King Of Spain

King of Spain are a five-piece from Balham (famously dubbed 'Gateway to the South' by Peter Sellers), South London. After years of sending home-recorded demos of varying degrees of quality to anyone who'd listen, their debut album 'Battleships & Aeroplanes' was released in 2008 on Oxford's pioneering Shifty Disco label. Recorded on a dairy farm near the Oxfordshire village of Steventon, the record was received by the media with a mixture of delight, consternation, confusion and downright anger.
NME loved it, Artrocker did not. Album track 'Bacon' was selected by William Ravenscroft (son of the late, great John Peel) as one of his gems of 2008, and received airplay on the legendary Tom Robinson's BBC6 radio show. Once a clean edit had been hurriedly produced to remove a particularly offensive swear word, Tom also took to spinning live favourite 'Menagerie'. Last year the band returned to the cow shed to beach some fresh tunes, and begin the process of recording Album Numero Deux with long-suffering producer/engineer Rowland Prytherch (a.k.a. Badger), to be released sometime in 2011 when they get round to finishing the bugger.
King of Spain run 'flux=rad', an occasional showcase of lo-fi and alternative music that usually happens at their spiritual home, the 12 Bar Club in Soho, and sometimes at the Notting Hill Arts Club in, err, Notting Hill. They also play gigs in places from Berlin to Bournemouth, but can be pretty much persuaded to go anywhere given the promise of beer and/or food.
'BATTLESHIPS AND AEROPLANES'