Art is Hard Records

aih015: Our debut album release

There’s a saying that goes something like; “you can only succeed in doing big things, if you do the little things well.” Fourteen releases under our belt and I feel at least we’re beginning to learn not to get the little things completely wrong. We actually realise how much postage costs and seem to be able to get most of our releases out on time. Me and Richard have always agreed that we wouldn’t release an album until the right one comes along and only when we felt we’d be totally ready to be able to do a full album release properly .. that time is now!

On that note, it is with great pleasure that we bring you news of aih015; the debut album from Art is Hard Records and Flamingods; “Sun“ scheduled for release on January 21st, 2013. Famed for their rapturous live performances and unique take on ethnic pop music, Flamingods was a name I’d heard banded around a lot and therefore it is a great pleasure to be able to be releasing their first proper album.

The bands’ story begins in Bahrain, where 4 of the 5 members met - Kamal Rasool, Charles Prest, Sam Rowe and Craig Doporto. Upon moving to London they became friends with and recruited Karthik Poduval, the final piece to lay down the Flamingods foundations. United by a shared appreciation for African dance music, the band set out to combine their love of bands such as Boredoms and Animal Collective to make something that sounded alien, yet accessible.

As early gigs go, Flamingods’ couldn’t have gone much better. Having all bought tickets to the Animal Collective curated ATP festival, they decided to take along a selection of their huge instrument collection and what followed can only be described as legendary. Chalet gigs are a regular occurrence at ATP but I don’t expect there’s many which lasted as long as Flamingods’ mammoth 8 hour set. Up to 60 people crammed into their chalet to try and grab a view of their constantly changing line up and enchanting tribal rhythms (those who couldn’t squeeze in danced outside or tried clambering through windows).

Throughout 2011, Flamingods built up a loyal following through uploading bedroom recorded releases to their Bandcamp and continuing to wow through a series of live performances including an ATP-organised support slot for Islet. 2012 saw the band entering the studio for the first time and their debut album “Sun” is the result of these sessions. “Quesso” is the first song to be taken from it and is available for stream and free download below.

It is the perfect illustration of that Flamingods mantra we alluded to earlier ‘alien yet accessible’. Tribal chants coincide with tropical pop melodies and all manner of cacophonous drums topped off nicely with some riffs added by legendary Ponytail guitarist Dustin Wong.

We’re pleased to say that “Sun” is going to be available in a variety of formats. Obviously a beautifully packaged 12” version had to be done; limited forest-green vinyl that’ll include one of five limited posters inserted at random. I guess if you’ve been following our work closely over the last couple of years you’ll know we enjoy providing music differently. Thankfully Flamingods do too, and they’ve been selling their own brand homemade sauces at shows for quite some time. We’ve decided to put these recipes into mass production to offer up a super limited Flamin’ Goods hot sauce package (complete with the band’s own Herby Tahini & Green Chilli recipes!) which’ll also include a CD version of the album. All purchases come with a digital download that’ll be issued the week of release (you can also buy the download separately if you’re a little slim on cash) and are available to pre-order now!

I think it almost goes without saying due to the fact that we’re putting this out as our first album .. but I worry how we actually feel about the release gets lost in all the other mumbo jumbo. From the first listen of “Sun” me and Rich were both hooked. It’s the freshest, most exciting and interesting thing we’ve heard in a long time and we hope you grow to love it as much as we do.