“The most remarkable current UK band. Lost Crowns do things with music I previously thought unimaginable”
Kavus Torabi (Gong, Cardiacs, Knifeworld)
Bad Elephant Music is proud to announce the signing of London-based psychedelic supergroup Lost Crowns for the release of their debut album Every Night Something Happens on 25th January 2019.
Lost Crowns assault the mind with the densely detailed songs of Richard Larcombe (Stars In Battledress). There’s a lot going on here – complex drum patterns, bass and guitar parts with a lot of notes and hardly any gaps, with clarinet, keyboards, harmonium and voices weaving through the middle like a twisting country road that can’t shift an inch left or right in case it strays onto someone else’s territory. But they accomplish this with the relaxed air of a druggy jam. Will the head leave the body? It will if Lost Crowns have anything to do with it.
To quote Richard Larcombe: “The union of Lost Crowns and Bad Elephant Music will carry brave ears to a new dawn of complex shimmering surrender, and their devotion to our vision is proof of their bold pioneering spirit.”
David Elliott from BEM says: “I’m delighted that Richard and the band have put their trust in us to release Every Night Something Happens. From my first hearing of the mixes last summer I knew this was something incredibly special, and we can’t wait to get it out there”.
The album will be available to pre-order on CD and digital download from the first half of December 2018 ahead of its release in January.
LOST CROWNS
Lost Crowns is nothing less than a ‘funny music’ supergroup, built around the songs of Richard Larcombe (Stars In Battledress), alongside Charlie Cawood (Knifeworld, Tonochrome, My Tricksy Spirit) on bass, keyboardists Rhodri Marsden (Prescott, Scritti Politti) and Josh Perl (Knifeworld), and Nicola Baigent (North Sea Radio Orchestra, William D. Drake) on clarinet – together with the free spirit of Keepsie on drums.
Richard’s attitude to music was formed in his teens by the Incredible String Band and Syd Barrett, but he always thought something was absent. “The missing element for me in the psych-rock canon is complexity”, says Richard. “To me the combination is essential. Psychedelic pop became prog rock, but the fluttery, out-of-it surrender got lost in the transition to more elaborate arrangements. The intricacy of Lost Crowns is meant to add to the evocation of visionary experience. The vital influence of Tim Smith [Cardiacs] gave me the inspiration to articulate my vision of truly psychedelic music, with the edge and the unfunny dreams of The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn but not a hint of flower power and no rock vocal stylings”.
Written, arranged and recorded over a four-year period, Every Night Something Happens was developed as a studio project, but with the catalyst of an appearance at the Alphabet Business Convention in 2017 the band has developed into an acclaimed live format, too – “…a rich, unfolding master-craftsman’s confection…complex, artfully-meandering songs built from delightfully byzantine chords and arpeggios that cycle through ever-evolving patterns like palace clockwork”, to quote Misfit City’s Dann Chinn.
