World Unlimited are very pleased to present Cheek Mountain thief who has been druming up a lot of interest from the press recently. Cheek Mountain Thief will be playing at The Hare & Hounds Thursday 13th September, you can grab your tickets from here: Cheek Thief Mountain in the meantime here are some nice things to read about the Album –
Mojo September 2012 – Former Tunng man abandons folktronica for the textures of Iceland. – With his former Tunng bandmate Sam Genders off and running with Diagrams, Mike Lindsay returns. Cheek Mountain Thief is Lindsay and sundry musical characters he’s picked up while living in the tiny Icelandic coastal town of Husavik. Cheek Mountain Thief itself is the nearby Kinnarfjöll. The circular song structures and chant like repetition Lindsay favoured with Tunng are present, but there’s been a change. Electronica is mainly eschewed and texture comes from a subtle interplay between the instrumentation and Lindsay’s care worn, reflective vocals. When grandeur comes, it’s measured – the choir on Attack is like amassed but muffled Russian voices. Percussive rattling and wayward brass injections suggest he’s been listening to the latter day incarnation of Icelanders müm (the album is mixed by their Gunnar Om Tynes). Lindsay’s found his new voice, and it speaks the musical language of his adopted country. (Kieran Tyler)
Q September 2012 – Tunng singer goes to Iceland. Meets girl, makes record. – It’s a sweet tale. Mike Lindsay, singer with folk sextet Tunng, fell for an Icelander in 2006. Last year, he moved to Husavik, under Cheek Mountain, the Island’s prime whale-watching site. There he made a record with some locals, moulding the album to fit their unlikely inclinations, hence the marimba band underpinning the standout, Strain. The often magical result is light years from Tunng’s intricate electro-folk. In fact, when the choir kicks in on the stentorian Cheek Mountain, it’s not a million miles away from Sigur Ros‘s expansive, brave warmth, while the moving Attack is part Yorkshire brass band, part Ennio Morricone. Wake Them Gently, meanwhile, shows Lindsay can do pounding, pretty pop too. Where Lindsay goes after this remains to be seen: a return to the day job might just feel like a step back (4 stars – John Aizlewood)
Time Out London 08 Aug 2012 – After the first solo LP by one of the founding members of Tunng (Sam Genders, as Diagrams) comes the debut from the other, Mike Lindsay. Recordded in Iceland – muchof it in a tiny norther fishing town – it’s a set of light filled, lovely electronic pop, incorporating strings and brass and played by members of Lindsay’s new community. There are echoes of Bon Iver, Müm and Belle And Sebastian butsweetly offbeat songs like ‘Nothing’ and ‘Snook Pattern’ cast their own shadows. (Sharon O’Connell)
Uncut September 2012 – Tuung singer loses his heart in Iceland – In December 2010 Tunng’s Mike Lindsay visited Husavik in Iceland, a remote fishing town overlooked by Kinnarfjöll, otherwise known as Cheek Mountain. So bewitched was the singer by this ‘mythical wonderland’, and a girl he met there, that he decided to leave London and make it his home. Cheek Mountain Thief is an engaging and cccaisionally wistful love letter to Iceland in wehich he gasps at the alien landscape, loses his head under the Northern lights, and gets naked in hot springs, to a soundtrack of lollaping drums and woody percussion. A fine advert both for Lindsay and his adopted home. (Fiona Sturges)
The Guardian 10 August 2012 – In 2006, Tunng’s mike Lindsay visited Iceland, falling in love with a girl and the small, snow covered northern fishing town of Husavik. Four years later, having lost touch with the girl and drifted back to his old life in London, he felt the pull of that ‘mythical wonderland’, and travelled back to Husavik to rekindle the love affair with town and resident. This lovely album documents Lindsay’s new life, songwriting sensors heightened by romance and discovery. Recorded in a cabin with local musicians including the local school’s marimba band, and finished in Rejkjavik, the songs are as beautiful and occasionally challenging as the landscapes, as military drum beats and Arcade Fire – type walls of sounds and cries mingle with wind instruments, violin and wistful, poignant moods. Lindsay’s lyrics drip with tales of ghosts, melting snow and great unknowns. “With the sun in your face you see a questionmark in the mountain,” he whispers in Spirit Fight. It’s a departure from Tunng’s folktronica, but anyone who love’s that band’s Bullets will find a wealth of similar treats here. (Dave Simpson)
