SESSION ISSUE 1
EDITION
IntrOdUctiOn Welcome to the first issue of our fledgling publication ‘Session’. What you hold in your hands is a project that has floated about in our heads at Rise for a while now, we just needed the final push to make it happen. We spend our days surrounded by music, and meeting people like yourselves and talking about music, as huge fans of the print medium we’ve always dreamt of putting our thoughts down on paper and chatting to the bands who mean the most to us. This first edition may be slightly hastily constructed, so please forgive us if there are any glaring spelling and grammatical errors, we’ve put this together in the same week as receiving and processing hundreds of boxes of RSD stock which is always a recipe for no sleep and maximum stress! We have dedicated Session 1 to Record Store Day, assembling interviews with some of our favourite artists who are releasing records for the day alongside a great feature with the guys behind ‘Secret 7s’. Despite it’s increasingly negative press, for us, RSD is still our favourite day of the year. The shop comes alive with excitement, and meeting all the new customers who are on their first visit to the shop, or even buying their first record, is such a highlight. There are some absolutely stellar releases coming out, vinyl finally being reissued to a huge demand, and special one offs just for the day, it’s a healthy thing to be looking back at the past whilst also being excited by the future wave of new artists coming through. We’ve highlighted a few of the releases that we recommend looking out for. We will hopefully be back on a quarterly basis, but for now we hope you enjoy the articles and interviews. All feedback is welcome, so please let us know what you think. Thanks to all the bands and artists who took the time to speak to us, and to you for being a Rise customer. Record Store Day then...let’s do this! Team Session
cONTENTS 5
girl band
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secret 7" Redesigning the 7� Single Cover
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mOthers Nesting Behaviour With Our New Favourite Band
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rise RSD line Up
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rise rsd picks
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tim BURGESS The Best Hair In Indie Music
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metz Acetate Dreams
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GIRL BAND Purveyors of one of our favourite debut records of 2015, Girl Band are an uncompromising mash of no wave experimental noise, post-punk and techno undertones. We wanted to get a few words from them for our end of year leaflet but we just missed the deadline. So rather than let the bite size interview go to waste, we have published it here. So how’s the response been to ‘Holding Hands With Jamie’?
what’s happening and every progression is relative to the last. Nice slow build.
It’s been really great. A lot of people are really excited about it and seem to honestly like it which is cool. We’re just happy to have it out there as it’s something we’re very proud of.
‘The Early Years’ set a very high bar in terms of quality, did you feel any pressure living up to that?
There’s a lot of raw emotion in there, is it hard translating that energy in the studio? I think a lot of the rawest emotion is in the lyrics as they’re very personal. When playing live you can watch Dara perform and there is very much a physical presence with that which can’t really be caught on audio. But that for us is where recording becomes fun and kind of works like a trade off. You lose some stuff but gain numerous other opportunities. You’ve worked very hard to reach this position, do things feel like they are starting to change? Not really change in a way that everything is different. It’s just a lot more of what we were doing beforehand. There’s more people at the shows, more records being sold etc, but it still feels like the 4 of us are in control of
No not at all. That EP feels like a very different thing to us. It was just a collection of singles that we released in 2014 and was never intended to be a full body of work. Also we always felt that if people liked the tracks off that EP then it would be pretty unlikely that they would hate the album. Would you say producing material yourself helps form your own identity and sound? With this record we knew exactly what we wanted it to sound like. So producing it ourselves just made sense. I think producers can be a great asset as someone to bounce ideas off or to just be an outside voice. In our case for this album we knew what we wanted and didn’t need or want outside influence. It’s how we recorded everything else up to this point and we wanted to keep that going.
Words by AD & RB
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“In our case for this album we knew what we wanted and didn’t need or want outside influence.”
