The Mechanisms

So, The Bifrost Incident, then. We’re all very excited about this one – there’s a lot of work still to be done, but it’s finally on the horizon. Hope you’re all looking forward to a new full-length tale – if you managed to make it out to the Oxford show the other night and caught the first couple of new songs, thanks so much for supporting us; you made it a great evening, as you always do. And if you couldn’t make it, worry not – there’ll be plenty more chances to catch us as 2016 goes on, and we plan on doing a live recording once the new set’s taken on a firmer shape – that way you won’t miss out even if you live overseas or can’t attend our shows!

Those of you who’ve been following The Mechanisms for some time have probably noticed that an announcement about our next big project has been a little while coming. Truth is, 2015 was a bit of a turbulent year for us – a lot of personal circumstances changed, the band relocated to London, with Jess (The Toy Soldier) going on hiatus to seek her fortune; Fran, who played Nastya brilliantly for four years, decided to move on – and consequently although we’ve been writing feverishly these last 12 months, we had one or two false starts when it came to choosing and developing projects before we got here, some of which we’ll go into in future posts.

So although we brought out Pellinore and the Beast and the Frankenstein EP last year, we’re aware we had you on a bit of a drip feed. All that’s set to change in 2016, and in a big way, which brings us to the topic of this post. There really isn’t an easy way to say it, so we’ll tear the plaster (band-aid?) right off –

We won’t be appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016.

This wasn’t an easy decision for us to make – our proudest and happiest moments with the band all come from our Fringe runs – not just as performers but as people. It feels like home. Each and every time, we’re blown away by the reception. The queues outside the door, the fans who doggedly turn up for the Mechs show year on year, who spread the word on the Mile and bring in even more people the next day. It’s really, truly, humbling. Nobody has fans like you.

Last Fringe was our best year yet – we’d been flagging a little, but your enthusiasm gave us the shot in the arm we needed to head back to the practice studio and press on with The Bifrost Incident. We don’t say it often enough, usually because we’re in character as murderous space pirates, but you – yes, you – are so important to us.

So we know this will come as a bit of a disappointment. But know that it’s only a temporary absence – we’ll be back with a vengeance, but we can’t make it this year.

The thing is, and without giving anything away, The Bifrost Incident is shaping up to be a HUGE story. Vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big. Narratively and musically it’s easily the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done, and that’s part of the reason why we’re so excited to finally announce it. But with that excitement came the realisation that 2016 needs to be about Bifrost. To make this whole ridiculous project happen – hopefully in the form of a shiny new album! – there’s so much work to do, and to get it all done we need to preserve that creative momentum from the 2015 Fringe and focus our energies on developing the concept.

In particular we need to set aside as much time as we can for studio sessions; most of us are lucky enough – thank gods – to be in some kind of employment, but are thus bound by arcane magicks like ‘statutory leave’, which makes recording an album and taking a show to Edinburgh very tough to do. In the end we realised we could only realistically do one of the two this year, and we made the call that it was better to produce some new material for you, make it the best we possibly can, and sit this Fringe out.

So there you have it. We’ll still be gigging wherever and whenever we can throughout 2016 (and if you have a gig for us, don’t be shy – message us!) but the focus is going to be the ongoing production of The Bifrost Incident. With that in mind, we wanted to introduce the Bifrost Blog – a series of out-of-character posts about the new set and its development we’ll be putting up over the coming months. In particular we want to bridge the gap between High Noon Over Camelot and Bifrost, which has a slightly different style to our previous stories, and talk a bit more about the journey that led us there via Frankenstein.

We’ll save all of that for another time, though. For now, thanks for reading, and for all your support – together, we’re going to make this really, really special.

The Mechanisms