CHINCHILLA - NEWS & INFO

CHINCHILLAAAAAH

THE BASICS...
E-Mail : dangerchinchilla@hotmail.com
Last FM : www.last.fm/label/CHINCHILLA-TONE
Myspace : www.myspace.com/chinchillatone
Facebook : Coming soon...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Due to Dom's computer taking a turn for the worst in early 2008, we've not been able to update this website for a considerable chunk of time. But here we are; new year; new computer power; new look website; new information to relay! Please bear in mind that the nely designed website was first uploaded early January, so if you see any glitches or glaring errors, please email us and we will sort it out post haste! There will definitely be improvement and additions to the individual band pages over the next few weeks (accessible via the flashing banner below) and the archive of posters, art, photos, comics, interviews, and just about everything else we've done is beginning to get beautifully out of hand. Most of 2008's most memorable bits have now been added to the archive below, along with all the hottest, most exciting new chinchilla news!

The Chinchilla Collective is Dom, Nash, Dicko, Tobias, Moz and Hils. We are a group of friends who met nearly ten years ago in and around Hyde Park LS6, Leeds. For the last eight or nine years we have been FUN-ctioning as a DIY gig promoter, an independent record label, and an old-school 'at-gigs-only' distribution of other approximately like-minded labels and bands. We have also been known to help arrange a few tours here and there, and have a 9 seater Mercedes Benz Sprinter and backline available for UK and Euro tours.

We are musicians, artists of various proficiency and skill-base (fonts, drawing, sewing, screen printing, website design, gif animation, etc), a touring machine, sound engineer, professional plasterer, drum teacher, and Doctor of Bio-Mechanical Science. Above and beyond all that, we are motivated by having fun whilst operating outside corporate society in a fair, honest, creative manner not dictated by finance, fashion or faux-pas.

NEWS...

13-March-2009... CHOPS INTERVIEW WITH THE QUIETUS
A CHOPS interview with The Quietus is now online, as part of their Escape Velocity feature which has also spoken to Crazy Cousinz, These Are Powers, Micachu & The Shapes, Women, The Priscillas, Tenebrous Liar, A Place To Bury Strangers and Gang Gang Dance. Read the interview here.

11-March-2009... CHINCHILLAFEST 7!
Keep an eye out in the next week or so for the mouth watering melon of an announcement of the line up for the joyous gathering of the 7th annual three day chinchillafest! As ever, you can expect all our favourites and friends from around the UK, and a few touring cherries - though we're sad that Japanther won't be playing as we'd planned, because their continental tour dates fell through - hopefully we'll be seeing them later in the year! There's just a few confirmations still outstanding, and we're really very excited that coincidence has allowed for the band who released our favourite records of last year to close the festival on sunday evening - bring on the warning orbs of the future!

25-February-2009... CHOPS IN PLAN B & THE WIRE
CHOPS are featured in the February issue of Plan B Magazine (see here), and there's a review of the split 12" with Helhesten in the February Wire Magazine (see here). You can see the Plan B interview in its entirety over on the Upset The Rhythm blog.

16-February-2009... PLEASE CANCEL UK TOUR - REPLACED BY POLTERGROOM
Due to several unforseen & unfortunate circumstances, Please have been forced to cancel their UK tour with Mucky Sailor. Chinchilla extends our warmest hugs, and we look forward to having them up later in the year. Please will be replaced by Poltergroom for the UK tour with Mucky Sailor, and the gig at The Brudenell Social Club in Leeds on 25th February with Beards is still very much ON! EDIT: Thanks to everyone that came down and make this work out, Poltergroom were on fire, Gus got his new ship's wheel synth on the spin, and Beards played sans costume!

