Following the release of their critically acclaimed second album ‘Red’, Guillemots kick start their UK tour, May 18th in Norwich. Nominated for Best Live Act at the Brits last year, the Guillemots are one of the most exciting and original live bands’ around.

The band will be showcasing tracks from both albums, including the poignant and spellbinding new single ‘Falling Out Of Reach’ out May 26th on Polydor Records.

Set to be one of the albums of 2008, ‘Red’ is out now. Written by all four members of the band - Fyfe Dangerfield, Magrao, Aristazabal Hawkes and Greig Stewart, it was co-produced by the visionary four-piece alongside their longstanding engineer Adam Noble (George Michael, U2 and Paul McCartney).

New Single ‘Falling Out of Reach, May 26th
Top 10 LP ‘Red’ out Now on Polydor

Guillemots release their new single ‘Falling Out Of Reach’ on May 26th. The rapturous single is the second track to be taken from their acclaimed new album ‘Red’ and follow up to the hugely addictive first single ‘Get Over It’.

Written by the Guillemots - Fyfe Dangerfield, Magrao, Aristazabal Hawkes and Greig Stewart – ‘Falling Out Of Reach’ was co-produced by the band alongside their longstanding engineer Adam Noble (George Michael, U2 and Paul McCartney).

Blissfully romantic, ‘Falling Out Of Reach’ is a rich string laden ode to the unrequited. Building into an unrestrained and utterly emotive chorus, the track epitomises the bands ability to write clever, honest and completely unique modern love songs. The accompanying video features Sir Ian Mckellen in what is without doubt one of the bands best videos to date.

Ladies and gentlemen, listen with fresh ears. This is ‘Red’ - an album packed with a sense of musical exhilaration so rare and so pronounced that it will have you dancing, shouting, stomping and laughing. Maybe even bring you close to tears.

Of course, Guillemots fans would argue that the band’s entire four-year career has been defined by this wide-eyed approach to making music. Certainly those that have watched the four-piece of Fyfe Dangerfield, Magrao, Aristazabal Hawkes and Greig Stewart evolve from their early art-rock/improv days onto bigger stages in the 18 months since the release of their 2006 debut, ‘Through The Windowpane’, will also attest that, as their audience has swelled, the band themselves have lost none of their natural ebullience. Indeed, it is this that characterises the tumultuous outpouring of ‘Red’, released March 24th .

If ‘Through The Windowpane’ marked out Guillemots as a band with the ability to deliver delicious free-form dreamscapes, ‘Red’ is an album that draws on an even broader sonic palette and whose sole purpose is to restore a sense of boldness and adventure to the increasingly safe world of pop music.

"Through The Windowpane was subtler", begins singer Fyfe Dangerfield, "all about strings, harmonies, reverb. Sounds you could drift away to. This time round, we just wanted to make pop songs that punched, instantly."

And as the jagged stabs that unleash album opener - the mutant disco-glam mash-up ‘Kriss Kross’ - make clear, ‘Red’ is certainly an album that punches. Songs like the lyrically apocalyptic, musically joyous ‘Standing On The Last Star’ and the gorgeously fragile ‘Falling out of Reach’ illustrate that Guillemots’ unique melodic prowess and intimacy remains intact, but the album itself is an exercise in “big pop music” – the kind that, as far as British music is concerned, arguably hasn’t been heard this side of the ‘80s.

“None of us are massive ‘80s fans or anything,” admits Dangerfield. “But there's so many songs from that time that just live in your subconscious, even if you can't name them. They have tunes you can't forget. The production, though, was often so synthetic in the '80s, and it created this notion that still lingers today, that you can't be overly melodic without sounding cheesy. And that's so wrong! So making a record that challenged that notion really appealed to us - writing songs with big, unashamed pop melodies, but then marrying them to obese rhythms, dirty basslines, sounds made from scratch."

