Dancing With Ruby

Dancing With Ruby Are The Sexyunits Made Out Of Northern Kind And Electrobelle. Now Everyone Unilaterally Concurs Dancing With Ruby Are A Band That Create Music. So How Do You Define The Sound Of An Artist Or Band. By Their Instruments Their Influences What They Wear How Old They Are? Maybe All Of These Things. In The Case Of Dancing With Ruby Their Instruments Are The Voice Electronic And Virtual Their Influences Are Diverse And Their Age Range Spans 15 Years. So How Do They Sound? You Hear Them And Think “This Is Goldfrapp Without The Synthesizers.” But Then Think “No That’s Not Right There Are Loads Of Synthesizers On This I’m A Goddamn Idiot” You Skip A Few Tracks Waiting To Hear Something To Compare Them To. Fad Gadget Vampire Weekend Jann Hammer The Last Half Of Felt Mountain And The First Few Chapters Of Under The Skin By Michel Faber. By The Album's Fifth Track There Is Nothing Left In Your Life Everything Is Gone Scattered Over An Audible Plateau You Think About Trying To Escape. Welcome To In The Interest Of Beasts By Dancing With Ruby. The Songs Were Written Over A Seven Month Period Between June 2014 And January 2015 With Stolen Moments And Borrowed Time In Between Normal Life. Dancing With Ruby Singer Charlotte Sanderson Says “The Songs Come From My Heart From Dreams And Fears And Fantasies And Realities. We Live In These Crazy Times Today So Advanced And Beautiful And Evolved But At The Same Time So Cruel And Frightening. It Has Been A Joy To Write Again To Find The Rise And Fall Of Words And Sounds To Rediscover My Voice. It Has Been Five Years Since I Last Wrote Any Music And This Is The First Collection Of Songs That I Have Worked On With An Honesty And Consideration That I Have Not Ever Had The Courage To Muster Before. Matt Is A Joy To Work With He Is Not Obsessed With 'being Cool' He Is Not Interested In Only Making One Type Of Song Or Sound He Is Very Freeing And Non Judgemental. I Hope That The Album Is The Same I Hope That In This Crazy Cruel Beautiful World We Live In Today Our Music Can Appeal To Those Of You Out There Who Are Looking For That Space Where You Can Be Yourself Tell Your Tale And Dance.” Matt Culpin The Other Half Of Dancing With Ruby Recorded His First “bedroom Album” At The Age Of 16 On A 4-Track Portastudio He Sold It On C-15 Computer Cassettes To His Peers At Art College. “It Was My Take On The Some Bizarre Album Although With All The Songs Written By Me It Kinda Defined Who I Am.” Matt Goes On To Say “Working With Charlie Has Been Great The Ideas Have Flowed In Both Directions Which Made The Process Very Satisfying. It's The Most Consistent Album I’ve Been Involved With I’m Not Sure If It’s Because It’s Been Written In A Relatively Short Period Of Time Or That We’ve Not Been Afraid To Disregard Tracks That I’d Have Normally Championed To Stay In. Either Way I'm Really Pleased With The Songs And Also How It Sounds." This Music Doesn’t Directly Threaten The Status Quo But It Certainly Makes Status Quo Nervous. It’s Not On Par With Hearing Goldfrapp In The Autumn Of 2000 But It’s Probably Like Hearing Goldfrapp In The Spring Of 2003. Can Dancing With Ruby Become The New Carpenters? Sure Maybe. But Maybe Not. There Might Be Too Much At Stake And Too Many People In The Way Plus They Like Their Food. ENDS. Then December 1st 2006 Princess Charlotte Leicester. The First Northern Kind Gig We Had A Handful Of Songs And A Dream Of Putting An Album Together. Some Of Those Songs Featured On What Became Our First Album Fifty Three Degrees North. The Title Was Derived From The Longitude Of Sheffield The British Home Of Electronic Pop Music. Yeah Yeah Basildon Could Also Claim That Title However Sarah Was Living In Sheffield So It Made More Sense At The Time Plus We Had The Word “Northern” In Our Name. To Get That Gig We Had To Book And Pay For The Venue Get A Couple Of Other Bands On The Line-Up And Hope People Would Come. I’d Discovered A Band Called Schmoof Via Myspace Remember That! Who Had A Great Following. I Met Up With Lloyd From The Band And Quizzed Him About How They Got Their Following How They Released Music And Had A General Chat About The Music Scene. It Was Great To Hear They Had Taken A Similar Approach To What We Were Planning. They Found It Difficult To Get Gigs So Created Their Own Synth Pop Themed Nights Called Warm Electro. Our Night Was Called Electrotease And Featured Ourselves Schmoof And A Band Called Codette. We Had About 50 People Turn Up That Night Gave Away Some CD’s And Within A Few Weeks We Had Another 6 Gigs Lined-Up Including Client E’s Tesco Disco Night In London. We Started Planning The 2nd Electrotease Night To Coincide With The Launch Of Our First Album. I’d Seen A Great Band Called Trademark Support The Human League So We Invited Them Plus A Really Unusual And Comical Band Called Starbase 109. They Were Like A North Of England Version Of Kraftwerk They Sang About Vacuum Cleaners Bailiffs And Grave Diggers. They Had All Sorts Of Electrical Contraptions On Stage None Of Them Would Contribute To The Sound And Would Often Break. They Took Hours To Set-Up And Breakdown But They Were Really Great To Watch I Would Have Signed Them. So The 2nd Electrotease Night Passed And We Had Again Entertained Another Modest Audience. Fifty Three Degrees North Was Released On 7th September 2007. That Day We Had One Physical CD Order Thanks Wout . I Thought Oh Well At