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Secret 7'' Redesigning the 7” Single Cover One of our favourite parts of Record Store Day is the Secret 7s campaign. Artists from around the world, both famous and undiscovered, submit their own covers for a series of 7 songs which are pressed to vinyl. The submissions are whittled down to 700, and then auctioned off for charity at the end of a fantastic exhibition. This year saw tracks from bands like Tame Impala and The Jam alongside music legends like John Lennon and Etta James open themselves up for interpretation. We chatted to organiser Kevin King about how it all works. Secret 7” is into it’s fifth year, and it seems like you have surpassed your previous record for contributions this year, (quite substantially!) How many covers have you had roughly? The exhibition is a mix of an open submission and creativeswe invite to design. It’s usually about a 50:50 mix amongst the 700 sleeves on display. This year we had 7,000 v ia the open submission, up 2,000 on last year’s record. It’s not just the q uantity o f but a lso the quality that ‘s growing year on year . The one thing I love every year is the variety of tracks / musicians you work with. For example, this year you have a track from Max Richter alongside legends The Jam and the more contemporary Tame Impala. How do you guys pick the bands you work with?
in time and genres. I t starts with a long list and as we confirm tracks, we start to hone in on certain other ones to achieve that. It can be quite unpredictable in both the most agonising and wonderful ways. We thought we had a legendary band in place for 2016, but failed to get the track fully approved before Christmas. In short, it gave me 24 hours to approach and confirm our final track. I sent a message to Yoko Ono’s team on a desperate whim, as she’d contributed artwork in 2015. Just like a Christmas miracle we had ‘Imagine’ approved with hours to spare. Ironically, we came back after Christmas to news that we had full approval on the band as well, I guess maybe you’ll see them in 2017.
Every year we enjoy having a sonic mix amongst the seven track, mixing up p eriods Words by AD
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“What is great about the resurgence, is the artwork moving from the size of a thumbnail to a tactile object that can be fully appreciated.” With the resurgence of the record, physical album art is back in a big way. Our customers often talk to us about the artwork on their purchase, it seems we all connect with the music more if we enjoy the whole package. The beauty of Secret 7s is that it puts the artwork first, people buy their favourite solely on a gut reaction to what they are looking at visually. The music follows, and completes the package. Do you think in this new resurgence of vinyl, the artist/designer is equally as important as the musician?
What is great about the resurgence, is the artwork moving from the size of a thumbnail to a tactile object that can be fully appreciated. With that, people can research and explore the finer details about the records they love - like who did the sleeve, the producer or where it was recorded.
Not at all, first and foremost, records are to be listened to. It’s great if the sleeve it’s contained in enhances the listening experience for you, but artwork should be secondary. I love the work of so many of our contributors, like Pete Fowler, Stanley Donwood & Leif Podhajsky; but I wouldn’t buy a record I don’t like simply because they did the artwork. Redesigning the 7” Single Cover
Do you have a current favourite piece of album/single artwork? I ’m far too indecisive for favourites...I really like the new Underworld and Savages artwork.
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“I started getting into heavier music, Lightning Bolt and Arab On Radar, and from that I pulled dissonant chord structures�
Mothers
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MOthers Nesting Behaviour With Our New Favourite Band
When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired’ is already one of our favourite albums of the year, a beautiful blend of fragile vocals and intoxicating intricate musicianship. ‘Mothers’ have somehow married post-rock intricacies with upbeat yet solemn folk-pop. It’s a perfect springtime record and has been a constant on our turntable since it’s release back in February. One listen to ‘It Hurts Until It Doesn’t’ and I think you’ll all be hooked too. We gave Rhys the task of finding out a little more about the band who are set to take this year’s festival scene by storm. We’ve been loving your debut album here at the store, could you have expected such a warm response? That’s great to hear. It feels good to know that there are people who have found something for themselves in the record. We made it a long time ago, so it can be cringey for me to listen to now, because there are things I would do differently if I were making it now, but I have to remember that we’re the only ones who have been sitting so long with this thing. It’s helped me appreciate those songs again to see other people experience it for the first time and, like, not hate it. There’s a certain tranquillity from the offset, how did you go about developing your sound? Some of my first influences were bands like The Microphones and Neutral Milk Hotel, and what I liked about their records was the linear song writing. In early college I started
listening to Don Caballero and Hella, which are (predominantly) instrumental bands, so those projects developed a love in me for the heavy role that dense instrumentals and repetition play in song writing. I started getting into heavier music, Lightning Bolt and Arab On Radar, and from that I pulled dissonant chord structures. Lately I’ve been heavily influenced by “Act Of Tenderness”, a record by Cindy Lee, and one of my favourites in recent years. The band started as an off-shoot of a solo project, is this why there’s such a personal sensation behind it? I’m sure that plays into the ethos of the project. I tend to use art/music as a place to retreat to, and a room in which to put all things personal, fragile, and connective. I struggle to be personal and open in my daily life, and in my relationships with those around me. I have a hard time connecting, and wanting to connect.
