Tasty Fanzine E.P review

Spiral 25 are a psychedelic rock band from Oxford, playing music described by the local Oxford press, if the blurb accompanying the submitted CD is to be believed, ‘slow motion narcotic groove rock’.

Oh good, that’s cleared that up then. What the fuck is slow motion narcotic groove rock? It is, it turns out, down beat rock and roll at its finest. All dirty bass, fuzzy guitar, slow and meandering drum beat pushing it all along; very black, very industrial, like the noise you’d expect to hear ringing out from the forges as the rock gods first cast the world. You won’t dance to it, you’d certainly struggle to mosh to it, but you will be able to sway to it and, if you like your vocals long, drawn out and echoed, with your accompanying soundtrack distorted and dirty, you’ll probably quite like it. I did. 7/10

Jim Johnston

Tasty Fanzine

Drone Magazine E.P Review

Keeping the spirit of broody, dark, non-metallic drone alive are Spiral 25 - a mostly five, sometimes six-piece from Oxford who flaunt the undeniably catchy label bestowed on them by the local music press (theirs, that is): 'slowmotion narcotic groove rock.'

Careful. That might wind up a legitimate genre of music.

Reviews of the band compare their sound to the Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3 and The Doors. Clearly we are on a bridge over some sort of musical generation gap because when I threw on their EP... EP... and found myself besieged by the crushing guitar on 'Let The Light Shine On', the first name that ran across my mind was The Horrors. This was followed by The Warlocks. Then the Brian Jonestown Massacre. It would appear that I am at the 'new generation' end of the bridge.

The cross-generational comparisons are not inconsistent, of course. Spiral 25 channel the same dark reverberations that characterise the music of the bands mentioned. Except for the Jesus and Mary Chain whose influence strikes my ears as negligible. The songs on the EP are immensely dark. This is not a band you will, or should, catch rehearsing in your local park on a sunny day. They sound dark and ideal for echo-inducing acoustic-amplifying venues such as vampire-laden caves and dimly-lit taverns. Russell Denham has a voice reminiscent of the low grumble that personified the vocalist of almost every major post-punk act to have existed.

In fact Spiral 25 manage to make even the usually cheery harmonica come across as a thug. On 'Today's Future (Tomorrow's Past)' Chris Monger arms the instrument with a dagger and sics it at you while Russell gives the command 'Kill! Kill! Kill!' It's all rather intimidating. 'Shadows in Line' is possibly the strongest track on the EP, and further proof of the band's ability to hypnotise objects. 'Watch the shadows fall in line' boast the lyrics, as they stare down... shadows. Now that's cool.

You can easily imagine Spiral 25 striking dumb the few loyal patrons of a local pub (volume or talent, one of them will do it) and just as easily see them playing to a massive crowd of a few hundred darkly-clad types sporting perpendicular hairstyles. Whatever the setting, absence of light is essential.

by Radhika Takru
http://www.dronemagazine.com/

An E.P review from Drone Magazine, a blog which covers some pretty decent music.

We've also recently got most of the tracking done for a second E.P, hopefully release that around the same time next year as the last one. Will keep you all posted.

Golden Animals Revisited

A far cry from Vixens, these guys were sunglasses-wearing, long-haired and bearded drone/sludge rockers highly reminiscent of Pontiak among others. Very loud and thunderous, they caused a very strange sensation at times – the singer’s voice seemed occasionally to cause your brain to throb when he held a note, one of those feelings which uneasily straddles pleasure and horror.

Andy Johnson
http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2009/09/golden-animals-jericho-tavern-oxford-190809/


A short review of our set the other week supporting Golden Animals. Click the link for a full review of the gig, including Vixens and Golden Animals sets.
Got a few more gigs lined up for the next couple of months, supporting the Notorious Hi-Fi Killers at the Celler on the 24th of September, and ILikeTrains at the Bullingdon in October.

Oxford Punt Reviews

We played the Oxford Punt earlier this month. Organised by Nightshift Magazine the Punt is a mini festival held across many venues in one evening in Oxford.

Here are some snippets of reviews from that night.

"Sprial 25 turn The Cellar into a dark womb of numb bliss and stoned
paranoia with their molasses-thick drone rock. It’s a claustrophobic
experience, an expertly controlled swirling fug of heavy grooves and
sweeping vocals, with definite narcotic nods to the likes of Spiritualized,
Loop and The Jesus and Mary Chain."

Oxford Bands, May 23rd 2009

"Adding bricks to this wall-of-distortion, Spiral 25 were also well received. Similar to the psychedelia of The Black Angels, they flooded the room in a dense fog, put on black sunglasses and drew forth waves of mystic, textured Rock."

Brendan Morgan
Bearded Magazine, May 24th 2009

E.P release.

Our debut E.P is available now, both in a physical digipack with full artwork by Russell and as a digital download.

The CD is available at £4 from us at gig, or for Oxford people from Videosyncratic on Cowley Road. If you aren't local drop us an e-mail and we can sort something one.

