The Isaac Phillips Band are...Isaac Phillips, vocals and acoustic guitar: Isaac is a 28 year old, Australian-born drifter and a major retainer of youth. After spending almost ten years traveling Europe, working, learning and loving, he discovered his love for music and hooked up with some local musicians wanting to start a simple rock band. Aside from music, Isaac enjoys traveling, ramen and cycling.
Jacob Vesely, double bass: Jacob is a 20 year old music student at Birmingham City University. Jacob discovered the love for double bass through his father, a Czech performer at local jazz clubs. Aside from music, Jacob enjoys reading, cooking and has developed a penchant for cartoon-esque illustration. Jacob's dream is to one day meet Alexei Sayle.
Hector Fortitude, drums: Hector is a 19 year old native of Birmingham and a student of journalism at Birmingham City University. Hector grew up in an ordinary, middle-class family he describes as "musically retardant" and only discovered drumming during his final years of high school. Hector enjoys writing, mountaineering and the art of the omelet.
Martin Spector, manager and producer: Martin is a Montreal native and a fairly experienced manager and producer. His last musical venture was with a Canadian rock band who didn't quite make it past their first groupie sex and heavy drugs experience.
Upcoming Gigs23 November, 2011 - The Borderline, Soho, London, UK25 November, 2011 - The Pipeline, Spitalfields, London, UK26 November, 2011 - Dublin Castle, Camden, London, UK27 November, 2011 - Boogaloo, Highgate, London, UK3 December, 2011 - The Former, Birmingham, UK
News28.11.11Sorry for a lack of posting over the weekend, but the friend of friend who I was staying with told me on Saturday morning that the Internet had decided to cark it, and being a student vacationing in London for a few days I didn't exactly have money pouring out of ears, meaning at an Internet café I barely got past Facebook before my time was up.
Anyway, in brief, The Isaac Phillips Band's mini-tour of London was fantastic! Turnouts at both Saturday's gig at Camden's Dublin Hotel and Sunday's gig at Highgate's Boogaloo were amazing. The boys played what is probably amongst their greatest shows on Saturday, playing from 10 to way past midnight and again inspiring an entire club full of people to go out of their comfort zone and get a little bit more pissed than they would've liked to. Sunday's gig was great, but it was very chill; not as many people go out rocking on a Sunday, particularly at 6 o'clock, so The Band played to a fairly constrained, quiet, but very polite and enthusiastic audience. The Boogaloo on Sundays is fantastic for live, afternoon music, which is apparently just the thing you need to cure that killer hangover you woke up to a few hours earlier. Anyway, The Band has definitely made their mark on London, and it's an experience I will not soon forget.
So now what for The Band? Martin told me they will be entering a studio in Birmingham within the week to start recording on their new demo, a large thing called "Scurries". The term Scurries doesn't sound familiar to me in the context of The Band, so I assume there's gonna be a lot of brand new stuff on the demo. This is very exciting; with a demo under their belt, The Band might be able to get a record contract, or go on tour, or who knows what! They've got an entire musical career ahead of them now.
An interview with Isaac recently appeared in UK music magazine Uncut! Sure, it was just a little sidebar feature, barely talked about The Band, but man... ain't this amazing?
Quote:When did you first get into music?
I think it was when I was 22, six years ago or so, I lived in Milan for a few months. I traveled all over Europe, from the age of 20 to just a little under a year ago. Anyway, I was working at this small bar in Milan, and a friend of mine convinced me to buy his guitar. I thought, why the hell not, started learning the guitar off some tapes I had of Definitely Maybe. One night, after the bar had closed, towards the end of my stay in Milano, the guys convinced me to go up on stage. With nothing more than an acoustic guitar and my voice, I gave them a rendition of Oasis's Cigarettes and Alcohol. And a few other songs. I dunno, I guess it really just led on from there.
How did you and the other members of the band meet?
