The rocked up heart of England has recently begun to beat solidly again after intensive 'de - fribulation' by a bright new hope coming to the 'Fore' to give England a fresh and powerfull answer of their own to Irish bands like 'The Answer'... And while Kopek were making Steve Lillywhite's jaw drop at the 2005 International Battle of the Bands in London, the Midlands saw a group of teenage college friends from Liecester and Nuneaton reviving English hopes and dreams by making a few jaws of their own drop at their debut concert at a festival in the West Midlands where they blew apart the side of the lorry that was their stage with pure sound waves ( for those of you who are slightly unfamiliar with English geography this is roughly the area around Coventry, Birmingham, Nuneaton, Liecester and Wolverhampton). The new band originaly comprised of Guy Snowdon (Vocals and bass) and Liam Hopkins (Rhythm Guitar) , with Tom Liffe on Lead Guitar and Shaun Lee on drums playing a mixture of classic quality British rock ( inspired by the likes of The Who, Stones, Led Zep', Kinks, Oasis etc) along with the odd Who cover and a rapidly growing arsenal of classicly thought out creations of their own.
  After a debut ep calld 'Unknown Destination' the boys quickly found themselves playing at some of the UK's classic music venues too - most notably 'The Cavern' and 'Barfly' where they helped to significantly spice up Liverpools upcoming fresh annointing as 'The 2007 International City of Culture' with their prolific new wave of rock... where intricate, intense, and at times even delicate lead work, splices through and meanders over some classic riff and key changes..where fundamental bass lines blend with perfect cross-over vocals all wonderfully wrapped in some 'Cozy Powell eat your heart out' styled drum solo's , rolls and enormous big rock beats...So The Fores sound quickly made sure they were booked again at the first opportunity by almost every venue they played.
  Their venture into the UK's 2007 Surface Unsigned festival saw them quickly and easily dominate the competition right up until the Quarter Finals ... how they never made the final is something of a mystery to many, as they were clearly the most gifted and professional act..But even so, they made plenty of hard core fans along the way and found themselves with an increasing ammount of rave reviews from many music magazines, the BBC and countless radio stations on both sides of the atlantic . When Shaun Lee recently made a career choice to get a degree at a University in London and leave the band, Dexter Kingston was the man invited to fill those gifted shoes and surprisingly enough they seem to fit perfectly as any sign of a 'musical transition' is invisible -thus leaving Cozy Powell to scoop out the remnants of his half eaten heart with a wooden spoon in commiseration, while Dexter has proven himself to be just as exceptional on those classic rolls, rhythms and solo's. There has been no slowing down on the Fores new sounds either and two musical highpoints on the recording front include some brilliant sessions overseen and mixed by two British legends of sound delivery and production that include Kenny Jones ( currently 'sound genius' to Alchemy Studios and the man behind the mixing of The Smiths 'Hatfulll of Hollow' album and singles, as well as albums and tracks by Bauhaus, Oasis, Marrianne Faithfull, Bjork etc...) with the other legend being the chief engineer and producer extrordinaire Stuart Epps (the man who mastered the soundtracks to the lives of an entire generation of rockers and former chief engineer/manager of DJM's and later Jimmy Page's 'Mill Studios' - see our 'Highly Recommended' page in the Musical Interlude drop section for more on Stuart).
  We've included one of the new mixes by Stuart as a small taster of the exceptional sound and musical vision of The Fores embedded in the track 'It Took Me Years' just to whett your appetite. We've also included the link to their MySpace page where you can find a musical main course and puddings too while you're waiting for their new main website, which is currently under preperation and should go 'live' early in 2009. Expect to see and hear alot more from The Fores over the coming year, as well of alot more airplay on both sides of the pond and  both sides of the Equator - with a possible album release coming soon. For Englands first real new hope for quite some time get your ears round these samples and then click.....

  A few weeks ago I was asked to check some cover songs by a young and very short haired teenage band from Torbay. Even though I was listening on poor quality speekers at the time and was being partialy distracted by screaming children, dogs, cats and neighbours at the time, I initialy thought that they'd just taped a couple of Led Zeppelin tracks, uploaded them to their MySpace and were pretending to be brilliant musicians and vocalists!
  It was only when I saw the video footage of them playing AC/DC's Whole Lotta Rosie that it suddenly dawned on me that a) They were telling the truth and b) they realy were brilliant musicians and vocalists ...they're aren't many vocalists in the world who can pull off Robert Plant and Bonn Scott so convincingly and the fact that the band mambers are all between the ages of 14 to 18 makes their music even more of an exceptional talent.
  The band is called Vivid Sky and currently comprises of Matt Chalk on Guitars, Lewis Burks on vocals,Dan Huggins on Bass and Dec Vaughan on drums...every single name of which will be well worth keeping an eye on for future mind numbing rock god performances as every single member of the band is quite simply way ahead of their years for technical skill and musical ability. Chalks guitar work isn't too far behind the likes of Pat McManus and Gary Moore which is pretty outstanding for a 15 year old, Huggins sounds like he's fresh from a John Entwhistle Masterclass and even Vaughan seems incapable of putting a foot wrong. After spending some time performing covers that make 99% of professional cover bands seem a little embarrasing the boys era now tackling their own catalogue of all time greats so expect to see them sharing a stadium with the likes of The Fores, Killers, Oasis or even perhaps AC/DC or Zeppelin at some point in the next five years as this is quite literaly a top Supergroup in the making right now...Find Vivid Sky here...

To follow on again with our Anglo-Irish comparisons, it seems, that during recent years, Ireland had something of a monopoly on turning out the kind of cutting edge indie rock that seemlessly slips and slides through overpowering waves of classic rocked up funk that can also somehow intertwine itself with cascades of jazzed out key changes to create an unexpected form of musical continuity.