Arctic Monkeys? Well that's news to us!

Unbeknownst to us, we have made it into music video site

muzu's TOP 5 list of bands from the Live andUnsigned competition earlier this year!

Thank you Amy of http://www.fieldandfallow.com for randomly coming across this exciting nugget of news! We are bizarrely described as being influenced by the Arctic Monkeys and Maximo Park, but we shall brush over that shall we?

Check out the video: http://www.muzu.tv/blog/2010/05/26/live-and-unsigned-5-top-indie-bands-from-the-competition/

Right now we're getting some new tunes written and will be gigging again soon.

Will keep you posted!

WAGS out on the town!

Saturday night saw Joelle's Hen Do parade around Central London in a double decker bus, complete with sunglasses, willy straws and a list of dares. Anna and Tash plus the Layers' WAGS (I didn't even come up with that one!) were there to celebrate Joelle's upcoming wedding to Toby, which takes place in under two weeks' time!!!

As this is a band blog and not a personal one, this post will be short. But just a quick message to the Layers' other halves: thank you all so much for the support you have and do give us all. Looking forward to seeing you all on Sunday, and it feels great to know you're behind us!

Much love, see you soon!

x

The Layers on Muzu

There’s nothing quite as cringe-worthy as watching yourself on video. Well perhaps hearing your speaking voice recorded. That one always gets me.

The Live and Unsigned people have put our video clip from the last round onto a music video website, Muzu. It is very helpful to see yourself, to see what you’re doing wrong, to improve for next time. On a more positive note, we can also see what we did right. At the time, I was completely in another world. I was trying to make sure I:

a. Performed
b. Remembered what we’d practised
c. Enjoyed it

But the reality was that those 3.5 minutes went by in a complete blur. After we came off the stage I could not have told you if I had sung in tune, or remembered the words, or if I’d even sung at all! It was a very strange almost out of body experience, so to see that I did, in fact, sing the song as planned, was a huge relief.

The bar has now been set. We need to raise this for the next round, and we’re all super keen to do a lot better. I think we’ll use this to work out what needs improving, from the actual music, to the performance, to our styling.

Check out the video, and leave a (nice please!) comment!
Layers on Facebook
Big Love,
The Layers

Our first practice for the next round of Live and Unsigned began last night. Having got through to the area finals (which take place on 2nd May), we now have to prepare another 3.5 minute piece, half of which should be our own song and the other half a cover of our choice.

Hannah wasn’t able to make practice, but even with one short, six people is still a lot of opinions! We first decided which of our own songs we would choose. We shortlisted it to Do the Walk and Don’t Stop Now with James and I preferring the former and everybody else choosing the latter. Luckily we’re a very polite (most of the time) bunch, and in the end we all agreed on Don’t Stop Now.

The second part was harder – deciding on a cover. Should we choose something completely un-us, as we did in the Regional Finals when we chose to cover Franz Ferdinand? Or was one of the judge’s comments about us being maybe ‘too unique’ something we should take note of?
Thanks to the magic i-phone, we youtubed a few songs, including Ne-yo’s Closer, Arctic Monkeys’ Bet that you look good on the dancefloor, Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and even that classic, S Club’s Don’t Stop Moving.

What’s wrong with a bit of cheer? Really, sometimes those boys are just too short-sighted for their own good! ;P

We still plan to try some of the above on Sunday’s rehearsal. However, in the meantime we came up with something that sounded tight pretty quickly and that we all felt excited about. Shy FX’s Shake Your Body links in lyrically, as it is about dance, and the original is such a banger. We’ll see on Sunday if we keep it or go for S Club after all...

Layers play The Bedford, Balham

Last week we were offered the headlining spot at The Bedford in Balham, thanks to a recommendation by the Rocket Number 9 boys.

The Bedford is well known for promoting new talent, and showcases bands four nights a week. It has hosted and helped acts such as Paulo Nutini, James Morrison and KT Tunstall before they really made it. With a great reputation and being notoriously difficult to get a slot in, we jumped at the chance to play a set at the Bedford, even though we only had two days' notice!

