G&T on the Radio

Snuggle up under your duvet and tune your crystal set to hear Adrian's hour-long interview with Poppyland Radio's Simon Pink. Click here for top tunes, top chat -- and the first airplay for Shaken and Stirred. But wait, there's more. Henry slides into the studio to join Simon, and you can listen here. Not 'arf! 

Shaken & Stirred - OUT NOW

SHAKEN & STIRRED is the long awaited second album from G&T. It's out now to stream on Soundcloud (listen to it here) as well as Apple Music, iTunes and Spotify. The album consists of eleven tracks -- just over an hour -- of instrumental rock, ranging from straight-up hard rock (Tropic of Scorchio) to prog (For Emma) to blues (Dead Tree Blues, Sundown) to a bizarre fusion of Bulgarian folk music and southern fried boogie (Seven O'Clock Rock). All the songs are original compositions by G&T except two. The Purfleet Strangler is an instrumental version of Deep Purple's 1984 track Perfect Strangers, with a few quotes from a well-known classical tune: album opener If Only was a group composition by Itchy Fingers, a band that the members of G&T were in in the 1990s. 

The Not-So-Difficult Second Album

 

Greetings, Pop Pickers! Flushed with the worldwide success of their first album Ice & A Slice (download it here), and the hit single Hocus Pocus (here) G&T is going wild in the country and has lately been holed up in Flabbey Road recording a second album.

For most groups the second album is notoriously difficult: the first album is usually made of songs honed over years, so the second has to be cobbled together from barrel-scrapings and left-overs, or written in a hurry. Not so G&T -- Adrian and Henry have been enjoying a songwriting hot streak and there's already a bulging catalog of tunes to choose from. 'At the last count there were twenty possible tracks in the songbook,' says Gee. 'I think it must be the drugs', he says. 'I've just turned 60 and they give them to you for free'. 

The band is taking a  break before another heads-down no-nonsense bout of recording, so while they do that, here, just for you, music fans, is a taster of things to come. This seven-track selection from the forthcoming album comprises mini-prog epic Echoes of Mountain Ash, full-blooded rocker Tropic of Scorchio, the pop-tastic Sunrise, and many more.

All feature Adrian Thomas on guitar, extra guitar, more guitar, additional guitar, further guitar, with a side order of guitar and guitar for dessert. Gee does what he refers to enigmatically as 'other stuff', though he does admit to a squirt of acoustic guitar in Sunrise. What all the tracks have in common is a complete absence of vocals. 'After Hocus Pocus I felt that the world could be spared any more of my yodeling' says Gee. And with one exception none of the songs is about anything. 'This is all just for enjoyment', he says. 'As Thomas Beecham said of the English, we like music mostly for the noise it makes'. But what's the exception? 'That's For Emma, recorded as a tribute to my son's Siamese cat who died in violent circumstances. I shan't say more, except that Adrian did some great cat sounds with his guitar'. And, yes, it is noisy. It's remarkable how much racket G&T makes, considering there's just the two of them. Not 'arf!

G&T's New Single - Available Now

 

Hocus Pocus is the new single from G&T - out now. Hocus Pocus is the first G&T song that's not an original. It's a cover of a tune by the Dutch prog band Focus ... though G&T has taken the inspired lunacy of the original and taken it to another level.