We have a video premiere today from Oxford-based 4-piece Family Machine who are making a return after seven years with their new album ‘Houses That You Live In’ which is due for release on August 14th 2015 via their own Beard Museum label.
The simple yet thought-provoking video for ‘The Less You Know‘ features a retro-looking robot who begins to enjoy life in the ignorance (or so we assume) that its days are numbered, a fact we must all face, and to hammer home the point there’s a graffitied wall the robot walks past which reads ‘One Day I Will Die’. In this instance ignorance is indeed bliss as it lives for the moment. Talking about the album, frontman Jamie Hyatt described ‘Houses That You Lived In’ being “about living and dying. It’s about the little stories that are in the big life story that we are all in the middle of. It’s about the fear, the joy and just the general feeling that everything is just as it is.”
Originally penned by Hyatt, each track is worked out by the whole band in the rehearsal stage. Very much a product of their hometown, the album was recorded at locations across Oxfordshire and produced by Ian Davenport (Badly Drawn Boy, Supergrass) at Courtyard Studios.
Whilst household names in their hometown of Oxford, the band have accumulated an illustrious list of achievements all over the UK and abroad. Having supported the likes of Gaz Coombes, Stornoway, Midlake, Mark Gardiner, Frank Turner, Noah & The Whale and countless others, their live show has seen over a hundred gigs. Alongside the release of the album the band have a number of dates lined up this autumn.
In addition to the album, Hyatt has been busy behind the scenes, scoring the theme to the upcoming Star Wars documentary ‘Elstree 1976’. A film about extras and supporting actors that’s doing the rounds at Film Festivals this year, Hyatt played and recorded the whole soundtrack himself.
Using acoustic guitar, piano, analogue synthesisers, 808 and 909 drum machines, mixed up with shakers and handclaps, keyboards, omnichord, the score is an ode to Hyatt’s musicianship. Family Machine’s ‘Skeleton’s And That’, which features on the album, is also being used as the final track over the credits.
www.youarethefamilymachine.com
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