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News 2006 |
| November: Toolshed Trio - Club Integral - Brixton - Friday 8th December 2006 |
On the 8th December 2006, Graham Massey, Paddy Steer and Richard Harrison will perform at Club Integral in Brixton's Canterbury Arms as Toolshed. According to Graham; "We will do a power trio set then will jam with Superstrings and Spaceheads, and they will also do the same..."
Club Integral London's premier venue for the uncategorisable. The next Club Integral is on December 8th 2006 featuring: Toolshed Trio featuring Graham Massey, Paddy Steer and Richard Harrison, Farmyard Animals Trio, Spaceheads and Superstrings. At Canterbury Arms, Canterbury Crescent, Brixton - just two minutes from Brixton Tube. Entry Fee £5 |
| 4 November: Toolshed Lite - Gong Unconventional Gathering, Amsterdam - Saturday 4th November 2006 |
On the 4th November 2006, Graham Massey and Graham Clark will be performing acoustic songs as 'Toolshed Lite' at the Gong Unconventional Gathering in Amsterdam. Amongst the other artists featured on the bill include Gong, Steve Hillage, System 7 and Eat Static.
For further information, visit the Planet Gong site. |
| August: Toolshed - Cohesion Live Festival, Manchester |
On the 23rd September 2006 Platt Fields Park in Fallowfield will play host to Manchester's biggest new outdoor music festival, Cohesion Live. Some of the UK's finest bands and best new musical talent are lined up to play on the 2 stages and you can also expect some intimate shows from some very special guests in our smaller performance spaces. Toolshed will be amongst the performers, including Elbow, Badly Drawn Boy, Graham Coxon, Andy Rourke & Friends, Lou Rhodes, I Am Kloot, Durutti Column and a DJ set by The Doves.
Cohesion Live is raising money to complete the Manchester Peace Park Project in Kosovo. To help the festival raise the money needed to complete the Peace Park all artists at Cohesion Live are giving their time and talent free of charge. |
| 6 April: Toolshed - Live in London and Bristol |
Toolshed will be making two live appearances - in London and Bristol:
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| 31 March: Seaming To - Soda Slow EP - out 31st March 2006 |
 Seaming To - Soda Slow the first release on our own 'for us' label in a while and this one's an absolute peach. with the help of james ford (simian) and graham massey (808 state) seaming has created a strange and mystic brew that one moment sounds like dancefloor bjork and then veers totally to the left into a silver screen swansong. her voice is incredibly gymnastic and only adds to the almost classical approach of this release. in a world of 80's copycats and minimal house this really stands out as something unique and magical. also includes a blissed out remix from jm lapham from the earlies. essential. Release Date: 30/03/2006 SEAMING TO Sodaslow/Dreaming For Us **** Part-time Homelife collaborator, occasional Toolshed occupant and full-time, octave-scaling chanteuse, SeamingTo has amassed a fair old CV over the years. Having graced the stage with many a Mancunian legend, she has now decided to step out of the shadows with the release of her debut EP, a wonderfully strange and suitably twisted example of free-thinking music. Impossible to categorise and pointless to pigeonhole, it's SeamingTo at her experimental best (notwithstanding the dodgy opener). Needless to say there's a fascinating contrast of styles at work, as beautifully stripped-down, haunting piano and strings share the same stage as sinister, pulsating electronics. Weird and wonderful! (FS) Review from: DJ Magazine – 15 th March 2006 SEAMING TO SODASLOW For Us ( UK), FU36T Homelife banshee Seaming To goes solo, her operatic vocals soaring above the Simian bleeps and blips of electro monkey maestro James Ford. It's a complicated affair, as if Gary Numan had courted Liz Fraser before dropping 'Cars', but this is a record loaded with emotion and which packs plenty of dancehall thump amongst the fluttering intricacies. Watch for an album later in 2006. KM Review from: International DJ – April 2006 SEAMING TO 'SODA SLOW EP' (FOR-US) [Essential] Coming from a family of trained musicians, it was only natural for Seaming to follow the same path, first of all studying at The Royal College Of Music in London, then moving to Manchester to explore different vocal techniques & do operatic studies at The Royal Northern College Of Music. Did all this work and no play pay off ? You bet it did, Seaming has got an extraordinary voice. As well as being part of the band Homelife, Seaming has managed to do a solo album, pulling in Graham Massey (808 State, Toolshed, Homelife) & James Ford (Simian) on production. 'Soda Slow EP' is the first taster of what's to come, and the title track will leave you gob smacked, as Seaming's vocals soar & dip as they twist & turn, weaving their way around racing drum machines & over the edge heartbroken strings. 'Soda Slow' comes with a couple of remixes & bonus cut 'Dreaming', which comes over like Judy Garland doing a silver screen siren number. I can honestly say Seaming To is in a class of her own.
