markland, often with some live helping hands from craig beacons and caz mechanic... other people who have helped out on the old live show include francois, victor ladybird, rozi plain, stuart with pictures, laughing boy jack, mama leaf, nik void, andrew panty sell... maybe some others too i think ..............................................................................
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for the usa 07 tour, sleeping states was:
dana (sticks n skins);
ashod (strings and things);
markland (other stuff).
Influences
tape hiss. optic nerve comics. knitting. los angles. alfred bester novels. sturgeon white moss. our band could be your life. michael borremans paintings. friendships n familyships. you made me realise. d boon and mike watt. ono + eno. sam prekop and archer prewitt (sound and vision respectively). booji boy (not booji boy high). jeannie gateaux. the pretenders. roger mcgough's strange ways. marcel dzama's scribblings. nostalgia for the unrembered 80s. david grubbs. robert heinlein. robbie basho. fireworks. s..s..sitting in a room. delia derbyshire. panty lions. head over heels and blue bell knoll. unwound. seasons of the year. homocrime. the corporation. calvin + k. school. kate and cindy. jim o'rourke. cool trannys you don't know about. holidays. pop gun war comics. pkd. stina nordenstam. stratford on avon. douglas coupland novels. homeground fanzines. maggie and hopey. chris watson. burt bacharach. gary wilson. london. kims we love.
Sounds Like
video for rivers (out on tome records), directed by alexosmith.....
video for trumpet calls.... (edited together by a smith)
BUY the new album on ITUNES with a bonus track 'the hundred bird' that isn't on the cd:
Here's some press on the record:
"Low-fi masterpiece that capture the best hazy moods and daydreams" (4/5) - Rolling Stone
"...a phenomenally engaging mess and a classic example of how small can sound big (90%) - Filter Magazine
"...hands down, one of the most beautiful and gorgeously composed pieces of music I’ve heard this year...The crippling fear of the future is what is represented and, joyously, it has never sounded so lush and stunning." (Recommended) - Exclaim! Magazine
"From the confessional poets through Joan Baez, the notion of the singer-songwriter as a self-indulgent whiner has endured, and plenty-- like Starkie-- are making huge strides to reinvent the idea of the bedroom poet with a guitar: There the Open Spaces is an impressive start." (7.9) - Pitchfork
"...what There The Open Spaces is: a gossamer piece of British landscape observation through sound. And a beautifully derived slice of near-nothingness it is... Hugely recommended." (8) - Drowned In Sound
"Possibly the most beautiful record of the
past twelve months, There The Open Spaces combines the very best of Adem, Vincent Gallo,
Mogwai, Autolux, Joy Division, Calexico, Elliot Smith, and the Junior
Boys into something no shitty list could ever hope to capture... In fact, it's worth repeating with a
shot of Caps Lock testosterone; THIS IS FUCKING GORGEOUS." - Clash Magazine
"'There the Open Spaces' is among the best singer-songwriter albums you'll hear this year, if not the best - and it doesn't even feel like a singer-songwriter album at all... Essential purchase." (Album Of The Week) - Boomkat
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er... if you've been trying to access the sleeping states website recently without much luck i do apologise - it's exceeded its bandwidth twice in the past five days despite me topping it up coz too many people are trying to look at it or something. It should be working ok now, but it means I've had to take down the free mp3s temporarily as I can't afford to pay for the top-up each time! Sorry... I'll try and figure out a cheaper way of hosting the mp3s soon, in the meantime you can still download a couple of songs from the myspace player above.
Thanks - markland.
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here and there are songs, with more guitars than i can handle and an old vocal sampler keyboard for when i dont feel like strumming. i like singing it makes me feel better, and when i forget the words humming will do.
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this is something somebody else once said about sleepingstates:
"Enter Sleeping States. Dr Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesiser, may have recently left the planet, but Sleeping State's lead-singer, Markland Starkie, is reinventing the concept. Starkie looks like a mad scientist on stage, hovering over his audio experiments and twisting dials.First he takes a Fisher Price radio to his guitar, and then what looks like a hairdryer, pressing them against the pickups he works up an
electromagnetic drone. Once the drone meets his required standards, he stands up at the microphone and begins to sing. He sounds like Jeff Buckley malfunctioning over a railway station PA.
This is a band designed from its atoms up never to break into the mainstream. Starkie's sprawling lyrics fall like a balm over the white noise and whale song of his guitar, but it all swings quickly from the gorgeous to the totally inaccessible. The band is often drowned out by the babble of the crowd, but Sleeping States don't care one bit. Starkie just presses a short-circuiting Dictaphone to his guitar pick-ups and smiles out into the dark." - Chris Stevens, www.new-noise.net
- Call Me (Sleeping States) / Harold T. Wilkins (Fanfarlo) 7" Gatefold Single
Copies for sale from the Felt Tip Records Shop for £4 + p&p, and also from good record shops around the UK. Also available from itunes so click the link to buy it:
- I Wonder / Under A Capricorn Sky 7" Single
Copies for sale from the Caspian Label Shop for £3.50 incl. p+p, and also from good record shops around the UK.
- the Rivers / London Fields 7" single is available from various indie record shops around the UK. you can also buy it online from the TOME shop for £2.50
- to buy the Distances Are Great cd-r album click the one of the two Buy Now buttons below: * £4 incl p+p for postage within the UK * £5 incl p+p for postage outside the UK. (paypal)
(Postage within UK)
(Postage outside UK)
Tracks: 01. Trumpet Calls 02. Distances Are Games To Me 03. That One Pipe Dream 04. You Can't Lie To Me 05. London Fields 06. Don't Make Me Over (Dionne Warwick cover) 07. You & Your Strange Ways 08. Sing My Love Sing 09. Farthest From The Sea 10. Next Time 11. The Devil Is In The Detail 12. Trio For Strings 13. A Surprise 14. Petite Soeur
Hello, hope all is good just dropping by to say our album is now only £2+postage, for 12 tracks on limited edition cd our shop is http://d67. bigcartel. com, thanks and take care, Absent.
Join us for another Big City Redneck Presents! Another wonderful eruption, nay, ejaculation of good music at the Buffalo Bar this month!
What can I say? We won’t disappoint.
Buffalo Bar June 19th £6 on the door… 8.30pm till they kick us out…
Mama Shamone – THESE GUYS AREN’T PLAYING LIVE (except one acoustic) EXCEPT AT GLASTO FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR! http://www. myspace. com/mamashamone “Put Mama Shamone on at any venue and they are likely to take the roof off, this was one of the best live shows I’ve seen in years - certainly one of the best in London. In my opinion these guys are destined for greatness, it felt like I was witnessing history being shaped-something was just so right about what they were doing up there.” Vibe Bar
We Yes You No www. myspace. com/weyesyouno “We Yes You No sing about the end of the world, the end of everything. But in an apocalypse that would sound like this I would buy god’s last EP” – Big City Redneck
Language http://www. myspace. com/languageuk “"The verbosity of funk, the poetic twang of intelligent pop. The bridge between Franz Ferdinand and Smashing Pumpkins perhaps" – Bugbear
(Postage within UK)
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