and the Champions of the World.

In January 2008 Last of the Charanguistas was named as "Album of the Week" on Huw Stephens' Radio 1 Introducing show. Check the reviews page for the other press attention it has had!

"...as engaging as Calexico and as an endearing as The Broken Family Band." - **** Q Magazine

"The Epstein have recorded this beguiling debut with an overwheing sense of ingeniousness and enthusiasm... There has not been a better band to come out of England this year, the epstein play inanother league - in a vast, desert like land of the soul." - **** Rolling Stone Germany

"One thing that strikes me about this record is that there seems to be a collective spirit at work. I'm swayed by that Arcade Fire, Decemberists strength, those individual elements coming together to make something quite powerful. A compelling debut." - Americana UK

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As soon as we hear Mark Browning's drawling vocals creak on the opening song "Miss Idaho" we instantly know that Ox has delivered an album of stature. Dope-soaked, derelict and wired, "American Lo Fi" features 11 songs that give a nod to Velvet Underground meets Bruce Springsteen, trading New Jersey urban fairground for Pacific interstate moonscape. Ox's long awaited follow up to the seminal alt-country, indie hybrid classic, 'Dust Bowl Revival', fuses weary with vicious, punk with hillbilly, the farmer in the city with the electro-magnetic aura of tape hiss and amp crackle. "American Lo Fi" was recorded in the manic confines of Vancouver's Profile Studios (aka Upstairs Sound Laboratory) amid the plume of smoke, sweat and heavy Pacific laced air. Ox began in Vancouver amid sessions for a Mark Browning solo record titled, 'Harvester'. The record went wrong... crossed between Neil Young's Reactor and a Journey record... and was scrapped. The beginning was a collaboration with Nathan Lawr (then of Guelph/Toronto's Royal City) on a Julian Cope song, 'Promised Land' and grew into an album session for what became, 'Dust Bowl Revival'.

Upon release in 2003- independent and driven behind the scenes by Browning as agent, manager, radio tracker, and publicist, the record was embraced by an industry who'd universally passed prior to release. Soaring to #1 across Canada on Earshot's and Chart's Canadian Campus Radio Charts- it was to be the first independent Canadian record to reach top spot in decades. What followed is the saga of a band on the road... Browning recruited fellow hometown Sudbury Ontario songwriter, guitarist/pianist Ryan Bishops and a host of guests over subsequent years and toured endlessly- the US coasts- the UK 5 times, Ireland 3 times, Germany and Holland twice, and of course Canada- back and forth from coast to coast 7 times over the course of 4 years.

Maintaining a grass roots approach- Ox has done it the hard way- thousands of miles in cramped mini-vans... countless nights spent bedding down on floors, couches... pool tables... bad food, stale beer- blown tires, road kill. Ox's sound is the sound of the open road- from not far above it. Songs like El Camino, Country Music Promoter, Awkward Beauty, Miss Idaho are the sound of gravel skimming fender crossed by overdriven tubes and tremolo... Halloween crossed with Christmas Eve spent in a bus station diner.

The Bimbo Squad DJ.

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