Tout will be supporting Haiku Salut on the 15th January at the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, 2-4 Hoxton Square N1 6NU from 7.30pm onwards. £6 entry. Tout will be onstage at 8pm with full band line-up. Really looking forward to this one. We would also like to thank everyone who came down to see our first  show of the year at the Camden Lock Tavern for Martyn Bonanza's Americana All-Dayer. Further shows to be announced shortly.

We also received this review of Tout Second on our band camp page recently: 

My experience in first listening to this LP by TOUT was simply stunning. It's lazy psychedelic grooves reminded me of some of ENO's work. The production is spot on, clear and with air and space. It's a wonderful album to own on vinyl. (Josie Lewis)

Happy New Year. We are starting the New Year with a small show at the Camden Lock for Martyn Bonanza on the Sunday 10th January. We should be on stage for around 6pm and will be playing as a three piece. There will be further announces of upcoming shows shortly. Last year was another busy year, with the release of Tout Third and lots of shows across London and elsewhere. Tout have also been working on some new tracks and there will be some announcements regarding them soon. To date , there is no release date set.

We ended the year with a terrific, almost sold out show at The Chapel, St Margarets House in Bethnal Green in late November. We played alongside fellow Trestle Record artist Ross Downes. This venue is very special and we hope to play more shows there this year. 

I can also announce that we are having a January sale. For a limited time you can pick up copies of Tout Second on vinyl for only £6 plus postage and packing. There will be more news to follow shortly regarding our plans for the 2016 and upcoming shows.

It's been a while since the last update. We've been busy working on several new tracks, but also taking a break following the release of the latest album. We would like to thank everyone who made it down to album launch show. You can watch an extract from the launch below.

As well as the album launch show, we also had the pleasure of supporting Noura Mint Seymali on the 27th July at the Servant Jazz Quarters. Thank you to everyone that made it possible and came down to show their support.

We will be doing a live session on Bonanza and Son on Resonance 104.4 fm this coming Wednesday at 4.30pm. We are going to be playing a few tracks form our latest album and having a little chat. Tune in. There will be more updates soon as we return to the studio.

Tout Third Review

We had another review for Tout Third from the chaps over at Norman Records. You can purchase the new album from them here.

Can ambient music sound like Chris Isaak? If it can, then it’s Tout’s fault. A band attuning folk roots into a slow and languishing type of post-rock, they end up making melodramatic lounge music, the kind that’s only a bar closing time away from being “Wicked Game”. On ‘Third’, the band continue to move slowly toward instrumental torch songs, placating their slick, open world guitar tones with some ground dirt.

Tout approach roots folk like it’s a familiar friend: it is the stuff that makes them sound as chill as Real Estate, the double bass there to put their compositions in a warm bold font, the violins appearing as a gorgeous buffer, giving the slow, meandering guitar lines some form of dramatic force. On its own, the noodling, meditatively technical guitar is Isaak all over: clean as a whistle, but dustier than a country road, it invokes nostalgia and then makes the nostalgia sad.  Think Loren Connors, too: chords only appear incidentally to a wandering kind of folk jazz that sounds like it’s walked in from a storm -- on “And Risked My Life”, strums on an acoustic guitar join the soloing like a stranger giving Tout directions.

If you’ve heard Tout before, you know and likely cherish the ambiguities of their sound: Tortoise, Rachel’s, and Earth all exist in their music, but so too do the folkies, the primitivists, the romantics. If you think they’re making soundscapes and letting them lie, then listen to the way they sprinkle piano over “For That Damned Stage”. What a manipulative bunch -- Isaak would be proud.

Tout Third Album Launch

A big thank you to everyone who made it down to the Tout Third album launch at Hatch in Homerton on Sunday. We were supported by our good friends and label mates Adam Coney and Nick Siddall and would like to say a big thank you to them and to Robin Dalton who accompanied us on Trumpet and Peter Bennie, who played bass for us. We are currently booking more shows, which will be announced as and when and will be playing the Trestle Records showcase on the 18th July 2015 at the Hackney Picturehouse, Attic.

