Silence single – now OUT!!

Silence, as explained by Taz:

In 2014 I reached a point where I couldn’t bear to watch the news any more. Everything in it was so sad, so far away from the world I thought would exist by the time I was an adult, so full of injustice, war and death of innocent people. Simultaneously my frustration with the use of social media peaked, and I deleted the majority of my accounts (some I need for work, otherwise they’d have gone too!) More than anything I couldn’t reconcile my frustration with events around the world with the fact that when I posted about them online, more people would talk about a picture of a sandwich than about the news events of the day. Granted a few like-minded folk would always engage in conversation about the state of the world but there were still 95% of people for whom it seemed that silence was the acceptable option. I was endlessly frustrated. The world is never going to change if those of us who are lucky enough to observe it from a safe place stay silent. But I still had a distinct feeling that just ranting on social media was shouting into the wind.

Around the same time I was listening to a radio interview with a musician, and in all honesty now I’d struggle to tell you who it was. What I do know is that it was someone whose music I wasn’t that familiar with, but he was telling the story about how a song he wrote was about a social situation he had observed at the time. Previously ignorant to the story of the song, I listened to his song with new ears. I pondered on why people don’t write protest songs any more. They do of course, and many of the musicians I admire the most write amazing songs about the injustices they see. And then I realised that maybe we had more of a voice than sharing distressing stories online. Maybe silence won’t change the world, but singing about it could.

Of course, we aren’t kidding ourselves. We aren’t a platinum selling band with legions of fans who will buy the single and thus give us a huge sum of money we can donate to a cause. But each of us are dedicated to what we believe in. And that, we think, is the same for most people. So here’s the deal. You can watch the video for Silence here: youtu.be/H0ovhi7wJuo. You can download Silence, and the 2 B-sides, Walk the Other Way and Was She?  on Bandcamp: http://ultraxine.bandcamp.com/releases. You can pay (donate) what you want for the single. Everything that we receive for the single will be donated to charity, via our Justgiving page: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Ultraxine-Music.

If you prefer you can download the single for free and donate an amount directly to our fundraising page instead. It’s entirely your call. But hey, we also know that not everyone has spare cash flying around, or has their own charities they would prefer to support. If you’d prefer to download the single for free, and donate your next spare £2 to the charity of your choice, then please, do that on us. Or if it’s a tight month – and trust us, we get that – download the single free, and pay it forward when you can. Do something kind for an elderly neighbour. Put a tin in the foodbank collection at the supermarket. Pick up a piece of litter in the street. Stand up for what YOU believe in. Change the world in any tiny way that you can, because you can.

If you’d rather do the ‘usual’ thing and purchase the single via a mainstream provider so it syncs with the rest of your collection, we understand that too – so it’s available from the usual purchase and streaming outlets too.

Peace, love, and absolutely not silence…

Alive and…SILENT?

Hello world!

We are still here, although of course you could be forgiven we had fallen off the edge of the World, we’ve just been having one of those busy times when various members of the band have been moving house, getting married and changing jobs with the result that we haven’t done all that much of a bandular nature.

…Although that’s not entirely true, because last August we hid ourselves in the (very sadly flooded) Blueberry Hills studio in Leeds and recorded a single.  We managed three tracks, and a video in one day.  The efficiency of which, Rick points out, is in stark contrast to the fact that it’s subsequently taken us a further half a year to mix the track and edit the video and do all that stuff that needs doing in order to get the tracks to your ears.  But the good news is that we are VERY NEARLY there, the single will be out…soon (hey, sorry it’s vague but we’re trying our best in our spare time here!).  The title track is called Silence…and we’ll let you know a bit more detail in our next update.

Love you all loads, hope you’ve been well in our absence…

Ultraxine.x

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Gigs…

As promised, we have been scouting around for gigs for later in 2015, and we’re delighted to announce we’ve confirmed we’ll be playing an acoustic set at the Perseverance in Wraysbury on Sunday 28th June.  We’ll be on from 4pm until we get chucked out – we’ll post more details as we have them.  Hope to see some of you there!

xx

THANK YOU!!

A belated but VERY huge THANK YOU to everyone who came and supported The Walls Still Hold a Tune Charity shindig.  The final total raised was £726 for Amnesty International – a fine total that far exceeded our expectations.  Of course this would not have been possible without the awesome musical talents of Paul Miro and Polly Phluid, and the huge generosity of so many bands and musicians who donated items for the raffle.

https://www.justgiving.com/ultraxine/

You’re all brilliant – thank you.

We’re back looking at gigs for later in the year – both electric and acoustic, so we’ll let you know when we’ve got anything confirmed.

The Walls Still Hold A Tune – Press Release

The lovely folk at CloseUp PR have released this press release about our forthcoming fundraising gig with Paul Miro and Polly Phluid, to raise money for Amnesty International.

Really hope to see you there! 🙂

Your official invitation…

Ok.  So we’re quite bad at making promotional videos.  We’re sorry – we did try…so here it is.  Your official invitation to The Walls Still Hold a Tune charity event is here:

The Walls Still Hold a Tune – an invitation

We’re much better at playing gigs than making videos, we promise!

Don’t forget, tickets for the gig are available here

We very much hope we’ll see you there

Taz and Kate. x

Breaking News…

Delighted to announce that Polly Phluid of The Idol Dead will be joining the line-up (with some friends) for The Walls Still Hold a Tune gig on March 21st.

The night is shaping up to very exciting indeed!

Tickets HERE.

The Walls Still Hold a Tune

Aaaaah. Well, the more eagle-eyed will have noted we sort of fell off the world towards the end of last year.  Alas, real life got in the way, and ending up homeless and broke in some instances and hiding under a duvet in others meant that we were unable to record the album as planned.  Oh no, oh sadness, or tragedy…

OR…let’s say “these things happen” and move on.  And so we are…and we decided that our original album-launch date should become a celebration of resilience and joyfulness – so we’ve turned it into a charity fundraiser for those awesome folk over at Amnesty International.  The event, named “The Walls Still Hold a Tune”, so far features the headline act of Paul Miro, and us and…ooh, we cant tell you the others yet, we’re keeping them a secret until we announce them!  Tickets are available via the link on our gigs page.  Or here.  We look forward to seeing some of you there, for an acoustically-rocking good time for a most brilliant cause.

Here’s to 2015 rocking like it wants to.

Taz and Kate. x

2014 rocks

Hello, hello, hello!

We are here…back in song-writing mode, and planning an acoustic album. We’ve got a whole ton of new songs already which we can’t wait to share with you. That doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten Rick…hopefully there will be some acoustic AND electric gigs announced later in the year, so keep checking back.

We’ll be updating the website over the next month too as in our year off we know we haven’t done much with it…bear with us, we’re on it!

It’s great to be back, and we’re looking forward to powerpoppunkrocking out with you all soon.

Xx

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We’re still here…

Alright everyone?

Just checking you’re all still alive…and a quick post to say we’re still here, writing some new material and planning some acoustic-type action that will be both FUN and JOYFUL.  Down with the sad acoustic ballad, up with the acoustic POWERPOPPUNKROCK!

Peace, love and tea

The ‘Xine. x