Six By Seven emerged from Nottingham in 1997 with their first single ‘European Me’ and consisted of of Chris Olley on vocals and guitars, James Flower on keyboards, Sam Hempton on guitar and Chris Davis on drums. The band played drone-rock, post-rock, space-rock, kraut-rock, I don’t know, it just rocked. Since then they’ve officially released 8 albums and had numerous personel changes. This is their ‘best of’ with songs picked by members of their website forum.
If you’ve never heard this band, buy this, honestly, it will make your life richer. Their first album, The Things We Make was 10 tracks of epic, heartfelt, emotive rock music, ‘For You’ and ‘Candlelight’ are included on this album. I guess Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine are reference points but Six By Seven were truly out there on their own.
The second album, The Closer You Get was a different beast, snarling, angry songs that at times veered towards and industrial and garage rock. They still wore their collective hearts on they sleeve and meant every word. Only ‘New Year’ gets an outing here (along with a 2 Lone Swordsman remix of ‘Eat Junk Become Junk’).
Albums and line up changes followed with the band keeping their fervent underground following but failing to break through into the mainstream. They never had chart storming tunes but when bands like Mogwai, Nine Inch Nails, Placebo and even Fuck Buttons can share common ground and get recognition beyond the underground it’s a shame this brilliant band couldn’t do the same.
They returned last year with their original line up and released the album ‘If Symptoms Persist, Kill Your Doctor’ which has it’s lyrics inspired by an episode of a BBC TV programme called The Trap. They’ve played the odd gig (mostly in Nottingham) of late but there’s no sign of a full tour to support this career spanning release. With a new Spiritualized album imminent and the rise of bands like Fuck Buttons and Crystal Castles maybe they were ahead of their time and now the world are ready for a Six By Seven assault.
http://www.myspace.com/sixbysevenmusic
