SLIGO LIVE 2011 PRESENTS

www.sligolive.ie

RACHEL SERMANNI BAND & ADMIRAL FALLOW

Thursday, 27th – Monday, 31st October 2011

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

SLIGO LIVE presents another special concert with two of Scotland’s Hot New Indie Bands tipped to breakthrough. RACHEL SERMANNI’s BAND and ADMIRAL FALLOW PERFORM ON SUNDAY, 30TH OCTOBER 2011 at SLIGO LIVE, Ireland’s folk, roots and indie music festival.

Creative Scotland Showcase RACHEL SERMANNI BAND and ADMIRAL FALLOW Live at Calry Church, a very special venue with wonderful acoustics and great atmosphere.  Fans at previous year’s Festivals will remember the fantastic performances by Josh Ritter, Bell X1 and The Duke & The King at Calry Church.   Tickets: €12.00.  Show: 9.30pm.

There is a real buzz building for Rachel Sermanni, the highly talented 19 year old singer/songwriter from Carrbridge in the Scottish Highlands. Make sure you catch this Highland star on the ascendancy.

Hot new Indie act Admiral Fallow are equally being tipped for the top.  And this NOT TO BE MISSED HOT NEW INDIE GIG is extra special because Rachel Sermanni’s band and Admiral Fallow are friends, having collaborated together previously on TV and recording.  Paul Kramer wrote in The Hit Sheet: “The award for the best of the new acts we have seen perform recently goes to Admiral Fallow. Their excellent set at the Lexington had publishers and A&R out in force. We expect them to be huge. Led by the engaging and captivating future star that is front-man Louis Abbott, they will soon have the world at their feet.”

This year’s folk, roots and indie music festival SLIGO LIVE will present an exciting programme over 6 days over the October Bank Holiday Weekend, October 26th – 31st bringing together established Irish and international acts with some of the best emerging talent on the scene. This is the seventh year of the festival and each year it grows from strength to strength.

Weekend tickets are the perfect solution for those making a weekend of it as they guarantee admission to Elvis Costello and KT Tunstall, with Special Guests Sam Lewis and Rozi Plain as well as Hayseed Dixie, Oddsocks Revival, The Barley Mob, Matt Molloy, John Carty, Arty McGlynn, and THE UNWANTED and Rachel Sermanni Band and Admiral Fallow and all Sligo Live performances for only €95.

Rachel Sermanni was chosen by Sligo Live last year for a café showcase gig and swayed the packed audience in Osta with her ethereally beautiful music and charming personality.  Her appearances at this year’s Sligo Live with her band will be truly special.    She also makes a special guest appearance on Elvis Costello’s intimate solo show on Saturday 29th October at IT Sligo’s Knocknarea Arena for his only Republic of Ireland appearance in 2011.

Her quirky songwriting, unusual phrasing and intricate finger picking earned her spots in SXSW in Austin, Texas; LA’s Musexpo, London Calling, Naked Song and Eurosonic (Netherlands). Since then she has toured with Stornoway and support slots with KT Tunstall, Newton Faulkner and Mumford and Son, saw Rachel winning over audiences and making friends everywhere she went.

Times have really changed for her in less than a year.  A storming start to 2011 saw Rachel appear at Celtic Connections several times as she stunned big audiences, including her 5 star New Voice Commission, and go on to support Mumford & Son on their Highlands and Islands tour. Her track ‘My Friend Fire’ recorded and produced by Ben of Mumford and Sons features on the first Communion compilation album.

Festival appearances this summer including T in the Park, Wickerman Festival, Ben & Jerry’s, Manchester & London, Sidmouth Folk Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, and The Edinburgh Festival.

Sometimes Rachel Sermanni plays solo and at others she is surrounded by a group of wonderful musicians consisting of Laura Wilkie, Siobhan Anderson and Louise Bichan (the fiddle pixies), and pianist Jennifer Austin.

“Her performance was dynamically aware, controlled, self-assured, compelling and utterly cool; and at only eighteen, she is a simply frightening prospect. In the interest of brevity, this girl is the real thing. Outstanding.” HI-Arts

‘Incredibly promising…we’re sure she has an illustrious career ahead of her’. The Independent

‘Rachel Sermanni impresses with a stunning singing voice.’ clashmusic.com

‘Expect sultry vocals and lyrics by the one, the only…’ NME

ADMIRAL FALLOW:

“Devastatingly downtrodden and wonderfully uplifting. . . surprising and enthralling. . . finely crafted material played superbly well” (Mike Diver, BBC Album Reviews Editor)

“Anthemic yet understated. Big and bold, but avoiding theatrical cheese. Every note serves a purpose and has its place, nothing is wasted and nothing is missed.” (Music-News.com)

“The perfect musical storm: depth, strength of feeling and technical skill in one sublime package.” (Stereokill.net)

“A veritable masterclass in dark-hued yet uplifting, catchily literate roots-pop” (The Herald)

“So good, so dark, so beautiful” (Daniel P. Carter, BBC Radio 1)

DEBUT ALBUM BOOTS MET MY FACE OUT NOW WORLDWIDE ON LO-FIVE RECORDS

FEATURED IN PASTE MAGAZINE’S TOP 10 PERFORMANCES AT SXSW 2011

SUMMER 2011 FESTIVALS INCLUDE GLASTONBURY, LATITUDE, CAMBRIDGE FOLK FESTIVAL, BELLADRUM, SUMMER SUNDAE AND GREEN MAN FESTIVAL

The toast of 2011’s South By Southwest festival (tipped in advance by NPR’s influential All Songs Considered; ranked as a highlight by US indie bible Paste magazine), Scotland’s Admiral Fallow continue their seemingly unstoppable mission to capture hearts and minds. They steal the former with beautiful melodies, sumptuous orchestration and bittersweet boy/girl vocals, while unforgettably colonising the latter thanks to lead singer/guitarist Louis Abbott’s exquisitely observed, hauntingly candid lyrics.

