The Dead Man’s Waltz - new single Swings & Roundabouts

The Dead Man’s Waltz
Album: The Dead Man’s Waltz out Oct 27th
Single: Swings And Roundabouts - free download from September 26th
www.thedeadmanswaltz.com
www.twitter.com/deadmanswaltz
www.youtube.com/user/ChannelDMW

“There’s a chill in the air… Here on Skye it will soon be time to tie down the corrugated iron roof and sharpen the chainsaw. Before you know it, the Day Of The Dead will be approaching...

Autumn is approaching; a time when nature retreats and spirits awaken from their slumber. A time of woodsmoke, mist and the long awaited debut album from The Dead Man’s Waltz.

Written and rehearsed on their native Isle of Skye, the album swells and seethes with the dual identity of the island, the most northerly of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. From the poetry of revered wordsmith Sorely MacLean to the rousing anthems of folk-rock giants Runrig and the stadium dance of Mylo, this is an island with a rich cultural heritage, but also of bleak landscapes, the imposing Cuillin hills and ancestral memories of clearances and famine.

Dark-eyed and slightly blue of skin, these gentlemen wraiths find their lyrical source material wherever there is mischief, melancholoy, treachery and terror, whether it’s the tragic tale of a U-Boat commander (‘Emmeline’) or the eerie ambivalence of love-gone-terribly-wrong (‘Cry On Me’). Drawing on the fascination of the Scottish traditional cannon for the spine-tingling and the lovelorn, The Dead Man’s Waltz’s self-described ‘folk-noir’ looks to other storytellers, such as the subversive cabaret artists of Weimar Germany and louche barfly poets like Tom Waits.

Veering from lush piano laments (‘1904’), pretty acoustic folk (lead single ‘Swings And Roundabouts’ and unearthly, semi-operatic rollicks (‘Old Man’), the thirst for creative challenge runs in their gurgling blood; from their inception The Dead Man’s Waltz have worked across genres and disciplines, devising musical theatre pieces and collaborating with film-makers and visual artists. This, after all, is a band whose Glasgow live debut was part-gig, part macabre theatre piece and recently complemented a session on SubCity radio with one of their self-penned horror chillers.


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Live shows
Oct 6th Unpeeled @ The Jazz Bar, Edinburgh, 9pm, £5
Oct 13th Band On The Wall, Manchester (w/Kirsty Almeida and The Mustdashios), 7.30pm, £10
Oct 14th Old Bridge Inn, Aviemore
Oct 15th Woodlands Centre, Stornoway
Oct 21st The Market Bar, Inverness, 9pm, free
Oct 23rd Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Isle Of Skye
Oct 27th The Old Hairdresser’s, Glasgow


The Dead Man’s Waltz are:
Hector MacInnes: Vocals, Guitar, Percussion
Leighton Jones: Vocals, Accordion, Piano
David MacLeod: Bass
Magnus Graham: Vocals, Guitars

The Dead Man’s Waltz: A Primer.
2007 – Multi-genre eccentrics Injuns devise musical theatre piece Scary Love and are asked to conjure a similar work for Aviemore’s inaugural Outsider festival.

2009 - The now dead men materialize from the ether to meld song, storytelling and film at the Now Museum in 2009, a disused ice cream factory in Glasgow, under the tutelage of maniacal surgeon Dr William Johnstone.

2011 – Winter/Spring: Writer/film maker Johnny Barrington directs the visual tale to accompany yearning debut single Cry On Me (vimeo.com/22755069). The Dead Man’s Waltz go on to release the black-hearted delirium that is follow-up single Fallow Fields.

2011 – Summer: The Men spirit away crowds in Scotland’s Central Belt and closer to home in Stornoway and Skye.
-In the secret absinthe bar at the Insider festival, The Dead Man’s Waltz perform Seven Gramophones, a seven set representative of each of the Seven Deadly Sins and informed by the story of Emile Berliner, the German-born inventor who patented the gramophone in 1887.
-Songwriters Leighton Jones and Hector Macinnes work on composition and sound design for Celestial Radio, a pirate radio station on a time-travelling mirrored boat and the brainchild of artists Neil Bromwich and Zoe Walker (www.walkerandbromwich.org.uk). Their hour long work is broadcast on September 10th 2011.


"One of Scotlands most intriguing new acts... Think The Pogues inviting Nick Cave or Tom Waits on stage to add an even more sinister, vaudevillian edge."
The Skinny 2011.

"Finds the common ground between the bleak tragedy of the island folk ballads and the more flamboyant execution of the European cabaret tradition."
The Scotsman 2011

"One of the most exciting and experimental bands around."
Is This Music? 2011

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