- RT @iamlonewolf: Myself and Jon Foulger (@duelsmusic) are conducting a lecture on Songwriting and Production today at Leeds Met chatting ... 18/October/11
- Band night out http://t.co/QWy5WzOR 23/September/11
- RT @mikedoyley: @duelsmusic What's this all about then guys, you've got me all excited now ! 24/July/11
- RT @nickrowan27: There's something occurring, but I know not what it is. RT @duelsmusic "Immersion imminent" 16/July/11
- RT @fuzzyfoster: @duelsmusic Yay for instant hot water! 16/July/11
- Bart Pettman Leeds-based photographer responsible for some fantastic Duels photos
- Honour Before Glory Whiskas’ new band who have just released their debut album
- James Kenosha Our very own James’ website about his music production projects
- Lazy Dane A freelance illustrator based in Leeds, producing work that brings together a love of Maths and minimal design
- Lone Wolf Paul Marshall likes to write about things like murder and death. He is often joined by Duels people on stage.
News
The BBC Introduces….James
James talks to the BBC about what a producer does. Though he fails to mention some of the other things they do…
Oh you Pretty Things
Greetings dear reader, what’s new? Well, The Pretty Things are performing at Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club on 23rd September. They are, of course, those of seminal 1968 concept album “S.F. Sorrow” fame. Recorded at Abbey Road a number of months after Sgt. Pepper’s.. and released in a week that saw The Stones, Beatles and Kinks [...]
Reading between the lines
Hello Reader, Drowned In Sound have now added the two-part iLiKELiTERATURE features. Part 1 features the mix-tape put together by Dave iLT which features our very own “The Wild Hunt”. There’s some fantastic tracks on the compilation, with commentary from the artists responsible. Part 2 features an interview with the songwriters who contributed to the [...]
Whiskas in the mix….
Hello reader, You might want to check out Drowned In Sound’s Leeds Day features. There’s a couple of contributions from Mr. Whiskas, including his mix-tape which we feature on (we also have a track on Dave iLiKETRAiNS’ mix-tape “iLiKELiTERATURE” I believe). It’s great to hear some blasts from the now-considerable past on there, and there’s [...]
Howling at the moon
Hello reader, Just a little note to point you at a blog written by Lone Wolf, and his musings on our very own “The Barbarians Move In”. Very kind words from him for which we are thankful. As indeed we are for all those who have contacted us since reading the blog to let us [...]
In season
Thought it good to make a note of our existence, still. I’m listening to this while writing so I’m sticking it here so you can listen whilst reading. The internet weaves its magic yet again – – Mark Hollis – The Colour Of Spring Mark Hollis – The Watershed Mark Hollis – Inside Looking Out [...]
Imagine Festival Photos
There’s some photos from our recent trip to Basle to play the Imagine Festival added to the photos page
Milo photos
Leeds-based photographer extraordinaire Bart Pettman was in attendance at our Milo gig last week, and took some great shots of the evening. To view them visit Bart’s website.
Yorkshire Evening Post interview
Jon M recently answered some questions posed by the Yorkshire Evening Post in his poshest voice. You can read the article that talks of the past, present and future here
Free gig announced
Duels are pleased to announce a free shindig on 8th June 2010 at Milo in Leeds, ahead of their trip to the Imagine Festival in Basle. The evening will feature guest DJ’s and a full band set.
In training
Duels return to the practice room. Memories of the days when they drank beer on weekday afternoons come flooding back. Arguments about setlists begin. Home.
Music for the people
Shame on me for not mentioning that I have recently been appearing as keys/backing vocals/guitars for Lone Wolf of Bella Union. Paul Marshall, for it is he, recently commissioned the lovely Broken Pixel (who made us a video for The Slow Build many moons ago) to make his new video for him. You can watch [...]
Imagine Festival 2010
We are delighted to announce that we will be making our first appearance in Switzerland as part of 2010′s Imagine Festival. Located in the heart of Basle, the festival takes place on June 11 – June 12, with our performance being on the first day. The festival should give chance to perform some new material [...]
Barbarians CD/Regeneration 7 Vinyl for £6
This is Fake DIY are offering the CD/Vinyl Barbarians/Regeneration bundle for £6. After enjoying the free download you may wish to own the releases in physical format. “The Barbarians Move In” is on CD and is available with the 7″ vinyl format of single “Regeneration” (b/w “When The Sea Comes”. To order your copy visit [...]
Ashes to ashes
Bonfire is, as we know, adapted from the French “Good fire”. It is believed to come from an exchange between Martin “Guy” Fawkes and Robert Catesby. When Catesby enquired as to whether levels of gunpowder lying beneath the House of Parliament would be sufficient to successfully deliver their plot, Fawkes is said to have replied [...]
There wont always be an England
with the baffling nonsense of Nick Griffin still ringing in the ears, no better time to listen to ‘There Won’t Always Be An England’ by Leeds heroes The Wind Up Birds; Paul’s writing some of the best lyrics I’ve heard. Duels reconvene for drinks and snacks soon to discuss getting down to it. Hopefully more [...]
