Friday, July 12, 2013

Band Review: The Castellers


The Castellers are another band that followed me on Twitter, and this is a great time to review them, because they are currently in a battle of the bands across Manchester to win over £900 worth of recording sessions,  which would be an amazing opportunity.
So, part of this review is encouraging you to go to http://systemonetravel.wix.com/botb and vote for them. The voting form has been a little tricky, so I recommend you hit the dropdown arrow for band selection first, and then fill in your name and email address. You can certainly listen to the other bands as well - Manchester produces some great sounds - but I know whom I voted for. voting continues through July 26th.
They list their genre as British Rock on Facebook, and that was interesting to me because the first group that I thought of was The Byrds, who are American of course, but an American band at the time of the British Invasion, who were both influenced and were influenced by it. Other things that came to mind were The Animals on "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", Van Morrison on "Gloria", and bits of Dick Dale (the Surf King) and the Beatles as influenced by Ravi Shankar. So, we are looking at a fairly specific time, though perhaps multiple places.
What you might guess from that last paragraph, other than questions about my music knowledge and sanity, is prominent guitars, entrancing rhythms, and feels a bit cosmic at times.
This is essentially getting a feeling from three songs. We have the haunting "Jackson In The Barrel", a more rocking "To The Gallows", and a lilting "Five Days Time" falls somewhere in between for tempo. However, I bet they could produce several more songs with, say, £900 worth of recording sessions. It really makes you think.

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