Whether it’s to our detriment or not, we take a long time to make albums. Births, Deaths & Marriages took us three years, and I think the new album has taken us the same. I’d love us to be the kind of band that can bang out an album in a couple of weeks, but sadly, we can’t. Partly because we are scattered across the east coast of Australia, partly because it’s all self funded, partly because we gave BDM an additional tour in the UK, but mostly because that’s how we naturally write. If we don’t write naturally, we end up just writing tosh. So in a bid to not write tosh, we take our time, and craft the best body of work we can. Our latest album is complete and is titled Sunshine Salvation.

After BDM was given so much praise for it’s ‘soul and heart’, we were concerned as to whether SunSal was going to be able to deliver the same – how wrong we were. Sun Sal, in my humble opinion, is an even bigger beast with more energy, more heart, more polish and an even more complete and rounded collection of songs (but of course I would say that, wouldn’t I?!)

So come October, Sunshine Salvation will be released, and you can all judge for yourself. Tomorrow (the 26th of course), we will release our first track, The Outside. It will be available on Soundcloud, Bandcamp and an extended single on iTunes shortly. The official film clip will follow in early August.

It’s taken time, but now it’s done. We’re immensely proud of it, and hope you will all enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it.

Hello to you, wonderful reader.

Those with a keen eye will see that we have removed the artwork on our website for our second album, Births, Deaths & Marriages. (BDM) It’s a bitter sweet moment for us. On one hand, we are delighted to have a new album sitting in front of us, and are keen-as-punch to show it to you all. But on there other hand, it’s a time where we rest an album that has taken up most of [26]s life.

BDM has taken us to Canada, Los Angeles, England, Scotland, Hong Kong and around Australia. It had pipe organs, choirs, harpists, guest instrumentalists and a good dose of rock added to the mix. It’s gotten spins on BBC6, Triple J, FBI, and a plethora of US stations. And we’ll never forget it’s 3 minutes of fame on the NBC tv show life which opened up many many doors for us.

Above all else, it was a special album for us on an emotional level. During its creation, one of us said I do, one of us welcomed a little human into the world, and we all said goodbye to 2 special people. As the titled suggested, we saw the full spectrum of life in one album. To say it was a special part of our lives is a bit of an understatement. So how do you top that?

Well, we think we have. It is its own beast.

SO it’s time to say adios to Births, Deaths and Marriages and prepare for our new album ******** ********* (going to make you wait just a wee bit longer). It’s a bitter sweet time, but mostly an exciting time.

Hope you all have/had a good easter break.
Talk soon
[26]

We think the idea of SOPA is scary. It’s a bomb to kill a bug. As musicians, we understand the debate about Intellectual Property, but we can’t condone this sort of action that’s effectively ‘on our behalf’. It’s old world thinking by old world people. It completely grates on us that the music industry is helping lead this ridiculous charge, because we’re yet to meet a musician (those that own the IP) that actually agrees with it.

The worst and most deluded part of SOPA, is that it goes far beyond simply ‘protecting’ intellectual property, and into the realms of destroying this amazing tool we have been given – the internet. Have a look at the video linked below for a further explanation.

[26] does not support SOPA, and never can support SOPA. We support an open and free internet, because without it, we probably wouldn’t be here. If you want to sit with your guitar in front of a webcam and cover one of our songs, we want to thank you – not damn you.

The internet is an amazing thing. We’re big fans!

http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

Ross & Iain chat, Nick makes coffee and I take photos – standard [26] recording session.

D