As you’ve probably guessed, we’re kinda fond of doing things others don’t. And so, in 2015, we release 2 concept albums within an 8-month period. Not a bad gestation, eh doc? Our 7th Studio Album No Wall Too High will be released on October 10th (go on over to www.oklisten.com right away if you want to buy) For those of you in the know, our 6th, The Scene came out around Feb-March 2015.

No Wall Too High features 10 songs on the theme of division. It so happens that this is the 25th anniversary of German Reunification post the fall of the Berlin Wall – an event that brought change to much of the world we know.

No Wall Too High is a project with many firsts, even for us.

1. It’s the first time we’ve collaborated with someone at a very intrinsic album-level, and that too with a non-musician; No Wall Too High was developed along with Mathew Kurian (UNU, Dresden, Germany) an erstwhile Bangalorean whose stories and lyrical ideas captivated us.
2. It’s the fastest album we’ve ever written – and The Scene was a quick one! All the demos for the album were written in a two-week period; additional composition and arrangements were made during recording – again, something we’ve never done before. Our usual formula has always been to write the stuff, take it on the road, and then put it on tape.
3. It’s the first time we’ve used foreign language ideas – the song Dresden Drumbeat features an intro in German, an even an excerpt from the press conference that actually announced the fall of the Wall. Kristin Meyer (also from the UNU, Dresden) spoke the intro (and sang backing vocal on many other tracks) – and her family’s personal story provided the inspiration for the song.
4. The album has also given us our first gig in Germany – we launch it for the international market at a festival gig on October 24th at the UN Day Celebrations in Bonn, Germany!

Head on over to the album micro-site to listen to clips of a few tracks, check out the liner notes, pictures and more.

The album launch in Bangalore will be at the RockStock 2015 Festival, hosted by Geoffrey’s at the Royal Orchid Park Plaza. And oh, did we mention that front man Bruce Lee Mani is being inducted into the ‘Fender Family’ at the festival? Yup, the man is getting more free guitars .

Stay tuned for more stories – what’s with the old guy on the cover, anyway?

The post …and here’s another new album for 2015! No Wall Too High appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Yes! We’re

going back to the Fatherland!

A lot of the music we cut our teeth on came to us via ‘Thomsun Original’ audio-cassette tapes carried down to India in bulging VIP briefcases by Fathers and Uncles returning from the ‘Gelf’. A brief vacation in God’s own backyard; replete with

large easy-chairs, relatives eager for tales and boons, quick impregnations and lots of coconut oil. Then it was back to slogging in the arid desert, squirreling shekels in the Sheikhdoms. And those tapes – ah,

from Boney-M to Steely Dan, Toto to Guns N’ Roses, Osibisa to The Police – that was the stuff that got us going. We wore them out, gleaning the chords to Josie or sweating that solo on Eye in the Sky.

When we played in Dubai for the first time, back in 2007, we promised to return. So, like the, ahem, ‘contraption’ in that book The Naked Lunch, we’re doing it again. On 25th October 2013, TAAQ will play

the Music Room at the Majestic Hotel in Dubai – one of the city’s hottest new venues.

Calling all ye friends and countrymen – show

up! We promise to inject every bit of the enthooseeyaasum we showed the Thomsun Originals into our show. And originals you’ll hear – a bushel full.

Salaam!

The post Going to Abroad – Again!
TAAQ Live in Dubai, October 25 appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

After completing 50 (yes, fifty!) gigs across 60

days across 4 nations we’re back home to close this tour where it all began 2 months ago. See you at the Bflat Bar this weekend, on the 4th, 5th and 6th October . Full of stories and anecdotes from the tour, this is gonna be a special one…err three

October is setting up to be a good gigging month already. We’ll keep ya’ll updated as soon as the pipeline allows.

The post TAAQ Back @BFlat appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

have them by the bushel) would chance by our show, and deem it worthy to feature on ‘Pick of the Fringe’!

Well, an expert did show up. His wife, Moira. Beautiful,

gentle and ever-so-gracious, she popped in to our gig

on a Saturday night, watched the whole thing and then waited 15 minutes (our pack-up time) in the cold outside to speak with us and welcome us to Mervyn’s show. It was kind of hard, at the

time, to stop jumping up and down and whooping etc. Grinning like idiots we walked back home. Thanks to Steve Cardownie and the Bellevue Street Party gig (more on that later) we happened to have a drum kit and amp available. Ah serendipity.

Well, Wednesday the 14th was as fantastic as we expected. Great crowd, great venue, some fantastic other acts… and us, wrapping things up at the end, getting everyone to holler the ‘Hey’ in Look at Me and dance in their seats on Hoedown. Watch out for that video, coming soon.