Honour Before Glory
DUELS’ own Whiskas has been busy working on a project he, and now everyone else, calls “Honour Before Glory”. To hear the first crop of material, featuring help from various friends including Jon Foulger visit the HBG myspace. He talks about the project a bit on his blog, and there are words from the horses [...]
Flash news
he y ho – things are calming down a little and the itch has started again so we’re making plans to start scratching it. I found a keyboard I love so I’m off to try it out with new songs and stick some vocals and things on our recent offspring on Thursday. There’s plans to [...]
Milk & Honey
Dear Reader, I hope the summer is treating you well
We’ve downed tools recently as we’ve been busy hatching and matching. Though before the hiatus began, we managed to squeeze in a live demo recording session to assess how the first batch are developing.
Photos by Bart Pettman
Bart Pettman’s photos of Live at Leeds and from the Vibrations feaure are added to our Photos page. For more of Bart’s work, peruse>
Heads We Dance
Today sees the official Fake DIY Records release of the Heads We Dance debut album “Love Technology” I’m personally delighted to finally see the fruition of many years of endeavour from the guys. In a previous life, early incarnations of our respective bands crossed paths/shared bills, as some of the dedicated may have witnessed, whilst [...]
Dedicated followers of fashion
Just to remind you, Dear Reader, that we have a full range of Duels merchandise over at the Duels Merch Store. Prices start from £7.99 and the range includes T-shirts for girls and boys, bags, hooded jackets and badges available in a full range of colours. The products will be shipped directly to your door [...]
Live At Leeds – The Proof
Fantastic visual evidence of our Live At Leeds performance has now emerged. The above is one of a number of photos taken, presented in the following locations: As part of a photo set for Live At Leeds / Drowned In Sound http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4136763 The complete set by photographer Carmel McNamara: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carmymac/sets/72157617590634591/
after Live at Leeds
Thanks to every one of the many who came down to the Live at Leeds gig – I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. We played: The Furies, Sleeping Giants, Perimeter Fence, This Year’s Man, Cald Waeter, Regeneration and The Slow Build. The last one was my favourite, but it was close. [...]
Saturday, saturday, saturday
The ruins at Jubb Yussef in Galilee are identified with the pit in Dothan, into which the Biblical figure Joseph was cast into by his brothers, later to be sold to a caravan of Midianites making its way toward Egypt (Genesis 37:22). For centuries, the site served as a crossroads on the Via Maris linking [...]
JG RIP
As we Twittered/Tweeted(?) yesterday, the passing of JG Ballard resonated both in the music world as well as the literary world. There is a decent article here talking about Ballard’s influence on music, by looking into some of the fantastic music it inspired. The Manic Street Preachers were also into him too, it appears.
Clement Freud
Sad news about the death of Clement Freud. He was a one-off, he had a keen eye for the ridiculous and one of THE great raconteurs. If you haven’t already, you should get your hands on any of the Just A Minute episodes he appeared in to enjoy his unique ability to light up the [...]
Training / Camp
I don’t know if you’ve been keeping your eye on the expanding confirmed line up for Live at Leeds 2009, but it is looking particularly tasty, with more acts to be confirmed. I’m particularly looking forward to A Camp, fronted by The Cardigans’ Nina Persson (her of beautiful voice fame) and also including Niclas Frisk [...]
Screenprints
I was at the Animal Collective gig in Leeds on Wednesday at what is now known as TJs, but which will always be the Woodhouse Liberal Club. The venue of a notorious Duels gig back in 2005
Good vibrations
A few weeks ago Jim and I went to The Reliance in Leeds to enjoy very, very small coffees with a fine chap by the name of Spencer Bayles. Spencer writes for Leeds-based mag Vibrations. We talked about our journey to the beginnings of III, our involvement with record labels and the like. You can [...]
Let them eat cake
As Whiskas mentioned in the Live at Leeds post, we hit the rehearsal room this week for the first time as DUELS III, and muchos fun was had. A cake in the shape of a champagne bottle and warm Grolsch all laid on special like to welcome Whiskas. Despite our creaking bones shaking with the [...]
Live At Leeds
After breaking the ice on Duels III last night, chomping into champagne cake and guzzling Grolsch, we will break into the public domain at this years’ Live At Leeds event – Saturday 2nd May The event features 100s of bands in 1000s of venues¬†across¬†Leeds – where and when we are playing will be revealed nearer [...]
News of the World
Our Barbarians give away made the News of the World north of the border this weekend If you’d have said to us we’d be in the tabloids next to an article that references a “cunning wheeze” I would have suggested we keep that quiet, alas no harm done as they are merely mentioning the album [...]
Download "The Barbarians Move In" for FREE
On the anniversary of the digital release of the album, we’re giving away the digital version of the album for free. Right click on the link below to download the digital version of “The Barbarians Move In”. The Barbarians Move In.zip (67MB) It includes MP3 versions of: 1. The Furies 2. Sleeping Giants 3. Regeneration [...]
