“In the past we’ve always written songs just so we can play them live; this time we decided we wanted to actually write a record,” says Dominic Webber, vocalist of Midlands quintet The Hiding Place, recalling the creative process which came to birth his band’s new release, So This Is Home; “Some of our favourite records are the ones that you put on and listen to from start to finish, and that’s what we want people to do with this EP.”
Offering up a layer cake of ideas, ambition and thumping conviction, So This Is Home is a positively widescreen presentation; brimming with sumptuous melodies and brazen guitar attacks, the quintet – completed by guitarists Jonny Wood and Phil Ward, bassist Dan Colton and drummer Joe Barber – cleverly intersperse their post-hardcore with twinkling moments of downbeat ambience. “We wanted to write something that we felt sounded like ‘us’,” remarks Webber; “Something personal that didn’t feel like it was confined to a particular genre. It feels as though we have drawn a line under our previous releases, as if they were merely us warming up: now we have refined our sound to reach this point.”
Set for release on September 1st, 2014, So This Is Home’s sizeable sonic scope was created with the aid of rising producer, Feed The Rhino’s Oz Craggs, at his Folkestone based studio Hidden Track. As Webber recalls: “Oz totally understood where we were coming from with our varied influences; we spent some long days in Hidden Track, but as long as they were, it never felt like a chore working with Oz . We spent time tweaking our sound and setup to make sure that we found the perfect vibe for the EP and when it came to actual performance, Oz was always ready to push us that bit harder to make sure that we got the best take possible. Our first listen back to the finished product was mind-blowing: it felt like all the hard work had paid off.”
Webber concludes: “No matter how unrewarding or hard it can be being in a band sometimes, it really is the only thing that we feel right doing, and the thing that we feel we were meant to do – hence So This Is Home.”
Seek out The Hiding Place at the following dates:
- July 13th – Out Of The Ashes Festival, Ellesmere Port
- July 19th – TALK Bar, Birmingham
- July 27th – The Lomax, Liverpool
- August 18th – The Maze, Nottingham
- August 27th – The Intake, Mansfield
- September 6th – The Underground, Stoke (EP Launch Party)
September Release Tour Info TBA Soon