29-January-2009... CHINCHILLAFEST NUMBER SEVEN! - 5, 6, 7th June 2009
Oh hell yeah! We just booked The Brudenell Social Club (as usual!) for the 7th annual extravaganza of joyous stupidity, laughter, and fucked up super ace party time musics that is known globally as the wonderous, brilliant, fantasmical CHINCHILLAFEST! When we started up Chinchillafest back in 2003, there wasn't that many festivals going on - now there's probably fucking hundreds on your doorstep. So why do we continue? Well, perhaps you could call us egotistical buckos, but we reckon we'll give you more bang for your buck, more smile per mile, over a ton of fun, and, most importantly, we think we manage to cram in the absolute cream of the UK's best DIY bands from all sorts of ilks, normally with a few of our European and American friends to keep it nice and spicy! You can expect the weekend and day tickets to be very reasonably priced (approx £15 for the weekend, including a free compilation cd and probably a comic or some other similar treat). Watch this space for arriving details and hopefully we'll see you down the front!

29-January-2009... CHINCHILLAS INVADING OTHER FESTIVALS!
Quack Quack, Cowtown and Cissy are playing at the third annual British Wildlife Festival at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds on Saturday 28th March, with Thomas Truax, Capillary Action, Drum Eyes, Alexander Tucker, Uprights, Chickenhawk, Dethscalator, Bilbao Syndrome, Temperatures, B>E>A>K, Plaaydoh, Castovalva, Wonder Phantom, Wooderson, etc.
The next day, Sunday 29th March, sees CHOPS and a.P.A.T.t. head down to London for the Upset The Rhythm YES WAY Festival in an abandoned car show-room (Auto Italia, 1 Glengall Road, corner of Old Kent Road, London, SE15 6NJ), along with Beards (who play on the Saturday), Rolo Tomassi, Gay Against You, Please, Drum Eyes, Team Brick, Kylie Minoise, Pens, Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, Gentle Friendly, Graffiti Island, Shitty Limits, and Banjo Or Freakout.

27-January-2009... BABI-CHIN-II RESULT!
Thanks to everyone who lent a hand, played and attended the second all day Babi-Chin Fest! I think it's fair to say everyone had fun. Nash filmed every band so we should have a few video links up some time soon (ish). We're going to get fully cracking and sort out the 7th three day extravaganza that is known as CHINCHILLAFEST over the next few weeks... sit tight and we'll make it worth your while, we promise...

08-January-2009... CHOPS AND a.P.A.t.T. ON TV!
CHOPS are featured on the programme TRACKS, broadcast on ARTE TV in France and Germany on 9th January. TRACKS filmed and recorded live footage and interviews with CHOPS, a.P.A.T.t., Zun Zun Egui, Katie Stelmanis and DJ Scotch Egg under the banner Nu'Zik at Hokaben Festival, describing us as the "inclassables unknown, unpaid, the cream of unidentified music". You can see a clip of the show on the CHOPS myspace, and we're trying to work out how to get a more high resolution clip compressed small enough to embed onto this website. There's a review and "In The Studio" interview of the CHOPS/Helhesten split 12" in the January 2009 issue of Plan B Magazine.

05-January-2009... CHINCHILLA GIGS FOR 2009...

Babi-Chin-II aka Babi-Chinchillafest or Mini-Chinchilli returns on 24 January at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 3pm, £6 -
CLECKHUDDERSFAX, ACTION BEAT, MONSTER KILLED BY LASER, INDICA RITUAL, PICORE (Spain), WONDERSWAN, UPRIGHTS, FRINGES, MARK MAKE, WASP DISPLAY + Chinchilla DJs, Stalls, Cakes, Tea and an awsome stage set!

Please, Mucky Sailor + 1 more @ Brudenell Social Club - 25 Feb - more info soon

Icy Demons + 1 more + Chinchilla DJs - Wednesday 13 May @ Brudenell Social Club - more info soon

05-January-2009... COWTOWN ALBUM VOTED IN TOP 10 OF LAST YEAR
COWTOWN have just been featured in the January 2009 Vibrations Magazine Top 10 Leeds releases of 2008, which is none too shabby considering it was released in November 2007!

