Currently Semitt Falls are a 3 piece instrumental live dance music band with Sam Johnson, (drums) Paul Kendrick (guitar synth samples loops), Sidge Ruston (Bass, Bone, keys). Hitting you with massive dubstep bass drops that thump through the dance floor like a rampaging T-Rex that’s eaten too many jelly babies. Semitt incorporate live looping and live digital samples jammed on launch pad with more traditional rock instruments incubated inside a vortex on an asteroid heading towards the sun. Mellow meltdowns mixed with harsh brass tones mean these tunes are mathematically created to make you dance like everyone’s watching your incredible dancing.
Previously:
They combined metal genres, with various electronic dance genres, such as drum and bass, hip-hop, dub, electronica, reggae, and dubstep to create a unique sound. The band is named after a location in the 1988 console game ‘Final Fantasy II’. The band was started by Paul Kendrick and Jay Kane in 2012 after their previous band, Halt Under Heavy Fire” disbanded. After many months of struggling to find their own sound and numerous line-up changes the band were settled on their new line up of Craig Gilroy (Vocals and bass), Paul Kendrick (Guitar, progamming, vocals), Jay Kane (Keys and vocals), and Daniel Houghton (Drums).
The band changed their sound dramatically, moving from a post-hardcore sound to a more electronic rock feel while keeping the aggressive style which then led Jay moving away from keyboards to a more central vocal role, taking aspects of hip-hop and metal and adding it to the mix. The band recorded and released Monkey See, Monkey Do Doo in May 2012 and received good reviews including Artist of the Week on Reverbnation. The band entered an international battle of the bands competition making it all the way to the final at the O2 in London. Shortly after the final Craig Gilroy left the band for personal reasons and the band went on the lookout for a new bassist, in their search they came across Sidge Rushton, who dropped easily into the role and made it his own. The band yet again messed with their style, where Jay took on all vocal duties, and even set up adding live effects such as glitches, stutters and other crazy sounds to create a unique an wubtastic sound.
Some Music!
Some Video!
Some Blogging!
Drummer wanted! Beware monsters, rock hiphop dance crossover band
Are you a drummer based in Manchester uk? Are you up for making music that takes influence from rock, metal, drum n bass, drubstep, reggae, and hip hop? Do you like cake, cats, rabbits, horses, and other such things? If there answer is yes, then let’s eat some cake!
Seriously though, we’re looking for a Conga Player who is interesting, has a good groove, likes to experiement with music, can play to a click track and is happy to be involved within the writing/ideas process.
We been told we sound a lot like Rage Against The Machine meets Enter Shikari meets Beastie […]
Semitt Falls – Musak Video
Semitt falls has become an instrumental band, this is mainly as the people we auditioned were not suitable (either bad, mad, or we were just a fad). In the interest of showing what we can do we made a track and recorded a video. The principal here is that there are no backings tracks, the samples and back are all played live and looped, this makes for a more creative, if difficult to play set up. So this is our first offering:
Semitt Falls – Musak -Music Video
So, Semitt Falls made a music video, and this is it, recorded and performed entirely in Ableton live in one evening, mixed mastered the next two evenings, video recorded in one day then edited in another. Then the usual pouncing around with adobe after effects for about a week adjusting pointless things! here it is!
share if you like!
Semitt Falls Recording a Video
So Semitt decided to record a video, We have a tune called ‘musak’, and four of our friends very kindly offered to help with filming. We recorded the audio first on Wednesday, all live, no backing synth tracks, what we played we played. Considering the amount of production, samples and synths, this is no mean feat. Videoing started with set up on sunday morning, we had made our own DMX lighting controller, unfortunately it wouldn’t work. Something to do with a grounding issue as exactly the same set up worked at home, although plugging in the arduino to the dmx […]
New New New….
Semitt Falls has been busy writing some new material and getting up to speed with older material with Sam on Kit. Old tracks are sounding pretty awesome and new tracks equally cool!
Just ordered an Akai APC40 for controlling additional effects.
We have got guitar looping up and running, using a Beheringer FCB1010 footpedal to control Ableton’s built in looper. Some issues with the triggering of loops as because we have ableton live’s quantise setting set to 2 bars, to trigger the loops I must press a switch before I intend it to be triggered. This is a little counter-intuitive, a little […]
Long time no blog.
