Viva Stereo - ProfilesArchive

About Me

Viva Stereo were born in Glasgow...

....with the view to making music that would encompass a full weekends ebbs and flows. Saturday nights are important to Viva Stereo but with it comes the Sunday morning soul searching(not to mention the grim reality of Monday morning and the working week) and the combination of these are what give the ’stereo’ sound its dark edges.

They are part of the Fence Collective
2008: Viva Stereo’s third album, ’Roar, Lion, Roar’ will be released Autumn 2008’

2007: Viva Stereo’s latest release is a 10" EP released through De-Fence Records

You can buy it online here

Other Viva Stereo releases can be bought from our online shop or from itunes UK + US

Viva Stereo’s debut album, ’Optimism is Not a Curse’, was released in October 2004(before this they released 4 x EP’s). It featured contributions from Malcolm Middleton(Arab Strap), King Creosote and Pictish Trail(Fence Records),Paul Tierney(Odeon Beat Club), Stacey Seivnwright(Reindeer Section),
Viva Stereo’s second album ’Patterns of Behaviour’ was released in October 2005. Featuring contributions from Tara Mascara from Language of Flowers, and Pictish Trail/Candythief from Fence Records.

2006 saw VS play a 25 date Uk tour which included the Fence Records Homegame in Anstruther and Big in Falkirk.

"with two adrenaline fuelled guitars, this is like Hallelujah pre-Factory played on PCP. The grind of the electronic drums and sequencing is pumped up to hell, by the pulsing bass and Primal vocals and searing guitars. When the whole thing reaches its climax, its a testament that Viva Stereo have got you there, one exciting step after another." Live Review Manchester Music.co.uk

"their vertiginous jams are bolstered with cosmic loops and samples, space-walking in similar orbits as Death In Vegas and Primal Scream with all the adrenalised assurance of a band who’ve suddenly discovered their forte" The Metro

"Sounding like the bastard love child of Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and Death In Vegas’ Richard Fearless, Viva Stereo are cooking up quite a sound" Leeds Music Scene

"a strutting mass of sneering proto punk / psyche robotics replete with grind like menacing electronics and heavy duty fearsome hook laden riffs, think Darklands era Jesus and Mary Chain" Losing Today Fanzine

"Exterminator era Primal Scream basslines, twinned with Cooper Temple Clause styled mad electronic pulses, Viva Stereos sound is really refreshing, drawing you in with riotous and fiery vocals, then chewing you up with monstrous guitar parts" High Voltage Fanzine
"This is the sound of a band making music they believe in and it’s good enough to take a chance on. Viva Viva Stereo indeed". Lost Music Fanzine

"It’s rare to find such versatility and inventiveness in one album. Even rarer to come across a band brave enough to break out of media-imposed boundaries and take their music wherever it needs to go. Highly, highly recommended". -Contact Music

"Viva Stereo are probably Glasgowâ€™s best-kept secret" -Tangents Fanzine

"Innovation is dead, thank God for bands that recycle good old ideas and make them transcendent thank God for Viva Stereo" Logo Magazine
For a Viva Stereo pictorial history check out our Flickr site

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 7/12/2004
Band Website: vivastereo.co.uk
Band Members: Rob Viva Doug Viva Stuart Viva Tim Viva and sometimes Onthefly
Influences: i mean we listen to allsorts of stuff...some of it filters through into VS, some of it doesn’t....some of the stuff that does.....Primal Scream, Jesus and Mary Chain, Spiritualized, Death in Vegas, Joy Division, The Beta Band, Mogwai, The Happy Mondays,FENCE RECORDS, Johnny Cash, Massive Attack, New Order, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, The Stone Roses, Kraftwerk, Spacemen 3, DJ Shadow, Bonnie Prince Billy, UNKLE, Radiohead, Boards of Canada, Neil Young, Felix Da Housecat, Andy Weatherall, Aphex Twin, Jimi Hendrix, Can, The Fall, David Holmes, MC5, Can, Velvet Underground, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Lo-Fidelity Allstars, Ladytron, Beck, Four Tet, Regular Fries, Six By Seven, LCD Soundsystem, Suicide, Giorgio Moroder, The Sonics, Arab Strap, Factory Records, Chemikal Underground, Warp Records, DFA Records, 70’s funk(Curtis, Sly, The Temptations), Northern Soul, Nuggets, early Verve....fucking on and on and on...