Now we are five
Yes that’s right, we’re delighted to announce that Whiskas has joined the band. He’s always been close to our inner workings, particularly through the making of Barbarians, but beyond anything he’s a fantastic guitarist and it’s gonna be great to see and hear how it all fits together. We’re gonna try and document the making [...]
Brothers & Sisters on Channel 4′s Shipwrecked
Earlier today I received a tip-off from an avid fan of crap tv that Duels has just provided the soundtrack to T4′s “Shipwrecked”. Needless to say, I uncorked a vintage and populated the cheese board and kicked back with Channel 4 +1, and was subjected to a quite peculiar bunch of Man and Woman Friday’s [...]
Napoleon III Sleeping Giants Remix Available
We are delighted to give away an exclusive Napoleon III remix of “Sleeping Giants”. To download the remix, right click on the link below and ‘Save As’ Sleeping Giants (Napoleon III Remix) 6.6MB Napoleon III is releasing a mini-album entitled “Hideki Yukawa” on 16th Feb. For more details and to hear tracks from it visit [...]
Camden Crawl interview
Here’s an interview of us talking shit at last year’s Camden Crawl. And yes we are that red in person…
Barbarians makes Click Music Albums of the Year
Click Music placed “The Barbarians Move In” at number 5 in their Editor’s Choice: Albums of the Year. We’re in with some great records, to see the full top 10 click here The album also appeared in the Legacy Recordings review of the year, aside a damn fine synopsis of the album. That lives here
Brand Spanking New Website
Hello reader, and welcome to our new digital home. Throughout the year we intend to chart the making of DUELS III with blogs, photos and videos. Also keep your eyes open for exclusive downloads we’ll be making available through this website. Our contact email address has also changed, you can now get in touch with [...]
2008 and all that
Hello reader, Just a quick note to say thanks to all those people who contacted us recently to let us know that “The Barbarians Move In” was one of their favourite albums of 2008, we greatly appreciate it. As we move into a new year, we’re still working out what to do with the pile [...]
An interview
Check out Autobuffet for a write-up of when Jon F talked some words right at them about “The Barbarians Move In”. There’s also some MP3′s to download n that, including Jim’s fave “Into Gas”. Anybody else getting headaches? ‘Bring on the storm’ says I
iLiKETRAiNS on Artrocker
Our buddies iLiKETRAiNS are guest editors of Artrocker this week. They’re reviewing singles and the like, they recommend you check out This Et Al (very much agreed) and there’s a great article written by Dave about the music industry which is well worth a read. Their debut album “Elegies to Lessons Learnt” (yes they went [...]
Q Magazine review
So the reviews for the album keep coming, and people keep saying nice things. Latest to add to the list is Q Magazine. They give the record 4 stars, and use words like “they reach for the stars, laudably sophiscated, laudably widescreen”. They also put a little box thats says “Q Recommends” next to the [...]
This weekend – Pride, Gluttony, not Sloth but Cardigans
Now then, thanks to those who made it down to Proud Galleries on Friday night and apologies to those who were victims of the random factor that was introduced to the stage times leading to reduced rock action. here’s some photos for those who missed us gurning our way through another sweaty night in London, [...]
Sunday, sunday
Thanks to everyone who came down to The Crescent we weren’t expecting to see so many friendly faces, a really nice atmosphere we thought. Hope that our set was the start of a great night for many of you. Big thanks again to Glenna for the violin, fantastic. Remember to check out her band Tigers [...]
Crawling Forward through Camden to Russia with Talking Tigers
hello, i’ve not tried this thing yet probably to the consternation of others but here we go anyway… if all that Forward Russia chat made you hungry for more sticks of math rock check out this cos they’re ace and I’m in it helping them out on the acoustic axe..i’m concentrating, not sleeping by the [...]
Spring Is A Condition (that makes bands release great music)
Don’t let the April showers dampen your mood, those rains are replenishing the earth, from the earth grows some stuff, some of that stuff is later eaten by bands, who then record music using the energy given to them by the stuff (potatoes etc). Yes, Dear Reader, the first yield of the second crop is [...]
Barbarians reviews
As we build up to the physical release of “The Barbarians Move In” on 28th of this month, reviews are starting to appear. The album has already been given 9/10 on websites Leeds Music Scene, Sound of Violence and Whisperin & Hollerin. This week Artrocker described ‘The Barbarians Move In’ as “the album for armies [...]
Leeds Cockpit all-dayer
An enjoyable return to the Cockpit last Friday for the Dance to the Radio and Friends all-dayer. It’s been about 18 months since we last played there. Well done to those of you who arrived at 1 and stayed through beyond our set. Hats off to the people who found a little glade of their [...]
The Slow Build Artist’s New Feature
Our friend Ashley Dean, also known as Broken Pixel, has held a gala screening of his new film at Leeds’ East Street Arts’ Patrick Galleries. Ashley worked with us on the video for The Slow Build about 18 months ago, contributing the wonderful stop-animation sections. We met up a handful of times to discuss what [...]
Duels on 6Music
Mr. Tom Robinson will be playing a track from “The Barbarians Move In” on his Introducing show on BBC 6Music, this Saturday at midnight.