P.T.O
And indeed, every track on ‘Red’ glistens with a newfound and unashamedly modern sonic intensity, from the tribal electro stomp of first single ‘Get Over It’ (March 17th) to the seedy R'n'B raunch that is ‘Big Dog’.“’Big Dog’ especially was really influenced by a lot of modern R'n'B,” confirms Fyfe. “You hear, say ‘Sexyback’ - and it's so bare, but it sounds amazing. Hearing the power of space in music like that really made us more ruthless with ourselves. Every part of every track had to count".

Careless talk of ‘80s pop and modern day R&B could of course be a recipe for disaster as far as most modern bands are concerned and, in the hands of a more callow set of musicians, probably would be. As far as Guillemots are concerned, however, their sense of appropriation is in keeping with all four band member’s diverse backgrounds in improv/classical (Fyfe), jazz (Aristazabal), noise/thrash (Magrao) and folk/metal (Greig). As such, ‘Red’ also marks the crystallisation of the band, with all four members sharing an equal input into the proceedings.

“I wrote most of the songs on our first record, so I had a really strong idea of how it should sound,” says Fyfe. “But this time, virtually everything was written by the four of us just stood in a room, playing. So in that sense, it feels like our first true record as a group."

Wanting a base of their own, the band converted an old synagogue in Bethnal Green to be the home for recording sessions and rehearsals, which begun in late February 2007.

“There was an awkwardness at first" says Fyfe. "We started rehearsing while the place was still being converted, so there was plaster coming off the ceiling, no heating or lights, and all of us were knackered from touring. And, probably through laziness, we just ended up setting up two basses and amps, and two drum kits, and played those. I didn't even try singing for a couple of weeks, we all just got into these really basic, thumping, monotonous riffs that sounded like The Fall without vocals."

As these riffs gradually grew into songs, so did an atmosphere that threads through much of the record.

"’Red’, musically, is a pretty upbeat record, but a lot of the lyrics are about death, conflict, frustration, greed.. and I think that's because the songs came out of improvisation. You're completely unhinged when you're improvising, lost in the moment, and stuff comes flying out of your subconscious that you didn't know was in there. And this sense of something not being quite right - personally, but especially in the world at large - was something that came out in a lot of the songs".

After several meetings with R&B production insiders came to nothing, Guillemots ended up trusting their own instincts, recording ‘Red’ between March and December 2007 with the help of longstanding engineer Adam Noble (whose credits include George Michael, U2 and Paul McCartney). The first few weeks of recording were characterised by drummer Greig Stewart's desire for the drums on each song to sound completely different.

“For Kriss Kross, we spent about an hour trying to lasso a microphone up onto a beam in the ceiling to get a huge room sound.. on Big Dog, it was the opposite, literally putting microphones as close to the drums as they could go. We got really into sampling too, making beats or keyboard sounds out of anything - people's voices, magnets, a bee in the toilet...anything that would make this record sound like us, and nobody else".

And while such ideas may appear typical of a band so often and erroneously described as ‘quirky’, in fact it simply exemplifies the band’s everlasting desire to travel beyond the realms of the conventional.

Indeed, technological adventures abound on ‘Red’ to gloriously multi-layered effect. ‘Last Kiss’, for instance, features Aristazabal and Magrao's ethereal vocals set against cyber-Chic rhythms and strings; the late night lilt of ‘Don’t Look Down’ is transformed midway into schizophrenic, cut-up drum'n'bass. Indeed, drummer Stewart's endless cavalcade of inspired beats and loops is one of the album’s defining factors, making the album as exciting rhythmically as it is tunefully.

“’Smells like Teen Spirit’, ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘Loser’ by Beck .., I just imagine someone hearing records like those for the first time and being blown away" concludes Fyfe on the subject of the band’s ambition. “You have to listen to them…they're uncompromising, they demand your attention, but they're amazing radio records too. And that's our ultimate ambition, to make records like that…to make pop music you can't ignore."

One play of ‘Red’ suggests that Guillemots may already be there.

New single ‘Falling Out Of Reach’ is released March 17th.