The Half Rabbits

We’ve been asked by the brilliant Audioscope to play an acoustic set at the Old Boot Factory this coming Saturday 19 May. The amazing lineup includes Scholars, Richard Walters and Phil McMinn, formerly of the Winchell Riots. See here for full details.

Michael debuts collaboration track Prometheus Unbound in Tiger Mendoza at the famous Oxford Punt this coming Wednesday, 16 May. The show will also feature this month’s Nightshift prizewinner Asher Dust. Full details here, and pictorial evidence of the collaboration is here.

Our Reading Oakford Social Club gig has been moved from May to 4 July. See gig page for updates.

We’ve been interviewed by M magazine here.

Advance tickets for our remix album release at the Oxford Cellar are here. All attendees get a free copy of the album.

2012 is off to a flying start. We’re releasing a remix album at the Cellar in Oxford on Saturday 17 March. Details of that and other gigs here.

More on our new studio recording, interviews and other adventures here.

Keep Pop Loud has voted our Optimists EP the third best EP of 2011. Read all about it here.

The video to our track Gasoline is finished and can be found at our YouTube channel here. Thanks to Tim Bearder and Sam King for all their work on it.

Also, read how our intimate wintertime Phoenix Picturehouse show went here.

We’re delighted to report that our track Poor Me/Poor You from our Optimists EP has been voted one of Nightshift’s top songs of 2011. Click here to find out more.

Thanks to everyone for making our Machine Triumphant launch such a success. Read our singer Michael talk about it here. Our next gig will be a free winter acoustic show at the Oxford Phoenix Picturehouse with Phil McMinn (ex-Winchell riots) and Gert Lassitude. Flyer for the show here.

Having sold the entire first batch of advance tickets, we’re pleased to announce that more can be obtained here for our headline show at the Jericho Tavern this coming Friday. With every advance ticket purchased comes a free, exclusive Half Rabbits CD, and a vote in the competition to see which band will play a cover.

Also, see here for our recent feature on Music in Oxford, and here for the details of our new record, the Machine Triumphant EP.

We head into the studio with Pat Collier (Primal Scream/Jesus & Mary Chain) this weekend. We release the results as an EP at the Jericho Tavern in Oxford. More details on that show are here.

We’re proud to say that Oxjam Oxford Takeover 2011, at which we played, raised over £2,000.

Tickets for our upcoming headline EP release gig at the Jericho Tavern on Friday 18 November can be found here.

We’re playing an acoustic set for Oxjam 2011 this coming Saturday (22 October) at the Turl St. Kitchen in Oxford. Tickets and details are here.

Check out the live track and video interview we did with Oxfam right here on NME TV.

There’s a new video of us online, with Chris and Michael from the band playing an acoustic version of Aviator on the roof of the O2 Academy in Oxford. Check that out here.

The compilation from Keep Pop Loud Records, featuring us, is unveiling its track listing over time. Check here for the latest updates.

We’re playing a show for BBC Introducing at the Oxford O2 Academy on Saturday 20 August. Advance tickets are available for £5 from here.

Also playing are Alphabet Backwards, Anchor and the Wolf, Cooling Pearls, and Nairobi. Read the full story on our blog.

Thanks to all those who came down to our gig at Fat Lil’s in Witney, Oxon on Thursday – there was a really good turnout and I think everyone had a good night. Thanks also to Oxfordshire Music Scene for putting the show on, and to The Black Hats and Alphabet Backwards for playing great sets.

There was a slight mishap in that Chris was unable to play this gig due to an eye infection. He would usually just have battled through it, but his treatment involved medicine being injected directly into both his eyeballs (!) on the day of his gig, so he felt he’d better sit that show out.

He’ll be back fighting fit for our next gig, which will be on Saturday 20 August at the O2 Academy in Oxford, where we launched our debut album last year. More news on that when we have it.

We’ll keep you posted with news about how our new video goes. Oh, and we also have a new blog page, which you can find here.

-Michael

Having been to Charlbury Riverside Festival at the weekend, we’re in the mood for some more live music.

Join us this coming Thursday for our gig at Fat Lil’s in Witney, Oxfordshire. We’ve never been to the venue before, but heard from our friends the Winchell Riots that it’s really good. We’ll be joining the excellent Black Hats and Alphabet Backwards and will be on just after 9pm. Tickets are a bargain at £5 on the door or get them in advance here.