05-January-2009... QUACK QUACK FINISHING UP RECORDING DEBUT ALBUM
It's been a long time coming, but QUACK QUACK are just about to add the cherry to the cake of their debut album, delayed by a few months due to Disco Stu's extended honeymoon (congratulations!). They're unsure which label is going to release the album yet (open to offers!), but our ears know it's already sounding brilliant.

20-November-2008... CLECKHUDDERSFAX ALBUM RELEASED! CLECKY AND BEARDS EURO TOUR!
After many a month wrangling to get the artwork finished, we finally got the long awaited debut CLECKHUDDERSFAX album out in time for them to take to France, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany and Holland on Euro tour fun and games with BEARDS from 27 November - 14 December.

20-November-2008... DISTRO!
Currently stocked records inlclude most of the UPSET! THE RHYTHM releases, lots of GRINGO, GOLDEN LAB and RUN OF THE MILL records, as well as plenty of other Leeds and UK bands, plus a variety of stuff picked up from bands Dom has driven on tour. You can buy Chinchilla-Tone releases by emailing us, but to get your hands on distro stock, the records are for sale at most of our gigs, and when Dom is away on tour.

20-November-2008... CISSY & BILL DOLAN SPLIT RELEASE AND EURO TOUR
CISSY have recorded for a split LP with with Bill Dolan's new band DAS BOTON (ex Heroic Doses & Five Style) on US label SixGunLover, and tour the UK and further afield together in April/May 2009.

29-September-2008... CHOPS/HELHESTEN 12" ON UPSET THE RHYTHM OUT NOW!
Transparent rhubarb and solid white cream coloured split 12"! £7! Or available from UTR, distributed by Southern and also stocked by Rough Trade (London), Jumbo (Leeds), Crash (Leeds), Monorail (Glasgow), Norman, Picadilly (Manchester), ITunes, etc. CHOPS just got back from a short tour including ZXZW Festival in Holland with Sun Ra's Arkestra, Wire, Pelican, Torche, Gay Against You, etc, and will also be playing at Hokaben Festival in London in November with Sun Ra's Arkestra, Don Caballero, Acid Mother's Temple, etc.

10-September-2008... a.P.A.t.T. ON TV!
'Massive' is a brand new comedy series on BBC Three, starting Sunday 14 September. a.P.A.T.t. cameo as a hapless band called The Lamps, who sure can play but are just too odd for mass consumption... ring any bells!? Ralf Little's character describes the band as "Shit". Massive stars Ralf Little (Two Pints Of Lager, The Royle Family), Carl Rice (Scallywagga) and Johnny Vegas (Ideal, Benidorm).

20-August-2008... CHINCHILLA ART EXHIBITIONS @ LIME + DONALD TRUMP & THE PLANETS, SEPTEMBER 2008
In collaboration with the new Leeds Museum opening later this year, The Art Library at Leeds Central Library hosted two exhibitions, LIME and Scribe. Leeds Independent Media exhibition was based on different groups involved with music in Leeds, such as Chinchilla, Manifesta, Oblong, ClothCat, etc. Our display was focussed on a series of towers and floating hand-made boxes, created from blank white card 12" record sleeves; exhibiting sketches, posters, art from our releases, comics, etc. Photos coming soon!
Dom also displayed a selection of screen prints and personalised sketches collected from tours he's driven (such as Ligntning Bolt, Daniel Johnston and Coughs) at the "DONALD TRUMP AND THE PLANETS FEAT. ROMAN ALASKA WORLD ENTERPRISES" exhibition at The 42 New Briggate Gallery in Leeds on Stember 6th. The exhibition was a DIY blockbuster, based on a shop front inside the gallery displaying homemade bric a brac (this is collectively all the artwork, side projects, films, inventions, artist designed products and so forth which have been made by the many creative communities of the worldwide DIY scenes). All this surrounded by hundreds of portraits of Donald Trump!

