mantlepiece

Like a musical equivalent of the 1970 Brazilian football squad, Mantlepiece are an effortlessly creative and deadly potent band. Their music blends folk, rock and electronica with touches of blues, jazz and classical music to create an utterly distinctive sound. From the heartbreaking to the floor-filling, these are songs laced with drama, dripping with beauty, which have drawn comparison with the likes of Nick Cave, Massive Attack, Pink Floyd and even Queen.Formed in the spring of 2006, Mantlepiece’s early rehearsals – in a room overlooking their local park – would draw crowds of on-lookers, often becoming impromptu open-air performances, long before they had done anything as mundane as perform a gig. And by the time they finally took to the stage they had developed a genuine musical rapport, which lead their local press to write: “Quite simply, you have never heard anything like this... It is as if they have arrived fully-formed from some strange land to re-invent the rules of rock music... Astonishing”Since then the band have performed extensively around the South West and Wales ending 2006 with a rapturously received show at Cardiff University. In the process they have further impressed themselves on both audiences and critics alike with their spellbinding live performances: “That their 40-minute set is packed with more originality and subtlety than many bands can muster in an entire career is little short of miraculous,” said BBC Somerset. “One only dares imagine how good they can become”, concluded the Western GazetteEver evolving, Mantlepiece have more recently collaborated with prominent South-West DJ/producer 2-Veg, the sheer inventiveness and depth of their sound finding favour with a dance community normally suspicious of ‘boys with guitars’. Truly – and belatedly- this is the sound of a new millennium.