A wholesome fierce panda one sheet

The Band: GOLDHEART ASSEMBLY

The Release: ‘WOLVES AND THIEVES’

The Formats: COMPACT DISC & DOWNLOAD ALBUM

The Label: fierce panda

The Catalogue Number: NONG 65CD

The Release Date: MARCH 15TH 2010

The Harsh Truth:
** Goldheart Assembly are comprised of six young men who live in London Town. They consist of Jake Bowser (keyboards, vocals), James Dale (vocals, bass), Nicky Francis (drums, vocals), Thomas Hastings (vocals, various instruments), John Herbert (vocals, guitar) and Dominic Keshavarz (lead guitar, vocals). Some of these people have beards and look a little bit like members of ELO circa 1975. This may or may not be significant.

** On March 15th 2010 Goldheart Assembly will release their debut album ‘Wolves And Thieves’ on fierce panda records. And you can’t say it hasn’t been a long time a’coming: since forming at the close of 2008 the sextet have spent much of their spare time carefully nurturing an ebullient live fanbase via the BBC Introducing Stages at Glastonbury and Reading / Leeds and ravishingly received performances at Latitude, the Camden Crawl, Swn and In The City, not to mention a mini-tour with The Low Anthem and a sold out Borderline in October. All this off the back of little more than one limited 7” single release, ‘So Long St Christopher’ on Heron Recordings, and the sort of seemingly carefree approach to live performances where the charm comes first and the tunes impact later.

** Fittingly then ‘Wolves And Thieves’ was recorded by the band themselves in a makeshift studio amongst the old steam engines at the Forncett Industrial Steam Museum in Norfolk in the middle of 2009. It was then finished and mixed with Laurie Latham (Echo & The Bunnymen, Squeeze, Ian Dury & The Blockheads) at Helicon Mountain studios in Greenwich. So ‘Wolves And Thieves’ was started in the warmth of a bucolic East Anglian summer and completed in the blizzards which landed on the sixth day of Christmas in Southeast London. These details may or may not be more significant than the number of beards in the line-up.

** The key to Goldheart Assembly could well be that they are music lovers first and wannabe rock stars second. This means that they can be playful, even knockabout in their approach to live shows but in the studio there is fearsomely disciplined side which pays minute attention to the details of the drum sound, the hum of the harmonies…the near-invisible things that the passionate musician dwells upon. And this means that the likes of ‘Hope Hung High’, ‘The Last Decade’ and lead-off single ‘King Of Rome’ – released on March 8th - can sound epic without being pompous, poppy without sounding trashy and blindingly cool with apparently very little effort. Not for nothing did a thoroughly Goldhearted Steve Lamacq observe that “They take a joyous acoustic beardy bunch of ideas and mess around with them like a cat playing with a ball of string.”

** And whatever the weather, the end result is a timeless-sounding but extremely modern rock record which combines that charm and those massed harmonies with a mischievous sense of noise and a beguiling way with a massive lighter-waving chorus. We’re particularly taken with the admirable sprightliness of ‘Under The Waterway’ but you’ll have your own favourite by Easter. Before then, Goldheart Assembly kick off the New Year with these wee live outings…
JANUARY 27TH: LONDON Soho St Moritz (Dirty Mac Club)
JANUARY 29TH: LONDON Notting Hill Tabernacle (New To Q night)
MARCH 31ST: LONDON ICA

www.myspace.com/goldheartassembly
www.fiercepanda.co.uk