Mervyn puts everyone at ease, chatting with each performer, putting all the right promo stuff out for people to see and hear, ensuring that each act gets the attention it needs, thus sending more people to the shows. It’s an amazing thing to do. And it’s done so well.

It was a real honour, being invited to be a part of this

iconic Fringe event.

If you thought this couldn’t get better, it just did.

Mervyn called us today. Himself. To tell us that we’d just won his ‘Spirit of the Fringe’ award, and would we like to reprise our showcase gig for his finale show on Sunday the 25th? Naturally we hummed and hawed and eventually accepted . Mervyn’s Spirit of the Fringe Award is one of the longest-running awards at the Edinburgh Festival, given out every year since 1992! Apparently, the Scotsman (local big media) launched its own ‘Spirit of the Fringe’ award a few years ago, without acknowledging Mervyn’s precedence! Ah, well.

So there we are, folks. Our first Fringe,

and it’s raining and pouring and we’re loving

it. Wish you were here!

Check out more pics from our first showcase gig here. Videos etc coming soon.

Cheerio!

The post TAAQ: First the ‘Pick of the Fringe’, then Pick o’ the Pick! appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

their events. Lots of friends made. Lots of sausages (the veggie kind too) eaten. Lots of miles walked. Lots of flyers, well, flyer-ed. Let’s get to the reviews. Here’re some quick excerpts: “Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. These folks play boldly and 642-902 dumps brilliantly across all genres wrapped up in solid driving rock. They challenge themselves with a unique set every night. It matters not where they

are from as they are an excellent force in the universe of Rock.” – Christopher Frick (audience review, on EdFringe.com) “Excellent band with terrific instrumental fluidity; saw the show twice..”

– Steve Kelsey (audience review, on EdFringe.com) “Clapton, Bruce and Ginger

Baker eat your heart out! Saw them live last night (7th). These guys are a seriously good power combo and deserve to be playing in front of 1000s. Intelligent and visceral rock music with funk and edge. See them now.” – Mark Hardcastle (audience review, on EdFringe.com)

So there ye have it. Are we makin’ ye proud yet?

The post Let’s Hear It: TAAQ Reviews from Crowds and Critics… appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

TAAQ makes the cover of Rolling Stone!

Yep. That’s Thermal And A Quarter on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.

A big ‘Thank You’

to Air India and

ProFx for

their support on the tour!

The post That’s Right. TAAQ is Now A ‘Cover’ Band ;-) appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Inter-national flights are always bloody inter-minable. But the Air India 787 Dreamliner was a darned comfortable ride, and the crew was fun, plying us with much drink and drink. The most (ir)rev. Leslie Charles experienced a somewhat unsettling personal vidscreen – it stubbornly displayed only the flight path, with the little grey jet stuck somewhere above Kandahar, Afghanistan. Maybe he was intending to bail out there

and attempt some mass conversion of the natives…

Landed in Heathrow 10:30am, get through immigration without a hiccup and get all our bags too. Our tour bus is somewhere outside; the driver, Mark, finds us easily enough and we step into the warm London sunshine (with the heatwave on, it’s a balmy 20+ degrees and there is dancing in the streets). Quick detour to pick up two acoustic guitars from Gibson – kind enough to loan them to us for the entire Fringe run and beyond. Thanks Heena for setting that up! Meet David at the Gibson office, and get some kind advice and insights into

the Fringe and what it takes to make the most of it.

The Gibson office is apparently close to Abbey Road. Beatlemaniacs all, we’ve gotta go. Get there, find a place to park and find many other similarly affected souls attempting the great crossing. Lots of passing traffic, all with long-suffering smiles. Leslie, the most hardcore among us, does it barefoot. It’s a lovely place and with the great weather, we lollygag about, soaking in the vibe…

Back on the bus, we have a quick chat with Mr. Sunil Chandy (our founder bass player) and his lovely wife, Luiza. Seems possible the man will make a trip to Edinburgh to catch one of our gigs. Rah! Stop at a Tesco for snacks and supplies and then we floor it on the motorway. Some stunning scenery. Get in to Edinburgh late – about 10 pm – and it’s still blinking bright, not even twilight yet. Drop in to another friend’s house – Dr. Rayner Lazaro – he’s got the keys to our apartment in town. Rayner is the original Dr. Feelgood, if anybody wants to know. Find the place after a bit of faffing about with the GPS, and discover it’s three flights up to our apartment. 24 bags in total. Aaaaargh.

Next day spent stocking up the kitchen and getting used to our rather neat and cozy apartment – which is amazingly right next to High Street and all the town hotspots. Super!