Well, Jacob [Vesely] and Hector [Fortitude] had been the rhythm section of various garage bands, high school bands, uni bands, all of which failed before their second gig. I met them through an ad, I think, they were looking for a guitarist, no skill required. They had this singer, and for the life of me I cannot even remember his name. Anyway, it wasn't long before he left, and I said "Hey, I can sing," and yeah. The Isaac Phillips Band was created.
You guys rose to a certain level of fame pretty quickly. How hard was it to become as prominent as you are now?
You'd think it required a lot of continuous effort, but it was more of a stop-and-start process. At first, we didn't know we wanted to do this, well, professionally, so we didn't put too much effort in, just booking the odd gig here and there, due to an acquaintance, an ad or just a sudden urge. And people were receiving us really well. So, we decided we'd put in a bit more effort. For a month, I was constantly ringing places, writing tunes, learning new numbers, getting as good as I could get and getting us as many gigs as we could get. We improved enormously, and we got picked by Martin [Spector, Canadian manager] and then he started doing half the workload. Life became a bit easier. So, really, if you want to get where we are, the way we did, without any game show or instant fame shit, then you're gonna have to work shit hard for a while.
Your mini-tour in London has been a great success. What's planned for the future?
Right now, we're hitting the studio, recording a beefy demo, then we'll hopefully go on a proper tour around the UK, before recording an album... That's a longshot, I guess, but that's what we're hoping for.
Looking forward to hearing from you all soon, and hope you can make it to The Former this Saturday!
Regards,
Aliah
26.11.11Good morning again, everyone. A massive thank you to everyone who turned up at the Pipeline last night. It was a fantastic gig: everyone got of their face, Jacob soloed like I've never seen a double bassist solo before, and I'm pretty sure Hector was having sneaky shots between numbers. Not that it degraded his drumming; it did anything but, in fact. Anyway, it was super packed, and I found myself pressing up against a few young men I'd rather not be pressing up against. Isaac debuted a new original last night, titled "James the Five Minute Wonder". Apparently, the topic of the song is derived from a certain Friday night park party he went to, when he lived in Australia for a year when he was fifteen. The eponymous main character of the song, as far as I could tell and as far as what I learned from Isaac, has sex on a park bench for five minutes, and that's about it. It was fantastic musically; the instruments were all over the place, but that's why it was so good! I really hope this is on their demo. Sure, it was a bit juvenile, and not just lyrically, but if they're writing songs of that quality...
Thursday was an uneventful day. Me and a few fellow fans spent the day browsing indie record stores and visiting a few choice pubs, before going to a pub (slightly pissed, mind you) and seeing some band or another with a similar style to The Band, which was rather strange. They weren't anything special, just played soft, background music sort of stuff. Apparently The Band themselves spent the day wandering around pretty much all of London, eating food, chatting up birds, being recognised by a few youngsters from Wednesday and putting up the odd poster. According to Martin Spector, who has been on the phone to recording studios and producers almost non-stop since their arrival here, their aimless roaming and meeting of locals got quite a few people to come along last night. I guess the best way to publicise your band is to go out there yourself.
A big thanks to everyone who came last night again, and I really hope to see you tonight, and possibly Sunday, too!
Regards,
Aliah
24.11.11Good morning, fans of The Band, and a big thanks to everyone who turned up at the gig last night! The Isaac Phillips Band's first foray into London was a massive success! Perhaps it wasn't as rocking as last Saturday's gig at the Former, but it was an entirely different experience for all of us. For those not in the know, last night's gig was at Soho's the Borderline, a smallish club with a capacity of 275-ish, stubbornly stuck in the nineties. The Band had a set around 10, before the club really gets going, but they managed to rouse quite a bit of interest; people were coming and paying to see them, if that means anything. Apparently, The Band must be a lot more popular than I previously thought; some quiet prominent bands have played there, and by prominent I mean ones with Wikipedia pages. It was a short set, around an hour long, and with few originals, but overall I think it was a great success!
Today, The Band will be relaxing and checking out London; I don't know where, but if you were at last night's gig and enjoyed the show, be on the lookout for them... I guess...
