The Amber Herd’s ‘Magnolia’ is none of the above – thank God. There is something very confident about this band, musically they ‘rise and fall’ together (sounds like they have been playing together for decades – not as long as Pink Floyd though – YAWN). The sound they make is that of a single unit, everybody slots into their own place and meshes neatly in with everything around them. I want to see them live – I will see them live. In their own words, “Sounds like alternative music when it was still alternative”. Yep, I’ll go with that.
The Amber Herd formed in 2006 and includes ex-members of Sheffield’s Beulah Kop and Nottingham’s Wide Eyed Wonder. The band formed following a call for tracks for a Pink Floyd cover project CD and live shows by the Neptune Pink Floyd (NPF) website. Having recorded a couple of tracks which were included on the CD, the band were asked to play two big Pink Floyd tribute shows in Autumn ’06, in Brighton at the Komedia and at Glasgow’s Jumpin’ Jacks, supporting some of the country’s best Floyd tribute acts (Breathe, Us Not Them and Darkside).
As the recorded tracks and gigs had been so well received and the band had a large amount of original songs, they decided to drop the cover versions, and develop their own material
A 10 track CD of original songs, ‘TAILS OF WASPS’, was finished in 2006 and features ‘Stage Fright’ and ‘Apple’ and others from the current live set.
In 2008 The Amber Herd recorded ‘Magnolia’ for the Neptune Pink Floyd website ‘DOUBLE CORE’ originals album project and a cover of Floyd’s ‘The Gnome’ for Volume 3 of the NPF tribute series. ‘Double Core’ has just been released and is a 60-odd minute continuous piece featuring tracks from bands in the USA, Croatia, Sweden and the UK, to name but four. The full ten-minute version of ‘Magnolia’ forms the centrepiece of this album.
In February 2009 The Amber Herd entered the studio to record their first real single release – a re-imagined version of ‘Stage Fright’ backed with the formidable ‘Foot-Tapper’, which is now freely available worldwide on self-release, and is getting airplay on BBC Radio Nottingham.
At present new material is being finalised and we should be entering the studio again to record more tracks for an album release later in 2009/10.
The Amber Herd have played a wide variety of shows all over the country over the last 2 ½ years and with some great bands, we have regularly been asked back by venues and headline artists.
