Green Man Festival founder Jo Bartlett has shared the first fruits of a new instrumental project named The Modulation Freaks. The video for ‘Circle : Line’ has been released with two EPs to follow. In addition to her involvement with Green Man, Barlett was also one half of folk duo It’s Joe And Danny (with Danny Hagan) whose most recent album was 2005’s The Quickening.
“I have always had a love of instrumentals,” says Bartlett. “As It’s Jo and Danny we always had a couple per album. The Yellow Moon Band was an instrumental project. I had just moved on from the Green Man Festival and had some time on my hands. A few months went by and I had written what I realised was an album’s worth of riffs on my acoustic guitar. For various reasons, couldn’t get The Yellow Moon Band together to record them. I gave Howard Monk a call (Billy Mahonie/The Clientele) and he was up for drumming on them. I then asked Richard Handyside (guitar genius from the band Kodiak Island) if he was up for playing electric guitar on the tracks. He was. We recorded them in Bark studio, in East London. Through the desk that 10cc recorded ‘I’m Not In Love’ on. I was able to borrow Brian from Bark’s analogue synths. That was fun. I played some bass guitar too. That was also fun. I mailed the tracks out to a few people to hear and the reaction has been amazing.”
The Modulation Freaks’ EP1 is released on Double Snazzy on November 6th. EP2 to follow soon.
Check out the video to the New Order-esque ‘Circle : Line’ here:
