Acting as a bridge between No-Man’s elegiac 2008 return Schoolyard Ghosts and the forthcoming live concert DVD Mixtaped, Wherever There Is Light is a strictly limited edition release.

From Schoolyard Ghosts, the poignant title track features guest performances from US pedal steel legend Bruce Kaphan (American Music Club/Red House Painters) and Theo Travis.

The alt-country tinged Death Was California and the atmospheric Counting are two new songs especially written for the EP, while Carolina Skeletons and All The Blue Changes are the first recordings released from No-Man’s Autumn 2008 mini-tour.

Also containing Grant Wakefied’s poetic video for the title track, a powerful preview from the Mixtaped DVD, and striking Carl Glover designed artwork, the enhanced Wherever There Is Light EP is a rare and beautiful thing from the band Uncut memorably described as ‘Britain’s most underrated sorrowful sonic architects’.

Wherever There Is Light is already available from the Kscope store but will available in stores from August 24th.

Click here for the web page for the Wherever There Is Light, which features audio samples from the ep, as well as live footage of title track Wherever There Is Light, taken from the Mixtaped DVD.

Mixtaped is a double DVD set and will be available from 5th October. The set comprises the band’s sell-out performance at London’s Bush Hall in 2008, a comprehensive career-spanning documentary, and numerous extras (including newly commissioned and archive video footage), and provides a fascinating insight into one of British music’s most unusual cult heroes.

Mixtaped Disc One:

No-Man’s complete Bush Hall live performance with 5.1 and stereo options (90 mins).

Live photo gallery – Including photos from all three of No-Man’s first live concerts in 15 years, with an exclusive soundtrack of the song Housekeeping (recorded live in Dusseldorf).

Mixtaped Disc Two:

Returning – A 90 minute career-spanning documentary including previously unseen footage, photos and images, and in-depth interviews with every member of No-Man past and present (including Tim Bowness, Steven Wilson, Ben Coleman and Chris Maitland).

Extras – Complete videos for several No-Man songs spanning 1990-2008.
Rare live footage.
No-Man ‘live timeline’.
Easter eggs.

A new mini-site for Insurgentes is now online at www.insurgentes.org. In addition to audio clips, a free mp3 and downloads, the site also features a remix competition. The remix that Steven judges to be best will be included on a future official Steven Wilson release. If you are looking for some inspiration, there are two new mixes from Engineers (Kscope’s newest act) and Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson) already available to stream on the site.

The first single to be taken from the album, Harmony Korine, is available to pre-order from the site. Harmony Korine will be issued as a limited edition 7 inch vinyl single in a choice of three different colours – black, white, and blood red, each limited to 1,000 copies. The single will only be available through the mini-site.

A video for Harmony Korine is currently being made by long time collaborator Lasse Hoile and will be streamed from the site as soon as it’s ready! Lasse is also putting the finishing touches to the Insurgentes documentary. Trailers for the film are also streaming on the mini-site.

The mini-site also includes;
• Free mp3 track download
• Remix competition – winner to be included on an official Steven Wilson release
• New mixes from Engineers  and Pat Mastelotto
• Pre-order links for ltd edition 7″ single Harmony Korine (only available from the mini-site)
• Audio streams
• Video for Harmony Korine coming soon
• Trailers from the forthcoming Insurgentes documentary, filmed by Lasse Hoile
• Web and mobile phone downloads
• Artwork Gallery
• IPod destruction videos coming soon

Acclaimed for his work with Porcupine Tree, Opeth and Anja Garbarek amongst others, Steven Wilson’s debut album Insurgentes will be released on Kscope on the 9th of March 2009 (24th February in the US and digitally from 16th February)

Comprising 10 new tracks that range from ballads and anthems to all-out industrial noise assaults, the dark, cinematic and richly textured album represents two years’ worth of creative output and numerous recording sessions worldwide in studios from Mexico City to Japan and Israel. 

While Wilson is a member of several bands including Blackfield, No-Man and Bass Communion, he explains that: “when I began writing these songs, I quickly realized that they would be best suited to an album under my own name.  It was an intuitive, almost unconscious writing process that resulted in a kind of ‘poetry of melancholy.”  The final product inhabits a similar experimental realm as recent albums by Thom Yorke, Portishead, and Nine Inch Nails.


Wilson recruited a stellar cast of guests to work on the album including bassist Tony Levin, drummer Gavin Harrison, and keyboardist Jordan Rudess, alongside Japanese Koto player Michiyo Yagi, British guitarist Sand Snowman, and jazz flautist and saxophonist Theo Travis.

Formed in Italy in 2001, Giancarlo Erra’s Nosound creates a seductive and original fusion of elements of Progressive, Ambient and Post Rock.

Regarded by critics and fans alike as one of the most interesting up and coming alt/art rock bands in Europe, Lightdark sees the Nosound identity evolve into something even more focused and powerful.

Lightdark inventively combines influences from ’70s psychedelia, ’80s/’90s ambient and contemporary alt/progressive rock.

Recorded in Italy, England and the US throughout 2006 and 2007, the album develops further the promise of debut album Sol29 and exhibits a stronger group identity which reveals a greater contrast between atmospheric detail and the walls of sound created by the band on stage.

Highlights include the 15 minute epic From Silence to Noise, the ethereal The Misplay (with cellist Marianne DeChastelaine), and the epic piano/mellotron driven ballad Someone Starts To Fade Away (which features No-Man’s Tim Bowness on vocals).