19-May-2008... CHINCHILLAFEST 6 - 16, 17, 18 MAY 2008 @ THE BRUDENELL SOCIAL CLUB, LEEDS
More classic chinchillafest fun! Oh the good times! We turned down an offer from Terrorvision to play a secret show as a warm up for their come-back tour. Big time! Thanks to everyone that helped us out, and to all the bands - DJ SCOTCH EGG, GAY AGAINST YOU, COWTOWN, MUCKY SAILOR, BEARDS, EATS TAPES, THAT FUCKING TANK, ACTION BEAT, CHOPS, PLEASE, STIG NOISE, CISSY, a.P.A.T.t., ZUKANICAN, QUACK QUACK, BILBAO SYNDROME, BRONZE. There are still copies of the compilation CD available, 'Christ This Wine Is Agreeable' - a Bilge Pump Tribute featuring Printed Circuit, Beards, Cowtown, Lords, Monster Killed By Laser, Mucky Sailor, Two Minute Noodles and Pifco.
Just before Chinchillafest there was a Cops & Robbers Podcast - Chinchillafest special with Circuit, Dicko, DRC, Hilary and Jon Nash. Features an interview with Beards, and tracks by a lot of bands who played Chinchillafest and at other gigs in Leeds in May: Gay Against You, Broken Arm, New Bloods, Eats Tapes, Monster Killed By Laser, Pifco, a.p.a.t.t, Quack Quack, Ghost Fleet, Fangs, Melt Banana, Printed Circuit and Beards; this is your first chance to hear some of the Bilge Pump covers from the Chinchilla CD, and also a new Quack Quack song.

16-November-2007... "NEW SONIC PIONEERS"
There's a blog on the Guardian Unlimited site (November 2007) which lists CHINCHILLA, CHOPS and QUACK QUACK, (as well as our friends UPSET! THE RHYTHM, LEOPARD LEG, BIRDS OF DELAY, HEX OUT TAPES and THE POLLY SHANG KUAN BAND) as the UK's "new sonic pioneers". We don't particularly agree with most of the article, and we think there's a great deal more brilliant UK bands than those mentioned, but that's not to say we're not grateful for the appreciation from someone we don't know, because we very much are.

05-November-2007... DEBUT COWTOWN ALBUM - PINE CONE EXPRESS - OUT NOW!
The new COWTOWN album is ready for your listening pleasure! 12 tracks of total party fun, mostly instrumental stuff, plus a taster of the Cowtown to come, with Steevsie vocalising a song. CHINCHILLA have released the CD, and GOLDEN LAB will be releasing the vinyl version of the album in 2008. ON THE BONE are co-ordinating mp3 downloads. Artwork by DAVE BAILEY: secret dogs with cocks, ostriches with ying yang eyes - y'know, s'nice. There's an ever growing stack of reviews (Drowned In Sound, Subba Cultcha, Contact Music , etc).
A track from PINE CONE EXPRESS, I'm In Your House (Part Two), was played on Huw Stephen's BBC Radio One show on 21st November, as part of ON THE BONE being chosen as his DIY Label Of The Week. Huw also played the new single by our pals THAT FUCKING TANK on the same show.
EMAIL US FOR A COPY OF PINE CONE EXPRESS, £6 + P&P
You can also buy the album in real-life and online shops such as Rough Trade (London), Jumbo (Leeds), Crash (Leeds), Monorail (Glasgow), Norman Records and Selectadisc (Nottingham).

10-May-2007... PIFCO CASSETTE ALBUM RELEASED!!
Finally, the slackest and most prolonged project of CHINCHILLA to date is complete! PIFCO handed us two cassettes containing no fewer than 47 songs, weighing in at just under 180 minutes of music! Together we picked out the best bits, and after a year of delays, they recorded newer songs which have been added to the release. Your ears will be excited! And so will your eyes, because Ste lovingly printed on 500 hand-made cardboard boxes! Email us or see us at gigs to buy one, £2.50 plus postage where necessary. Oh, and you can spot a review of the tape in the August 2007 issue of Plan B . Thanks!