On Thursday, we decide to catch a gig at the Tron Kirk – a 17^th cent Chapel, now used only occasionally for gigs and suchlike. It’s a few steps from our apartment. Beautiful, cavernous interior, wood ceiling, crumbling stone walls and some stunning stained-glass. Halfway through the first act, The Rosie Nimmo band, we meet Steve Cardownie, make an instant connection (he’s been to Bangalore) and a few beers

and a couple of pizzas later (his treat), this wonderful outspoken man has gotten us a gig at this venue on Saturday! What a trip.

We get to the Tron again

on Friday, this time to watch the Bill Kemp trio – billed as ‘a rare performance by this great jazz drummer and his swinging trio’. Google isn’t

giving us much on the man, but we go anyway. And what a treat that was. With Ian Mathieson on piano and Peter Lowit on upright bass, they ran through some standards and oddities (including a tune by Nina Simone, and Holliday’s ‘God Bless the Child’). Watching Kemp play was inspiration, education and more, all at the same time. Jaw-dropping mastery of technique, texture, swing – he had

it all. As Rajeev put it – “the man is singing with the drums”. Met them after the gig and share a few words and pictures.. discover that Bill has been in India, 1960, to play a gig! Gracious and kind, he wishes he could watch us play, but

has to leave back to Aberdeen for another gig.

Spend the rest of the evening at Rayner’s and we have a barbeque. Stuffed to the gills with Bratwursts and bread rolls we delve into old and new times…

Saturday: Gig night! We get a quick rehearsal in – during which there’s a power cut. We kid you not. Feeling right at home, we carry on, ‘unplugged’. 9:30 pm, we get a line check and then we’re off! Sizable crowd, seated and there for the music. Blast through a 90-minute set and it looks and feels like they’re lovin’ it! Good start eh, me hearties? Now’s when the real work begins…

Some quick pics from the gig:

…and thanks to

Charlie Kang (@King_Kang) for this pic:

The post Tour Diary 1: London – Edinburgh, First Gig @ The Tron Kirk appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

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Bangalore Rock Tour

While the rest of India comes to terms with the monsoon season, TAAQ is all set to head out on

an epic voyage. With 36 dates in 4 countries (and hopefully a few more to be added), the Bangalore Rock Tour will be the largest tour ever by an Indian English rock band, as far as we know. Right here and now, we’ve got to thank Air India and ProFx

for their unstinting support on this venture.

The highlight of the tour will be a 26-gig run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. At the Fringe, our peripatetic players will be performing a completely different set each night of the week, with no repeated songs, drawing from a shortlist of 60 songs.

As is only fitting, the home team will get a preview of this through an epic trilogy (shades of Star Wars, anyone?): a 3-night stand at Bflat, Indiranagar. In another first for Indian rock, this will consist of three 2-hour+ sets on three subsequent nights with no repeated songs from night to night. Use the force, eh?

These are the dates and venues TAAQ will be playing (keep following this blog for gig reports and added dates):

July 19th,20th,21st – Fringe preview The BFlat Bar Bangalore

Aug 1st – 26th – Edinburgh Festival Fringe #Edfringe

Aug 30th – Glasgow, Scotland

Sep 1st – Edinburgh Mela Festival

Sep 5th – Dublin, Ireland

Sep 6th – Kilkenny, Ireland

Sep 7th – Galway City, Ireland

Sep 8th – Mullingar, Ireland

Sep 21st – Kathmandu, Nepal

The post Rocking in the Isles and Beyond appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Come July 23rd and we embark on our biggest international tour ever. Yeah yeah, we’ve been

going on about it for a while now, so you know we’re doing 34+ gigs in just over a month-and-a-half.

So, just before we leave, we’re putting together a special 3-night gig bonanza: come on down to the Bflat bar, Indiranagar, Bangalore, on the 19th (Fri), 20th (Sat) and 21st (Sun) July. We’ll play 20 songs every night with NO repeats – so you’re going to hear a total of 60

songs from our catalogue. We’re guessing this is some kind of record in these parts. Any other Indian band ever done something like this?

Lock those dates. Get in an auto if you have to. Pay the one-and-a-half. Be there to say good luck, good bye – or even good riddance. But be there. We’re gone for 2 months, y’know…

The post 3-Night Stand at the Bflat Bar: Fringe Preview! appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Here we are, playing along with Mystik Vibes, getting a brand-new music venue up and running in Bangalore city!

The sylvan settings at the Tamarind

Tree have hosted all manner of events – heck, our drummer got

hitched here – and now some new vibrations are going to permeate the lawns, gazebos and water bodies. Yes, yes, we know it’s a bit far out, but make the effort. You know it’s going to be worth it.

The post Tamarind Live! appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).