Newsround :: Featuring Tokyo Police Club, Wildbirds & Peacedrums and Gruff Rhys

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I apologise for our tardiness in keeping you up-to-date with all that’s great and wonderful in the world of music. So, bumper update today…

Newmarket Ontario’s favorite sons Tokyo Police Club have confirmed the title and release date of the band’s second full length album. To be called Champ, it’ll be released on June 8 on the band’s new U.S. label home mom+pop. The band has provided a sneak peek at the new record in the form of the track ‘Breakneck Speed’, currently streaming at tokyopoliceclub.com.

We’ve caught wind of two UK dates as well in the same month. On the 7th June they’ll play the The Ruby Lounge in Manchester, followed by a date on the 8th at London’s Scala.

Sweden’s Wildbirds & Peacedrums return in May with Retina, the first of two vinyl only EPs. The second, Iris, will follow in June and both will be compiled as an album, entitled Rivers, to be released in August on CD and download.

The Leaf Label are offering a free download of ‘Fight For Me’ from Retina to subscribers to their mailing list. You can sign up here. If you’d like to hear it, it’s streaming over on the band’s Myspace page.

Now for something a little different. Tony Da Gatorra and Gruff Rhys have announced details of their forthcoming collaborative album, The Terror Of Cosmic Loneliness. It’ll be released in July and Tony and Gruff will perform a handful of live shows to coincide with the album’s release, including a debut UK date at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach on 29th July, Camp Bestival in Dorset on 30th July and the Field Day festival in London on 31st July.

Tony Da Gatorra is a Brazilian TV and VCR repairman, musical freedom fighter and the inventor of his own unique ‘Gatorra’ instrument: part drum machine, part guitar. As a massive fan of Tony, Gruff set about tracking down the cult hero during his travels throughout South America (an adventure that also lead to road trip movie, Separado!). Having finally met, the pair undertook their first gig together and promptly booked in to a Sao Paulo recording studio to begin rehearsals…

Gruff takes up the story: We spent 5 days rehearsing a set of songs to play live at the venue – our only shared language was music itself so there was no small talk, just intense concentration on the music. On the final day, as the rehearsals had been so productive, we hooked up some recording equipment and took about 5 hours out to make this record. We recorded several live takes of each song then chose the best versions. I added a harmony vocal overdub on two songs, otherwise it’s pretty much what we recorded at the time. Upon returning to Cardiff I took the songs to producer Kris Jenkins’s studio whose excitement for the album and general encouragement was infectious – then we called in noise legend Sir Doufus Styles to oversee the final mix. Armed with 5 flasks of strong coffee, 75 sticks of gum and a bank of vintage compressors we mixed The Terror Of Cosmic Loneliness at extremely loud volume in one epic 12 hour session.

Tony Da Gatorra adds: Hello, peace my brothers, this record was made with lots of feelings and true love to bring consciousness and show a little bit of truth that needs to be said without hypocrisy. We are creatures of God, so there’s no death. Spirit is light, all evil won’t prevail – there’s no evil when it crashes with goodwill.

Brilliantly bonkers.