Anyway, thanks again to everyone who came last night, and I hope to see even more of you at the Pipeline on Friday!
Regards,
Aliah
21.11.11Good news, everyone! Largely due to last Saturday's fantastic gig (and it was fantastic), Martin Spector has booked The Isaac Phillips Band into a four-gig tour of London this week! This could very well be the defining moment for The Band. They've already increased their recognition in Birmingham after Saturday's gig, and now it's time for them to make a name for themselves in London. Fortunately, I managed to rustle together the money, time and a laptop to go down to London with them. We leave Wednesday morning and come back Monday sometimes. Come down if you have the money and the time. You don't have to come to all the gigs - just come down and support our boys! Details for the gigs will be posted on the main page.
In related news, Martin has announced that upon arriving home from London, the boys will hit the studio to write and record a fairly large demo, recorded professionally and with a lot of new, top-quality material. This demo will be better produced and filled with better songs than any demo before, and should be released within the two weeks after their tour of London. Martin also says that a major image change may coincide with the release of the demo, but he wouldn't tell me the specifics.
Here's some more good news, guys. An online, local music zine has published a review of the band's performance on Saturday - and what a review it is!
Quote:Now, whenever I'm writing for the site, I do NOT like to drink. Somehow, I find drinking distorts the music, and everything with a steady bass player, a man hitting somethings that resemble drums, and a guy speaking into a microphone (or not) instantly becomes highly agreeable. So, I lay off the drink whenever I go out to review a band. Nothing, not even one beer. Sure, if I'm going out for pleasure, I'll lay it on, but if I go out and know that I'm going to have to give my two cents about this band to a growing readership, then I will not drink.
But something happened on Saturday.
They seemed like your perfectly normal rock band, perhaps with a bit of a twist. The Isaac Phillips Band (who you have probably heard of by now) features a double bassist, a drummer and a guy wailing and hitting an acoustic guitar. I've heard them briefly before, and they play seemingly normal rock. But this week, at the auspicious club "The Former", I was taken aback by their intensity, their passion. Sure, they certainly lack complexity and depth, but there's something about them that really makes you want to grab a shot and the nearest girl. Slam one down and dance with the other. And you're not necessarily slamming the drink down, if you know what I mean.
From what I can remember, The Isaac Phillips Band were fairly fantastic. Phillips, or the lead singer whom I assume is Isaac Phillips, has a beautiful, young voice, with this fantastic scratchy, huskiness. The bassist is a real, steady player, and he did quite a few adventurous things with that double bass of his; isn't it already adventurous enough to be playing a double bass in a rock band? The drummer, in all honesty, was average, except for a moment in the night (now be wary, because I was dead drunk at this moment) when he began soloing, and it was quite a sight, especially considering the fact that he'd been playing fairly straightforward rock numbers for the rest of the night.
But the main hook with The Isaac Phillips Band is their passion. They play with so much of it, you can feel it seeping into, sneaking under your skin, making you question the way you listen to music, the way you dance, the way you live your life. And this makes you just want to slam down a few cold ones.
Anyway, thanks to The Band's passion, I woke up Sunday morning with a hangover like I haven't had since uni, and also a girl like I haven't had since uni. Most of the night is a bit blurry - I'm quite ashamed, actually - but I know that few people at The Former could avoid my fate.
The Isaac Phillips Band, or what I can remember of them, are a fantastic group. I know they play the area quite regularly, so make sure to check them out next time they're near you, and check out their website
here.
Alexander Decroux
Saturdays.co.uk
21 November, 2011 Anyway, hope to see you in London, and hope to hear from you soon otherwise!
Regards,
Aliah
20.11.11
10:30 amHello there. Sorry if my slightly drunken post this morning was a bit confronting, or nonsensical, or whatever.
Not much update, except I have a bit of a hangover. The gig last night was fantastic, thank you to everyone who came. I'm remembering a conversation I had with Martin, however. Apparently, The Band is "tying up negotiations" with several pubs, bars and other music venues in London - for later this week! Now, I'm not sure if I just made this up, but I suspect that we're/they're going to London!