This 2 disc edition of the album includes an exclusive five track bonus disc including the video for Lightdark.

Lightdark will be released on September 15th.

Tracklist
Disc One:
About Butterflies And Children
Places Remained
The Misplay
From Silence To Noise
Someone Starts To Fade Away
Kites
LightdarkDisc Two:
Cold Afterall
Like The Elephant?
You Said ‘I Am.’
Clouds 
Lightdark (Enhanced Video Track) 

To download the usual desktops and other audio samples, go to the mini-site at www.kscopemusic.com/nosound

No-Man have announce two further live dates this summer.

In addition to the sold out show at London’s Bush Hall on August 25th, the band will also be playing at De Boerderij, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands on 3rd September 2008 and Savoy Theatre, Düsseldorf, Germany on 4th September 2008. The London show is to be filmed for a live DVD.

Unfortunately, due to recording commitments from mid-September onwards, there are no further No-Man dates planned.

Schoolyard Ghosts, the band’s new album, was released in May and has been described as ‘truly sublime’ (9/10) by Classic Rock. You can get more details on the album here.

The full details for the September shows are:
3rd September 2008 – De Boerderij, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands
www.boerderij.org
Cost: €21, Tickets available from www.ticketmaster.nl

4th September 2008 – Savoy Theatre, Düsseldorf, Germany
www.savoy-theater.de
Cost: €23, Tickets available from www.eventim.de

July 2008, Issue 120.
Review reads:

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

In the five years since No-Man’s aptly titled Together We’re Stranger appeared, Steve Wilson has been busy conquering the world with Porcupine Tree. Thankfully he’s continued working with singer Tim Bowness to produce an album that sits half-way between The Blue Nile’s soul-searching melancholia and the edgy menace of Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk.

Bowness’ haunted, breathy croon narrates tales of late-night heartache, rain-swept affairs and bitter-sweet long-lost summer days. Accompanied by surges of orchestral strings, icy ripples of retro-sounding guitar, it’s a soundtrack where darkness lurks below the glacial beauty of the surface. Mixtaped’s pensive air is the hair-rising closer where loss, loneliness and regret have never sounded more appealing or inviting.

Truly sublime.
9/10

Sid Smith

No-Man will be performing their first full concert since 1993 at the Bush Hall, London, on August 29th (Doors open 8pm).

The gig will be filmed for possible DVD release and there are plans (as yet unconfirmed) for a European mini-tour to follow in December, 2008.

Tickets are available directly from the band, click here for details

Schoolyard Ghosts, the new album from No-Man, is released on Monday.

Written and recorded between Autumn 2007 and Spring 2008, Schoolyard Ghosts is a distinctive combination of beautifully detailed songwriting, haunting melodies and inventively cinematic production. The album sees No-Man’s core duo of Tim Bowness and Steven Wilson expanding the band’s sonic palette by collaborating with, amongst others Californian pedal steel ace Bruce Kaphan, saxophonist/flautist Theo Travis, drummers Pat Mastelotto and Gavin Harrison, and the London Session Orchestra (arranged by Dave Stewart).

Schoolyard Ghosts reveals the band taking its accessible and ambitious blend of Post-Rock and Singer-songwriter influences to an even more focused and personalised place than before.

The video for Wherever There Is Light is premiering on the Schoolyard Ghosts mini-site from today. Go to www.kscopemusic.com/no-man to watch the video.

‘Truly sublime’ 9/10 Classic Rock

In advance of the release of the new albums Schoolyard Ghosts by No-Man and Tightly Unwound by The Pineapple Thief, Kscope have launched two new mini-sites.

www.kscopemusic.com/thepineapplethief
The Pineapple Thief site features audio clips, podcasts, a free mp3 download and your chance to re-mix a track from the album.

Click here to order your copy

www.kscopemusic.com/no-man
The No-Man site features the brand new video for the track Truenorth alongside downloadable banners, wallpapers and more. Tour dates will be announced shortly, so keep checking back for further details.

Click here to order your copy

New No-Man album Schoolyard Ghosts coming May 12th

Tim Bowness & Steven Wilson return with No-Man’s eagerly awaited sixth official album, and the band’s first since 2003’s atmospheric Together We’re Stranger.

Featuring the sweetly hypnotic Wherever There Is Light, the warped dynamics of Pigeon Drummer, the outsider lament of All Sweet Things, and the subtly evolving explorations of the uplifting semi-orchestral epic Truenorth, Schoolyard Ghosts reveals the band taking its accessible and ambitious blend of Post-Rock and Singer-songwriter influences to an even more focused and personalised place than before.

A distinctive combination of beautifully detailed songwriting, haunting melodies and inventively cinematic production.

Representing the band’s most consistent and mature work to date, the album looks set to build and improve upon the success of predecessors Returning Jesus and Together We’re Stranger.

Guest musicians include Porcupine Tree’s Colin Edwin and Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree/King Crimson), Bruce Kaphan (ex-American Music Club/Red House Painters), Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson), Dave Stewart (arranging The London Session Orchestra) & Theo Travis (David Sylvian/Nine Horses)

Click here for more info, to watch the video for Truenorth and to download desktops

Tracklisting:
All Sweet Things
Beautiful Songs You Should Know
Pigeon Drummer
Truenorth
Wherever There Is Light
Song Of The Surf
Streaming
Mixtaped

Following the release of Schoolyard Ghosts, the band will be embarking upon its first major tour since 1993 (line-up and dates tba).

Click here to order your copy