Cargo Records

From The Ground Up

From The Ground Up is the debut album from Birmingham's shady bard, a mini indie-orchestra of pianos, guitars, casiotones, violin, cello, French horn and samples. Their music is at once passionate, eloquent, tender, bombastic and fragile, evocative of Spiritualized, Mercury Rev, Sigur Ros and Sparklehorse.

Singer Lawrence Becko, whose cracked tones contribute to the album's bruised tone, writes using a special condition known as Synaesthesia, which is the pairing of two or more senses. When Lawrence sees words, they appear as colours...

"Synaesthesia shapes what we do in every way and makes me very obsessive," he explains. "To me, every word and every chord have a colour and they all have to match up. So Penguins contains a lot of light blue, white and green colours to match with the imagery of ice and nature. Torch Song and Fires are rich yellows and oranges respectively to reflect their titles."

The album joins a loose group of ecologically themed albums that includes Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump, Pulp's We Love Life and British Sea Power's Open Season. Penguins, Bobby and Treeology all look at the consequences of environmental irresponsibility, Treeology telling the story of a tree surgeon who attempts to preserve an entire forest with creosote and varnish but kills the trees in the process. And the environmental theme runs not just through the lyrics but through the band's actions as well - they handed out birdseed to the public at one gig, band member Jasmin Hollingum hand crafts their merchandise and they once performed in the Victorian bandstand at Birmingham's botanical gardens.

"But as much as nature, I think we're influenced by a bigger theme of how people deal with the world around them - with climate, with living things, with the land, with each other," they say. "We use environmental problems to say something about the wider picture - sometimes personally, sometimes politically."

The band formed in 2004 from a group of five multi-instrumentalists who'd arrived in Birmingham from the four corners of the British Isles (Alex Housden, Aidan Murphy and James Dey complete the line-up). Together, they shared a common background of playing in school orchestras, which has manifested itself in their lush music. Quietly developing away from the eye of the music industry, they formed a relationship with local label Static Caravan and released the Treeology EP in February 2006. A limited edition of just 100 copies, it sold out instantly and now exchanges hands for over £100 on eBay. Following it up with their debut single Penguins in October, they played shows with the likes of The Veils, Califone, iLiKETRAiNS, Veda Hille, Yndi Halda, I Was A Cub Scout and Peter Bjorn and John in the interim, finding a summer haven in Brecon's Green Man festival.

Following these home-recorded EPs, From The Ground Up marks the band's progression into the studio - it was recorded in Stockport's Amplisound Studios with Robin Housman."Robin is a young producer and he comes from a mixed musical background - his knowledge of electronica and hip hop meant we could talk in terms of loops and beats and that formed a strong foundation for what we were doing," says Lawrence. "We were all delighted with the final result - it has all the texture and lo-fi ethos of the EP tracks but it sounds warmer and phatter. We're looking forward to putting it out there and seeing people's reactions but we've already started recording for the next album. We don't like to stand still!"