Nesting Behaviour With Our New Favourite Band
11 I pour it into the creative outlets I have to get it farther away from me, probably. Lyrically it’s quite a bitter sweet affair, especially tracks like ‘Nesting Behaviour’, how comfortable do you feel being open about such matters? I don’t really care/it feels natural. The only shitty part is how cruel people are, how cruel they can be. There’s honestly a huge lack of respect for musicians in our culture. It’s easy to criticize people who are trying.
“It’s helped me appreciate those songs again to see other people experience it for the first time and, like, not hate it.”
was willing to write string arrangements for some of our songs. But it most likely wouldn’t have ever happened if he hadn’t been in the studio working with us in the first place. You’re currently on a run of shows over in the States, how did you find SXSW? We had as good of a time as we possibly could have. It was our first year participating. I’m generally not a festivalgoer because I have a hard time with crowds. The manic attitude of it all weirds me out - it doesn’t feel like a way to digest music. Lastly, how is your summer shaping up, is there anything you’re most thrilled about? We’re about to go on tour with our friends Palm (April 25th - May 8th), and it’ll be a treat to get to see them perform every night. They were one of our favourite current bands well before we met them, and we find their work really inspiring. It’ll be a breath of fresh air for us, and I think we need it.
The use of orchestral elements adds another texture, was this a natural decision? It relied on circumstance, really. Our friend McKendrick Bearden is an incredibly talented musician, and he played bass for us on the record because at the time we were operating as a three piece (drums, two guitars). He studied composition, and Words by AD & RB, illustration by AD
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rISE BrISTOL rSD LINE UP NZCA LINES What can we expect from your RSD set?
What records are you listening to right now?
We’ve been touring with Teleman for the past couple of weeks, for which we’ve developed a 2 piece show. So you can expect me and Sarah (Jones, drums) to be playing a set featuring choice selections from our new album Infinite Summer, as well as a couple of oldies from my first record thrown in for good measure.
The last album I really listened to in full was Iggy Pop’s ‘The Idiot’, after reading a biography on Bowie in his Berlin period. Actually no, I lie - we listened to Craig David’s ‘Born To Do It’ in full in the car. It definitely has its moments. Then we listened to Rhianna’s new album, the quality of which (aside from Work) is extremely debatable. There’s a track that sounds like Dido. Is that cool now?
Which RSD releases are you most excited about? Tell the truth, I’ve had a look and there isn’t a specific release that piques my interest, but I’m excited to be a part of the whole affair, I think it’s a really good initiative. I’ve never been to Rise before so I’m looking forward to scoping out the shop and see what other bands are playing . Last time I bought a record in Bristol it was from Fopp!
RSD line up
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SKELETON FRAMES Split between Exeter and Bristol, Skeleton Frames are a chaotic yet serene proposition. Huge growling guitars sit as the perfect bed for some bewitching vocals. Dark and brooding grunge to rattle your bones. What can we expect from your RSD set? We recorded back in November of last year. Some of that stuff should finally be coming out over the next few weeks so we will play all the songs we recorded and maybe an old one or two. We thought about stripping in back for an in-store but I’m not sure it would work. So it’ll be loud as ever! We don’t like talking/have nothing to say so we try and join the songs together using noise and loops.
