NOW, as you know The Vibe has built up some great friends in the form of bands over the years, such as 65Daysofstatic, Hundred Reasons, Reuben, Fighting With Wire, Frank Turner, Taking Back Sunday, New Found Glory, General Fiasco, One Night Only, and many, many more.

We’d like to take this opportunity to welcome a new member into The Vibe’s close-knit group of musical chums.

The latest addition are a band that sit among the heavyweights of the resurgent Northern Irish music scene, from in and around Belfast, we can gladly welcome And So I Watch You From Afar.

Yep, you’re right, that is quite a long name for a band, and yes, it does sound like a band that spend a lot of their time musical-daydreaming.

Well, you’d be right on both counts because And So I Watch You From Afar (or ASIWYFA if you don’t mind, it’s a lot to type over and over again) play perhaps the most lethal instrumental music around.

Unless you’ve heard them on Radio 1 a couple of times recently, it’s probably pretty difficult to imagine what I’m talking about so I’ll paint you a picture, and that is how they sound – does that make sense? I’m sure it does for this purpose.

Imagine you’re sat in a meadow in the shade of an oak tree on a hot summer’s day, a butterfly is flying around, it passes you by as you feel a cool breeze pleasantly offering some refreshment. You can here birds tweeting as the clouds meander above you.

You look left, and there’s a family of deer, you look right and there’s a 40-tonne robot eating the entire world in a relentless clanging metallic path of destruction! Run! Run for your life!

Perhaps the band put it best on their website “We are the bull, you are the china shop”.

That is what ASIWYFA sound like. They’ve got the beauty of melodic guitar picking, very clever drumming, and some moody bass work, but they also have the ability to suddenly switch into the must brutal and industrial music going.

Now don’t get me wrong, this band is not a wall of noise, in fact their songs are carefully structured and there is great attention paid to detail, but when they get going, wow, they get going!

So let me tell you the story of when The Vibe met And So I Watch You From Afar.

Now I’m a firm believer that North Yorkshire, and more specifically Ryedale, has the best bakeries in the country. I’m not sure why it is that nowhere else producers the quality that a Ryedale baker does, but they just don’t.

So what’s the first thing you take someone who has never experienced such a thrill as a bag of bakery food from a Ryedale bakers? Ah, you guessed it, a bag full of bakery food, or to be more specific, cheesestraws, Yorkshire pizzas, and, of course, yum yums.

I must say, ASIWYFA are well and truly converted, they could not believe the taste. Ryedale one, the rest of the world nil.

On to the action, first of all I would like to say that the main support band for the night, Lost From Atlas were outstanding.

So often you hear support bands that are just clones of anything and everything that has been before which can make for a long and frustrating night, but Lost From Atlas offered something genuinely fresh. They kept a sizeable following gripped and certainly won over the vast majority of the audience that hadn’t heard them before. They played an up-temp instrumental set, that showed a really maturity in their song writing, and an understanding for what works within their style. They are local to the Ryedale/York area and are certainly worth checking out www.myspace.com/LostFromAtlas

The venue was perhaps only half full, but the beauty of ASIWYFA is they make so many layers of sound, every space in the venue seems full because the music surrounds you.

It was interesting to watch how people reacted to an instrumental set, as obviously you can’t sing along because there aren’t any words to sing along to.

Half of the audience jugged around, with the other half standing and watching in a mix of awe and appreciation as the set flew by.

The Northern Irish four-piece flew around the stage from start to finish and guitarist Tony even managed to cut his lip pretty badly during the set, but carried on with blood all over his shirt.

Rock and roll? I think so.

As the show ended, it was back home with the band following in a huge tour bus. Back down the A64, through Malton, and home to, well... home. A couple of hours of terribly cheap American TV and guinea pig admiring later it was bed time.

Before the band, tour manager and photographer headed on to Manchester for the next night’s show, there was time to introduce them to the noble art of Fruitball (baseball bat, gone off fruit... that’s it really).

And with that, the band were gone (before returning half an hour later having forgotten mobile phones), so I suggest you check out ASIWYFA as soon as possible.

If you are of a nervous dispersion, I suggest And The Voiceless, which is an ambient track, if you are feel ambitious, I suggest Tip of the Hat, Punch in the Face, Set Guitars to Kill or Don’t Waste Time Doing Things You Hate.


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