Fire Action! - Fiasco

Despite shoving it down the throat of most people I've ever met for the past few weeks, I somehow failed to post about this here. Fire Action! made an EP. You should totally buy it. Yes, YOU. From either iTunes or Amazon.

Fire Action! Tour - Day Three (Monday)

Bristol - 12:00

The sun is out again, although not with quite the same force as we felt it in Oxford. I'd have liked to use the next few hours to explore - I hear Isambard Brunel built an impressive suspension bridge nearby - but the cheap shoes I bought yesterday are fighting against my unusually shaped feet and, at the moment, winning, leaving the heels and tops of my feet feeling something like good carpaccio: raw and tender. So instead I'm sitting on a bench just off the High Street, outside a Methodist church that lays claim to some kind of historical significance, while some cheery whistling workmen paint the wall behind me a not completely repulsive shade of lime green.

Fire Action! Tour - Day Two (Sunday)

Oxford - 16:00

Day two of the tour and there's time to kill in Oxford before we drive to Bristol. In an attempt to blend in with the natives I've bought a pretentious Moleskine notebook and taken refuge from the day's scorching heat under a tree in Christ Church meadow. It would probably be sensible to find a more secluded spot than I have - tourists pour down the wide pebble dashed path almost constantly, eager to gawp at the university's golden monuments to intellectualism or the cows in the field ahead of me - but the poser in me quite enjoys imagining I might be a source of fascination to passersby with my furrowed brow and look of intense concentration. Besides, it's not long before the repetitive crunch of footsteps on gravel becomes faintly reassuring- like the sound of rain on a pane of glass.

Fire Action! - White Dress video

Here it is! It's turned out alright, no?


Fire Action!, White Dress from Chris Newcombe on Vimeo.

We're still left with lots and lots to organise: we're aiming for an EP launch at the start of August, to go alongside a one week INTERNATIONAL tour (which will include both England AND Wales).

Obviously, feel free to re-post like kerazy.

The Best Kind of Exhausting

I spent last weekend in Norfolk making a music video for the Fire Action! song "White Dress". The band - along with one phenomenally talented director/producer, one so-witty-you-could-punch-him Director of Photography, an unfailingly resourceful and creative Production Designer, and crucially a funny and beautiful selkie - spent two 20-hour-long days filming for the five-and-a-half minute long song.

I cannot begin to describe (largely because I'm still feeling the effects of the sleep deprivation) how excited I am at the prospect of seeing it all put together, so until I get back to the point where putting words in a coherent order is a little more effortless, here are a bunch of photos I took on my mobile phone (click 'em to see 'em in all their high-res glory):

Fire Action! - Lucy Fang

On this I'm playing the bass AND the washing up tub.

Fire Action! - I am Boring (but you are Bad Bad Bad)

I should get out of the habit of staying up too late and making crap videos by throwing together a bunch of Google image results. It's no good for me. Or for the song they accompany.

Oh well:

Cutting Teeth

You should form a band because you want to entertain. Only the most desperate, naïve or utterly corruptible can start making music with a belief that they’ll ever make money from it. That’s not the point. The point is to play. Have fun. And then hope that your play is infectious enough that anyone listening starts having fun too.

At least, that’s where I come from whenever I play a musical instrument in front of someone else. Admittedly there will be some who approach music making from other angles, perhaps with some great political or philosophical points to make, and some even pull it off. But for the amateur pop or folk musician (and I use “pop” and “folk” in the broadest possible senses there), entertainment has to be key.

So... does it sound like we're enjoying ourselves?

Fire Action! - "Who You're Gonna Be"


Fire Action! feat. Pankita - Improvisation

Ongoing Fire Action

Or is it Fire Alert? I'm not quite sure. But the exciting band I'm in are starting to do some things that sound quite good. Perhaps. I think. It's hard to tell when you're so close to it all. But at the very least I think we're getting near something that exceeds the phenomenal debut song we "released" a few months ago. Yeah, it's all very exciting, so this is a space you should watch.

Whoever this is has bad technique

In the meantime, here's a sweet, pretty work in progress I'm being naïve enough to believe might keep someone's interest in the meantime.

Fire Alert debut, err, "thing"

We got the name Fire Alert from some fire evacuation instructions we stole from a bar, on the night my brother, James McInerney and I decided we should have a go playing some music together. The wise principles contained within ("DO NOT TAKE PERSONAL RISKS OR PUT LIVES IN DANGER!") formed the basis of the first song we wrote. It's not a very good name for a band, but I'd rather have a crap name with some significance to it than spend months trying to think of something that's sufficiently "cool" but which is totally meaningless.

(While we're on the subject of bands with hip names, I'm pleased to see Internet Forever getting recognition from the likes of the Observer and VICE. They deserve it, and I've been slightly obsessed with the twee but undoubtedly great 'Break Bones' for a while now.)

Anyway, we got drunk, made up songs til the small hours of the morning, and pissed off the people living in the flat below. Thanks to the wonders of the iPhone, we were able to record it, and sure enough, most of it was a mess. Yet among the fluffed notes, dodgy lyrics and hesitant improvisations, there were a few minutes that stood out as sounding surprisingly 'finished'. (Or at least, slightly more than half-finished.)

A week later we took some video, and what you see below is what happened when the two were put together. I'm playing the bass notes.