Which RSD releases are you most excited about? My friends in The Fairweather Band have a track coming out on the Alcopop compilation so I am looking forward to picking one of them up. They got a whole bunch of independent labels to submit a track. I also want to grab a copy of the METZ/Mission to Burma split. They have covered each others songs. What records are you listening to right now? I’ve been addicted to Electriclarryland by The Butthole Surfers this week. That’s an album I’d love to get on vinyl. I also got a copy of the new Muncie Girls record. Catchy song after catchy song!
That’s always good fun and improvised so its always different!
RSD line up
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AMADOU DIAGNE Senegalese multi instrumentalist, singer and songwriter Amadou Diagne and his UK based band Group Yakar have been developing a style that is uniquely their own. It is music that is hard to define, from Afro beat to Blues, Jazz Funk to Mbalax, traditional West African Praise singing to Rock, a working fusion of the bands collective music experiences and styles. Amadou Diagne weaves his Senegalese melodies and rhythms with vocals that though soft and warm can deliver great power. A freedom of improvisation backed by years of knowledge and skill with an excitement and a dynamic energy takes their music into uncharted territory. What can we expect from your RSD set? I will be enjoying Record Store Day you can expect acoustic percussive guitar style with the rhythms of Senegal and desert blues sound of Mali. I sing in Wolof mostly which is my first language in Senegal I like to mix it up with some English, some french, other dialects from west Africa too like Pular, Manding. I write and sing about my experiences in life moving to a new country, my west African culture. my music is influenced so much by my travels and the many diverse musicians I have met and worked with but always has at its roots my Griot culture.
These are on my shopping list. My wife loves Emmylou Harris especially the album Wrecking Ball. Desmond Decker is a legend and I love to listen to some reggae/ Ska music. Fela Kuti and Funkadelic to feed the afrobeat and funk cravings.
Record Store day is important to bring people into the enjoyment of an actual shop. Slow it down, really listen, let a magical excitement happen by finding a new music and learning about it. Which RSD releases are you most excited about? There is lots of music I have not heard before here, which is great I am looking forward to discovering new sounds.
I am also looking forward to hearing 'Unwind' from Guy Garvey. There are just so many that look really interesting to listen to, including some rare African albums like Joe Mensa 'Cry Laughter' I would love to hear.
RSD line up
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JesUits The Jesuits bring together a psychedelic cauldron of influences and serve up a delicious sweet & fuzzy soup full of noise and melody. We are very excited to have them play for us. Miles answered a few quick questions for us below. Catch them at 6pm. What can we expect from your RSD set? Energy Efficiency Which RSD releases are you most excited about? Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove Jay Reatard - Blood Visions Dead Kennedys - Live... The Old Waldorf 1979 The Black Tambourines Chica Alan Partridge Knowing Me, Knowing You
What records are you listening to right now? Ought - Sun Coming Down Wavves x Cloud Nothings - No Life For Me Velcro Hooks - Velcro Hooks Dream Wife - EP01 Ulrika Spacek - The Album Paranoia
RSD line up
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Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove
David Bowie - TVC15
Requiem For A Dream OST
13th Floor Elevators You’re Gonna Miss Me
Regina Spektor - Soviet Kitsch
Alan Partridge - Knowing Me Knowing You
Howling Owl - ANKRSD15
Suicide - Dream Baby Dream
Run The Jewels - VRTJ Viewer
Fatnotronic- Onde Anda
Cosmic Machine (VA)
Field Music- Field Music
RISE BRISTOL RSD STAFF PICKS
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Illustration by AD
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Tim BUrgess The Best Hair In Indie Music Tim Burgess is probably the busiest man in indie music. When not making music with legends The Charlatans, he is writing hilarious autobiographies, producing coffee and running a stellar independent label. Quite where he finds the time to do all this is mind boggling. A long time friend of the shop, we checked in with him for a quick chat whilst he was midway through an Australian tour with The Charlatans. An avid ambassador for Record Store Day and vinyl as a format, he is a someone everyone should be listening to. You’ve been very busy since we last caught up - what’s in the pipeline for Record Store Day?
fact that kids call records ‘vinyls’ but I just think it’s a relief that they call them anything at all.
