Hello folks,

Sad news from my little as our drummer and childhood friend has died. Well, died as in is leaving the country and so must finish with being in the band. But he is kindly hanging around until we find a replacement. And so hence this post. Let me give a wee synopsis of what the band is about to see if it might be your kind of thing -

So the band is called Extradition Order and we have been going three or four years, but I guess we've only been a proper band since we released our first 7" in 2008. Our first album came out on iblametheparents records last October (http://www.roughtrade.com/site/shop_detail.lasso?search_type=sku&sku=316706) and you can hear that and some of the singles off it on Spotify.

We're all based in London and most of our shows are there. Places we've played in the last few months include venues like Catch, Old Blue Last, the Barfly etc. We've had press and done radio sessions to promote the record and its singles. We have a reasonably big (7-9 night) UK tour coming up in April, sharing a bill with the band David Cronenberg's Wife.

We're also currently making a classic-style adventure game about the band. It'll be the first indie game made by an indie band. Woo.

As for the future, we've done some initial recording for the second album already but nothing proper. Just sketches. We're wanting to be a bit more experimental to make us sound bigger and more unusual with our next record. I've been nicking more ideas from folks like Philip Glass and building on some more technical fiddles, but it's not about to go all bloody West Side Story or anything. In fact, if you want a rough idea of the kind of things we're thinking at the moment here's a video of us playing a song we're working on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFSo_EvYwJc

It was filmed last week and was done only the day after we started plotting it out in practise so it's not all there yet, but I think you get the idea of taking the lifting string melody from Peter Grimes and turning it into a kind of murder ballad.

With this in mind, the kind of drummer we're after is really someone who wants to be part of our gang, us being a friendly bunch like, and who will absolutely get to do a heck of a lot more than just keeping the beat. I guess I'm thinking someone who likes the idea of having the freedom to be a bit more of a percussionist - can play with odd rhythms, strange beats, strange sounds, and isn't afraid of the odd sonic explosion when the time is right. Stuff like you hear in Steve Reich's drumming, or Britten's amazing big orchestral bangs. Urm.. but before I sound too pretentious I guess the most even handed "sounds like" review I've read of us has been that we are a kind of Birthday Party meets Talking Heads. You don't have to be the greatest technically, but an interested mindset is what I'm thinking.

Either way, we're three nice chaps, brush our teeth, make eye contact when we shake someone's hand... we're trying to lift our sonic game when it comes to the way we make music and so any drummer who fancies really having the freedom to explore what they can do, well, we'll be delighted to get to know them.

We practise about once a week in Clerkenwell - sometimes less if not much is on, and more if something important's coming up.

Drop a line if you're interested at myspace.com/extraditionorder

A merci!
Alastair