Friday 4 December 2009

Action Beat





Action Beat (Sat)
Bletchley | Truth Cult (Southern)

Action Beat was conceived by Don Mclean and James Carney in 2004, as a tribute to the various drum and bass spazz outfits emerging around this time. Although they were extremely incompetent musicians, the band played a hell of a lot of gigs, adorned in comedy outfits. Their sporadic, nonsensical noise shows would on average last about ten minutes and usually end with the skinny, half naked frame of James Carney jumping into the beat-up, mangled mess of Don Mclean's drum kit. After continuing for some fifty shows as a drum and bass act, James and Don switched to guitars, incorporated a drum machine to punctuate that freak out guitar frenzies, cranked up the amps to preposterous volume, abused delay pedals, ditched the comedy costumes and laid the foundations for wall of sound which is now recognizable at Action Beat shows.

The band played many shows from 2004-2006, including a rather memorable Christmas show in which they hosted a number of short ad hoc gigs around Bletchley and Milton Keynes in front of a handful of dedicated supporters. The noise was so intense, the Queen probably heard it whilst delivering her speech! During a touring period with Parts and Labor in 2006 Action Beat recruited the help of James Walsh on drums and Pete Taylor on bass, it was at this time that they decided to draft in a live drummer for all their shows, like pied pipers they recruited a collection of wonderful drummers, special mentions are given to the following: Jake Burton, James Walsh, Danny Hawkins and Beanie. In 2007, more adjustments were made to the line-up with the addition of Lewis Webb on bass guitar and Pete Taylor moving to Baritone.
Action Beat first recorded at Southern Studios in January 2007 as a five piece, they turned up to the studio with nothing rehearsed and improvised two songs; "More Hookie" and "Maximum Bletchley". The same year they recorded three more improvised songs at Southern; "Tay", "Justice Yeldham" and "Daddy Thirsty", this time integrating Saxophone, Trumpet and Violin into the sound. Their first record, "1977-2007 - Thirty Years of Hurt, Then Us Cunts Exploded" was made up of five songs recorded at Southern in two days, and a re-mix of "Maximum Bletchley" by their friend Destructo Swarmbots.
Having toured constantly throughout the UK and across Europe, Action Beat have played somewhere in the region of 200 gigs, and with many notable bands including: Do Make Say Think, Dälek, Oxes, ZU, Usaisamonster, Bilge Pump, Destructo Swarmbots, OVO and many more. Needless to say Action Beat is completely DIY, and dedicated to being a true punk band. In their words, their main goal is "to play as many shows as we possibly can" and before now their main goals were to play as many shows as they possibly could and sign to one of their favourite record labels, our very own Southern Records. In November, the band will release their second album on Truth Cult, which is a new imprint through Southern. Dreams do come true!