Lengthy tale of the trials and tribulations of Kiyomori-making...

In my experience bands don't form over night.

This is certainly true of Kiyomori; looking back the actual course of events has become a little hazy now!

I was in a band called Rift (Andy Haines bass, Tom Alty lead guitar, Peter Hill drums) for many years, in fact probably a couple more than we really should have! Toward the end Peter had gone off to university and Ben Kidd was playing drums.

After playing a great gig at the Escape Club in February 2003 I ran out of steam.

I'd felt like I'd been forcing the band to keep playing and doing everything: writing all the material, arranging all rehearsals, booking all gigs, doing all the promotion and recording became too much! I just stopped one day and no one mentioned it to me.

(It was kind of unfortunate, in a way, because we played the last gig with Neville on the keys, then split up.

So with me, Ben and Neville together we had most of Kiyomori then! The same thing happened when Nev was playing keys for Bens band Dr Pussy.

They started to jam with him and then split up - nothing to do with Nev either time, but I think he might have started to feel cursed or something!!)

It wasn't long until I got hungry to play in another group, I'd been writing lots of songs.

There was Joybalous, which never really got passed a few rehearsals, which was going to see me writing with Joe Quigg (Pornography, No Bardot) and Matt Twaites (Pornography, No Bardot, ESP, Restlesslist) again, with Hector Miles (The Endorphins) on drums.

Unfortunately I don't think any of us really had the time to do it.

Then came 'The Roll Band', or something like that, with Sean playing drums and Steve Hoile (The Mojo Fins) on bass.

We were trying to roll rather than rock! I wanted to do some more mellow stuff, but we didn't seem to be able to go past a few rehearsals again.

(Pornography was Joe Quigg [vocals, guitar], Matt Twaites [bass], Henry Bell [drums], Rip [lead guitar] and I [more guitar, more vocals].

We were a short lived but glorious band.

Totally wired is a local radio show that my old bands Pornography and Rift both did Met-Way sessions for.

If you're interested you can download MP3's from their Met-Way sessions archive.)

In the meantime my brother Ben had broken up with his band Dr.

Pussy and we'd been meeting up to work on tracks every once in a while.

Then he moved in with me, around February 2003 and we started working on songs together with our housemate Tim Mantle (Psalm 37).

Then my old mate Crispin Cairns (Restlesslist) came back from Blackpool University wanting to get into a band.

In November 2003 Crispin and I headed down to his Mum's house in Blackpool to work on songs and came back with the name Kiyomori, I think Crispin had seen it in the credits of a Japanese movie he'd seen.

Only a month later (December 10th 2003) we were playing a gig with The Endorphins and GrooveMonsteR in Scream Studios for a Christmas party.

Tim Mantle was playing on the Hammond organ, Ben on drums, Andy Haines (my old Rift band mate) on Bass, Crispin on guitar and me, also on guitar and vocals.

This was the first gig under the Kiyomori name and we played, if memory serves, MAD, Solution, Don't Go Back, Honesty and What's Up With You, I think.

We had a gig in March 2004 at The Old Market, which Crispin and Tim ended up not being able to make it to.

I think as a result of we stopped working with Crispin, although there's no animosity.

He's still happy to let us play MAD, which was written around one of his instrumental arrangements.

Crispin and I have talked often about getting him to join us on stage for that song at a gig, which could be fun!

We played The Old Market gig as a three-piece, with Andy Haines, but it was going to be his last gig with the band, as he was moving up to London.

It was a really good show, as I recall.

Ben and I were also playing some additional guitars for a semi-reformed Red Guitars, my Dad, Jerry Kidd's band, with John Rowley and Hallam Lewis from the original line up playing guitars, Theseus Gerard (Stomp) on drums, Rory Cameron (Brighton Beach Boys) on guitar, Tony Burnet Smith on keyboards and Simon Sparrow (Snakemen, The Blackjacks) on bass.

At the peak there were five guitars and a bass playing! The first group on were Uncle Buck who are a brilliant local group.

After that Kiyomori was Ben, Tim and I with no bass player.

Tim had just gotten himself a really cool Roland AX-7 Midi Keyboard, which he was using with a laptop, round about now we started to get a good idea of the sort of sound we wanted, but the lack of bass player was a pain and we couldn't seem to find anyone who fit the bill.

We had a gig at the Hanbury Ballroom, which I think was with Restlesslist and I can't remember the headliners.

We'd had been working with Rob Grice (Korbin, Jerkin' The Rat) on bass, only he couldn't make it so we had to get Steve Hoile (The Mojo Fins) to step in at the last minute and I don't think Tim was there either.

When we eventually got to play a show with Tim and his lovely Roland it ended up being the last, as Tim was heading up to London too, to do a degree in photography.

The last gig was at the Pavilion Tavern and Steve Hoile was back on the bass, but we couldn't keep relying on him, as he would always just be guest-ing, The Mojo Fins are quite an accomplished group.

Ben and I needed to recruit and recover.

We scooped Neville up off our couch (where he'd been resident for much of the Summer) and convinced him to come and play with us.

Neville was the perfect addition, with a good ear for a catchy hook and a fine voice.

It was hard to talk him into it at first (perhaps he was worried about his unfortunate track record with Rift and Dr.

Pussy!) but as soon as he got into things started to progress.

We started the hunt for the right bass player anew.

First there was Dom Carol (who was drummer in Dr. Pussy) had a crack, but he was training to be a paramedic and couldn't really get the time.

Next we tried Kevin McCann, Kevin's a singer-songwriter who organises the Badger Music nights, which I started playing at in Autumn 2004.

Kevin and I got on really well so I thought we'd get him along to try out for bass, but we didn't really click.

Then Ben got his mate Jonah to come and play, but Jonah didn't have enough time either, although he laid down some good lines on a few of the demos we'd been making.

We worked for while with a guy called Ian on bass, who Ben knew as a local player for many years.

His approach to music turned out to be radically different from our own.

One day Neville, Ben and I were working on mixes of the demos and moaning about the state of things.

We'd spent months playing with different people and no one was working out.

We had a bunch of material that was starting to come together in our minds and were unable to go out and play it! It was frustrating.

We all decided that we should apprehend Sean and make him join the band.

Neville and Sean had met at Music College and we'd all played together at one time or another.

We marched round to Sean's and demanded he join the band and to our numb shock and amazement he said yes!

Since then things have been going pretty well, now we've reached the point where it finally feels like a band, a cohesive unit.

We're playing as much as we can through the summer of 2005 and we're all starting to feel like it's time to write some more material, to consolidate our sound, which is universally met with the description 'different'! From now on it's onwards and upwards; I hope to keep pleasantly surprising people!

Taira-no-Kiyomori (1118 - 1181)

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