The room we played in was the Shakespeare Globe, which boasts a huge disco ball in the middle. The gig was streamed live on the internet, and the acoustics were fabulous. It's always a treat to play somewhere that has a good soundman!

As our first gig since Sunday's Live and Unsigned, we were all still buzzing, and from the energy we produced on stage, I'd guess it showed. Being the first day of the public holidays, the pub was pretty full and we had a good crowd to play to. Though much of the audience were seated, there was some good chair dancing (!) and the reactions we got were really gratifying.

Anyone looking for a good night out in South London should head to The Bedford, and we would definitely recommend the Balham Burger!

Live and Unsigned Judges comments

From the Live and Unsigned judges' Twitter comments:

Rob said great musical energy. Steve said maybe a bit too unique simply arrangements 10:08 AM Mar 28th via web

http://twitter.com/liveandunsigned

The Layers get through to third round of LIVE AND UNSIGNED 2010!

Chillin’ in our Dressing Room (did I mention we got a DRESSING ROOM?!)

Getting seven people to be at the same place at the same time is normally hard enough. Make that a Sunday, and early in the morning at that, and it’s a challenge. This Sunday, the clocks went back, so we lost sleep but amazingly all made it to the studio for 9am (or there about!) to practise one more time before we headed down to the Regional Finals of Live and Unsigned, http://www.liveandunsigned.uk.com

Rob’s Fun Bus plus two cars made up the Layers’ convoy. We sang and danced our way to Hayes, Middlesex and were early for registration. We got to see the stage, complete with cups of tea (we may play funk, but we’re still rock and roll!) and check out some of the acts as they did their sound checks. We were expecting loads of Indie bands, but were pleasantly surprised to see a huge range of styles, including one boy who had his own backing dancers! I don’t care what you say, Anna, the boy had guts!

Our sound check was over in a matter of seconds. We had HOURS to kill, so we headed for the delights of Uxbridge. Our very own Layers Day Out! Toby and Tom discussed Kant over Nandos, and having seen a lot…… (perhaps all?) that Uxbridge had to offer, we headed back. To wait some more.

There were 3 shows on the same day, and luckily we were able to sneak in to see the first show. SUCH a mixed bag! There was some real talent, some … surprises and a lot of variety. There was even a girl dressed as a cloud. Or a mushroom, we weren’t really sure.

Finally we had our briefing. Which was indeed brief. And then – darling – we were taken to our DRESSING ROOMS. Sure, we had to share it with three other bands but we felt FABULOUS.

In our black, white and red, we were trying to calm nerves but still keep up the energy. We could hear the other bands playing, and we did an ‘acapella’ (aha!) version of our song just to check we could still remember it!

The MC introduced us while we got ourselves sorted, and then we were off…. Our piece was two verses and a chorus of our song, Mr Sleaze, which linked straight into Franz Ferdinand’s No You Girls. We couldn’t see the audience, and could only just make out the judges, but when we finished our friends did us proud, hollering to let us know they were there.

Thankfully we were second to last to play, so there wasn’t long to wait for the results. All the acts had to wait in the wings to hear who had got through to the next round.

We were pretty hopeful up until the seventh band was announced, when we all agreed it had been a ‘great experience’ and we had a learned a lot from it. Preparing ourselves for disappointment, we tried quite abysmally to look cheerful and totally not bothered about not making the cut.

The MC on the stage was thanking all the audience for coming, and giving information on the competition, on websites, and more things we were not really listening to. And then……

"The final act, going through to the Area Finals of Live and Unsigned, 2010 is……..

THE LAYERS!!!!!"

It was a movie moment. In those few seconds (felt like hours; it was all slow motion) we each lost ALL dignity as we whooped and jumped and ran on stage to join the other finalists. James completely outdid himself, and ran down the line of other acts, high-fiving each and every one of them before coming back to join us.

The next round is the Area Finals, and takes place on May 2^nd. The preparation begins!