Bill Hicks, Performance, Clockwork Orange, Goodfellas. Get Carter, Billy Liar, Chris Morris, Sam Peckinpah, David Lynch, Shane Meadows, Stanley Kubrick, the boat scene in Jaws, and the Big Lebowski

"We’d like to do a song, ladies and gentlemen, about how love kind of disappears after about 3 days... and you sort of like think ’I kind of like you but maybe it’s not really working’. You decide that you’ll lock yourself away in a room and fill yourself with as many drugs as you can. And you do this, ladies and gentlemen, and you have such a good time that you forget that you don’t actually love them anymore and it doesn’t matter. You’re walking along one day, and because you’re sort of like this indie rocker, you sort of like hear this Weezer song that says ’Oooh I look like Buddy Holly and she’s Mary Tyler Moore’ and you think you’re Buddy Holly and she’s Mary Tyler Moore and you kind of like start to think ’That’s pretty cool.’ Then you kind of look in the window of the shop that you’re going into to buy some bread and you realize that you are actually ... Burt Reynolds ... and she’s Sally Fields ... and you’ve been cast in Smokey and the Bandit 98. You have a toupee... and she’s not The Flying Nun anymore. So that’s kind of bummed you out and you think ’We really didn’t find love, but we had a lot of fun on the drugs ... but if it’s going to make me look like Burt Reynolds and you look like Sally Fields maybe we have to look at doing something else or maybe take another drug that makes us feel, like, kind of better than that.’ But you know in this time, ladies and gentlemen, you know in this time that ... Everything Is Fucked." -Warren Ellis "

also our great friends who have supported us and influenced over the years, please check out our top friends and have a listen...

If we have added you it means we think you might like our music. We do not use any computer generated ’add request’ programs.

Sounds Like: have a listen with your ears
Record Label: Much Better Records
Type of Label: None

My Blog

News, T-shirts and roaring lions

Hello,Its been a while since we last said hello so "hello".We thought we'd give you a wee update on how things are progressing round these parts. We played our first gig of 2008 at the 5th Fence Reco...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:57:00 PST

FNCUK Part 2

Then there were the Fence Homegame’s. The Homegame is a yearly Festival held in the Scottish East Coast fishing village of Anstruther, which is also the home of Fence Records. Each ...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:32:00 PST

FNCUK (part one)

There have been many people over the years who have asked us how Viva Stereo got involved with a predominately folk label like Fence Records, and to be part of the Fence Collective. We ha...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:26:00 PST

Last gasp

A quick note to say you can download for free our remix of the Odeon beat Club tune 'Last Gasp' from: http://www.myspace.com/odeonbeatclub In other VS news we've had to cancel our forthcomi...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:21:00 PST

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Well, hello, I hope we are well and shaking off the January blues?I had the joy of doing a stock take at work last weekend. It meant i had to be in work for 7am. Ok, some of you out there will be t...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:00:00 PST

on the wire

Hello Just a quick note to say theres a remix of our tune 'Copper Wire' available to listen to over at: http://www.myspace.com/monthefly Onthefly aka Gav Brown is our live drummer and also runs De-Fen...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 05:14:00 PST

My tupence worth

So its that time of year again where we all ponder what has happened and what lies ahead. Here at camp viva things are certainly going to be interesting in the year of our lord two thousand and eight....
Posted by Viva Stereo on Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:47:00 PST

Recent Gigs

So, it has been a while since my last blog (see my MySpace) and to tell you the truth I don't think I have ever written anything for the VS MySpace, in fact I haven't put a VS piece together since the...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:56:00 PST

General Xmas Blog

Hello,Thought it would be about time I wrote a blog on how we are getting on and well, just general bollox really.Our new Ep has come out, basically as a taster for our forthcoming album, 'Roar, Lion,...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:55:00 PST

at last..some news....

Yes, we are still very much alive&but we can forgive you for thinking otherwise!.. Its been a strange year for us. For the first time not one band member lives in our adopted home town of Glasg...
Posted by Viva Stereo on Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:06:00 PST