Firstly we would like to again welcome our newest member, Sam Johnson on drums. He pretty much owned the audition and we cant wait for you all to hear him play.
In other news Semitt Fall’s very own lead-shouty-man, Jay, has just become a dad, which is awesome, So Congrats to Jay and Amy!
Speaking of bears…… the Bear Heads EP has been actually been released, have a listen and if you could share it around that would be lovely:
We will be writing new material and practicing furiously and then get back to gigging asap, we have many ideas, all of […]
FIRE!FIRE!FIRE!
So the video is now completely filmed. It has taken us a long time but it’s finally done. Jay has spent a lot of time to finish off the offline edit and now Paul will take it on and make it look nice and warm.
Fire!Fire!Fire! is our 3rd video but this one has live performances and an awesome rap by GRIM vocalist Lance Hargreaves. We filmed him in a really cool place by Manchester ship canal, which has some pretty cool graffiti on the walls.
We are very excited to finally release it, we feel it’s our best song on […]
Global Warning – Semitt Falls – Lyric Music Video – HD
We made a new video didnt we! check it yo.
Latest News June 2013
Well it’s been a while since we’ve posted anything up here so I thought I’d keep you up to date with the world of Semitt Falls.
We have yet again changed our electronic setup because of the failings of glitching during the tour. It’s a lot more stable, and Paul bought a new Mac!!!
IEM is a lot better but Paul is thinking of being wired in and not wireless like me.
We have written some new material since the tour and are all pretty happy with how it’s coming along.
Make Wubz Not War
Beware! Monsters
Higher
We’ve really taken a step closer to hip-hop and […]
mandemblog
So we went on tour with, Tussk and Syren City, Two bands we met doing the surface festival final, who are mint btw! We played five dates, London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and Stoke. This was a collection of a load of first for semitt falls. First time on tour. First gig with sidge our new bassist. First gig with the new set up with adds more interaction with the live electronics. First time we played our new set. The list goes on!
The tour itself was great, after a shakey start to the first night, with some technical issues and a lack of attendance, Birmingham was […]
Ableton Live – Tips and Tricks
In working towards this new set up where we want to integrate live electronics better with live music we have a learnt a few things that you may find useful. This Blog will be updated as we go with more snippets of information about tricks and tips in using ableton live live. (version 8).
The Semitt falls set up lets us:
A) Play to a click, including automated tempo and time signature changes within a song
B) Produces individual mixes for each musician
C) Wireless control of Mixing of main audio and monitor channels via wireless apple and android devices ipad, iphone etc.
D) All audio processed within ableton […]
Semitt Falls – Tour 2013
Right so tour is looming at the end of january and its really very exciting, the manchester date is on the 26th Jan and is now at Sound control, (NOT Dry Live), bit of a mix up with the booking.
wed 23rd Jan London, www.motherlive.co.uk/
Thurs 24th Jan Birmingham, www.theflapper.co.uk/
Fri 25th Jan – Bristol http://www.the-croft.com/
Sat 26 jan Manchester – www.soundcontrolmanchester.co.uk/
Sun 27 Jan Stoke http://www.ygpc.co.uk/the-famous-lion/experience/
We are touring with a couple of awesome other bands we met at surface festival:
+Syren City from Bristol
and
Tussk from Stoke
If we are coming near you, get yourself down, follow us on twitface:
Latest News December 2012
So it may seem to be pretty quiet on the Semitt Falls front but we can assure you that it’s not quiet in the background.
As some of you know we recently lost our bassist and clean vocalist Craig for reasons outside of the band. We then spoke and decided to carry on and to look for a replacement on the bass front.
We held auditions for bassists and organised 4 bassists from the Manchester area. Only 3 bassists made it and we decided on Sidge Rushton to fill the boots.
We are now re-working some of our songs because Craig played a […]
Bassist auditions
So we are holding auditions on Sunday we have four promising candidates which is great. Looking forward to meeting them all.
Bassist required do u have what it takes?!
