Two events, one aim, to launch Circa Regna Tonat‘s awesome new album ‘Dance Off With A Triceratops’.
The first launch sees the experimental four piece play a stripped down acoustic(ish) set in store at Spillers at 5.30 on Saturday 30th May, this will be straight after the F.A. Cup Final so go along after a few beers and cheer the boys on!!
The second event is in Le Pub and hosted by Diverse Music. It’s on Sunday 7th June and is free to get in. Support comes from Black Cesar and Strange News From Another Star featuring none other than Mark Foley – the most namechecked man in South Wales.
If you know nothing about CRT then this is the band in their own words:
The Band were originally conceived over a telephone conversation between Adam Lewis and Daniel Barnett in November 2005, in which the former party stated that he wanted to “start a doom band” to which the latter party replied, “what the hell is doom?”. The meeting of the two had happened a month or so prior to this conversation in a pub called The Railway in their hometown of Caerphilly. Daniel was front man of the three-piece grunge outfit, The Esoterica, who that night were supporting Adam’s band, Anna-O. After seeing The Esoterica, Jonny Lee Evans, guitarist in Anna-O stated that “I want to be in a band with that guy”, sewing the seeds that would eventually lead to Adam’s call to Daniel the next month.
In January 2006, the three came together at Redrock Studios, where they emerged with a few basic ideas that would eventually become the songs ‘Lice’, ‘Hydro/Claw/Ride’ and ‘Multipleorganfailure’. The initial intentions of the band were to write dynamic instrumental pieces without the aid of bass, choosing the more preferred Boss Octave Pedal to enhance the sound. A sound which inspired the final choice of name. For weeks the three went through the names ‘Rape Technique’ and ‘Spastic Wedding’ before settling on three latin words which had been used as an inscription on Henry VIII’s throne and also by 16th Century Poet Thomas Wyatt, ‘Circa Regna Tonat’, meaning ‘Around The Throne Thunder Roars’.
The band rehearsed furiously for four straight months, getting the songs as tight as possible to gig with. However, the more the band rehearsed, the more dynamic the songs became and that’s when the decision was made to bring in a bassist to allow both Jonny and Daniel to be more experimental. Rhys Griffiths and Daniel had been best friends for years and had started their first band, Franco, together back in 2001, so the decision to choose a bassist was an easy one.
From that point the band started building a strong reputation as a great live act on the South Wales circuit. In the summer of 2006, the band recorded their first e.p. entitled ‘Burning Witches For Glue’, followed a year later by the highly experimental second offering ‘Lightswitch Impulses’, which has gathered a cult following in its wake due to the use of two basses and schizo-noise shreaks mixed with progressive, post-rock instrumentals. During the past three years the band have secured high profile support slots with the likes of Taint, Noxagt, An Albatross, Rolo Tomassi and more recently Manatees, Part Chimp and The Airborne Toxic Event. Mikel Jollett of The Airborne Toxic Event has stated that the band were “by far the best band we’ve played with on the entire UK tour”.
CRT in other people’s words:
Adam T. Walton (BBC Radio Wales): “Excellent, original tunes” “Pretty Remarkable”
‘Buzz Magazine’: “(CRT) can lurch out of the light and in to the shade with a snap of a chord, often to fine effect” and have described the music as, “Fat-arsed Instrumental Heaviness”.
‘Metro’: “Whether it’s the name of a black metal band or a Tool album, the deployment of Latin in modern music is almost invariably shorthand for po-faced heaviness and absurd portentousness. Happily, though Circa Regna Tonat have a name that would set the darkest of metallers aglow with envy, the Caerphilly quartet are cut from an altogether more colourful cloth. That’s not to say they’re not loud- they’re very, very loud- but their experimental noise rock has as much light as shade, instrumentals marked as much by the subtle build up of tension as the pummelling, drum-dominated roar of their full stride. Their eight-track 2006 EP, Burning Witches For Glue, provides a decent introduction, but CRT are best sampled in the more visceral environment of a live show.”
We booked them twice (or three times?) for Joy and have followed their progress like a proud father. Sort of. The album will be on sale at both gigs and proceeds will basicall pay the sound guy so come along and support a fantastic band.
