Xtra Betrayal from Dave Wise on Vimeo.

New video from our homegrown creative and film maker Dave Wise – in my opinion his most potent piece of work to date – Great soundtrack, shocking content. Well worth a moment of your time and precious attention.

The first time I’ve seen a British seaside in fucking years, and so began a haphazard Crooked Family trip down to the south coast, armed with loose ideas, a few bottles of wine and our battered guitars. The plan was, film a video for World’s End.  Seeing as resident anarchist and Medway bred filmmaker Dave Wise had offered his services behind the lens, away we went. The usual chaos come creative blagging ensued, near drowning on my part and armed guards less than happy with our presence, all making this chilly yet sunny April day well worth the trip.

All hail Dungeness for she is a bitter dream, where nothingness grows like wild fire and all alive dies like a desperate death . . . . pure joy for the lost and lonely spirits of our godforsaken world. And on that note, here’s a fine selection of photographs taken by Hg, merry moments stolen during our inglorious day down at the World’s End, aka Dungeness,  enjoy . . . . x

(For the larger version of the slideshow, click here.)

Hey there, I’m pleased to announce we’ll be playing a gig at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen on Wednesday 5th May… which is in two weeks’ time! It’ll be a full band affair and we’ll be joined by saxophonist Leeroy Horns, so it should be pretty cool.

On-the-night and “official” advance prices are as per the flyer above, but just so you know WE HAVE A LIMITED NUMBER OF ADVANCE CHEAP TICKETS FOR SALE! If you want in for £4, use the Buy Now button.  Please read the small print below.

["BUY NOW" BUTTON WAS HERE - TICKET SALES NOW CLOSED xxx]

More information on this gig here.  Please spread the word, be good to see as many of you there as possible.  Speak soon punk rockers.

Love Mr CroOK.

A few “small print” words:

• You don’t need a PayPal account, you can pay with most credit or debit cards
• These are e-tickets, we are not posting physical tickets
• Print your confirmation e-mail and bring it along as proof of purchase
• Tickets are strictly non-refundable
• Ticket offer closes midnight Tuesday 4th May
• Your e-mail address will be added to our mailing list

We ran out of Old Books CDs at the start of the year and then the original artwork went astray for a while.  It’s now been safely retrieved and we’ve made up some new copies.  Head on over to the Shop page to purchase.

Old Books, Broken Bands & Other Little Treasures is a collection of experiments and hard-to-find material, mostly recorded around the time of Iscariot The Ladder.   It was originally released in November 2008.

You can see the track listing in the picture above.  The Releases page shows you where it fits in to the discography.  I’d forgotten that although the CD inserts are black and white, the original artwork is a little more colourful.

This is what the black treacle was for… a photo shoot based on the concept of tarring and feathering, punishment by humiliation.  As you can see in the video, much pissing and moaning ensued, so the humiliation went well.  However, the end justified the means, as the very rough preview shots that we saw later in the day were amazing.  Jenny’s now scrubbing them up and working her magic on them, so hopefully you’ll get to see them soon.

(Facebookers, you’ll need to hop over to the blog to see this video, plus any other YouTube stuff that we post on the website.)

Ten cans of black treacle and 200 wipes… possibly the weirdest thing I’ve done for this band so far.  Though tomorrow could be weirder.

Bruce was checking out a possible contact who could make a video.  He forwarded a link for us to watch.  The sample video used a mirrored effect in places, which reminded me of something from a few months ago that had slipped my mind.

My nieces and nephews love playing around with the video software on my laptop.  Spending the afternoon round at Mr Crook’s place last August, I checked out what Matilda made of it.  Pretty soon, her dad’s curiosity was also piqued.

Ten minutes later, we concluded that this was fertile territory and possibly something that could be used in future.  We promptly forgot all about it until Bruce’s friend’s video reminded me.  I watched it again and saw the same potential.

It’s not as slick as Tom’s stop-motion experiment from the same period, but it has a certain charm.  Creativity is often like this… play around with something, carelessly discard it, then remember several months later what you liked about it.

So, I’ve cut it down to the best section and added an obscure Drazillian score as backing music.  I’m publishing it now as an example of the kind of wonky little idea that frequently never sees the light of day.  This one gets a second chance.