Blackpool’s cinematic rock band blanket are proud to announce a one-off performance of their debut album How To Let Go under a Luke Jerram’s Museum of The Moon – a spectacular 24ft replica of the moon, which will be held at Preston’s Harris Museum Art Gallery & Library. The performance will take place on 23rd February 2019, celebrating 50 years since the moon landings. Tickets are available for purchase here.
The Museum of the Moon is a new touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram. Measuring seven metres in diameter, the moon features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface. At an approximate scale of 1:500,000, each centimetre of the internally lit spherical sculpture represents 5km of the moon’s surface.
“This is exactly the kind of thing we strive to be a part of as a band” comment bassist Matthew Sheldon, “we love playing unique venues and being part of special events like these. We like to think of our live shows as something more than just a gig, we want people to see it as an audio-visual experience, so something like this is just perfect for us. We want to make it really special so we’ll be bringing in guest musicians and a small choir so that we can do the record and all its layers justice.”
blanket signed to Music For Nations to release their debut full-length How To Let Go last year – a blissful 55-minute exploration of imagination, wonder and the human spirit, designed to uplift, enchant and provide a beautiforous escape from an often harsh and confounding reality. Receiving plaudits from the likes of Kerrang! and Prog Magazine, the record cemented blanket as a breath of fresh air in the UK’s burgeoning alternative music scene.
As the name suggests, blanket envelop the listener in a comforting quilt of sound, transporting them to dreamy landscapes of sweeping, celestial beauty with a kaleidoscopic symphony of soaring guitars, tinkling piano, warm bass and propulsive drums. In essence, it’s ambient music on an epic scale.
Initial ideas and early demos for blanket came together at the beginning of 2016, as guitarists Bobby Pook and Simon Morgan would routinely retire to the conservatory of their rented home in Blackpool to noodle on guitars, tinkle ivories and write intertwining melodies, all whilst gazing wistfully skywards at the stars above them. It was perhaps such a sublime view that infused the music they created within that glass retreat with such elegance, purity and grace. Pook and Morgan fleshed out their ideas even further with the addition of Matthew Sheldon and Steven Pellatt in the summer of 2016; blanket was now a fully-fledged proposition.
blanket have been making waves live, fresh from touring the UK with Zeal & Ardor, as well as performing a hypnotic, otherworldly set at the prestigious ArcTanGent Festival. They will return to the road in March 2019 to support prog metallers Cellar Darling. Bassist Matt comments, “Going out on tour with a band like Cellar Darling is really exciting for us, we like to think of ourselves as a band that cross multiple genres, and want to get ourselves out to as many different scenes as possible, in front of people who might not have heard of us before”. Dates for the run are:
21st Mar – Studio, Sheffield
22nd Mar – Hammerfest, North Wales
23rd Mar – The Globe, Cardiff
24th Mar – Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
26th Mar – Waterfront Studio, Norwich
27th Mar – The Welly 2, Hull
28th Mar – Audio, Glasgow
29th Mar – On The Rox, Dublin
30th Mar – Academy 3, Manchester
31st Mar – Jazz Cafe, London
A brilliantly ambitious and creative force, blanket will announce further news very soon.