Glass Ankle are a fairly new band from Manchester who caught our attention with some fantastic online songs and an appearance at this year’s marvelous Postcards From Manchester Festival. When arranging the session, they suggested Samsi restaurant on Whitworth street, which made the perfect location to capture their Japanese influenced folk sound. Beautiful!
Glass Ankle were brought together by songwriter, Greg Jackson who had a burning desire to play his songs with a band .
The name “Glass Ankle” comes from the reccurring football injury Greg continues to endure.
Between the 25th June 2008 and 6th May 2009, Greg decided to give life in Japan a try. Whilst there he wrote a lot of songs on his travel guitar, drawing inspiration from his experiences in a culture and landscape contrasting to that which he grew up with. Demos of some of these songs were recorded in Japan with a BOSS MicroBR 4-Track and later completed in the UK, again using the MicroBR to retain their unique, lo-Fi character. They released their first E.P., entitled “If You’ve Been There” on the 19th October 2009 and received high praise; winning demo of the week from manchestermusic.co.uk and achieving 8/10 in Whisperin’ and Hollerin’ magazine. While Japanese influence continues to be present in their current batch of songs they are continually writing and moving forward exploring new and contrasting lyrical themes.
Live, Glass Ankle comprise of Greg on vocals, guitar and harmonica, Stu on bass, and Chika on vocals drums, cajon or suitcase, depending on the song and the venue! Greg knows Stu from playing in other bands based in Manchester such as Low Risers and Homegrown Effect. Chika met Greg in September 2009 when he enrolled on her Japanese course, however it wasn’t until a couple of months later that they realised they were both musicians and decided to collaborate.
They are currently gigging regularly in and around Manchester and gaining a reputation for their dangerously catchy, melodic and imaginative songs. A tour of Japan is also on the cards for 2011. New recordings are close to being finished and a new E.P. due to be released this year.
[...] music from: Hammers And And And Oberhofer* Young Brtish Artist* Brown Brogues* Ghost Saddles* Glass Ankle* Stealing Sheep Mammal Club [...]
This band should be signed up. Catchy rythms and vocals. They are deserving of a wider audience to share their musical narrative.