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ERLAND AND THE CARNIVAL

0	LONDON: The Old Blue Last
P	Thursday 18th February, 2010
N	8:00pm

Event information

ERLAND AND THE CARNIVAL were formed by singer/guitarist and Orkney islander Erland Cooper with ex-The Verve/The Good, The Bad & The Queen guitarist Simon Tong and drummer David Nock. Together, they produce a sound described by Tong as “Pentangle meets Ennio Morricone meets Love meets 13th Floor Elevators meets Joe Meek.” In other words: folk-tinged, psyched up, fuzzed-out brilliance.

Some history: Erland grew up on the Orkney Islands, where passing musicians and troubadors were a common sight. In his early teens, The Verve and Bert Jansch inspired him to swap the fiddle for the guitar. Later, having moved to London, Erland sang at Tong’s What The Folk club night in Portobello Road, where he was introduced to the former Verve man by the producer Youth. “It wasn’t a regular folk night where people are quiet and stroke their chin,” says Tong. “It was a more raucous affair where the acts – as many as 15 a night – had to quieten a noisy baying audience by being good. Erland definitely got people to shut up and listen.”

Resolving to form a band, Nock, Tong and Cooper took their name from Jackson C Frank’s My Name Is Carnival, a cover of which appears on the album. The band’s progression since has been fairly unorthodox: they’ve played gigs at miniature railway stations and their debut EP was individually re-recorded for each of its limited run, meaning no two copies are the same. All the while, they’ve been developing that bewitching sound.