LITTLE SPARTA : Winter 2010
Little Sparta are a London based band named after the garden of poet & artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. The band currently consists of Alan Boyd, Susie Honeyman & Scott Skinner.
You can find our releases to download on itunes, emusic, and CDbaby as well as at record stores and online for the CD’s & vinyl. For the most up to date information on the band and live shows visit our myspace site via the link below.
Contact:
Alan Boyd
T: ++44 (0)7 808 588 689
E: avoyd(at)littlesparta(dot)com
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
music by Little Sparta:
A live performance to the silent 1926 shadow film
“Live soundtracks to silent movies have become all the rage over the past few years. This year Edinburgh has already seen former Siouxsie and The Banshees guitarist Steven Severin playing a quartet of laptop generated scores to The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, while a trio of Edinburgh bands hosted an evening at which they played along to some found footage from the Scottish Screen Archive. As part of The Grey Gallery's programme at upmarket bar Hawke and Hunter, where Bob and Roberta Smith are exhibiting, Little Sparta's live accompaniment to The Adventures of Prince Ahmed (*****) is the most cosily sublime offering of all of these.....”
Glasgow Herald August 2009
“... a perfect marriage of music and film. Rather than trying to distract the crowd with complicated, changing music Little Sparta instead worked with simple motifs, building up these threads into a rising crescendo during key scenes in the film. The effect was a little like watching the tide rise and fall, a slow, subtle feeling that held the audience’s attention.”
Latitude Festival Reviews 2007
LITTLE SPARTA have a four song CD of our live performance to ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’ which was released in spring 2008.
We also have music out on Fire Records (UK) with Gerry Mitchell having released a mini album, Scalpel Slice, contributed a song to the James Joyce album Chamber Music a full length CD entitled The Ragged Garden.
In 2007 we recorded a single with Sally Timms of the Mekons that has been released on Grey Gallery Records which you can order though us and all the releases are available online at itunes, e-music, CDBABY and in stores.
IN JANUARY 2008 Little Sparta contributed three pieces of music to the film ‘Carts of Darkness’ by Vancouver filmmaker Murray Siple. The soundtrack also contains tracks by Black Mountain, Ladyhawk and Vetiver. This is a great film about perceptions of the homeless, the disabled and racing shopping carts down the side of a mountain.
You can find out more about us at the links below.
For all other enquires please email us at: littlesparta (at) littlesparta (dot) com
Some Press:
Chamber Music Compilation
Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta:
2008 on Fire Records
“Gerry Mitchell and Little Sparta’s stab at spoken word is infinitely better than Mercury Rev’s, mainly because of… everything about it – sweet, quietly violent strumming and woozy violins, and a strong, warm Scottish accent. Mmmm.”
Playlouder
The Ragged Garden LP
Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta:
Released February 2008 on Fire Records
“The Ragged Garden weaves a hypnotic, beautifully dramatised tapestry of post-rock textures, string-led romanticism and Mitchell's absorbing spoken texts.”
boomkat
“Elegant, waning violins and craggy folkisms come duffle-coated by Mitchell’s rich, been-there-swigged-that Highland tones” 6/10
NME
“...it is a charming, innovative record which will hopefully broaden the horizons of many music lovers who would usually run a mile from anything tagged as ‘spoken word.”
Noize Makes Enemies
“... it’s a record (that) prefers to explore deep-seated emotional fissures amidst a rustle of lilting, creaky canticles that bear more than a passing resemblance to the autumnal instrumentation and darkened atmospherics of Dirty Three.” 8/10
Drowned in Sound
Feasting On My Heart 10”
Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta:
Released August 2006 on Fire Records as Keep Mother G &H
“William Burroughs meets the Dirty Three”
The Wire
Single of the Week (October 3rd 2006)
“…a beautiful melancholy piece of blackened future folk. Intermittently revealing a torn, twisted soul full of pain and anger, this is not music for the faint hearted, what with it’s stained teeth and bloodshot eyes. Brilliant stuff!”
Norman Records (Leeds)
“…a deliciously moody piece of spoken word that is given extra bite through its taut string backing and muttered samples…”
Scalpel Slice EP
Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta:
Released February 2006 on Fire Records
"Bittersweet & unpretentious...these collaborators feed off of each other in strange ways, with an edge that keeps this from just poetry set to music. 7/10"
“Contained in Scalpel Slice are many moments of elegiac and melodic beauty. One of the best poetry-cum-music albums I’ve ever heard.”
“Scalpel Slice is a quite remarkable and unusual record.”
“A slow burner maybe, or a masterpiece in the making.”
“Little Sparta weaves some of the most powerful, moving pieces of music for Gerry Mitchell to unleash his prose against. Mitchell twists every word and syllable to gain maximum affect. 4/5"
You can find our releases on itunes, emusic, CDbaby, etc., & at record stores and online.