Neotopia, as far as I know, are no more.

Workhouse 2010

Neotopia will be playing the big Workhouse Party at Llanfyllin, Powys, Wales! It runs from July 9th - 11th. So get your camping gear down out of the attic!

We have been invited to join the line-up for a special event at the regular Workhouse Festival site. It's their big 7th birthday bash, along with some top festival favourites. There'll be more pop, rock, jazz and dance outfits than you can shake a stick at!! And if you don't believe us, come along and make sure you bring your best shaking stick.

As this is a one off exclusive event, membership subscription is required. But once you've got that sorted the three day party is FREE! Just click this

NEOTOPIA Sound Awesome!

This is a sort of MySpace kinda forum for musicians and listeners to join up to. And what's really nice about it is that it's a lot smaller and intimate than those big unwieldly networking sites most of us use. This one has been designed by a few enthusiasts who occasionally get their favourite bands from the site together for little festivals. Because it's still fairly new you can be more sure to be heard by some of the promoters who're already members.

There's a bit of a space rock and psychedelic electronica bias to it, but they're a nice open minded bunch. This will really suit many of the musicians who we're associated with already. So, we've just signed up to it, built a profile and loaded some new tunes up.

Each band or listener can have their own site and gallery space (much like MySpace) which they can decorate how they like - Also, there's a radio feed, which plays a continuous random mix of all the music the bands have put up on their own profile's player. It plays through iTunes as a stream, really smoothly. I quite like it.

You don't have to be a musician, though. Just be a listener, if you want.

Into The Future...

Neotopia is changing

We have, for the last few years been a five piece band, based in south Shropshire. The line-up has fluctuated a few times, due to the geographic spread of its members - and the availability of each to rehearse or get to gigs.

Original guitarist Gareth Kirk and vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Carolina, both of whom from mid Wales, had to leave the band at the end of 2008, for this very reason.

Vocalist Laura Higgs and jazz guitarist Stuart Thomas soon took their place. However, even with this new team, many writing sessions have often had an absence of members of even this regular group. And now that Gareth is making appearances in sessions, once more, we have decided that Neotopia will become more of a musical collective, than being regular group. This means that gigs and sessions may or may not feature all or most of this pool of musicians. Some songs familiar to you here might not be played at certain gigs, whereas other gems, you haven't heard before, will.

Welcome back, Gareth. Sort of.

The Horseshoe Inn: April 24th

Well, due to real-life getting in the way even more than the Christmas build-up, rehearsals as a full band were indeed very thin on the ground as we approached our late April gig. Rather than doing a bit of quick thinking and rope in a support act, we stuck to our guns of playing the full evening, with an intermission.

We'd managed a very loose run through of the first set about five weeks before - and then not managing to all meet again until the very week before for a stumble through what was to form the second collection of songs. Rehearsals in other reduced versions of the line-up had been encouraging, in the weeks between, however - well, actually, very good, in fact.

So, to the gig itself. We were a little shambolic. As ever there are always fluffs, here and there. It's live music. And almost every song has at least some element of improvisation going on. But the new songs; 'A Minute With You', 'Quiet Times' and especially 'You'll Never Get To Heaven Alive' were really good and very well received!

Quiet Times

This is a new video, put to the song recorded during recent rehearsals.



Neotopia: Quiet Times
Music recorded live from The Sonic Cellar, Shropshire.
Images courtesy of The Hive Arts Centre, Shrewsbury. With still images by Richard Foot, The Snige & Jamilla Walker.