And finally, we have also been asked to play at this year’s Eurocultured Festival. This has become an established part of the Mancunian Summer, and this year looks set to be no different. There are some brilliant Manchester bands playing this year’s festival, including friends of ours Blind Atlas on Sunday, and the Slow Show on Sunday.

We are opening up Sunday’s proceedings at 2.30 at Font Bar, next to Oxford Road Rail Station. Tickets are available here http://www.eurocultured.com/tickets Tickets are also available WITHOUT BOOKING FEE at Font Bar New Wakefield Street, Font Bar Fallowfield, Thirsty Scholar and Revolution Oxford Road. WITH BOOKING FEE from Piccadilly Records, Eastern Bloc and Gaffs Fallowfield.

We are another overhaul of the website soon, so we’ll keep you updated on that as it happens.

It’s been a bit quiet on the City Reign front recently, as we’ve been focusing on sorting out stuff for the album and single launches later in the year. All is going well at the moment, the mixes are sounding good and we’re looking forward to getting it out there. Unfortunately there is still lots of work to do so it looks like it will be towards the end of the year before we actually get it out there, which is a little frustrating but we want to do it right.

We do have some gigs lined up for the next couple of months that we thought we should probably let you know about.

1ST MAY - NIGHT & DAY CAFE

Supporting Little Night Terrors

Little Night Terrors are a Leicester based band, forming from the ashes of a band from the mid-noughties called The Displacements. Their song ‘Frontline Hearts’ was a bit of a favorite of Grice’s so it should be good to play with the LNTs next week. Check out their new videos here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQxeB3Qncgw&feature=youtu.be
Tickets here http://www.littlenightterrors.com/tickets

21st MAY – BAND ON THE WALL

Secondly, we’ve been asked to play Band On the Wall New Review on This is a FREE GIG showcasing some great Manchester bands, so make sure you don’t miss out

http://bandonthewall.org/events/3574/

4TH JUNE – EUROCULTURED FESTIVAL

And finally, we have also been asked to play at this year’s Eurocultured Festival. This has become an established part of the Mancunian Summer, and this year looks set to be no different. There are some brilliant Manchester bands playing this year’s festival, including friends of ours Blind Atlas on Sunday, and the Slow Show on Sunday.

We are opening up Sunday’s proceedings at 2.30 at Font Bar, next to Oxford Road Rail Station. Tickets are available here http://www.eurocultured.com/tickets Tickets are also available WITHOUT BOOKING FEE at Font Bar New Wakefield Street, Font Bar Fallowfield, Thirsty Scholar and Revolution Oxford Road. WITH BOOKING FEE from Piccadilly Records, Eastern Bloc and Gaffs Fallowfield.

We are another overhaul of the website soon, so we’ll keep you updated on that as it happens.

Look forward to seeing you at a gig soon.

So we’ve just finished our recording with Manchester producer Sam Jones in the Sacred Trinity Church in Salford, and it’s going great so far. We’ve been in studios a fair bit now, and although we’ve always enjoyed our times before, there was something that little bit more exciting aboutrecording somewhere a little bit different. The Church is a beautiful building, and clearly has a lot of history.

Not only is it a wonderful looking building, but more importantly for our purposes, its acoustics are incredible. The great main hall with its high wooden ceilings seems to make almost anything soundgreat. A big part of the way Sam has set up to record us is to stick microphones all over the roomto pick up the natural ambience of the place which seems to work really well. Unfortunately, it hasthe drawback that these mics tend to pick up their fair share of background noise from the street,meaning the inevitable passing sirens of the Salford Constabulary were a regular interruption!

Mostly though, we cracked on with a speed that surprised even ourselves. We were prepared to goin and work hard and fast to get as much done as possible, but I don’t think any of us expected tohave the bulk of the recording done by the end of this four day session. It may be in part due to Sampushing us pretty hard. The man doesn’t take kindly to unnecessary delays, and there were a fewego bruising moments throughout the process (‘that was rubbish, do it again. And be quick, we don’thave all day!’), but in the main we all got along really well and cracked on.

Another reason for our work ethic could probably be attributed to the weather. The Church certainlylooked and sounded great, but it was cold. Very cold. Anyone not directly involved in recording atany one time would find anything to do to keep their mind from the cold.

Often this involved eating. There was a lot of eating and drinking done in those 4 days. It must besaid the general good mood was settled early on when Sam found the cafitiere and Grice bought around of bacon sandwiches. Hungry stomachs were filled, and tired minds awoken. The standard offood certainly fluctuated, and Sam was pretty unimpressed when we broke on the 30% pork sausagerolls. In fact, he was so disgusted that the following day he brought in Caramelised Onion Homous,Brie and Olives to get him back to his home comforts. We got him back on board when we got hima curry for the late night sessions, although I’m not sure he really enjoyed eating it off paper plateswhile sat on the floor.

Our speed during the first session meant that we had a bit more time when we went back thisweek to try different things. Sam had the key to the Church’s pipe organ, which we played aroundwith, and some of Duncan’s friends from the Royal Northern College of Music kindly came downto put some strings down on the record. One of the songs had been arranged before the recording,but for the rest of it these classically trained musicians had to try and translate our indie musiciannonsencial ramblings to try and work out what we wanted them to play (it needs to be energetic,make it sound soar-ey!). They did this admirably, and it sounded brilliant, so hopefully they can thatextra little something to make it great.

As ever, keep track of what we’re up to on Twitter and Facebook, we have posted some pictures of our own pictures of the session, but we were also joined by Louise Cowley from www.blocandblur.com, who will be putting together some stuff for us to document the recording sokeep an eye out for that in the future.

Til next time…

City Reign will be playing the following shows in February and March

CLUB POPULAR – Trof Fallowfield – Manchester - 23rd Feb

BIRTHDAY SUIT SUPPORT – The Ruby Lounge – Manchester - 29th Feb
For cheaper guestlist tickets email chris@carbootrecords.com

CLUB FANDANGO – Bull & Gate – Camden – London – 24th March
Get your tickets here 

City Reign go into the studio in February to begin recording their first full length album. The boys will be hooking up with Manchester producer Sam Jones, no relation to their first drummer!

The boys chose to work with Sam as he is know for taking his artists out of the comfort zone of a standard recording studio, and these recordings will be take place in Sacred Trinity Church, Salford. They are really excited about the opportunity of working here, and are hoping to be able to get a bigger and more open sound from these sessions.

Many of the songs that will make up the record have been recorded and released already, but the band wanted to make a full album in one session of recordings to maintain the consistency of the record. There are still a number of brand new tracks that fans can look forward to hearing when it is released.

The Independent

Fans of Yuck and Dinosaur Jr will approve of City Reign’s anthemic, grunge. A million failing garage bands will ask why

You can purchase the EP from the Car Boot Records Bandcamp here

www.cityreign.net