Damon & Naomi's 1001 Nights

This weekend Damon & Naomi are performing two special shows in New York City and Boston. The events will feature a theatrical screening of Naomi’s tour film diary Song to the Siren and will be followed by a Q&A session hosted by Haden Guest, director of the Harvard Film Archive. This will be followed by an opening set by the excellent Sharon Van Etten and finally Damon & Naomi will perform a set accompanied by guitarist Michio Kurihara.

The show in New York will take place on Saturday the 30th January at 92Y Tribeca and tickets cost $20. The show in Boston will be on Sunday 31st January at The Brattle Theatre, Cambridge and tickets are $15.

Naomi has just launched a new site to make some of her photography avaialable to view and buy/download in high quality. Naomivision has galleries of photos from her trips around the US as well as to Japan, Morocco, Portugal and many other countries. There’s also a gallery of protraits available to view, although the portrait pictures are not available for download.

More galleries of new (and old) photographs will be added.

Other Damon news in Damon & Naomi’s January update finds Naomi added as an endorser of Nord Keyboards and a reminder of the two special shows coming up in NYC and Boston at the end of the month.

The two dates will feature Damon & Naomi playing with Kurihara and will also include screenings of Naomi’s films from the 1001 Nights DVD and a Q&A session moderated by Haden Guest, director of the Harvard Film Archive. Support for both shows will be from Sharon van Etten. The shows will be at 92Y Tribeca in NYC on January 30th and The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA on January 31st.

The update on their website also includes a Christmas pressie from Damon & Naomi, an mp3 download of their cover of White Christmas that was released on a very limited CDR last year and was featured in the film Lovely, Still. Head on over to Damon & Naomi’s web page, read the full update and click on the Have a happy, everyone! link.

Limited edition Damon & Naomi tenugui

Both Damon & Naomi and Dean & Britta are heading out of the US for dates during November. Damon & Naomi, having just completed a North American tour with A Hawk and A Hacksaw are heading out east for six dates in Japan. The “Lost Gaijin tour” sees the couple setting out to visit previosuly unvisited parts of Japan using Japan Rail.

Meanwhile Dean & Britta head west for two dates in Spain as part of the Tanned Tin Festival and then on to the UK for a show at St Giles’ Church in London. The London show has support from Double Feature recording artist Cheval Sombre and features Sonic Boom.

we’re extremely happy to announce that next month, we’ll be returning to Japan. This time we will travel further north, and further south, than we have ventured there before.

• 07 Nov 2009 – Damon & Naomi @ Garo, Misawa, Japan
• 08 Nov 2009 – Damon & Naomi @ Cafe Mozart Atelier, Sendai, Japan
• 10 Nov 2009 – Damon & Naomi @ Jive, Hiroshima, Japan
• 11 Nov 2009 – Damon & Naomi @ Urban Guild, Kyoto, Japan
• 12 Nov 2009 – Damon & Naomi @ K.D Japon, Nagoya, Japan
• 14 Nov 2009 – Damon & Naomi @ Tsukimiru kimiomofu, Tokyo, Japan

Damon & Naomi have a Japanese language website.

See all upcoming Damon & Naomi shows.

I don’t have many recordings of Damon & Naomi – at most gigs since this one in 2001 my taping buddy hasn’t been able to tape for various reasons (and had one failure – and doesn’t come out so often these days). This was a great show, support had come from The Clientele (first or second time I’d seen them) and The Trembling Blue Stars (sadly neither of their sets were taped). Damon & Naomi were over with Michio Kurihara on the tour that would end with the “Live in San Sebasitan” deception (go read your Sub Pop Years liner notes).

I didn’t often bother making sleeves for the recordings I have, but I did for this one. The picture was not from London but from Holland (I think) on the same tour, and was from a set sent to me to put on the website by the photographer Stefan Claudius. I didn’t get permission to bung it on my CD sleeve but then it was never meant for sharing. Stefan’s photos also turned up in the “Song to the Siren” CD booklet.

Anyway… great show – you can see my original review here.

Download Attention Shoppers from Mediafire (93MB) (booklet / insert)

View the video on Boston.com.