We’ve got a couple of beauties for Record Store Day - a Charlatans 12”, a remix of ‘Trouble Understanding’ by Norman Cook and on O Genesis we’re putting out a record by Howard Marks - it’s five Dylan Thomas poems read by Howard. He recorded them last year and we thought it was fantastic that he brought the recordings to O Genesis - Howard really liked the record we did with Ian Rankin, so it all worked out really well
Would you say your relationship with the indie stores has changed since starting O Genesis?
As someone who’s championed RSD in the past - why do you think it’s such a special occasion? I know it has it’s detractors, but then again, what doesn’t? It’s been compared to Christmas and lots of people moan about Christmas - I’m a big fan of anything that celebrates music and vinyl but I suppose I might be a bit biased. I heard someone who owns a record shop, grumbling about the
Not hugely, as I was an avid customer and The Charlatans have always had a good relationship with independent record shops - we’ve played a few in stores and made special editions for them. I’m not one of those guys from the label that checks if our releases are at the front of the racks or anything. Tell us a little bit about the growth of Tim Peaks Coffee in recent festival seasons? Yeah, it’s been quite a trip. It’s our fifth year at Kendal Calling which was the first festival we took it too - and we’ll be at Liverpool Sound City, The Isle Of Wight, Forgotten Fields, Electric Fields and Festival Number 6 this year - it’s so good to be working
The Best Hair In Indie Music
19 with bands like Yucatan, Beds In Parks, Horsebeach, Documenta and so many others - we’ve had some amazing surprises along the way too with Suzanne Vega, Roddy Frame and Edwyn Collins stopping by to play a few songs. And it’s the best coffee you can get at a festival too. With so many projects on the boil at once, how do you go about finding some down time? My son is nearly three and in under a second he takes my mind off any books or albums or gigs. Give us some crayons and stickers and it’s like it’s the only thing in the world. Transcendental meditation helps too. It was wonderful to see The Charlatans back on the circuit last year - was the response quite overwhelming? Yeah, we toured the UK twice and played a massive headline show in Manchester at Castlefield Bowl and we were the unannounced opening band at Glastonbury too. Each and every gig we play there’s always a fantastic response but ‘Modern Nature’ kind of added an extra dimension to that. I think people loved the positivity and it fed straight back to us. We caught the set at Glastonbury, was it a daunting task opening the festival to an unsuspecting crowd? It was a real honour but maybe not daunting - we’re pretty confident that a Glastonbury audience would be happy to see us. Most of them had been there a few days (at the festival, bit at the stage waiting for us) so they’re just glad to get things going.
The response when we walked on was amazing and the crowd was huge - I suppose if you are headlining The Other Stage, then your competition might be Coldplay, I think the alternatives when we played were a tai chi workshop or a lie in not that I’m necessarily saying we’re better than either. It’s great to think that lots of people didn’t know who was going to play though - I hope those people enjoyed the fact that it was us.
“Record shops are part of the fabric of my life and I couldn’t imagine what would happen to the musical landscape without them” My mate came with us and he was standing in the crowd while they were setting up our gear - he was interested to see if people knew, and asked the bloke next to him if he knew who was going to play. The guy said to him “it’s either The Charlatans or someone who has borrowed a kick drum from The Charlatans” - he texted me and our roadie went on and covered our name up with one of the towels that were on stage. I think that helped with it still being a bit of a surprise when we walked on.
Words by AD & RB
20 Your retrospective book Telling Stories has also done remarkably well - can you see yourself taking another literary plunge? Funny you should say that but I just finished writing Tim Book Two. They say write about what you know and I think I kind of know about collecting records and spending time with vinyl and loving spending time in record shops. Record shops are part of the fabric of my life and I couldn’t imagine what would happen to the musical landscape without them. I just spent a couple of years writing a book about my love of vinyl and I went round record shops from Istanbul to Stockholm to San Francisco picking up recommendations of albums from people like Paul Weller and Iggy Pop - there’s something that links every record shop, wherever it is in the world. So that’s Tim Book Two. Should be out in the summer.