Bassist required for established manchester based band ‘Semitt Falls’. We play a fusion of heavy-rock/metal and drum and bass with some dubstep elements. Recently performed at the 02 in London in an international battle of the bands. Recent radio airplay and local press. Small UK tour booked for January. We are looking for a talented, reliable, open-minded individual to join our band. Vocals preferred but not essential. Full album of material recorded earlier this year (search itunes/spotify/deezer) looking for someone to be involved in the writing of the difficult second album. Own private […]
Tech set up – rehearsal
So rehearsal tomorrow, We are going to try out the new tech set up as well as try out using in-ear-monitoring.
For those of who don’t know, in-ear-monitoring is where you use earphones to be able to hear what you are playing or singing rather than floor wedges. You will have seen many top pop and rock acts with custom ear pieces, and wireless links. The reason for us choosing this is due to the following
Consistent sound for the band whatever the venue – we are controlling the sound not the sound engineer so, while sometimes when you have a great engineer the sound can […]
More Ableton Liveness from Mo, M3P, or Jay…
So I have been messing around again on Ableton Live, trying to write something for the band..
What I want to come out and what comes out are very strange and extremely far apart.
This morning I sat down to write some Dubstep, DNB feel song and this is what came out of my head
http://soundcloud.com/jayson-kane/defo-not-dubstep
Yeah, I’m not sure either…
Mo.
Ableton – hello world
Spent a good few hours last night getting to grips with ableton live and the new semitt set up.
So I connected ableton live to an ultra nove keyboard, which I can use either as a midi controller or using the internal sounds. Connected a novation launch pad to ablton (on a mac) which I have set up just to play different sections of the song. Then connected a korg pad control to trigger some cool stutter effects on the drums hopefullly vocals.
Here is a video, of my first attempt, difficult to play all this stuff while holding a phone! haha, […]
M3P and Ableton Live
Now I will be the first to admit that I am not really up to scratch on the whole electronic music making ability.
But we have decided as a band to drop the backing track because we have felt we have had so many problems with decent sound. We are now switching to a more live and on the fly loop based system. A part of this system will be the use of Ableton Live.
Kenders, Danny, and I got together on Sunday to start sorting out our new set up and the three of us all had a go at a […]
Well now, we aint got any gigs booked for a while so we are taking this opp to write some new tunes, and mess with our set up. We are gonna move away from using a backing track and start using ableton live two keyboards, an mpc and a pletherea of midi controllers to make the semitt falls experience a truly live one. We are currently experimenting with set ups and ideas and will decide on a set up shortly. Currently it looks like we’ll be running ablton live, building up live loops from the mpc, and using our ultranova and micokorg to play the electronics, […]
Surface festival blog
Well now we played surface festival yesterday. We didn’t come in the top three unfortunately. But we did rock it!Here is a shot that makes us look well awesome! Haha brilliant stuff.
The day started very early at 8am, Danny and I got a taxi to the fine from our hotel and met up with Craig and jay.
We were shown to our green room, which was the outside! Haha, then sound check started and we found out the running order, we were on pretty early but someone has to be I guess, our friends in the north a41 were with us […]
Videos and Surface Festival 2012
Hello there you lovely primates,
So we had a gig at The Roadhouse in Manchester on Thursday night, we mixed a few songs together and I think it went pretty well.
We had the lovely guys from Selective Visions down to film some of it. They are doing us a promo video for free, because they are that lovely. It will be hosted on their youtube page once it is complete. We have been shown a very rough edit of the first section and all is looking well, no one is sure what Jay (vocals) does with his hand whilst singing, but […]
Some gigs and news
So we have a couple of gigs coming up this month (August 2012) and it would be amazing if you could get down to see us. We have a couple of surprises for you guys and gals!
Our first gig is at The Roadhouse in Manchester, if you want to come give us your name and we will guestlist you…yes that’s a free gig to see us and a few other bands play.
Secondly we have made it through to the Regional Showcase of Surface Festival at Manchester Academy on the weekend of 31st August/1st September. Keep in touch and we will […]
Latest News July 2012
Hey guys,
So the album is complete and available to buy from all the great digital download sites, or you can come to our gig and get it for free. If you live in Manchester UK you can pop along to Piccadilly Records and see if they have any left!!