Least We Can Say We’ve Done An Album That’s An Achievement. On The Morning Of Wednesday 9th Of September As Usual I Checked My Email. I Had 37 Unread Messages That Had Come In Over Night Odd. They Were From All Over Europe With People Saying They Really Liked The Album My Instant Thought Was “Wout You Bastard You’ve Ripped Our Album And Stuck It On A Torrent Site”. It Turns Out All These People Had Legitimately Purchased Our Album From ITunes But How Did They Find Us? Apart From Searching In The ITunes Store There Was No Mention Of Northern Kind Anywhere. I Made A Call To AWAL Our Digital Distributor They Told Me To Change My ITunes Home Store County To Any Of The Mainland Europe Ones I Didn’t Even Know You Could Do That. There We Were In A Massive Carousel Image On The Main Homepage Of ITunes. Without Any Investment In Marketing Or PR Those Wise Folk At Apple Had Decided To Feature An Unsigned Unknown Band On The Home Screen Across The Whole Of Europe Except The UK . For Two Weeks We Were In Prime Position It Went Kind Of Crazy For A Short While Lots Of Emails Interviews Blog Posts Reviews And Requests To Do Gigs. That Exposure Gave Us A Top 5 Album In The Swedish Download Charts And Top 20 Positions In Spain France Italy & Germany. The Next Twelve Months Saw Us In Meetings With Managers Labels And Producers Including The Home Of Xenomania The Production Company Started By Brian Higgins That Gave Girls Aloud All Their Hits. It Was Hectic Mental Superficial And Mostly A Load Of Bollocks. Our Taste Of The ‘real’ Industry I Guess And One That Neither Of Us Wanted To Be Part Of. So We Slipped Away And Started Making Our Second Album. One Of The Songs On That Album “Dirty Youth” Was Written For Girls Aloud But Not Wanting To Share Writing Credits With Another Six Writers For Them Adding The Odd Piece Of Punctuation A “yeah” Here And There We Kept It For Ourselves. Despite All The Shit We Became Embroiled In There Were Some Genuine People That Championed What We Were Doing Namely Rob Windle Chi Ming Lai Jer White And A Handful Of Others Who Wrote About Us Organised Events And Had Bags Of Enthusiasm For The Scene. We Released Our 2nd Album WIRED In May 2009 And From 2006 To The End Of 2009 We Had Played 92 Gigs Including Ten Dates Across The UK Supporting Kajagoogoo On Their Reunion Tour In 2009. In 2010 We Had A Break But Managed To Squeeze In A Couple Of Gigs The Brilliantly Organised InFest In Bradford Followed By Our Support Slot With Our Friend Alan Wilder Recoil In Berlin. Gary Numan Also DJ’d That Night And In The Audience / Backstage Was Karl Bartos This Made Our Berlin Experience Very Special Indeed. 2011 And 2012 Were Very Quiet I Had Really Good Intentions To Finish Our Third Album But Couldn’t Really Gather Any Momentum With Any New Ideas. We Also Made The Decision To Become More Picky About The Gigs We Did And Turned Many Offers To Perform Down. Sarah Patiently Waited For My Mojo To Come Back And At The Start Of 2013 With The Additional Of A Few New Synths And Gear I Got Stuck In. We Were Asked By Simon Hewitt To Play At The Silicon Dreams Event In The Summer Alongside Heaven 17 We Had A Great Time And Previewed Some Of The New Songs From Credible Sexy Unit. By The End Of The Summer We Had A Collection Of Songs We Were Really Happy With And Released Our Third Album On October 21st. A Week Before The Launch We Offered Up A Stream Of The Album In Full On SoundCloud In A Just A Few Hours We Had Over 11 000 Streams With Some Rave Reviews. Following Our First Gig In 2006 I Could Have Only Dreamt About What We Would Achieve Who We Would Have Played With Where We’ve Visited And Even The Fact That People Have Actually Bought Our Music From All Over The World. Our Album Sales Are Modest Compared To Those Of Signed Artists But In The 7 Years We’ve Sold Approximately 10 000 Albums With Around 40% Of Those Being Physical Albums. We’ve Had Approximately 70 000 Streams On Spotify And Considering We’ve Spent About £500 On Promotion I’d Say That’s Not Bad.
We’ve Made A Bunch Of New Friends On This Journey Far Too Many To Mention Here But You Know Who You Are!
So It’s Now With A Heavy Heart That I Have To Write That Sarah Decided To Leave Northern Kind In January ’14. Since Then We’ve Mostly Kept That Decision To Ourselves Mainly Because Of The Commitments We Have To Fulfil Two Dates Already Booked For This Year. The ISynth Festival In April And Silicon Dreams In June ’14. I Must Admit I Was A Little Disappointed Initially That Sarah Wouldn’t Be Joining Me For These Dates If Only As A Farewell. But Still I’d Like To Thank Her For Sharing This Experience With Me And In Her Words To Me “Thank You So Much For Being My Partner On This Amazing Journey” – Thank You Sarah Xxx So What’s Next? First We’ll Be Playing The Two Dates Mentioned Above. Charlotte “Charlie” Sanderson Has Kindly Stepped Into Sarah’s Shoes For These Two Dates And I’m Looking Forward To Performing With Her In A Few Weeks Time. Charlotte Was In A Band Called Electrobelle That Had A Handful Of Really Great Songs Including “Mirrorball” That Featured On The Electronically Yours Compilation Back In 2008. There’s New Music In The Pipeline And We’ll Be Putting New Material Out Over The Summer They’ll Be A New Name And A Few Surprises But It’s Gonna Be Great.
So Here’s To The Next Chapter And Thanks For All Your Amazing Support So Far…
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