Tout Third

www.trestlerec.com

Third is the latest album release from the London-based instrumental four piece, Tout, and its most ambitious record to date. Drawing on a range of influences including Neil Young, Dirty Three and Do Make Say Think, Third's ten instrumental tracks evoke sprawling vistas, outback lands, expanse and movement. Emotive viola rides atop country-tinged rhythms and thudding double bass. Distorted guitars occasionally emerge to bring dirt and dissonance to the highly crafted melodies.


On Third, guest contributors on trumpet and double bass expand the band's dynamics to produce a uniquely textured collection. Multi-instrumentalist David Coulter adds to the musical arrangements on Third the rarely heard instruments the jaw harp and bowed saw. The resulting sound is one drawn from a palette of historic folk and country blues re-contextualised in to a contemporary form and the aesthetic is highly atmospheric and suggestive of filmic landscapes.

released 14 June 2015

Nick Downes - Guitar / Percussion / Synth / Piano / Lap Steel / Harmonica
Jonny Fryer - Guitar / Percussion / Synth / Piano / Lap Steel / Tanpura
Jonny McKemey - Drums
Simone Potter - Viola / Cello / Piano
Peter Bennie - Double Bass / Electric Bass
David Coulter - Saw / Jaw Harp
Robin A. Dalton - Trumpet

Recorded in London 2015
Mastered by Nick Siddall
Artwork by Ross Downes

TR028

Tout Third Release Today

Tout Third is released today. We wrote and recorded this record last year and will be debuting tracks at the forthcoming record launch show to be held at Hatch in Hommerton, London on 21st June 2015. We like to thank everyone who helped us make this record, with special thanks to David Coulter, Robin Dalton and Peter Bennie. You can purchase the new album at www.trestlerec.com and through the regular channels. 

Trestle Records Showcase

As well as the album launch show on the 21st June. Tout will also be playing alongside Adam Coney at the Trestle Records showcase to be held at the Attic, Picturehouse Cinema in Hackney on the 18th July. we are really looking forward to this show. It's £5 entry and doors are at 7.30.pm.

Tout Third - Album Launch Event

Thank you to everyone who came down to see us play in Camden for Martyn Bonanza's Country All-Dayer. The sun was shining and we had a really good time. We were without our drummer, but had Robin Dalton with us, who played trumpet on the new record as well as the ever talented Pete Bennie on double bass. It was great to have an opportunity to rework the tracks.

We can now announce the date of the Tout Third album launch, which will take place on the 21st June at Hatch in Hommerton. We will be supported by good friends and Trestle Label mates Colonel Acland and Lord Sydney. Doors will be at 6pm and we will be on stage at 8pm. Entry is free. We will be playing an extended set and debuting tracks from the new album.

Tout Third is officially released on Monday 15th June 2015 and can be purchased via the Trestle Records website as well as streamed via the usual links.

Album Review - Tout Third

Tout's forthcoming album, Tout Third which is due for release in June 2015 has received it's first review from Dalston Sounds. Click Here to read or see below:

Tout’s music has its roots in American country and folk styles, working them into languid soundscapes that are occasionally spiked with jolts of folk- and acid-rock. On this outing, licks of trumpet, jaw harp and bowed saw add a subtle hint of Morricone.

3rd is a significant step up from the group’s last effort, Second (Trestle, 2013), although that album was seductive enough. On 3rd they achieve a more distinctive, more cohesive sound, which is more satisfying than Second‘s aggregate of influences.

Tout’s principals, Nick Downes and Johnny Fryer (who I last reviewed as part of the duo Calibos) are guitarists with extended musical palettes. Both also play synth, piano and lap steel. The core quartet also has Simone Potter on strings and piano, and Johnny Mckemey on drums. Peter Bennie takes over bass duties that were previously shared between Downes and Fryer, while Robin A. Dalton’s trumpet is very sparingly and effectively deployed, as are the musical saw and jaw harp of David Coulter, who has previously worked with the likes of Test Dept and The Pogues, but now works in musical theatre (notably, he was Associate Musical Director and multi-instrumentalist in Tom waits and Robert Wilson’s staging of The Black Rider).

