AN ANNOUNCEMENT: The end is nigh. No, really.

Greetings,

As the final hours of 2011 trickle by and the (Gregorian calendar-reading) world's attention turns to 20 and the 12, so the members of Souvaris also turn our attentions to new things. We're sorry to say that from Saturday 18th February 2012, this band will cease to exist.

We're extremely proud of what we have achieved with SOUVARIS - SOUVARIS SOUVARIS. It's the culmination of over 2 years of work (including a few self-inflicted delays, admittedly) and quite honestly we don't know where to go from here. Our lives are now in such different places to where we began and our energies are diverted into other avenues to the point where it is difficult to get us all in one place, let alone in a position to make more music. So we've decided to stop.

Now into its twelfth year, we never for a moment imagined that this band would come to dominate more than a decade of our lives, playing hundreds (just about) of shows around the UK and Europe, sharing stages with some of our favourite bands and meeting too many of the loveliest people imaginable who we are now proud to call friends. Looking back across the years stretching back to the late months of 2000, we have innumerable fond memories to look back on and share as stories whenever we see each other.
)
This goes back to include our two former (and founder) members Mike Beevor and David Moult, both of whom are both still dear friends and brothers in arms. The seven of us actually managed to get ourselves into the same room for the first time in memory - twice in the space of a fortnight! - to celebrate the marriages of David S and Simmo in the summer of 2011. Look! Here's a picture, taken by our esteemed friend Romain Didier of Crëvecoeur and Jean-Elliot Senior:



So what do we do now? Well, first we have to persuade you to buy SOUVARIS - SOUVARIS SOUVARIS so that Matt Gringo makes back some of the cash he spunked on getting it pressed. All our relatives got predictably red CD-shaped presents this year. Why didn't yours? BUY BUY BUY. It's our legacy. Our swansong. One last bow. Etc. You get the picture.

The second thing we decided to do was to at least do one last hurrah; or rather ONE LAST GIG before we call time on things. We're still planning various things to put a special evening together for anyone who decides to come, but you can rest assured that it probably won't be like the KLF. Full details will be forthcoming, but we have booked THE SPACE at Nottingham Contemporary for Friday 17th February as the air-infused vacuum in which we will perform our final show. So put the date in your diary, or just add this Facebook event to it: http://www.facebook.com/events/294835213891238/. There'll be more soon.

Lovingly,

SVRS
xxxx

FINALLY RELEASED: Souvaris Souvaris Souvaris Souvaris Souvaris Souvaris Souvaris...

Hey ho chaps and chapettes,

Some obligatory HUGE THANKS to Emma and the lovely blokes from Dear Thief/Gung Ho and Doig and the dudes at Power Lunches for having us at a super-special, super-sweaty London gig the other weekend. We had a hugely enjoyable time playing and seeing lots of faces old and new. If you came out; we salute you.

But now, to business, for this week finally marks the official release of SOUVARIS - SOUVARIS SOUVARIS. Some of these songs took literally months to write, and we first started working on recording the whole thing over 2 years ago and only just managed to finish it this summer, so it's extremely gratifying to have it released by our great friends and still hugely vital Nottingham-loving label Gringo Records. Similarly, in these times of massive cutbacks, record labels and distros dying on their arses and shops going tits-up, it's extremely kind of Cargo to take on a record as uncommercial as ours and stick a few copies in local record shops... if you're lucky enough to live near any that still exist, we implore you to go out and support it by buying AS MANY COPIES AS YOU CAN.

You mean you haven't heard it yet? Well my dear, here are some thingummies from Bandcamp and Soundcloud:

Latest tracks by souvaris

And if that sonic onslaught didn't persuade you, we received one of the most well-considered and thoughtful of our venerable 11 years courtesy of the generous Tommy Dski at Pocket Jury:

"Somewhere between [NEU!75 and Can's "Landed"] is the wonderful Souvaris, an amalgamation of the inventiveness of early krautrock with western pop music, creating something of a unique art-rock sound. The surging crescendos favoured by many post-rock bands are still there but the sense of dynamics is far more varied, with many moods covered over the forty minute duration... one of the great British treasures at the absolute peak of their considerable power."

I think we all genuinely blushed when we read this review - so many thanks to Tommy.

Now what are you waiting for? It's the perfect Christmas present! Buy one for yourself! Buy one for your other half! Heck, buy our Gringo's entire stock so we can stop owing Matt so much money as well as all the good karma he's passed our way over the last few years! BUY! BUY! BUY!

NEXT GIG: Saturday 26th November - LONDON

Aye up,

Cheers to everyone who came out to the shows with Zun Zun Egui last week. We had tremendous times in both Coventry and Nottingham and it was great to see some old friends and to meet some new ones.

Next up is OUR LAST GIG... OF 2011:



This'll be the first time we've played London in a couple of years, so we're really looking forward to it. The Gungo Ho lot are great people and have been waiting literally MONTHS for us to pull our thumbs out of our arses and start playing gigs, so we're grateful for their patience... more information here: http://powerlunchesltd.co.uk/
It's only a fiver - in London - how cool is that? Hope to see you there!

SEXY WORM GETS THE BIRD

Zun Zun Egui - Fandango Fresh from Bella Union on Vimeo.

