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Just over half an hour of class songs from one of the best kept 'secrets' in music. It’s another new release on a different label for I Am Kloot as BBC Audio release their complete Peel Sessions.

BBC Radio 1 John Peel Sessions by I Am Kloot

There’s a fine tradition of trios in the entertainment world. In comedy you might think of The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges or Tony Hancock, Sid James & Bill Kerr. In music you might think Nirvana, The Jam or The Jimi Hendrix Experience spring to mind. Now there’s another three-piece to add to that esteemed company – they’re not new, but you could be forgiven for not having heard of them, let alone heard any of their music.

The Invisible Band?

The act in question is one of the best-kept ‘secrets’ in British music: North-West-based trio I Am Kloot, who have had their 'Peel Sessions album released on Skinny Dog. Radio 1 John Peel Sessions compiles all eleven tracks recorded by I Am Kloot (AKA: John Bramwell - songwriter, singer and guitarist - Peter Jobson - bass, occasional keyboards - and Andy Hargreaves – drums) at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios for the late DJs Radio 1 Show from 2001 to 2004. The album features alternative versions of songs from the band’s Natural History album debut as well as from the eponymous follow up and exclusive unreleased material.

"Johnny Bramwell from I Am Kloot is one of the four most talented songwriters this country has produced in the last ten years." - Pete Doherty (Babyshambles).

Kloot on Film

Apart from appearing on Manchester’s own Channel M cable station – featuring their headline appearance at this Summers’ SWAP Festival the band are also making headways on the big screen with two forthcoming films are sporting I Am Kloot tracks on their soundtracks. These are: Snowcake - starring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver (the Alien quadrilogy) – which features The Same Deep Water As Me and Gone features I Believe. The band has also been working with director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) on the soundtrack of his latest feature – a science fiction film called Sunshine.

For more information you could do a lot worse than check out the band’s very own website: www.iamkloot.com – which features pictures taken at recent gigs, sound clips, guitar chords and song lyrics, links to video interview material, a full discography and all the up to date news and tour/release dates you could need. Being switched-on types the band also have their own page at: www.myspace.com/iamklootmusic, which is also well worth a click – if only for the solo version of Johnny’s song Black & Blue – from his long since deleted solo mini-album You, Me & The Alarm Clock For more of the same you can also watch I Am Kloot perform onstage at this years’ SWAP Festival on Channel M.

I Am Kloot follow up this release with a short UK tour - plus a quick jaunt over to Turkey! Johnny and Pete will also be playing a number of low key acoustic shows having already brought their full band sound to bear in support of Peter Doherty’s Babyshambles earlier in the year.

Catch them if you can. Failing that, track down a copy of the two-disc CD version of their last album (Gods And Monsters) which features a cracking full concert recorded in the Ritz ballroom in Manchester and will give you a very good idea of just exactly what you’re missing.

Here's what the critics have been saying about I Am Kloot:

“Head and shoulders above most of the competition...Rarely has a lack of popular success been so baffling." - The Metro newspaper.

"...if critical plaudits were album sales I Am Kloot would be pulled along in carriages made of gold records..." – London listings magazine Time Out.

“This collection makes clear that their main themes of death, inadequacy and most things hopeless have barely changed over the decade...Here the band sounds more heart wrecked than ever. Even when the drums do come tumbling, as on Life In A Day, the band sounds like the Stone Roses on a death trip. A seriously melancholy yet utterly delicate and beautiful decade indeed." Clash Magazine (reviewing The BBC Sessions CD).

"Everyday epics from another one-time busker; the very small but enormously talented Johnny Bramwell, the frontman of the best band to come out of Manchester in the last twenty years." - The Independent newspaper (22/01/07)

John Harold Arnold Bramwell – a (selected) discography

Johnny Dangerously with deBuchias - Introducing Jane - 12" three track single (Village Records, 1990)
Johnny Dangerously solo - You, Me and the Alarm Clock 12” vinyl only six-track mini album (1988?)
The Mouth - Bang/Never On Time 7" (1995)
I Am Kloot - Titanic/To You 7” (1999)
I Am Kloot - Natural History – CD, LP (2001)
I Am Kloot - I Am Kloot CD, LP (2003) – initially available as black and white double vinyl discs.
I Am Kloot - Gods And Monsters – CD, LP and 2-DISC CD/DVD (live at The Ritz 2003, plus promotional clips) double pack (2005)
I Am Kloot - Over My Shoulder - 2x7” featuring different b-sides: Junk Culture and Stop Taking Photographs - two tracks that only otherwise appear as extras on the Pony Canyon release of Gods and Monsters in Japan. Apart from being great tracks in themselves fans with long memories might recall an earlier solo version of Junk Culture from the You, Me and the Alarm Clock record.
I Am Kloot - Maybe I Should - 7”, CD and download
I Am Kloot - BBC Radio 1 John Peel Sessions CD
I Am Kloot - I Am Kloot Play Moolah Rouge - limited edition digipack (of 2,000) live CD recorded at Stockport's Moolah Rouge studios, initially only available at concerts in Autumn 2007 - going for big sums on eBay. (2007)

'Kloot At The Beeb

With more tunes than you can shake a stick at I Am Kloot - BBC Radio 1 John Peel Sessions is 34 minutes and 20 seconds of class song writing from quite simply one of the best kept ‘secrets’ in the music business – and a first class intro. to the band for those yet to snap up one of the group's studio albums.

The full album track listing looks like this:

1. Storm Warning
2. Twist
3. Titanic
4. 86 TVs
5. Stop
6. From Your Favourite Sky
7. Life In A Day
8. This House Is Haunted
9. Proof
10. Strange Without You
11. Coincidence

In short this is just over 34 minutes of class song-writing you really should have in your home.

BBC Radio 1 John Peel Sessions is available now from Skinny Dog Records by arrangement with BBC Music.

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