Cajun Dance Party were a five-piece band based in London, England. They originally consisted of Robbie Stern, Max Bloom,
Daniel Blumberg, Will Vignoles, and Vicky Freund. Blumberg and Bloom left the band in 2009 to form the band
Yuck, while other members of the band went to university. Freund now performs with the band TML. No split was ever officially announced.
Biography
The band came into being when guitarist Robbie Stern invited Daniel Blumberg (vocals), Max Bloom (bass guitar), William Vignoles (drums) and Vicky Freund (keys) to start playing together, originally to participate in their school 'battle of the bands' in 2005 at
University College School, in the same year as
Bombay Bicycle Club. In their first few band practices, the 15-year-olds began working on their first four songs, "The Next Untouchable", "Colourful Life", "Amylase" and "Buttercups", which were recorded as demos and submitted to their
Myspace
Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...
site shortly after.
The band played their first few shows at the West London all ages club night 'Way Out West', performing in the bar beneath
Brentford FC
Brentford Football Club is a professional association football club based in Brentford, England. The team competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football league system, English football. Nicknamed "The Bees", the club was found ...
football stadium. Way Out West was well known for putting on many up and coming bands such as
Jamie T,
Late of the Pier, Video Nasties, The More Assured and
Laura Marling
Laura Beatrice Marling (born 1 February 1990) is an English Folk music, folk singer-songwriter. She won the Brit Award for Brit Award for British Female Solo Artist, Best British Female Solo Artist at the 2011 Brit Awards and was nominated for th ...
. The organiser of the event, Keith Anderson, began to manage the band shortly after. Their first single, "The Next Untouchable", was released on Anderson's record label as a
limited edition 7" single, with 500 copies being put into production.
Cajun Dance Party's debut album was entitled ''
The Colourful Life'', and released in April 2008. The band recorded the album sessions with
Bernard Butler at the
recording studio
A recording studio is a specialized facility for Sound recording and reproduction, recording and Audio mixing, mixing of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home proje ...
, West Heath Yard, owned by
Edwyn Collins. West Heath Yard was also a
music industry
The music industry are individuals and organizations that earn money by Songwriter, writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling Sound recording and reproduction, recorded music and sheet music, presenting live music, concerts, ...
spoof which aired for a short while on
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...
in 1999, The album consisted of nine tracks, with singles from the album including "Colourful Life", "The Race", and "Amylase". The album was given 4/5 in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
''.
The band made many festival appearances in the UK and abroad, performing at such festivals as
Reading and Leeds,
Glastonbury
Glastonbury ( , ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbury is less than across the River ...
,
Oxegen
Oxegen was a List of music festivals#Ireland, music festival in Ireland, first held from 2004–2011 as a rock and pop festival and again in 2013 with dance and chart acts only. The event was regularly cited as Ireland's biggest music festiva ...
,
T in the Park,
Underage Festival,
Camden Crawl, the
Summer Sonic Festival in Japan and the ''
Les Inrocks'' tour in France.
Since the end of the band, Stern has become a barrister at
Matrix Chambers, Vignoles works as a manager for the
English Touring Orchestra, Freund remains involved in music production and sound engineering, and Blumberg is an artist and musician.
Discography
Albums
* ''
The Colourful Life'' (2008)
Singles
* "The Next Untouchable"
* "Amylase"
* "The Race"
* "Colourful Life"
References
External links
Daily Music Guide Colourful Life reviewLive review The Point, Cardiff
{{Authority control
Indie rock groups from London
Musical groups established in 2005
XL Recordings artists