For those interested in such things, here is the Facebook event with all the details. The event is being promoted by Oxfordshire Music Scene, an excellent new(ish) glossy magazine about, well, the Oxfordshire Music Scene.

You’ll also be pleased to hear that that filming is back on track for our new video for Poor Me/Poor You. We’ll let you know when that’s ready for your viewing pleasure.

See you Thursday!

We were delighted to be asked to play for Record Store Day at the Truck Record Store on Cowley Road in Oxford. Thanks to Truck Records for asking us! They’ve always been very nice to us, having put us on at Truck Festival twice, and also the excellent (and extraordinarily busy) OX4 Festival a few months back.

We’ll be playing there tomorrow, Saturday 16 April. I’m particularly looking forward to it, as I was delighted to see this whole story about the gig in Artrocker the other day. As Artrocker says, the lineup is absolutely superb. Headlining are The Young Knives, one of Oxford’s biggest and most recent success stories. Their new album Ornaments From The Silver Arcade has just come out and seems to be doing very well. I’ve always enjoyed their music, my particuar favourite track being Coastguard, so I’m really looking forward to seeing them again.

Main support are Spring Offensive, who have certainly been making an impression around Oxford over the last couple of years. They have a wonderful clean-but-heavy sound, and if you want to see what these busy bees get up to, their wonderful new video will give you a good idea. I was fortunate enough to see them play at their EP launch last week at the Bullingdon Arms in Oxford. Thanks to Oxford Music Scene for the free tickets.

We’ll be on at 6:30pm, playing a set of tracks from our new Optimists EP and our 2010 debut album From The Horizon To The Map. We’re very much looking forward to it, and between now and then will be rehearsing (literally) day and night for the show.

Our gig buddies Phantom Theory will be playing, and if their performance is going to be anything like their excellent set at our Oxjam gig last summer in the Oxford Castle, they’ll be great.

Also playing are Nathaniel Rateliff, Sophie Barker, and Adam Barnes. I must admit, I haven’t seen or heard  either of the first two, so I’m looking forward to hearing what they’ve got to offer. I first saw Adam Barnes play at his EP launch in the Oxford Cellar six months or so ago, and he was really good.

For the time planning-minded, here are the stage times:

9pm Young Knives

7.30pm Spring Offensive

6.30pm Half Rabbits

5.30pm Phantom Theory

4pm Nathaniel Rateliff

3pm Sophie Barker

2pm Adam Barnes

So, a great day of music! Also, don’t forget that there’s another full day of music on Sunday, also at the Truck Store. Headlining are Little Fish – who we last played with at Commotion Festival in the summer – hot-tipped new Oxford band Fixers, the superb Richard Walters, Cat Matador, Message To Bears, and Good Things Happen In Bad Towns.

Please spread the word, as it’ll be an excellent weekend, and independent music is something we feel particularly passionate about.

We hear that there’ll even be a bar in the store. Not something you’d find in a run-of-the-mill HMV.

See you there,

-Michael

Well, well. We played in London last night and it was fun. Thanks to all for coming, and thanks to Glasswerk for having us. Hipster New Band Of The Week The Vaccines were playing at the Barfly, which is right next door to the Monarch, and it was fun seeing all the music journalists milling about with their mohawks and leopard skin parachute pants.

We’re celebrating the launch of the Optimists EP (PELVIS007) with a relaunch of our website and this brand new blog. It’s all very exciting. The track listing is as follows:

i) Gasoline
ii) Poor Me/Poor You
iii) How The West Was Won
iv) Extremadura

We’re releasing the download-only EP on Bandcamp, and the link to buy from Saturday 19 March is here.

The EP has already attracted a lot of attention in Oxford, and we’re hoping that it’ll get the same when we start to promote it further afield. The BBC have been particularly nice.

The launch gig is at one of our very favourite venues, the Oxford Jericho Tavern, and we’re joined by the excellent Scholars and Fuzzy Logic. The Facebook event is here.

We’re also playing at the Camden Monarch on Thursday 24 March, so make sure you get down to that.

Back in touch with more news soon.

-Michael