- 20
- 11
- 2017
- 07.30
- pm
- Ballroom
DHP Presents Amusement Parks On Fire Featuring Misty Coast
- £10
- Buy Tickets
Amusement Parks On Fire first came to prominence in 2004 with the release of the eponymous debut
album, conceived and consummated by founder Michael Feerick and phonically actualised on a shoestring
with Nottingham cohabitant Daniel Knowles. Issued on Geoff Barrow (of Portishead)’s Invada label, it was
described by the NME periodical as ‘hedonistic teenage genius’.
A live line-up was essentially preformed and extensively performed. The unit then retreated to Sigur Rós’
private swimming-pool sanctuary Sundlaugin in Álafoss, Iceland to complete the venturesome sophomore
release ‘Out Of The Angeles’, during which time they experimented with sleep, food and sunlight
deprivation at the insistence of V2 Records.
After several years of international incidence the band crash-landed in Los Angeles in 2009 to make ‘Road
Eyes’ with producers Michael Patterson (Beck, NIN) and Nicolas Jodoin (Arcade Fire, BRMC). Again
inspired by the locale, the collection was intended as ‘a skewed Californian contemporary-classical’ with
Alternative Press characterising it as ‘sun-drenched, challenging and gratifying… a near-perfect album’.
Initially envisaged as a much longer, expansive volume, the record is now newly available to purchase and
stream online as a ‘deluxe’ edition, appended with a second ‘disc’ of nine unreleased cuts and curios but,
due to the inferior and essentially theoretical nature of the digital release model, no intrinsic or tangible
vessel to verify that the work explicitly exists.
Besides brief excursions in western Europe and occasional American acoustic revues, this appearance
tour marks the outfit’s first since their feasibly-final performance in 2010, open-air in Echo Park, California,
where a ceremonial blood-letting was staged and after which most of the group’s equipment was
destroyed.