+ Mojo Fury

Their new album 'Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up' has received rave reviews in the press recently!!

Kerrang - 4/5

NME 8/10

One of the UK’s true innovators, Oceansize have carved a unique place for themselves in the music scene. Previous albums “Effloresce, “Everyone Into Position” and “Frames”, recent DVD “Feed To Feed” and a series of EP’s have been hugely critically acclaimed. This acclaim, in part recognition that Oceansize look to do things differently to the mainstream. The sound is progressive but never forgets the importance of good songs. Oceansize are a hugely accomplished live act – supporting acts as diverse as Porcupine Tree, Coheed & Cambria, Smashing Pumpkins and Biffy Clyro in addition to sold out headline shows.

Manchester’s very own prog/experimental rock band Oceansize formed back in 1998 whilst members were still at college. In 1999 they released the first of a handful of EP’s, titled Amputee followed shortly by 2001’s A Very Still Movement and 2002’s Relapse. All three EP’s featured tracks which would later be re-worked and re-recorded for their debut album.

Effloresce; Oceansize’s debut album for Beggar’s Banquet saw its release in September 2003. The album spawned the singles and subsequent music videos for ‘Catalyst’, ‘One Day All This Could Be Yours’ and ‘Remember Where You Are’. The piano line playing on track nine, ‘Unravel’, is an excerpt of the second piece ‘Le Gibet’, from Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. Effloresce achieved favourable criticism with both fans and critics alike.

The band’s second album Everyone Into Position was released in September 2005, also on Beggar’s Banquet. The track ‘Music For A Nurse’ was used in an ad campaign for Orange, whilst ‘Meredith’ was used in an episode of The OC, which aided the band in garnering new fans far and wide.

The album was well received; critic Jeremy Chick praised the album, writing “…songs seeping into each other, the palpable sense of drama and sounds that will haunt you forever in your dreams. I hate to pander to the US vs. UK debate but you can’t deny Oceansize are living proof that we have some very special bands over here; making music that is not only thought provoking; but genre defying, original and mind-blowingly amazing!”

Everyone Into Position marked the final appearance of bassist Jon Ellis. Shortly after the album’s release the band and Ellis parted ways. Thankfully, they found an ideal replacement in Steve Hodson who was already a member of the Oceansize side-project Kong and also a drummer in Capulet.

After the release of the sophomore Oceansize decided to end their relationship with Beggar’s Banquet and seek out a new deal which would better support the band in terms of promotion and financial backing for international touring.

Their third album Frames was released in October 2007 on Superball Music (home of …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Pure Reason Revolution and The Amber Light) Artwork for the album was produced by Robin Finck (NIN, Guns ‘N’ Roses) Unlike the previous two studio albums, Frames took on a far more thematic approach, with an obvious stylistic approach that focussed on quality over quantity.

Lead vocalist Mike Vennart spoke of the album – “The last album was all over the place with so many different styles and moods, whereas I think these songs know each other. It was a liberating experience making this record, because to be quite honest, we didn’t care what people thought of it. We were very insular, doing it six days a week and indulging ourselves, and I think that means it’s not contrived, it’s a lot more us than we’ve done before. On our second album, we did that classic thing that every band seems to do – try to sanitise who we are to make a bid for airplay and try and trim everything down so it’s nice and concise. I think that worked for some of the songs, but there was a couple of singles that didn’t really suit us. The fans didn’t like them and they didn’t get played on the radio anyway! So when we sat down to write this one, the only thing we said was ‘lets not make any singles!”

Recently, the band supported Sydney band Cog on a national tour of Australia. Also, in August they played the Sonisphere festival at Knebworth and supported Faith No More. September 2009 saw the release of Feed To Feed – a live box set limited to 5000 copies.

In 2009 the band released a new EP titled Home and Minor. On the EP, Vennart has explained that the band have taken a stylistic approach on the record: “There’s no big blast beats, no metal, there’s no riffs, there’s no ‘loud loud’ on it. The whole EP is a more-gentle affair. There’s stuff on it like ‘Music For A Nurse’ (Everyone Into Position 2005) that sorta stuff… It certainly sounds like us, but it is a bit different”. Vennart added that ‘the idea of this more chilled EP is something that we’ve been thinking about way before we got signed. It would be nice to be able to do different albums and EP’s, with different flavours. And we thought about how the second album was quite scattered, with a million different styles on it and I think that turned a lot of people off in some ways. So we thought if it’s an EP, let’s just do something that is one flavour, rather than try and pull in all these different colours into it and freak everybody out, because it’s not going to work for thirty minutes”.

According to the band’s official website, the band have completed the recording of their fourth full-length album, which is titled Self Preserved While the Bodies Float Up. Guitarist Gambler spoke of the album stating: “most of the songs are shorter, more concise. We didn’t set out to write shorter songs, it just happened; we didn’t feel the need to drag them out and elaborate on them any further than necessary. I think we’ve been tarred with the ‘oh-they-write-long-proggy-songs’ brush so I think a few people will be quite surprised”. The album is scheduled for a September release.

Experience Oceansize live at Manchester Academy 2 on Monday 15th November.