Overwhelmed By Stimuli

Another video created by digital video artist London Penda / Ray T. This time to a rehearsal recording of our popular live song 'Overwhelmed By Stimuli'.

SONIC ROCK SOLSTICE '09

We're playing at the SONIC ROCK SOLSTICE Festival! It does exactly what it says on the tin: Music by legends of spacerock and psychedelic underground on the bill include Alan Davey’s Gunslinger, Earthling Society, Litmus, MOAD featuring Ron Tree (ex Hawkwind), Harvey Bainbridge (ex Hawkwind), Earthlab - featuring Jerry Richards (ex Hawkwind), Anubis (ex Budgie)... Plus late addition to the bill; the legendary former Hawkwind sax player Nik Turner and his band! - AND OF COURSE, US!!!

This promises to be something of a Psychedelic Summer!

Freefall Fireball Video

Here's a lovely piece of fluid psychedelic animation created for our recent live in the cellar recording of 'Freefall Fireball'. It was programmed and melded by popular YouTube digital artist Ray T. - and on its initial release rose to 87th most discussed music video on YouTube!!! Not bad for a bunch of unknowns from out in the sticks somewhere, eh? A big hearty hats off to Ray, for his splendid work.

Platform: Shrewsbury

On May 7th 2009 we played at Shrewsbury's regular Platform evening. This is a monthly arts night where local artists' of all media get a platform on which to publicly do what they do. This, in the past, has included poetry, burlesque, monologues and performance art. Fine art works are projected onto a huge screen for a regular competition and of course there is plenty of live music.

The team of volunteer organisers clearly have a passion for making every Platform night the best it can possibly be. We had played for them before (details can be found in our MySpace blogs). This time round though, we airing all new songs and introducing the new line-up.



As before, however, we were cooking. All our songs were well received, despite our concerns that we can flit from music genres with each song. New regular favourites such as 'Overwhelmed By Stimuli' and 'Frankly, My Dear...' which have more danceable beats were as popular as jazzier musical songs like 'Klezmik' and 'Five More Minutes'.

Following our set, it was so flattering that so many people were eager to find out about future gigs in the pipeline - as many wanted to bring friends along to see us, next time. The new Shropshire fanzine 'Feral Shrew' conducted a short, but lighthearted interview with us before we played - and we'd like to use this opportunity to wish them the very best for its success.

Photos: Richard Foot

Start Here

Despite having a slightly off-kilter idea of what constitutes music, we seem to be quite extraordinarily blessed to have a rich seam of creative people in our part of the world. We call it Neotopia.

And this collective originally formed at the end of 2007. The original fledgling line-up were gigging within just a few weeks. With members being based as far apart as Worcestershire, mid Wales and Shropshire meant that the first few gigs played were semi-improvised and exciting affairs to say the least. The songs were strong and grounded in rich melody - the band's performances were solid, confident and competent, bolstering and exploring some nice grooves. Audiences were immediately carried along by these infectious pieces that drifted from lovely lilting dub reggae to skronk electonica and to chilled broken beat jazz.

Throughout 2008, as word spread, we played several big parties, then pubs, bars and clubs such as Shrewsbury’s Hive and the Buffalo Bar in Cardiff, before being invited to join the bills for some larger open-air shindigs including Nozstock Festival in Herefordshire and the Groe Gathering in Rhayader. However, at the end of summer 2008 our original guitarist and singer were both sadly forced to leave by the unwelcome intrusion of real life. Bummer.

Enter guitarist Stuart Thomas and then barely four weeks later jazz singer Laura Higgs. We had again tapped into that rich seam that Neotopia thrives upon. Again we have a strong line-up. Each member collaborating new ideas that just wouldn't work in many other bands. Each contributing in equal share to this band's new eclectic playground of colourful moods and sounds.

For 2009, the entire set has been replaced by a whole new fresh crop of songs, feverishly written between this enthusiastic group of people in our rehearsal cellar. The ideas continually coming thick and fast, taking their form as anything from groovy nu-jazz, electronic pop, hip-hop or spacey 'krautrock'. The songs just coming out as they come out. - Almost independent of our preconceived guidance in terms of style and perhaps steered by a quirky left-field approach! What's important to us is that our live audiences 'get it'. They always look a little surprised, at first, but they do get it none the less.

Recent appearances at The Llama Lounge in Worcester and The Old Post Office in Shrewsbury quickly reassured us of that.

An audience member at the Bearded Theory Festival in Derbyshire was heard to shout "You're weird - But, I like you!". Further confirming that we were flying against expectation and remaining true to ourselves, rather than following any formula. Integrity. It's a nice word, isn't it? -
That was an odd festival to play, though. Rain and heavy winds came in unrelenting waves. The skies just looked wrong, the whole time. We initially put it down to some new visual effect headliners Hawkwind were trying out for their set. Even in the brief moments when the sun was breaking through things just seemed uneasy in the sky. And sure enough, two stages were utterly destroyed by a tornado on the second day!

Please give us a listen. We're all (clearly) very excited about what we've got, here!

Welcome to Neotopia

Having solely existed online as a MySpace band for a while, we've decided to branch out to a few other popular networking URLs. Facebook was a recent experiment, but that has a lot of limitations still, despite its popularity with the general public. It's not like MySpace, in that we can't customise the page's appearance - or make our music readily available on it. Well, not until we embedded the ReverbNation 3rd party MP3 player to stream our recordings.

Our MySpace site can be found at
http://www.myspace.com/jazzydubfunk

Blogger, on the other hand is already quite established within musical circles of artistes and enthusiasts as a source of forgotten recordings by established bands - and indeed as a source for newer breaking acts. Members of Neotopia have been enjoying Blogger sites as a source of classic reggae, jazz and rock music for a while. We want to use this portal now as a repository for our own ongoing content and adventures.

We've been in existence as Neotopia for about eighteen months (as I type this, in early June, 2009) and really quite like the idea of sharing it all. Afterall, we're a live band - and that's what we do! The whole idea of travelling to play to audiences is to share what we think is pretty good music and vibes.

Our back story will unfold here, as we build it up with subsequent visits. There is a huge digital library of excellent photography to illustrate it all, as we're unfairly blessed in having several professional portrait and fine art photographers among our growing army of followers and groupies. However, it is the ongoing exploits of the present and hopes for the future that are most in our minds. So, let's see how this site evolves. I must warn you that due to time contstraints - and a bit of laziness, there will inevitably be some duplication from the MySpace site. Well, the copy and paste facility is just too convenient to be restisted, isn't it.

Welcome to Neotopia.

Nick Raybould
June 5th, 2009