a r t i s t : Billy Mahonie
t i t l e : Exhale on Mare Street
d a t e : 2006
l a b e l : Unlabel (un52006/42)
g e n r e : Instrumental Rock
r l s. d a t e : Jun/2007
t r a c k s : 16
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 88,3 MB
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Welcome to unlabel series52! This is number 42, released on
October 16, 2006.
Artist Info:
Billy Mahonie - Billy Mahonie is a rock band and not an Irish
folk singer. Formed in London in the autumn of 1997 they play
instrumental rock music. Although lumped in with the numerous
jazz beard wearing post rock bands of the late '90s, Billy
Mahonie did much more than gaze at their collective navels and
noodle around some horridly lame progressive jazz riff for a
half hour. Mahonie's music is indeed infused with elements of
heavy rock, hardcore punk, jazz and folk but the emphasis is
defiantly squared on ROCK and cathartic emotive and super
energetic guitar music.
The original line up consisted of Gavin Baker (guitar), Howard
Monk (drums and announcements), Hywell Dinsdale (bass and
guitar) and Kevin Penney (bass). Their first releases, two
singles, came in 1998 and they toured extensively in the UK
building up a solid live reputation and the 'best live band in
Britain...?' tag from Melody Maker. By spring 1999 they had
signed to Too Pure, recorded a John Peel Session, visited
Europe for the first time and also travelled in a van with
enough seats. The album 'The Big Dig' was released in the
early summer and met with positive press from all. A single,
two EPs and extensive UK and European tours followed in the
same year.
However, much to Too Pure's confusion, Billy Mahonie were not
Mogwai and they found themselves looking for a new label by
Easter 2000. With half their second album recorded Billy
Mahonie found themselves in the offices of Southern Records
who admitted themselves 'one man's posion is another man's
medicine' and Mahonie was the prescription. 'What Becomes
Before' released in the fall of 2001 was Billy Mahonie's
double album opus. It playfully mixed genres of every style to
create an album that was truly 'post rock': rock music of all
descriptions twisted and reinvented without giving up the
immediacy, dumb accessibility and volume of the old masters of
rawk. 'They're becoming almost untouchable' said the NME.
Again Billy Mahonie were despatched to Europe and toured the
UK and Ireland. 'What Becomes Before' again met glowing
reviews but didn't turn platinum. At the start of 2002 the
band decided to take a break and concentrate on other music
for a while. Gavin recorded an album with Jet Johnson and went
solo as Meets Guitar, Howard did session work and set up Knom
Promotions, Hywell moved from London, joined Redwood Falls and
bought yet more second hand cars and Kevin joined Seafood,
friends whom Billy Mahonie had toured with previously.
This period of rest saw both the original bass players leave
but by the end of 2002 Howard and Gavin had recruited Duncan
Brown (ex-Stereolab) on bass and Tony Barrett (guitar). This
new Billy Mahonie made its live debut in December 2002 and
recorded a second Peel Session as part of the Ten Minute Men
on Jonson Family Records. Third album 'Dust' came out at the
end of 2003 on Tritone Records again to great press from all
quarters: 'Now they sound refreshingly out on their own' said
The Wire magazine, '...the mighty Mahonie who wee effortlessly
on the po-faced post-rock fraternity from a great height' said
Time Out. The new line up continued the same musical path,
blending musical genres like a pissed TV chef with a huge
musical blender i.e.: Floyd on folkrockprogmetal.
2004 saw a quiet year as Gavin moved to Norway, conceived a
family and recorded an album of folk music with his father.
Howard continued promoting as Knom putting on larger shows
across the UK and Europe and also did further work as sometime
drummer with State River Widening, Joyzipper and Cass
Macombes. In the meantime Billy Mahonie began recording a
series of hot demos for an as yet unrecorded new album. In
December 2004 the 'Nightmare City' mini album was released,
exclusively available from the band's website.
There had always been a plan to release a compilation of the
earlier non album singles covering the first years of the
bands existence; no one could figure out quite why these gems
and live favourites such as Hoon and Are We Rolling weren't
included on any of the albums. In 2005 work began with the
kindly Oof Records to make it so. The album 'Found' was
released in October 2005 and finally gave a long awaited CD
release to some of the bands best work. The band have since
released more singles, appeared on compilations and reformed
the original line up to perform a handful of shows before the
release of 'Exhale On Mare Street'.
The series52 Concept:
While chatting on the phone back in September 2005 the two
people who run Unlabel decided to do this...
During 2006 Unlabel is releasing a series of 52 CD albums -
one every week of the year, all by people who aren't connected
with us (i.e. none of our regular artists), to include all
genres that we cover from the usual guitar based music -
acoustic and alt. country to post-rock / math-rock, hardcore
and beyond, piano, electronica / idm through to ambient,
glitch, microsound, gabber, industrial / noise, soundscapes
and anything else that takes our fancy, each in a strictly
limited edition of just 100 copies.
We decided to do something slightly different - instead of
focusing on local artists, as has been traditional with
Unlabel, we opened this project up to submissions from all
over the world. It is entirely separate from the usual
catalogue of releases and will run as a new offshoot of the
unlabel family.
The idea is to release work by unknown artists who may not
otherwise be recognised at all alongside a handful of
carefully selected guests, including a few names which may be
familiar due to their other releases elsewhere. We receive
quite a few demos these days from all over the world and it
will be good to work with some of these people and to document
music (albeit in a small way) that may not otherwise be
noticed at all...
Each 'album' in this project includes at least 8 tracks OR at
least 30 minutes of material and obviously quality control is
being kept to a high standard.
All releases are packaged in distinctive matching artwork with
the musical artists' own image on the front and two images
from Unlabel on the back - including one of a landscape
photographed every week over the 12 months of 2006 and all
pictures are professionally printed on high gloss photo paper.
Each sleeve is hand numbered and every CD includes a diary
page insert for the relevant week of the year, which can be
filled in and returned to Unlabel to win a unique prize. There
are also inserts from the artists and Unlabel making each one
of these fine discs a collector's item.
http://www.unlabel.net/series52.htm
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01-Scary Village [07:04]
02-Lothe [06:39]
03-New Year's Eve Song [02:44]
04-Cheap Funk [02:28]
05-World Action [02:06]
06-Sleep in Feathers [08:56]
07-Descending Riff [04:22]
08-As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs [02:02]
09-Minor Dub Folk [05:30]
10-Why I Oughta [06:35]
11-Music for Eating Musicians [02:20]
12-Nightmare City [06:14]
13-Intro Riff [03:19]
14-Dusseldorf [07:27]
15-Red Crow [05:20]
16-(End of) Keeper's Drive [01:56]
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75:02 min