2013 is a landmark year for Tindersticks, marking 20 years since the release of the band’s first album. Tindersticks will mark this special anniversary with a plethora of exciting new music and art releases across the year, culminating in a jubilant ‘Across six leap years’ anniversary tour of European cities in October.
Celebrations kick off with the release of the book Singing Skies, the first collaboration between Stuart A Staples and his wife, artist Suzanne Osborne. The book, in association with Hannibal Publishing, comprises a selection of Suzanne’s ‘A year in Small Paintings’, where she recorded the changing daily sky in oils over the course of a year. The individual ‘sky paintings’ are presented alongside a collection of Stuart’s lyrics, written down for the first time, spanning Tindersticks’ 20-year catalogue and documenting the genesis of each song.
On the deep connection that exists between words and visual images, Stuart Staples says; “As I watched Suzanne work, sometimes furiously to catch a moment in a fast-changing sky, at other times, able to explore a sky more static, I was struck by how similar the process was to the writing of my songs. I felt they belonged together.”
Released on 13th May, Singing Skies hardback limited first edition of 2500 copies can be pre-ordered from Tindersticks’s official online shop (www.tindersticks.co.uk/shop). Coinciding with the release there is an exhibition of Suzanne Osborne’s ‘ A Year in Small Paintings’ at the historic Vooruit Art Centre in Ghent, Belgium (9-26 May, as part of Vooruit’s centenary celebrations), accompanied by a video installation by celebrated filmmaker Claire Denis (with an original Tindersticks score). The band will be performing in Ghent at the launch of the book and exhibition on 10th May. Further European and UK exhibition dates to be confirmed.
Across the last 20 years some Tindersticks songs have got “lost along the way”. For one reason or another they never became how they were imagined to be in their recorded form…until now. 19 years since the band first recorded there, Tindersticks returned to the legendary Abbey Road Studios to record Across 6 Leap Years, bringing together these previously unrealised tracks as part celebration, part reinvention. Stuart Staples on the process; “We started to suspect that these recordings represented the purest, most beautiful statement of our time together as a band”.
The new album will be released by the band’s own Lucky Dog label in Autumn. To accompany the album’s release Tindersticks are currently working on a large format book that will bring together the iconic images from the last 20 years of the band with the writings of David Boulter, Tindersticks’s keyboardist and writer of ‘My Sister’ and ‘Chocolate’.
Continuing a long and unique creative relationship, Tindersticks have completed the original score for Claire Denis’s highly anticipated new film BASTARDS (LES SALAUDS), recently announced to premiere at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard. The electronic soundtrack for BASTARDS, Tindersticks’s 7th film collaboration with Denis, is a fundamental stylistic departure for the band and features a new twist on the Hot Chocolate classic ‘Put Your Love on Me’. The soundtrack is set for a UK Autumn release.
Tindersticks will be celebrating their landmark year in style with the ‘Across Six Leap Years ‘Anniversary Tour, taking place in European cities 20-31 October.
‘Across Six Leap Years’ Anniversary Tour
October:
20 – Rennes , Carre Sevigne
21 – Paris, Olympia
22 – Brussels, Cirque Royale
24 – Dublin, Vicar St
25 – London, Barbican Centre
27 – Copenhagen, Koncertsalen
28 – Berlin, Admiralspalast
29 – Amsterdam, Concertgebouw
31 – Barcelona, BARTS – Barcelona Jazz Festival
And looking forward into 2014…
Marking the centenary of the Great War, Tindersticks will release their specially commissioned score for the ‘In Flanders Fields’ Museum in Ypres, Belgium devoted to the stories of WW1, the international legacy of the conflict and message of peace. Taking Tindersticks into new territory, the impressive soundscape for ‘In Flanders Fields’ is an evolving orchestral piece in 3 parts that carries the visitor on their journey through the museum’s exhibitions.
Further information about 2013’s anniversary activity can be found at:
Website http://www.tindersticks.co.uk/tomorrows/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tindersticksofficial
Twitter @tindersticksUK
For further ticket info for the Vooruit exhibition and ‘Singing Skies’ launch, 10 May:
http://vooruit.be/nl/show/detail/5987/Tindersticks_Stuart_A_Staples_Suzanne_Osborne
For further ticket info on ‘Across Six Leap Years’ Anniversary Tour;
http://www.tindersticks.co.uk/tomorrows/concerts/
