Second Album!

Exciting times here in Finchland

RECORDING A NEW ALBUM!

We are in the middle of recording our second album. Thanks to a grant from the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program we have been able to work with an amazing producer by the name of Nick Huggins. He has worked with lots of Melbourne musicians who we love, including Rowena Wise, James Kenyon and Domini Forster. It's been two years since we recorded "Home" and we have written so many new songs. We are also excited about having more time to record strings, piano and even a touch of Banjo (Ivy's newest love!!).

POZIBLE CAMPAIGN !

We are about to start work on the album artwork with an amazing young local photographer named Emma McEvoy. Check her our here!
To help us fund the artwork and actually pressing of CDs we are running a crowdfunding campaign on POZIBLE.    Here's the link here: http://www.pozible.com/project/205156 
or you can click on the image in the side bar on the top right of this blog.

AND

 the little movie we made for it featuring cameos by our little bro Percy and our mum.

And here's Ivy frying an egg for Mabel to smother in chilli sauce in the video!

MUSIC VIDEO!

And, as is the way with independent musicians, we are simultaneous producing a music video for what may be the first single on our album, "Lost Girl". We travelled up into Mallee country past Mildura, (actually into NSW just over the Murray) and found some astounding sand hills.

 RADIO DAYS

and finally, we had the utter pleasure of going into the ABC radio studios and recording a song with Clare Bowditch. She asked us to choose a well known song for us to sing together. We chose Simon and Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa" or that song about rather being a sparrow than a snail! We were inspired by the version our mum always plays on her favourite album of mainly murder ballads by the Wainwright sisters. It was such a treat to sing with Clare around one microphone in three part harmonies, and Ivy got to strum the banjo which made her smile a LOT!

You can listen here:

xx Mabel and Ivy

Spring is a busy time for finches...

We launched our debut EP "Home" on the 23rd August at the Northcote Uniting church!
It was as perfect an CD launch as we could ever have imagined. The church filled with the most wonderful audience: family, friends, new fans, authentic "punters" taking a chance on a couple of school-aged songstresses....the result was a magical atmosphere we will never forget.

photo by Peter Cahill

As you can see, the Northcote Uniting Church is a very special place to have a concert. It's very  beautiful, has incredible acoustics and is in the middle of the Northcote live music hub. 
We were so lucky to have one of our all time favourite musicians as our support act! Domini Forster enchanted everyone with her glorious angelic voice and incredible songs.  It was also very special because Dom has seen us progress from busking outside the veggie shop where she sometimes works to launching our own EP, and has been encouraging and supportive all the way. Having mentors and meeting musicians who inspire you is a huge part of developing as a young artist.

photo by Peter Cahill

In the photo above we are playing "Home" with Domini on glockenspiel and Mabel's most excellent cello teacher Vince Ward. What a band! And below we are taking a bow, looking very, very pleased and excited! Our heartfelt thanks goes out to all those who came along,  our family and friends for all their support, our Pozible supporters and of course to Michael Johnson and Evripedes Evripidou for helping us make such a beautiful debut EP!

photo by Peter Cahill

and now....on to making video clips!

In September we were awarded a Grand Grant from Deakin Uni's Arts Participation Incubator to make a video clip for the title track of our EP, "Home". We chose this song because there is a lot of interesting imagery and it's dreamy! Here's us singing at the awards night at the Sofitel in Melbourne.

The first step in this project was visiting two classrooms at Collingwood College and Thornbury Primary School in order to perform our song and inspire drawings to use in the film clip. The drawings surpassed our expectations completely! Check out this photo!

Then we planned the shoot! Our lovely filmographer/animator, Kim Deylen (who we found through Umbershoot in Preston)  enrolled cinematographer  James Alexander (who is actually a unicorn: the photos will explain all!) and they found the perfect beach for our needs. We had the challenge of procuring a row boat and ended up making one with a fridge box, tape, glue, newspaper and paint!

Voila! The perfect Owl and Pussycat style pea-green boat, wouldn't you agree?

Sunday morning we headed off to the perfect wild Victorian beach for filming! Hooray!
Lucky we had plenty of hands (thanks Mike and Erin) to cart the props and instruments over the dunes.

getting tips from director Kim Deylen

note James has a unicorn hairstyle

Think we'll stop there so the video clip has a few surprises in it!

house concert and album art!!

Yesterday we played a housewarming concert.  Nicki was one of our gold star Pozible supporters and she and her friends were such a fantastic warm audience and even sang harmonies to our rendition of "Wild Mountain Thyme"!
Thank you Nicki and company for a wonderful experience!
Here's a taste of Wild Mountain Thyme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObIzR4jai7s




::Our artwork for the album is coming along splendidly and Belinda Suzette keeps sending us little updates! Here's a little preview snippet!

And very excitingly, Mara Ripani has been sending us some amazing photos frpm our wintry beach photo shoot from the last post. Check them out! Now we have the task of choosing a couple for the album!

                                photo by Mara Ripani

                                photo by Mara Ripani