Mp3's are also available from the following online stores:

iTunes
emusic
Amazon.com
Napster
Rhapsody

Spiral 25 E. P. Review

"SPIRAL 25
‘Spiral 25 EP’
(Own Label)
Rock and roll’s dark side of the street – the side where the pimps and smack dealers and rakish leather-clad waifs exist in eternal shadow – has always held a more seedily romantic lure than the sunny side. From The Velvet Underground’s speed’n’smack rock experimentalism through The Stooges, Spacemen 3 and Warlocks, the needle traces a blackened line that can veer off at strange, exotic tangents or spiral forever inwards. Here’s where you’ll find Spiral 25, the band, lest we forget, formed by assorted members of The Factory, arguably one of Oxford’s great lost bands, certainly of recent years. Reconvened after a brief time under the moniker Dirty Sci-Fi, guitarist Chris Monger, bassist Joe Chapman and drummer Andy Proper have recruited guitarist Sunny Singh and vocalist Russell Denham, a singer in the spaced-out and devotional mode of Jim Morrison, and set out to dig their musical furrow deep and claustrophobic. They wear their influences not so much on their sleeves as stamped on their foreheads but confidently and with singleminded unselfconsciousness, and as they lay down a groove as black as a fallen angel’s armpit, guitars providing a shifting pattern of textures over the relentless rhythm, you’re lost in a flotation tank full of tar and treacle, the hymnal ‘Let The Light Shine On’ spiralling through Loop’s heavy-duty psychedelia with grim, morbid determination, while ‘Signals’ bubbles spaceward from its subterranean beginnings, a kindred spirit to Spacemen 3’s ‘Things Will Never Be The Same’.
As the mood darkens through the EP, Spiral 25 really hit bedrock with ‘Today’s Future
(Tomorrow’s Past)’, exhuming those old blues via The Doors’ ‘The End’ and a ceaseless narcotic grind that’s so thick with soot you feel you need to scrub out your lungs by the time it finishes. It may be a musical cliché but this is one CD you really must play at excruciating volume to do it full justice. Thankfully, if the neighbours do call the police, you’ll be so whacked out on the pretty fractal patterns in your head you won’t even mind when they cart you off."

Dale Kattack
Nightshift, Oxford's Music Magazine. March 2009.

Spectrum

On Tuesday 24th February, Spiral 25 supported Spectrum at The Wheatsheaf in Oxford along with One Unique Signal from London.

Spectrum is the band of Pete Kember (aka Sonic Boom), founder member of 1980s/1990s band Spacemen 3. This was one of the first times for many years that Spectrum had performed as a full band and it was quite something to hear Spectrum playing almost an entire set of some of the greatest Spacemen 3 songs including Transparent Radiation, Set Me Free, When Tomorrow Hits and Revolution. Almost like seeing Spacemen 3 themselves. An experience not to be missed.

Not only that but the whole night was brilliantly put together by Ady Foley of Oxford's Vacuous Pop promotions and record label with all 3 bands fitting the bill perfectly. The sound at the gig was controlled in house sound engineer Joal who did a wonderful job for the sound both on stage and off.

New material

Over the past couple of months as well as working on the E. P. we've also been doing some more jamming. Out of that we now have 2 or 3 new songs including a new set outro and we can't wait to play them at The Cellar on January 31st. We've also been working on our intro and a couple of little bridge bits between songs so we have a very solid and interesting set for the next gig.

E. P. launch gig

The first Spiral 25 E. P. is due out at the end of January 2009. The E. P. will be released on CD and features artwork by singer Russell Denham. The E. P. consists of 4 tracks recorded in Oxford by the band and produced by guitarist Chris Monger.

Let The Light Shine On
Signals
Shadows In Line
Today's Future (Tomorrow's Past)

To celebrate the launch of the CD the band will be playing a special gig at The Cellar in Oxford on Saturday 31st January 2009. Support is from CAT MATADOR and others to be confirmed.

Facebook event
Last.FM event

Gig at Lark in the Park Cancelled!

Unfortunately due to a dispute between the licensee and the owner of the venue the gig planned for Tuesday 7th October has been cancelled.

First London gig - Music industry unsigned band showcase with Alabama 3 DJ set.

Spiral 25 will be playing their first gig in London on 4th October 2008 at Dirty South in Lewisham. The gig will be an unsigned band show case, music industry people are expected to be there and the event will be headlined by Reverend D Wayne Love from Alabama 3 providing a DJ set.

Spiral 25 on the Radio

The song "Let The Light Shine On" has been played on BBC Radio Oxford during the BBC Introducing programme presented by Tim Bearder. On Saturday 20th September bass guitarist Joe Chapman appeared on the show to advertise the band's upcoming gig at The Bullingdon Arms in Oxford on 25th September.

"slowmotion narcotic groove rock"

SPIRAL 25
The Cellar, 16/08/2007

Tonight's drug of choice is acid and the flange pedal is king. Both bands
are well named, each hinting at the journey they're set upon.
Spiral 25 are making their first live outing tonight, formed by various
members of the much-missed Factory and tonight intent on
digging a deep, dark hole of slowmotion narcotic groove rock.

They're hairy and blissed-out, spaced-out vocals riding the heavily
opiated guitars, often recalling Loop's more dark-minded take on
psychedelia. The highlight of their set comes near the close when, just
as you've got their spiralling mantra nailed the guitarist picks up a
harmonica and they hit an even more claustrophobic groove. Barring
another implosion, Spiral 25 will be one of the local bands to lose your
mind to in the coming months.

Dale Kattack
Nightshift September 2008