Lastly, how did you find revisiting your in such depth career for that book? It must have been an exciting chance to uncover some hazy memories. . . Writing Telling Stories Was quite an adventure in itself. I’d obviously lived that life but I had to think back through it and not just say what happened but also try to imagine people reading it on the bus or on holiday - I was ok with making records, over the years I’d sorted the process out in my head but it was new territory. Everyone says about not reading reviews but I really wanted to know what people from the library world thought about it. It was quite a thrill to think that I’d gone to another world and not only survived but that I was allowed to stick around without being run out of town.
“I heard someone who owns a record shop, grumbling about the fact that kids call records ‘vinyls’ but I just think it’s a relief that they call them anything at all.” The Best Hair In Indie Music
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METZ Acetate Dreams The rich and cult history of Seattle label ‘Sub Pop’ is continually referenced when writers and bands talk about new ‘scenes’ and labels who have a distinct aesthetic. They are the God Fathers of the grunge era and for any band who sign to their famed roster, surely it is a holy grail achievement. I will listen to anything Sub Pop put out because I trust their output and love their attitude, when the promo CDs drop through our letterbox I am the first to tear open the envelope and get it on the stereo. Back in 2012 the self titled debut from Metz blew me away, it’s visceral combination of rabid, raw guitars and a rhythm section which sounds like an army waging full blown war, was enough to make me a die hard fan. When we saw they were releasing a split with another of our long time favourites, Mission Of Burma, for this year’s RSD, we knew we had to find out how this came about. We chatted to frontman and guitarist Alex Edkins to get the low down. We’re dead excited for your Record Store Day release, how did the idea come about? We’re all huge fans of Mission Of Burma. The three of us have bonded over our love of that band and their music for the lifespan of METZ. One day we decided to go into the studio with our friend Lehon Taheny at the controls and just bang out some covers. We did a Urinals tune that has already been released digitally, a Gary Numan song and ‘Good, Not Great’ by Mission of Burma. Long story short, we worked up the nerve to ask MOB if they would consider doing a split record together after we opened for them in Toronto. It was a complete shock when then said sure.
You’ve said Misson Of Burma are amongst your heroes, how does it feel to have them cover one of your songs? It’s insane. It’s amazing to hear what they did with it too. I think their version is just so so awesome and it has their trademark sound all over it. It’s very flattering. The second album perfectly maintained your sense of urgency, what are the next steps? Our next step is to chill out! We are all at home right now and we have two months off. Probably the longest break in several years. We’re working on lots of new tunes and seeing what happens.
Words by AD & RB
22 There’s always been a certain brutality behind Metz - can you ever see yourselves shifting the sound? Yes, we would all like to see the music change and develop. It’s all in the ear of the beholder though, a drastic change for us may not be drastic for others. I think the brutality comes from playing live together, the writing of the last record and all of the new material so far has been written separately in seclusion. The live show is a great example of this, how to you psychologically ready yourselves for such intensity? Its automatic. The music brings it out. There is very little preparation except for a case of beer.
We caught your stint over here with Protomartyr, how was that tour? It was a blast. Touring with friends and musicians you admire is always the best case scenario if you can swing it. Protomartyr fulfill both of those criteria. Lastly, tell us about your relationship with the iconic label Sub Pop... They are great people. They work hard and are supportive of the music we make without interfering in the ways that many other record companies do. We feel lucky to work with them. It allows us to function in a very uninhibited fashion.
Acetate Dreams
Session #1 was constructed in April 2016 at Rise Bristol. Words by RB & AD Design & Illustration by ‘Twofold Design’ Let us know what you think online with the hashtag #RiseSession www.rise-music.co.uk
16.04.16