Regards,
Aliah
3:00 amGood... something or other, fans. It's around three in the morning and I've had a few too many whiskey and sodas, but what the hell, I've just returned from one the greatest gigs of my life.
After their roaring success at the small club "The Former" last week, which apparently drew record crowds for the club (I'm not exactly sure what that means), The Isaac Philips Band were invited to another Saturday night gig at the club. But this time, the boys played possibly their greatest gig ever.
Isaac took to the stage like never before, playing with such vigour I swore his guitar was electric and plugged into several Marshall amps. Jacob attempted to play an insane double bass solo, and succeeded spectacularly, really going at it, slapping and popping and doing other stuff I assumed wasn't possible on a double bass. Hector, despite having an unnervingly large number of predrinks, played his first ever drum solo. Now, I'm not saying Hector isn't a great drummer, but during his time with The Band, he's been pushed into playing quite shallowly, and I didn't imagine his skill extended beyond the normal 4/4 rock 'n' roll style. But last night, he was really something else. I know very little drum terminology, so I guess the only way you will ever understand what I heard is to GO THERE NEXT WEEK.
The Band debuted a new original last night, a fast, fairly upbeat number about something or other. I can't really remember, I was being chatted up by a strapping young lad by the name of Cliff. However, it solicited such a great response from the crowd. Everyone was dancing, jumping, cheering. It was really something else. It was like everyone had payed large sums of money to come and see the band, that's how excited they were. It was a massive change for the band, a much fast, more intense song than ever before.
Anyway, the Band, their music and their presence doubled The Former's record bar sales; as they got into their second hour of playing, everyone seemed to want to get really, really drunk. After half an hour break at 10:30, one and a half hours in, the Band somehow managed to bust out another hour worth of top notch tunes. I didn't realise they even knew that many songs (although I suspect they snuck a few altered Pixies numbers in a few times each). For a gig that was originally meant to just go for the original hour and a half, even that being a stretch for the boys, they really overdid themselves. In fact, I'm sure they're all out cold in the arms of some dame on the other side of the city right now, gallons of drink eating up their insides.
After the gig, yours truly found herself stumbling along some busy street, with a group of strange people, before ending up in some strange house for an hour or so, still on a high from the gig and still gone from the whiskey and sodas. And now, I have stumbled home to tell you my delight in the Band's latest gig.
Another update will come in the morning.
My drunkest regards,
Aliah
17.11.11Last night at The Band's latest gig I spoke to a few new faces who claimed to have been on the lookout for The Isaac Phillip Band after being linked to this very site! It's early days yet, but it seems I may have the power to garner some more support for the lads.
I was recently contacted by what you could call a fourth member of The Band, a Mr. Martin Spector, who says he is the manager and future producer of The Band. He's a Canadian, the former manager of a Canadian rock group who never quite made it to their first album, instead crashing and burning in a spree of drugs and sex after the third gig of their first major tour. Apparently, he was just contacting me to inform me that I am free to publish most anything I can find out about on this site, unless the band forbids me to do so. Which I guess is pretty cool. Apparently, the band "isn't ready" for an "official" fanpage, so I'll have to keep the title of the site as it is. I'll be updating the page to include Martin as a member, but I have very little information on the man as of yet.
As I said, The Band had another gig last night at a club in the Jewellery Quarter of our city. A couple hundred people turned up, which was fantastic, and I reckon at least half of them were there to see The Band.
I managed to overhear a conversation between Hector and a young girl last night. Our lovable drummer was asked whether they would be going to London or anywhere else sometime soon, and he replied that "probably we'll go down and play a few gigs in London if anyone will have us". When I first became an avid fan of The Band, I was surprised to hear they hadn't left Birmingham before, but it sounds like a trip down south is evidently around the corner. I sure hope so; I'm sure their sound would be heavily accepted, and they could sure use the exposure.
I've heard some talk of a full-length, well-produced demo in the works, but no news on anything yet.