Some of Trestle Records’ tags for this album suggest broader influences, including Krautrock, classical, and blues, but most of these are misleading when just three serve to sum the music nicely: alt-country ambient americana. Neil Young gets a namecheck too, and that seems appropriate enough, since although Tout’s music is instrumental, not lyric based, and cinematic rather than rocking or balladeering, there’s always a song just below the surface.

For every piece that passes in a heat haze of wistful reverie (“I’ve Laboured Long and Hard for Bread”) there’s another (“For Honour and for Riches”) that admits more expansive imaginings. Where strings and saw determine the former’s melancholic tone, trumpet and plucked bass lend the twinned guitars of the latter resolution.

Those track titles are derived from outlaw poetry: “I’ve Laboured…” and “For Honour…” are the first two lines of a four-line stanza by the appropriately English-born American stagecoach robber Charles Earl Bowles, aka Black Bart.

As Londoners, one might expect Tout to sound like musical magpies in such an overtly (imagined as) American soundscape, but their take on Americana seems focused on particular sonic textures rather than romantic visions, so this isn’t a problem. Despite all the signifiers there’s a box-freshness to the group’s rich but uncluttered sound.

The Black Bart stanza, and the quartet of tracks that close the album and take their titles from it, conclude: “But on My Corns Too Long You’ve Tread” / “You Fine Haired Sons of Bitches”. On the former number, Fryer and Downes layer multiple shimmering and reverberant guitar parts over a tanpura drone, emotively enriched by Simone Potter’s viola, and an insistent pulse of bass and drums: shades of Silver Mt. Zion. The latter is a gentle lustre of bowed cello and saw, brushed percussion, and lap steel.

Six other pieces, titled after a six-line stanza by another, this time anonymous, masked highwayman make up a longer suite of ‘songs’ that begins the album. Dalton’s trumpet is the first and principle sound, introducing the unhurried “So Here I’ve Stood” and effectively signposting the acoustic, proto-ambient drift of Tout’s music. But the uptempo and lucid melodicism of “While Wind and Rain” serves notice that what follows will be shapely, directional and melodic, notwithstanding flashes of steel and coarse-grained texture.

Where the vast floodplain of now readily-available musics invites interminable introspection and long-form indulgence, the easeful flow of 3rd‘s narrative belies its authors’ attention to form and detail.

Personnel

Nick Downes guitar, percussion, synth, piano, lap steel, harmonica; Jonny Fryer guitar, percussion, synth, piano, lap steel, tanpura; Johnny Mckemey drums; Simone Potter viola, cello, piano; Peter Bennie double bass, electric bass; David Coulter saw, jaw harp; Robin A. Dalton trumpet.

Related Posts

Jonny Fryer and Adam Coney – Calibos.

Adam Coney – The Fall of the Flamingo Gardens.

Buy 3rd direct from Trestle Records.

www.to-ut.co.uk

I'm pleased to announce that Tout had a track played on BBC 6 Music Gideon Coe show on Monday 20th April 2015. You can listen back here for a limited time only. Martyn Bonanza has also been debuting tracks form the forthcoming album Third on his Resonance 104.4fm radio show, the latest edition of which can be heard here. 29th April 2015 edition of the show. Several tracks have also been played by John Wigzell over on radio Exeter. Expect more over the coming months.

We are also pleased to announce we will be playing the Martyn Bonanza, Camden Lock All-Dayer on the 7th June. Sadly our drummer cannot make this show, so we'll be doing something a little different. There will be more information regarding upcoming shows and information about the album release over the next few weeks.

Yesterday two tracks from Tout Third were previewed on Martyn Bonanza's americana show, Bonanza and Son Resonance FM 104.4 fm. He spoke about the new album and the track listing as well as some kind words about Tout. We have confirmed that we'll be playing the Bonanza and Son Americana All-Dayer on the 7th June at the Camden Lock, performing a stripped back, unplugged set. More shows to be announced shortly.

Bonanza and Son - 1st April 2015 by Resonance Fm on Mixcloud