Smash more gigs!

Whenever we play venues we've never been to before there is a certain sense of anticipation. Will it be dingy? Dank? Will the sound system be appalling? Will it be too small? Too large? Will we get a decent dressing room?

Sometimes, things work out much, much better than you could possibly imagine, and that's what happened to us last Thursday.

The Forum, Hatfield opened in September 2009 and is one of the premiere live music venues in Hertfordshire. Built at a cost of £38m, it boasts a total capacity of 2,000 people over three rooms and has already hosted acts such as will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, Doves, Scouting for Girls, Taio Cruz, Enter Shikari and N-Dubz.

Situated on campus at the University of Hertfordshire, it also acts as a massively impressive venue for student union events, such as Jam Jar - the night that we played at.

So anyway, we rocked up and sound-checked, whilst technical folk scurried around sorting out lighting, monitoring, smoke machines, etc. (All of us except Owen, who managed to be 3 HOURS LATE for soundcheck. Nice one...) and wondering how many people would turn up to such a big venue.

The answer was lots! It's a bit of a no-brainer, really: free entry, pound-a-pint, free parking (for those not taking advantage of the pound-a-pint promotion, of course), great venue... makes me wonder why we ever bother playing dingy basement venues in London that are £8 to get in, and over £3 a pint!

Seriously, though, the whole student union experience far outweighed the recent forays into London. The crowd were much more responsive, the venue was much more impressive, the staff were much more accommodating - whether this is just a great advert for The Forum or whether it's the norm for such venues we'll wait and see, but for now I'm crossing my fingers for more University gigs!

Anyway, here's a snippet from the gig - our opening track from the show, "Underwater". Enjoy!

PS: If you haven't already, head over to SoundCloud to download our latest free single NOW!

Fear No Evil - free single out now!

Press release:

Following the poignant "Red Sky", Eat More Cake deliver their second single "Fear No Evil" with remixes by Choking Dolphin and Steviebeatbox. Eat More Cake are a five piece band lead by songwriters and musicians Andrew Briggs and Matt Pearn supported on stage by drummer Alex Lane, DJ Owen Charles and vocalist Kay Juviler-Bacon. Their live show has wowed audiences at The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Camden Barfly, 93 Feet East, Hamswell and Glade festivals, as well as many other venues in and around London.

In "Fear No Evil" the band's easy-flowing mixture of electronica, hip-hop and indie underpin a thesis on the illusions of childhood, urging the listener to embrace the truth and seek happiness in the real world, whatever it's short-comings. The original mix is driven by an infectious blues-guitar loop and hand percussion whilst Choking Dolphin takes a more dreamy, electronica, synth-lead approach. The Steviebeatbox remix sees the vocals delivered over a bouncy Hip-hop beat and what feels like a slightly more optimistic chord progression.

Eat More Cake will be releasing their debut album "Climb The Ladder, Live The Dream" in 2010.

Eat More Cake - Fear No Evil - Urban Torque® by Urban Torque®

What's in a name?

Isn't the internet big?

One of the great things about having a name that's a bit different (with apologies to the two bakers shops also called Eat More Cake) is that if you're googling for information about us, the chances are you'll find information that is actually about us (or those two bakers. Oh, or a World of Warcraft guild, whatever that means...).

I often feel it must be a disadvantage for a band that has a less distinct name. Especially if that name happens to have geeky connotations - of the 20% of the Internet that isn't porn, I reckon around 15% must be geeky stuff. Take for example a band with a name containing 'Header', 'Banner' or 'Tag'. Have a search for 'header myspace' and see if you can find anything that isn't a reference to how to add custom myspace code...

Of course, Jim Header and DJ Header may be multi-platinum selling artists for all I know, but I think in some ways a name is especially important for bands that are 'up and coming' in these days of information overload.

It's a pastime of mine (and Andy's) to Google ourselves every so often. I mean, everyone's Googled their own name just to see what's out there, right? Googling 'Eat More Cake' at the moment gives a good assortment of information - our websites (MySpace, Facebook, etc.), YouTube videos, reviews of Red Sky, gig dates, etc. Here's a selection of some of the highlights at the moment:

Eat More Cake Interview on The List Mag (San Diego entertainment magazine)

Red Sky at #100 in the Swiss Dance Charts!

Eat More Cake's remix of Kandi in top 100 tracks of 2009 on Stop Me's blog

Urbantorque Transmissions page for our 1 hour mix - if only for the comments!

Enjoy!

EPK!

Electronic Press Kit. It's a perfectly simple concept: make available the information you would wish to present to press/venues/agents/management in an online format.

Strange, then, that there is such a wide range of EPK variations around, with completely different concepts and that very little useful information exists about what to include, and how to go about it. Google gives you millions of results for people who want to help you build your EPK (for a price), or will do it for you (for a price), or will host it on their EPK-generating website (for a price), etc.

So we decided to make it up as we went along (nothing new there).

We've been working on a video biog/epk for a while. It's been really difficult to get round everybody we wanted to in a suitable location (everywhere's so noisy these days!), to interview them about their involvement. However, we have finally crowbarred the whole lot together with a whole load of live and studio footage to come up with this, our video biography:

The rest of the web EPK is made up of stuff we think is useful: a written biog (also downloadable), a load of photos (also downloadable), some previews of songs, links to our YouTube content and contact information. Personally, I'm very pleased with the result having taught myself a lot more web-type stuff to get it working properly. Let's hope it proves useful for those that use it.

For your pleasure, here is our Electronic Press Kit:

www.eatmorecake.com/epk

Eat More Cake LIVE! Wednesday 3rd February

So we're back at The Underbelly, Hoxton Square tomorrow night (early doors - on stage around 8pm). Last time we played there I blogged about the excellent quality of the sound and the engineer, so I'm hoping it's the same guy tomorrow!

We've made quite a big change to the set list this time round. We've got half a mind on our festival dates for the summer, so we're attempting to liven up the set a little bit. It's always a shame to drop songs from the set, especially ones that go down really well, but in these days of 30 minutes slots, something will always have to make way for new stuff to come through.

Talking of new songs, you can catch a preview of our next track, "Fear No Evil" on our MySpace page now! Featuring mixes from Choking Dolphin and Steviebeatbox, the single will be available for FREE in the next week or so.

Meanwhile, if you're coming down to the Underbelly tomorrow, don't forget to RSVP to the Facebook event for discounted entry. Hope to see you there!