Regards,
Aliah
14.11.11Hello there, everyone! My name is Aliah Bird, I'm a part time painter, a student at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and an avid fan Birmingham's rock music scene.
Recently, I've become quite obsessed with a certain band that, if you are a young resident of Birmingham, you may of heard of: The Isaac Phillips Band.
The Isaac Phillips Band is a straight-forward, alternative rock band consisting of frontman Isaac Phillips on acoustic guitar and vocals, Jacob Vesely on double bass and Hector Fortitude on drums. They play fairly simple rock music, but they are an incredibly talented group of young boys and pull together a live act that few other semi-professional musicians can, and Isaac's voice is to die for, all hoarse, too deep for his young, sexy body...
After falling in love with the band one night a few months ago, I decided to attempt a search on the band, to see if they'd been utilising social media effectively. To my surprise, I found no more than a sparse MySpace page with no more than a few posts on recent gigs and a few demos.
I hold a strong belief that this band is going somewhere; their support has been rapidly growing, they're improving musically. So I decided that to entertain and satisfy the strong fanbase they had attracted I would create a sort of fanpage for the band, collecting media releases, gig info and a little bit of information on the band itself. So please, any fans that have been directed here via a quick Google search or after meeting a few of us crazed fans at a recent gig, bear with me as I get my bearings and set this site up.
Regards,
Aliah
In the meantime, please enjoy the following article I found in a local music zine,
The Birm Beat, just yesterday.
Quote:It's been a while since I went down to a bar and saw a crowd of young people and a double bass in the same room without a lathering of irony and "hip" so thick you can almost smell it. But I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived in the depths of the less-than-hip, second-tier bar "The Former" on Saturday to see a young man named Jacob plucking on a double bass purely for the sound of it.
Jacob, however, was positioned in semi-darkness towards the back of the stage, with his drum-playing counterpart Hector alongside. Towards the front of the stage stood a dashing young man thrashing away at an acoustic guitar, running the club off its feet with a scratchy but stunning rendition of Pixies' "Nimrod's Son".
This man, who I later identified as Isaac Phillips, and his two bandmates have been turning out two times a week at clubs all around the city, playing no-nonsense, solid alternative rock as the eponymously-named "The Isaac Phillips Band". Quite purposely, they sound like a rather British Pixies (although a member of their small but avid fanbase informs me Isaac himself was born in Melbourne, Australia and only moved to Birmingham when he was ten years old; his accent, although not obvious, has distinct Australian traits) but the double bass and the simple drums (Hector utilises a snare drum, bass drum, high hat, cymbal and occasionally a floor-tom) give it a much more solid feel than most of Pixies' work. Isaac's singing voice is highly contrastable to his speaking voice; whilst talking between numbers, he sounds young, boyish, content, perhaps a bit afraid, but once he starts singing, his voice takes on a scratchy, mature quality, and he can really hit notes, unlike many a local pub wailer these days.
However, I have a few grievances with The Isaac Phillips Band. Firstly, due to their bare-bones approach to music, they often lack a lot of depth. Some could argue that this is their style, their niche, but I for one require a little more than what they currently provide. Secondly, their small repertoire of original songs are of fairly poor lyrical quality, something another avid fan assured me Isaac promised to improve "when" he begins writing for their first album.
The amazing thing about The Band is the fanbase they pull. As I mentioned before, there is a very small but extremely dedicated group of fans who have claimed to have gone to all of The Band's shows since they emerged in July this year. Recently, however, their support has grown to the point where they are actually a known band in the local scene. A few young people who I chatted to during the show (most of the youngsters at the club seemed less than willing to talk to a 40-year-old such as myself) admitted to have gone out of their way a few nights to see the band. Although nothing spectacular, this is a start for such a small, local band.
The Isaac Phillips Band is obviously a group of very talented musicians. I highly recommend going down to whatever club they happen to be playing at next, and I forsee great things in their future.
Peter Winstead
The Birm Beat
Issue No. 45
13 November, 2011
Edited by user 28 November 2011 21:16:06(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified
