ESP interviews are rarer than hen’s teeth these days, but the chaps at L’Ecran du Son asked very nicely, and so we agreed to chat for a few minutes – possibly our first filmed interview together in over a decade. This was actually really nice – the questions aren’t silly and it was a pleasure to be asked to sing a few bars at the end too. All interviews should end like that. Enjoy. ❤
Thomas x
Fallais, 3rd May
Le Havre, 1st May
From: https://facebook.com/electricsoftparade
Mere days until The Brexit Outreach Tour 2019 commences and we smash through borders real and imaginary to bring you North-Europeans hour upon hour of Sunshine Pop from the South Coast™. We cannot wait. If there’s any songs people would desperately like the group to play, please do speak now, as we have some final rehearsals in the coming days and we’d like you all to be happy campers. Where ticket links/reservations are available, I’ve added below. This is gonna be so special, especially in these undoubtedly somewhat dark times. Let’s make some beautiful new memories. ❤
Thomas x
May 1st, Le Havre: https://www.facebook.com/events/284036652492907/
May 2nd, Rouen: https://www.mouvinormandie.fr/Manifestation/rouen/hard-rock-m%C3%A9tal/the-electric-soft-parade-yallinn/2238948
May 3rd, Fallais: https://www.facebook.com/events/256174578607872/
May 4th, Lesquin: https://www.facebook.com/events/366558567479759/
May 5th, Arthez-de-Bearn: https://www.facebook.com/lepingouinalternatif/
We’re heading out for our first tour in a little while next week, and to celebrate we’ve got an extremely limited number of these brand new tees printed up, in perfect-for-summer Carolina Blue and Lemon Yellow. A delightful colour combination. These are flying out already and they’ve barely been online a minute.
With any luck we’ll still have a few left come the tour if you’d rather pick one up in person from lovely Louis our Merch Man. We’ll have a full Chord Orchard shop happening at every show, but these are SUPER limited, so if you want one, snap ’em up now… (model: Heidi Johnson)
https://chordorchard.bandcamp.com/merch/do-you-believe-in-esp-t-shirt
Thomas White plays drums on Rose Elinor Dougall’s new album A New Illusion. Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/album/1jvJnND8Rew1hDCqW6Zd0f?si=8KV1-K12TDW39x2GQBnOTQ
Taken from http://facebook.com/electricsoftparade
Hello folks,
Hope everyone is keeping well. Roughly a month until we hit the mainland for some lovely shows in far-flung places. We cannot wait!
On the subject of Pledge, we’ve heard very little from them in the past few weeks, so can only assume things aren’t *great*, BUT we’ve also heard that some of our Pledgers have been reimbursed… Please let us know if you’ve had any luck retrieving your money. It would be good to have a rough idea of numbers…
Love to you all, and as ever, thank you for sticking with us…. The new album is being mixed as we speak and has a rough release date set for September, all things going well from this point onwards!
Thomas xx
***ESP LP #5 – PledgeMusic Update***
As you have no doubt read, Pledge Music, who we have trusted with the pre-order/crowd-funding of the 5th Electric Soft Parade LP/CD/download, are going through considerable (self-inflicted) financial issues and as such have stopped taking orders for all albums or paying any money out to artists. We have been advised by Chord Orchard’s distributor (Republic of Music) that it is extremely unlikely Pledge will ever honour the balance of our campaign money, and that the best option for us is to move our pre-order/campaign over to them immediately. Over the coming weeks we will re-open pre-orders for the album via a new page (through Republic of Music) with all offers/extras available as per the original Pledge page. From RoM:
*****We are advising everyone who has pre-ordered from Pledge to inform Pledge you are cancelling your order and to request a refund from them. If Pledge do not issue you a refund in full after 7 days contact your credit card company and they will arrange this. At the same time it is advisable to inform your credit card / bank of the need to withdraw the payment.*****
As a gesture of goodwill to anyone who has supported us already by pre-ordering the album, we will be setting up a discounted pre-order code for anyone who has already Pledged once. While this means we, the group, will be effectively bearing some of the brunt of Pledge’s catastrophic failure to manage their accounts, we feel it is the most appropriate action – a compromise that hopefully damages the band/fan relationship as little as possible. If you’re left with a slightly sour taste, we cannot blame you, though the onus and responsibility for EVERYTHING that has transpired (for us and every other artist affected) falls completely, unreservedly with Pledge. For those who Pledged beyond pre-ordering vinyl or CD (house concerts, t-shirts, extras…) we will be in touch personally via email in the coming weeks to try to arrange some sort of agreement/compromise where neither party is suffering financially and all Pledges are effectively honoured as originally promised.
It’s difficult to put into words quite how offensive we have found Pledge’s conduct over the past year – brazenly using us (and countless other groups) as an instrument with which to defraud hundreds of thousands of fans of millions of pounds – money which (aside from a payment of £300 last July) has gone directly from your pockets and into their accounts. Make no mistake, that’s precisely what this is – fraud. The vulgarity is overpowering.
We can only profusely thank Mark at Republic of Music for offering to step in and advise where needed. Together we will do everything in our powers to put this sorry episode behind us as quickly and as painlessly (for you) as possible, and get on with the business of releasing this brilliant new music.
We will update you with new pre-order links for the record as soon as we have them. Huge thanks to every last one of you for sticking with us and offering words of support throughout. It means the world to us and has kept us going through some dark, extremely frustrating days, so thank you.
Love to you all,
Thomas & Alex
xxx
Without further ado, we are psyched to announce our first European (FR/BE) dates of 2019. Most of these towns we’ve never played before, and some are quite out of the way, but we’ve always thought making that extra effort is damn important, and we don’t always get the chance, so this time we’re doing it. France has always had a special place in our hearts since the very early days – you guys were the first audiences we really felt understood what we were doing – we cannot wait to come back and repay that love with some beautiful music, and it’ll be a blast to cross the border and play a full-band concert in Belgium for the first time in at least a decade.
We are currently in talks to bring the group back to Spain for some shows this year, so please be patient if we’re not coming to your town (or even anywhere near your country) on this first run of shows – we’re gonna try to tour abroad a little more regularly from here on, and will try hit some places we’ve never played each time we go out…
Dates below – tickets and further info to follow. Huge thanks to Alex, Mathieu, Freddy, Thomas and Calo for helping make these shows happen.
May 1st: Le Havre FR, McDaid’s
May 2nd: Rouen FR, Le 3 Pièces Muzik’Club
May 3rd: Fallais BE, Flat Sessions
May 4th: Lesquin FR, Centre Culturel de Lesquin (w/ The Last Detail)
https://www.weezevent.com/the-electric-soft-parade-the-last-detail
May 7th: Arthez-de-Béarn FR, Le pingouin alternatif (w/ Le SuperHomard)
We’ll update as and when we have more information regarding supports/ticket price and purchasing and any other useful info.
Big love,
T&A xxx
