As you may have noticed if you're a regular reader, the Invisible Bordeaux blog has been a fairly dormant beast lately. But there's a good reason for the relative silence: during the recent lockdown period I worked on an exciting musical project which has resulted in a band being formed and an E.P. being released. Please meet Slowrush!
Slowrush has been formed with my good friend Olivier Rols on bass, and my son Dorian Pike on drums, while I do my best to sing and strum guitars. Both Olivier and Dorian were regular contributors to the Invisible Bordeaux words-and-music extravaganza The Shuman Show, so putting together an actual band seemed to be a natural development. Throw in the lockdown period and a number of long weekends, and we soon set ourselves the target of recording four songs (with Olivier recording his parts remotely). And, a few weeks on, those songs are now in the public domain and available to listen to on all streaming platforms.
What, then, do Slowrush sound like? Well, I've always been heavily influenced by melodic pop artists such as Joe Jackson, XTC and Blur. Dorian brings in millennial percussion ideas inspired by bands such as Everything Everything, Foals and Tame Impala. Olivier, meanwhile, has eclectic tastes ranging from rock and jazz to punk. It all makes for a nice musical combination although there is a definite Britpop edge to what we do.
This is the cover of the E.P.. And that might just be a building that can be spotted in the Mériadeck district of Bordeaux.
There also happens to be a little bit of Bordeaux in what we do. While two of the tracks (Parallel World and Mr Morality) were old songs that have been dusted down and given a new lease of life, the two others (Bordeaux Watergate and Four Walls) were written during the lockdown period, and are very much inspired by blog-related topics. Bordeaux Watergate recalls the 1970s "Winegate" scandal in the wine milieu triggered by the discovery of thousands of bottles of Bordeaux that in fact contained wine from the Languedoc region. And Four Walls is a celebration of places where things happened in the past but may today be little more than an ordinary street, an empty room or a whole district where things have changed beyond recognition (such as the Mériadeck quarter, the buildings of which feature on the cover of the E.P.!).But hey, enough of my yakking! You can listen to all the tracks on the streaming platform of your choice (Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, etc.) via the page you'll find by clicking here: https://il.ink/slowrush
You can also follow and interact with Slowrush on Instagram (@slowrushband), Twitter (@slowrushband), and Facebook (@slowrushbdx). Hopefully we'll be able to announce some live dates before tooooo long!
And, at no additional cost, you can listen to the four tracks of The Parallel World E.P. right here! Enjoy! (If the tracks don't display, click here).
Back soon with some more conventional Invisible Bordeaux reports, I promise! Watch this space!