![News Added Apr 10, 2015 The life so far of hardcore outsiders and fanatical guerrilla street band, Shoshin, formed in Salford by Preston City guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Pete Haley. After a brief period of personal turmoil Pete moved from Preston to Salford in a bid to stabilize his life and it was here he […]](https://hasitleaked.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/sho-320x320.jpg "Shoshin : Epiphanies And Wastelands")
The life so far of hardcore outsiders and fanatical guerrilla street band, Shoshin, formed in Salford by Preston City guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Pete Haley. After a brief period of personal turmoil Pete moved from Preston to Salford in a bid to stabilize his life and it was here he met the future members that would become Shoshin. The match of Joe Stuart and his groove heavy bass with back-beat specialist Abbi Phillips on drums allowed the band to evolve into a power-trio built on unique riffs and bouncing beats. The newly formed 3 piece skipped the rites-of-passage gigs in forsaken venues and devised their own method of reaching a wider audience, performing street shows, guerrilla gigs and their signature technique of ‘crowd-jacking’ where they ruthlessly exploited crowds assembled for other events.
The band recorded a DIY collection of tracks in Pete’s bedroom, packed their 10-year old Hyundai Trajet with street amps, car batteries and a ragged PA and headed to Europe. A performance for 7 hours in the snow at Eurosonic Noorderslaag earned them the unofficial title of most successful band at the festival by Dutch press and they even made back all their expenses in CD sales. Every street show was wilder than the last and before long the band mastered the art of wowing crowds made up of eclectic cross sections of random foot traffic in almost every imaginable urban setting. Every mile of fuel paid for by sales of their own DIY CD, burned on laptops in the morning and sold on the streets in the evening. By the end of 2011 they had performed in almost every major city in Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria and the length of the UK.
Such early independent activities came at a price with the band arrested regularly and fined thousands of Euros. Playing outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris they were jailed and had their gear impounded for baiting Police with Darth Vader’s imperial theme. Their Trajet was towed by Spanish Police in San Sebastien and Riot Police violently broke up a hometown Manchester show with the band beaten up and detained in the cells overnight.
In 2012 the band was invited to NYC to record an album for Purple Bees Records and tour New York State. Unbeknownst to them the owner of Purple Bees had caught a street show in Brussels several months before and tracked them down. Their debut album “Deep Sleprivation” was recorded with producer Joel Hamilton at Studio G in Brooklyn and the album took just 12 days to track and mix. Whilst Purple Bees managed to get the album released on iTunes, the promised PR support never materialised. Undeterred, the band returned home and subsequently sold 20,000 copies of the album on the streets around Europe.
It was again playing on the street, this time at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton that the band came to the attention of Jaba Music Management and international concert promoter FKP Scorpio. With a new deal signed, fresh material fully developed on the streets, the new album has been recorded with their first-choice producer James Kenosha at his studio in the defiantly non-hip environs of Bridlington East Yorkshire and then mixed by Chris Sheldon.
Early 2015 will see the release of the album, the return of more street shows, noise pollution and perhaps further brutality both on and off stage....