First bit of news is we have another gig lined up at Jabez Clegg in Manchester for the Semi Final of Surface Festival. We are playing on the 19th July with Freek, Shotgun Boulevard, He Who Dares, Blackmamba, and Severance. If you can’t make it for any reason you can always show […]
Gig ahoy!
We have a gig! Playing at kraak in the northern quarter in Manchester on the 4th July. Worlds of polaris who is our sister band are also playing that night too. It’s three quid and it’ll be great so if your in Manc city centre why not come down well be giving out free copies of our album as usual and dubbing the step out of some rock!- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Primate Dubcore Crew
So I (Jay) have been given the task of getting some t-shirts printed, because I work at a screen printers. My initial thought was to have a design on a black t-shirt with the monkey like our cover…
But then I thought it would be far more interesting to have different images and ideas for our tops. And because we are quite tongue in cheek as a band this is what I came up with…
Rehearsals
Rehearsal last night was fun, always is in Semitt. WE set up the Hard disk based multitrack system, released in 1999, its based on the older reel to reel multi-tracks. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug99/articles/fostesd108.htmWe have been using a macbook with logic’s mainstage but its let us down a number of times now, so we thought it was time to figure something more reliable. The D108 is great as it has ADAT in and out and we hooked that up to the Saffire pro 40 firewire sound card.http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan09/articles/focusritesaffirepro40.htmThe cool thing about the Saffire is it works without a laptop so we set up a […]
Semitt Falls Available on Amazon MP3
So if you do not have iTunes or Spotify or even Deezer you’ll be glad to know you can now get our album on Amazon MP3!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/277-8317263-1170564?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=semitt+falls&x=0&y=0
Enjoy!
Jk.
Latest news 12 June 2012
So, the album is finally out there. It’s available on Deezer, Spotify, and iTunes. On iTunes it’s only £2.49 for 8 tracks, honestly there is no reason to not go out and get it and enjoy it! We worked really hard on it and are all very proud of it.
So that is finished and out there, we are starting to think of new music and making the live performance more of a performance and more interesting and enjoyable for all involved, so come and check us out if you can!
Anyway, some of us have started writing some new ideas. Go […]
Things to do in Denver when ur not dead
Currently in boulder Colorado, it’s one of most beautiful cities I’ve been too, where the city is directly at the base of the rocky mountains.At a conference called isars which is all about remote sensing of meteorological stuff. Catching a flight from Denver home today as my sister is getting married on Saturday. So have about 6hours to kill before a long long flight back to blighty.Pk out- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhoneLocation:28th Street Frontage Rd,Boulder,United States
Digital music distribution
Digital music distribution So having submitted the album to this digital music distribution company called zimbalam, I am quite impressed with them. The process goes as follows, chose your package, single or album, (19 or 29 quid it cost to submit) Add all the details, it allows you to add your own ISRC codes (codes which are assigned to individual tracks to identify, the track/artist/country/year/label ) ours are GB – 3TV (our label) – then year (12) and the release number for that year (0-8). Then you upload the wav files, (so mp3 here), check and double check all the details and submitt! The […]
Webpage blog paradox
Ive been making a Webpage that encourporates widgets from sound cloud, twitter Picassa and blogger, I appreciate the irony that by blogging this I will be adding this content To the blog if will Automaticalky add this to the website, ergo the website will have a picture of the website on it, this is the kind of small insignificant thing I find amusing…Sad isn’t itPk out- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Finished Album, mastered and everything!
Well having now had a copy of the album from the wonderful Dr Kenders, I just thought I would give my (sometimes useless) opinion.
I think it’s totally mental. It’s something I am really proud to be a part of. And the best part is we have called it ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do Doo’, I mean what more could you ask for in a title.
Currently my personal favourite has to be In Fiction We Trust, I just remember having so much fun during the writing/recording process on that song. Laughter is always great, and should be essential, when playing and writing […]
Album recording finished
Well recording for the semitt album started in january, it’s now the end of may! The actual recording was finished a few months ago and what was left was alot of editing/ additions mixing. When you have an idea how you want something to sound but perhaps haven’t done that kind of thing before there is certainly a learning curve. I’ve learnt quite a bit over the past few months, the most important thing I learnt though is how to listen critically and form opinions very quickly. I think these two things are most important in production.
The new version […]