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.
15/06/2015
11/06/2015
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.
18/05/2015
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
Buy 3rd direct from Trestle Records.
06/05/2015
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.
02/04/2015
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.
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