Completed by fellow vocalist Sarah Hayes (also flute, piano), Kevin Brolly (clarinet, keyboards, backing vocals), Joe Rattray (bass, double bass, backing vocals) and Philip Hague (drums, vibraphone, backing vocals), Admiral Fallow’s richly distinctive mesh of acoustic and electric textures with multilayered harmonies has gained a fast-expanding fanbase either side of the Pond, prominently including Guillemots’ Fyfe Dangerfield, Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Radio 1’s Huw Stephens and BBC2’s ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris.

Having met while studying at university in Glasgow, Admiral Fallow formed in 2007 (as the Brother Louis Collective: the name-change came in early 2010), through a shared love of such left-field luminaries as Tom Waits, Low, Midlake, Elbow, King Creosote and Bruce Springsteen – all filtered through Abbott’s unflinchingly personal, resolutely Scottish sensibility. He says of debut album Boots Met My Face, released worldwide in 2011, that it “documents the first chapter of my life, be it memories from school or kicking a ball about with my childhood chums,” he continues: “All of the songs are taken from real life events. There’s no fiction. I’m not into making up stories or characters for the sake of trying to stir emotions. They are songs about friends and family as well as a fair bit of self-evaluation.”

Among the band’s early successes were opening for the aforementioned Guillemots, winning a coveted Your Sound award at legendary Glasgow venue King Tuts, and extensive airplay for debut single ‘These Barren Years’, on Euphonios Records. After headlining the T Break Stage at T in the Park, they were crowned as Under the Radar act of 2009 by the Scotsman newspaper, having meanwhile recorded Boots Met My Face at Glasgow’s Chem 19 studio, with award-winning producer Paul Savage (Delgados, Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai) at the controls. Guests on the album included Frightened Rabbit’s Gordon Skene and Kettle of Kites’ Tom Stearn, plus a string trio and a five-piece horn section. Despite an initially low-key Scottish release in March 2010, it was picked up as Album of the Week by the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, while the live buzz continued to build via festival dates at the Fence Collective’s Home Game, RockNess, the Insider and a return visit to T in the Park, plus further radio and TV exposure.

As well as support slots with the Futureheads, Paolo Nutini, King Creosote, the Felice Brothers and Frightened Rabbit, highlights among their own headline gigs included a triumphant London show in September, of which editor Paul Kramer wrote in The Hit Sheet: “The award for the best of the new acts we have seen perform recently goes to Admiral Fallow. Their excellent set at the Lexington had publishers and A&R out in force. We expect them to be huge. Led by the engaging and captivating future star that is frontman Louis Abbott, they will soon have the world at their feet.”

After more UK touring in early 2011, March saw Admiral Fallow’s maiden voyage Stateside, which took in no less than seven stellar performances at South by Southwest, as well as New York and Bostonshowcases. Later that month, the UK-wide release of Boots Met My Face (followed by its worldwide launch in June) garnered a fresh round of glowing reviews,ahead of the band’s busiest summer yet, with appearances at The Great Escape, Glastonbury, Latitude, Cambridge Folk Festival, Belladrum and the Green Man.

The diversity of musical contexts in which they’ve featured points directly to the breadth of Admiral Fallow’s appeal and their genre-spanning calibre of musicianship. Abbott has worked those childhood and adolescent memories, with their attendant soul-searching, into songs which strike a universal chord, across the full emotional register from euphoria to anguish, often articulating the complex, ambivalent overlap between the two. His reticently guarded, soulfully vulnerable vocals are vibrantly complemented by his bandmates’ alternately lush and sparing contributions, highlighted in the fragile, barely-accompanied ‘Delivered’ and the epic, distorted orchestral finale of  ‘Bomb Through the Town’.

The stealthy, delicate clarinet and flute opening to ‘Dead Against Smoking’, ushering in Abbott’s frank yet tender depiction of a lover asleep (“Backside in the air/Mouth half open/But still filled with grace”), builds to a gradual, majestic crescendo, while the deceptively – even desperately – upbeat ‘Squealing Pigs’ vividly conjures the intense volatility of teenage romance. Silvery acoustic guitar and elegantly cascading flute underpin dark recollections of past adversity in ‘Old Balloons’, before exploding into a fiercely extravagant climax, and the vibrant, richly layered plangency of ‘These Barren Years’ surges and seethes with exultantly barbed splendour. Not for nothing did leading Scottish arts magazine The List predict that, “Admiral Fallow are set to soundtrack our forthcoming festivals, fireworks and Hogmanays.”

As the band continue to attract admiring comparisons to Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons and Frightened Rabbit, while forging a sound that brims with originality, now is the time to catch them - before they’re huge.

For further information contact: Aine Carmody / Niamh White
Carmody Smith PR   Tel: 01 2602664/ 086 1741882
email: aine@carmodysmithpr.com  /  email. niamh@carmodysmithpr.com
www.sligolive.ie