Damon & Naomi

I arrived at Cafe OTO shortly before opening act Amor de Dias took to the stage. The venue was already fairly crowded so I shuffled in and found a spot near the front but tucked in behind a pillar. Most of the folk around me were sitting so I felt a bit conspicuous but held my ground, reasoning to myself that if I wasn’t obstructing their view the pillar would be.

Amor de Dias is the new project of Alasdair MacLean of The Clientle and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of Pipas. They played a short but very beautiful set of tropic-tinged folk guitar music accompanied on a couple of tracks by “Anne” on a huge recorder. Alasdair introduced the first track as “someone born in Aberdeen trying to play guitar like Caetano Veloso.” I think a couple of the numbers were tracks from Bonfires on the Heath, the new album by The Clientele coming out next month.

Amor de Dias

In the break before The Left Outsides, Damon came over for a chat and gave me a copy of the new Sub Pop Years compilation. I’m such a fan that I still get a glow just for being recognised (Alasdair patted my shoulder and said “nice to see you”… I love how the Internet has put me, albeit only in my head, in the same ball-park as cool and talented people.)

This must have been the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen The Left Outsides, they seem to be pulled in to support most bands I go and see these days. They make a lovely sound although they struggled a little tonight and the set seemed short and not as sweet as usual. Still lovely… just not as lovely as I know they can be. Maybe my appreciation was coloured by the time (more of that later).

Before Damon & Naomi took to the stage I had a chat with Joakim who was over for the show with his girlfriend, who was too shy to say hello (which as someone who has often been too shy to say hello I completely understand – so this is by way of a “hello” to her now). They knew of me through A Head Full of Wishes and under the name “And Suddenly” had contributed a lovely lo-fi cover of Luna’s “Tiger Lily” to the Decomposing Trees tribute CDR I’d released many years previously (and still available to download for free here). I can’t help get a warm buzz when I think of all the nice people I’ve met through AHFoW.

By now I was checking my watch obsessively. Leaving my bike at Acton Central meant that the only way I would get home at anything approaching a reasonable hour would involve me catching the last train west from Dalston Kingsland… that train left at 23:03 and Damon & Naomi never started until almost 22:10 so I was already resigned to having to skip out before the show ended.

Obviously a real fan (or at least a younger one) would have shrugged off the thought of a late night and worried about getting home after the show was over. But I’ve reached a stage in my life where getting home easily, quickly and as early as possible seemed more important.

Damon and Naomi opened with Song to the Siren and played through a set mixing tracks from their Sub Pop years with more recent tracks. Highs, and it was all up there, were New York City, which never fails to move me and Lilac Land. But by now time was getting on. In my head I was trying to work out how long it had taken me to walk from the station… how long… then Damon & Naomi, as if hinting that I was cutting it fine, played “How Long.” They finished the song and I bolted for the door, passing Alasdair who I assume was heading for the stage and a guest appearance. I paused at the door for a second and then left… ran to the station and had a five minute wait (at least one more song) before the train showed up.

The journey home was uneventful except that I learnt from The Sub Pop Years liner notes that Song to the Siren was a fake live album! A lovely evening but annoyed that I couldn’t see the whole show.

If anyone cares to fill me in on what I missed… please do… just don’t make it sound too great because I’m miserable enough already!

More pictures on Flickr.

Damon & Naomi have just launched a digital store selling their new compilation album The Sub Pop Years. As well as being able to buy the album in both mp3 and Apple Lossless formats you can also buy one of the many good value packages which combine the album with other Damon & Naomi albuns from their Sub Pop Years.

Here’s the concept: download our new comp, The Sub Pop Years, with or without a physical copy on CD, and you can add for just a few more dollars a download of any one of the complete original Sub Pop albums. Choose your favorite Sub Pop album — or one you never heard — or take the lot of them, by ordering the deluxe packages we’ve put together.

For example for just $19.99 you can buy The Sub Pop Years and all four of the bands Sub Pop albums. There are also packages that include the forthcoming 1001 Nights DVD released by Factory 25 (inlcuding the limited edition that comes with a vinyl copy of Song to the Siren.

Head on over to The Sub Pop Years digital store.

Here’s a list of all upcoming Damon & Naomi shows which includes a tour of North America with A Hawk and A Hacksaw as well as their short four date European visit.