Sheffield band hoping to take country by storm in 2013

A Sheffield band are hoping to take the country by storm as they embark on their first UK tour next year.

Six-piece Brave New Storm formed at the University of Sheffield and have earned quite a reputation for themselves performing at pubs and clubs in and around the steel city in the past year, which has also seen them win Tuborg's national Battle of the Bands competition.

2013, however, will see them branch out of South Yorkshire, and frontman Patrick English says they have ambitious plans for the coming twelve months after recently signing with management company Pronote.

English said: "Signing with a management company is like the first big step for us. They're setting up a series of dates for us, making us able to get around the country. It shows that it's not only you that believe in what you're doing, it shows that somebody else genuinely thinks that you've got something to offer and that you can make them money and yourselves."

They used to describe themselves as a cross between folk and post-rock. Now, though, English says they are more of an indie-folk outfit, taking inspiration from Foals and the Maccabees, along with recent Barclaycard Mercury Prize winners Alt-J: "We've kind of tamed the post-rock element of it into more of an indie feel. It's still got the atmospheric sense to it and the gradual build ups and the slower parts.

"This is our second band after the first one [The Inside Job] was starting to stagnate a bit. We wanted to do something a bit more ambitious and bring in the stringed instruments (their line-up includes a violinist and a cellist) and create something that was more powerful but at the same time could be more delicate and atmospheric as well."

Liverpool, York, Nottingham, Lincoln, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford are all on the list of cities that the band hope to visit in the next few months. In addition, they played a gig this weekend at the legendendary Wheelbarrow venue in Camden in London. They will also be working their way around a number of festivals next summer, including Tramlines here in Sheffield.

Line-up

• Patrick English - guitar/vocals
• Siobhan Bligh - guitar/vocals
• Tom Sprackland - drums
• Aidan Hughes - bass
• Mike Waller - cello
• Blai Covas - violin

The next step is hopefully a record deal, English said: "Having a management company opens new avenues. If you play in places and you go on tour, record labels look at you a lot more favourably than if you’ve just played a couple of pub gigs.

"If you capture audiences from far and wide and if your name is spreading to places, it says to record companies that these guys aren't just pulling their friends into gigs and if we put time and money into it, there will be people willing to buy an album."

The plans are ambitious, but English is confident they are going to come together: "The EP's been out for nearly a month and it's been selling very well – we've got an online shopnow because there was a demand for it and at gigs we’ve been shifting upwards of £20-30 worth of CDs every time. Everything's coming together at just the right time."


by Stuart Hill