DEAN THATCHER |
| 20 March: Toolshed - Radio One Breezeblock Session |
Recorded at Maida Value on 13th March 2006, and broadcast on BBC Radio One on 20th March 2006. Four tracks were recorded, but only two were broadcast:
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| 5 March: Toolshed - Radio One Breezeblock Appearances |
Toolshed will be making an appearance on Mary Anne-Hobbs' Radio 1 show, Breezeblock on:
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| 3 March: Toolshed - New Album Reviews Onlines |
There are new album reviews online from Nuts, Get Rhythm, Music Week, as well as a new interview from Style And The Family Tunes - check them out here. |
| 2 March: Seaming - Soda Slow - out March 2006 |
Seaming To will be releasing a new 12" single in March 2006, entitled "Sodaslow". You can listen to the results via Seaming's website here. More news as and when it happens. |
| March: Toolshed - CD Release - Out Now (TN066 CDINT) |
 Twisted Nerve released the Toolshed album for European countries on CD format (in a jewell case) in January 2006, featuring the same tracks as the 2xLP release. The catalogue number is 'TN066 CDINT' and can be purchased from Finders Keepers here. "Now available on cd. Following his ten year apprenticeship in 808 state, Graham Massey was finally given the keys to his very own Toolshed in 1997 with the birth of his first son. A 14-piece multi-drummer and brass heavy unit, Toolshed were formed as house band to the same-named Manchester night-club with this eponymous double LP a self-proclaimed "anthology of activity; or scrapbook". 'Toolshed' opens with the imposing racket of 'Pazuzu', wherein the vibrancy of fuck-loads of drums duking it out over what sounds like a Christmas carol becomes patently clear. In comparable spirit, 'Mathematica' and 'Watusa' rattle around with high-kicking intent, nicking bits from Duke Ellington and Sun RA, then sellotaping it back together through sheer exuberance. Elsewhere, 'Nana Nana Naa Naa' is a platter of horns+breaks, 'Don King Singh' is Stephen Hawkings getting mucky down Blackpool beach, whilst 'Mahaladin' closes proceedings with a white-knuckle blast worthy of Melt Banana." |
| 15 January: Graham Massey interview in latest B-Music Newsletter |
In the latest B-Music newsletter (a quarterly free publication given away via the B-Music website to those who request a copy, or order some music from them), there is an interview with Graham Massey on all things Toolshed. The interview can either be read by clicking here.  |
| 7 January: Toolshed Album Out Now |
The Toolshed album was finally released via Twisted Nerve on 19th December 2005 as a double vinyl album (with free CD of the entire album inside) - limited to 500 copies in vinyl format through Twisted Nerve Records.  Tracklisting:
Release date: 19th December 2005 Catalogue Number: TN066
Format: 2xLP (with Free CD of the album) Purchase from Finders Keepers here   Dear SHEDHEAD Thank you for purchasing this document. The TOOLSHED project dates back to 1997 when my son was born, all new dads have to have a shed. My shed was my new home studio where I began to work on my midlife musical crisis. Having served 10 years in 808 state, Toolshed was my "Derek Smalls fusion prog odyssey". Everyone said I better get it out of my system by giving birth to it, as it was bleeding too heavily into 808's Lords of Techno world. I had to be frisked for Sun Ra CDs before getting on the 808 bus, and my guitar solos on Cubik went on for 10 minutes longer than tasteful. Pacific State now sounded like free jazz... At around this time I was given a monthly residency at the Night and Day venue in the heart of Manchester's then-bustling new Northern Quarter. Raki Kumar, whose idea it was , envisaged pulling in electronica acts with myself as resident DJ. I took it as a platform for my shed experiments and for a chance to catch up with some fantastic musicians who I hadn't played with for a while alongside a lot of new ones who were drawn in from the `play-along-tothe-DJ' trend on Oldham Street. We called the club-night TOOLSHED and we ran it at various venues and special events. A list of the guest bands who appeared over the following 5 years sum up the musical climate with a wide variety of acts including Autechre, Mathew Herbert, Add N to X, Liela Arab, Kruder and Dorfmiester, Broadcast and Squarepusher. The Toolshed Allstars, as we had become known , played a different set every time depending largely on who was available to play and how much rehearsal we could squeeze in , hence a few cover versions from our record collections that we had in common. Members all had other music projects on the go . Mainstay bass-man Paddy Steer formed his group HOMELIFE around the same time and many of the players were in both projects including singer Seaming To , Drummers James Ford (from Simian) and Richard Harrison (from Spaceheads) and Myself (On top of this Paddy and James were also 808 state's touring rhythm section). Graham Clark and my self had being playing together off-and-on since 1977 when we were in our first garage prog band. In the meantime Clarkey had become the -great jazz violinist he always said he would be, often playing across the road at Matt and Phreds, Home of the burgeoning young MCR jazz scene, from where Dave Walsh and Pat Illingworth came from (more and more drums) becoming Toolshed regulars. Back in the late 90's a drum solo was almost a political act in the face of the tyranny of four four club culture and the suffocating coolness of hip hop culture. One night we DJ'ed 2 hours of drum solo records followed by a set of live drum solos. Years at the computer studying the DNA of music had just led to a strong desire to make unruly noise again, untethered, unpredictable and unlabeled but hopefully informed by the new speed of choice that technology affords us now (especially for me in writing music). We write with a bigger palette of sound now. Transferring this ethos to musicians resulted in the return of the "Big Bands" . In 1999 Toolshed were commissioned for a three day workshop alongside Nitin Sawney at The Contact Theatre. We decided to call `everyone' in, plus a huge brass section culled from the Royal Northern College of Music alongside a string quartet to form a 28 piece big band performance. Since then we haver performed special one offs as a 14 piece multi-drummer brass heavy unit as documented on several tracks on the album. So if the record you are now listening to seems more like a compilation album its because its made of some live recordings, some of the early recordings that formed a small musical based on a taxi driver/scuba diver from Rushholme (Arranged Wedding Arrangements) and then the main chunk of studio recordings intended to be a mini album (entitled "Fuck off with your Phat Dope Beats and wipe your Jazz Arse on the way out!"). So, if you will, approach it as an anthology of activity. A scrapbook. Most sheds are a messy haven of mouldy half finished intent, with the occasional invention that inspires the next inventor to return to their shed in the ever evolving relay race of SHEDHEADS. Graham Massey |
