November
Mancunian rock troupe Amplifier are coming to Nottingham’s Rock City on the 4th December to celebrate the release of their new album ‘The Octopus.’ If you’re not familiar with their music, read the review below and head to bands website for a taster. Nothing like a sweaty mosh pit to shake off the festive stress.
Head here for details on the Rock City show.
‘The Octopus’, the third record from totemic Manchester rock band Amplifier, is one that could not have been made in any other circumstance. Its story runs through its epic majesty each tentacle shot through with careworn experience. It is one of the most honourable rock albums of the year. The idea of ‘going it alone’ and self-releasing after a commercial deal collapses is, of course among the biggest clichés of the modern music industry. The idea that the scale and vision of an artistic imperative is heightened by the lack of any industry machine is one of the biggest myths peddled by those who faltered along the way. But ‘The Octopus’ is different. This staggeringly ambitious, boldly-intentioned classic rock opus (and ‘opus’ really is the word) is in its very essence the product of the struggles, the traumas, and ultimately the life-affirming lessons that were learned on the way to its creation.
The story began in the early 2000s, with the triumvirate of Sel Balamir (vocals/guitar), Neil Mahony (bass) and Matt Brobin (drums) that still survives to this day. Their early years saw them hammer at the coalface of gigantic, expressive British rock, earning a fearsome live reputation and quickly earning themselves a record deal.
But over the course of the period that saw the release of their acclaimed first two albums, 2004’s ‘Amplifier’ and 2006’s ‘Insider’, what transpired was an unedifying process of labels swallowing each other up, rosters getting culled, albums falling off promotional schedules, and every kind of bad decision-making that can be held accountable for the fabled “collapse of the record industry.” As Sel remembers: “It got to the point after ‘Insider’ that we were going to quit, but once we made that decision we just said, ‘okay, but we’ll carry on – but just like the olden days when we were doing it just for fun. Once we made that decision everyone was there again.”
The band returned, not defeated but somewhat re-aligned, to their rehearsal space in the Victorian mills of Manchester, starting at 2am, running and pushing and playing hard through the night, forging the colossal tracks that would go on to make the varying tentacles of ‘The Octopus’. The process gave them not just courage, but scope. The lack of external funding allowed a lack of external interference, and the ‘us-against-the-world’ mentality soon made it clear that this was going to need to be the band’s ultimate statement. Lives went on in tandem with the beast that they were building. The album became double. It ended up taking four years, because if this record was ever to come out at all, it had to be flawless. The fact they have allowed it out into the wild at all is testament to the fact that it is.
Clocking in as a sixteen-song enveloping concept piece lasting two hours, ‘The Octopus’ is a record that revels in its audacity, and is a reminder of the things that such billowing passion and integrity can achieve. The concept, of sorts, is that whatever the Octopus really is can only reveal itself out of its interactions with the wider world. That process is already happening. Thanks to an accompanying collection of fiction, and the visual motifs that adorn it and the activity around it (close to a million stickers have been distributed worldwide announcing its arrival), The Octopus is already developing a life of its own, achieving something of a cult status where the only message is whatever message is ascribed to it by its members.
And after two months on the shelves, its might and majesty is beginning to have just the desired effect of marshalling support. With their fanbase growing across Europe, numbering among them a composer of the incidental music for Doctor Who, and a group of NASA scientists who regularly listen to the album while assembling payloads to be sent to the space station, the power of this record is fast revealing itself. And for Amplifier, their epic prayers to possibility finally look like being answered.