Somehow this song is even better when performed in the flesh by possibly the best live band in the country right now. If you're in Nottingham, do pop by the Contemporary after 8pm tonight and find our FOR FREE:


http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/zun-zun-egui-souvaris-and-johnny-crump

THIS THURSDAY AND FRIDAY: Coventry and Nottingham shows with Zun Zun Egui!

Hi folks,

We don't seem to have blogged about this, but the gigs have been up as dates for ages, so hopefully you've noticed that we're playing at Taylor John's House in Coventry this Thursday (tomorrow!) and then at Nottingham Contemporary on Friday (free show!). Both are in the excellent company of our exalted friends and insanely fantastic band ZUN ZUN EGUI.

Facebook events with full details are here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112532672178408
and here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227891143933263

We'll have copies of our new album in advance of its December release, so bring yer readies. See you there!

FUCKSTICKS

Really sorry for the late, late notice, but unfortunately we've had to cancel our appearance at A Carefully Planned Festival today due to illness. We're really sorry to disappoint anyone who was planning on seeing us!

A CAREFULLY FLAMMED PESTIVAL

A Carefully Planned Festival update: We'll be playing at Gullivers at 10pm on Saturday 15th - that's tomorrow!

Weekend tickets are only £10 in advance from wegottickets and day tickets are £7 on the door.

You can see a full programme of the weekend at ACarefullyPlannedFestival.wordpress. Other bands playing include our good friends The FTSE 100, PLANK! and Crash of Rhinos - check it out!

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

Hot off the monitor screen: Souvaris will be appearing at Manchester's Carefully Planned Festival on Saturday 15th October.

We're rather pleased about it. It's been a while since we've played Manchester! Hopefully we'll have physical copies of our new album, "Souvaris Souvaris", to sell by then too. Hot cakes, goddammit!

More details about the event soon including full line-up and what time we'll be playing.

xxx

EDIT: We'll be playing at Gullivers at 10pm on Saturday 15th - that's tomorrow!
Weekend tickets are only £10 in advance from wegottickets and day tickets are £7 on the door.
You can see a full programme of the weekend at ACarefullyPlannedFestival.wordpress. Other bands playing include our good friends The FTSE 100, PLANK! and Crash of Rhinos - check it out!

SOUVARIS SHOEVARIS SCHMOOVARIS

Jesus, another blog post? Already? What possibly could the occasion be? Oh, just THIS. Out in October y'all:



OH YEAH.

AWAKENING FROM OUR SLUMBER

Hola!

After successfully maintaining radio silence for another extended period over the spring and summer, the behemoth that is THE SOUVARIS finally peeps open an eyelid and stirred at the start of August. After successfully sleeping through the marriage of two of its members and a whole lot of other things going on in everyone's lives, we finally got together and decided: IT'S TIME TO FINISH THE ALBUM.

And guess what? We actually went and did it. Okay, it took Matt Gringo threatening to castrate the lot of us if we couldn't get our act together for an October release, and then the promise of playing with our good friends (who also have their own, incredible, album coming out) Zun Zun Egui if we could get things sorted out in time, but we finally, finally have finished it. And it only took 21 months. Easy.

So, we worked our arses off...







(well, some of us did)


... and a few long days, late nights and good-natured arguments later, we haz dun it and it's finished. THANK GOD FOR THAT.

More news with some details of what to expect soon, but in the meantime, visit our new Facebook page - the old group got deleted - where you can find some sexy new information. Don't bother with Myspace though, it's old hat and we hate it. You probably do too.

Toodle-pip!

s.v.r.s.
xxxxx

We're still not dead

Hi folks,

Sorry about the lack of communication of late. We came back from tour in November delirious but exhausted and have promptly disappeared from sight ever since. We need to say a well over due ENORMOUS THANKS and MUCH LOVE to every single person who put us on, put us up, put up with our company, fed us, talked to us, bought something, got drunk or much, much worse things with us on tour. We had an absolute blast and enjoyed ourselves immensely to a man every day. The general consensus was: BEST. TOUR. EVER. Some photos showing the general malaise of touring life have been shoved up on F***b**k here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=683260309&aid=297824
(Don't worry, they're available for anyone to look at, so you don't need to log in to see them).

We haven't been posting anything since we got back because we've only all managed to be in the same room at the same time a grand total of twice in the last 3 months; unfortunately now we don't all live in each others' pockets or share houses/flats and have to actually work for a living, it's not so easy to get together. Plus, we celebrated the second anniversary of having all our old gear nicked by our practice room space getting flooded by a burst pipe thanks to the freezing weather over the holiday period, so we've had to clear out of there and hole up with our good friends Savoy Grand and Kogumaza. Thankfully not too much got lost in the flood, but if you're lucky enough to own a copy of our first, untitled, 12" - congratulations, that record got a hell of a lot rarer... 90% of our remaining stock got destroyed!

So what does 2011 hold? Well, the first thing for us, apart from starting to practise regularly, is to finally, finally, finally finish our third album. We started recording in November 2009 and have made snail-like progress ever since, but our focus is now razor-sharp, to the exclusion of doing pretty much else. We may play an odd show here or there, but for now we just need to get this thing done and out of our systems so we can get on with our lives. Tentative plans for another tour to coincide with the record's release are being put in place, but don't expect anything until the autumn. Until then, please feel free to email us with any inane questions, dodgy banter or gig requests you may care to pass on.

Peace out.

s.v.r.s.
(ouai)
xxxxx