Steveless

Steveless performing his Radio 1 session, October 2005

Full-band Steveless at the Cherryade launch party

"John Peel's last great love" - The Guardian

Steveless is perhaps best known as the prolific, frenetic musical vision of one man, Dan Newman, whose home-made demos brought him to the attention of the late great John Peel, earning him a Peel session and constant plays on his Radio 1 show. This helped bring him to the attention of a large and very appreciative audience of fans and ongoing support from the likes of Huw Stevens and Rob Da Bank, who are big supporters of Steveless; in fact Dan recorded a Radio 1 session in late October for Huw Stevens' Radio 1 evening show. Adam Walton of Radio Wales is also a supporter and Steveless have received rave reviews from all over, from regional publications and independent online zines to nationally distributed newspapers.

Popular Music In Theory introduces the latest Steveless incarnation, a kind of 4-piece Bristol super group, featuring members of other Bristol favourites such as Big Joan and Team Brick. It's 12 short-sharp bursts of pure noisy, distortion-laden indie pop with synth bleeps aplenty and a definite sense of humour running throughout, though this is a band who clearly take making music very seriously. The album offers something for everyone: old-school Steveless fans will still find the passion, imagination, individuality and sheer visceral noise thrills of Dan's solo Steveless output, but this time the songs are imbued with more hooks, catchy tunes and oddly hummable lyrics than ever before! This was perhaps exemplified when album opener 'bored' was voted in at number #9 in the prestigious One Music Festive Fifty, receiving goodness knows how many thousands of votes.

Find out about and buy the debut full-band Steveless album, Popular Music in Theory, from our sales page. Read the glowing reviews the album has collected here!

www.steveless.co.uk

www.myspace.com/steveless

Older reviews of Steveless as both one-man-army and full band:

Steveless – a certifiable lunatic, make no bones about it, and that’s a great thing. “Garden” is one of a bazillion patented Steveless songs already out there, and showcases his art damaged brand of Beefheart-y improvisational indie stomp, a description that fails to do it justice simply because it is utterly indescribable. John Peel loved him of course.
http://www.collective-zine.co.uk/

Immediately that set finished, Steveless played an acoustic set in the annex to the bar. Playing his guitar, with a bass drum on the floor, a snare drum propped against a seat, and occassional contributions from a miniature accordian, a melodium and a kazoo, this is like the world's most skewed one-man blues band. A great, slightly twisted, punked-up Howling Wolf for the 21st century. Good songs as well - the sort of stuff you can identify with. Fab.   Rating: 9/10   Life Among Normals

STEVELESS / SYD HOWELLS – Please In The Name Of God Stop Beating My Children To Death With Gigantic Hammers (FuKu) - Ah yes, frazzled wired messed up sonic violence and cheese wire ripping at your flesh and screaming and feedback and things being hit and painful noises and DIY chaos and fractured un-hinged un-togetherness and delicate children’s lullaby songs being ripped apart and Barbie dolls with their heads bashed in by giant hammers – I like this. Hey like headbutting some hideous wheel invention, like kicking amps so the reverb screams, like shaving with jagged rusty razor blades – it’s noise, there are wrecks of tunes in there somewhere with the white noise and the zizzz and the oculating Moog-ish bits and the frantic bits and the wired bits and I’m getting a headache now, do I have to listen all the way to the end? Music to scare people with or scar people with and it’s all so hissssy and tissy and oh you would not last long if you were interrogated with this…. you would confess to all - yes, I did fly the plane….. Constant droning and violent noise and rusty metal and keyboards and shouting voices that are way down in the mix and like all the city street noise magnified a thousand times so every details penetrates. Oh did I mean to do that, the album just ended and I hit the play button again straight away… it’s all very DIY and just so right, it’s a reminder of how much we miss John Peel and being nailed up for nothing and this isn’t just random noise, well maybe it is but it does make sense, these are songs, I think they’re ‘songs’? They have tittles and breaks and vague song-like structures and weird hooting noises and industrial insects and that bit sounds like a saxophone solo with a load of distortion and some of it sounds like the blues but not really, no nothing like the blues, just noise and violence and more noise and more violence and dreaming of being in a Parisian café (with welding and clanking and drilling and….. press play again, press it, press it!   The Organ Magazine

Steveless, whose improvised, fucked up one-man-blues can't fail to win you over. Armed with broken cymbals, kazoo and added electronic bleepery, he'll oscillate wildly between a folky strum, wailing banshee guitar and delay ravaged feedback. Proper, genuine, expressive blues music with added noise!   Bristol Ticket Shop

This bloke's a one-off. Punk poet and multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, Steveless was John Peel's greatest discovery of 2004. Hailing from Swansea but resident in Bristol, his distinctive approach to vocals is backed up by a highly entertaining and largely successful attempt at playing guitar, drums and kazoo at the same time. Imagine Beefheart songs arranged by The White Stripes and performed by a ramshackle Welsh Lonnie Donnegan and you'd be none the wiser.   Club Choke

Also stepping into the breach as a fully-fledged band is Bristol-based Steveless. Now technically, Steveless is a band, not a man, but it was the prolific and frenetic solo output of Dan Newman that piques people’s interest the most, thus Dan and Steveless became inextricable. When John Peel gave shoutouts to the Steveless demos last year – one of the last things he foisted upon his listeners before his passing – people began to holla back. Dan’s primary response was to form about forty new and different bands. One of these Steveless bands features members of other Bristol rock/noise bastards like Big Joan, Team Brick and White Trash Ambition, and it’s this one which’ll be gracing Cardiff. They have a very special cover lined up for us. Let’s just say it’ll be quite a challenge to the ‘status quo’! Yes. Lesson Number One

Let's consult the checklist: profound alienation, wilful hypocrisy, hatred of other bands/people, leering braggadocio expressed with enunciation as deep and Welsh as the Valleys themselves, an unabashed literacy (see the website's nods to Plath, Ballard and Camus), and iron-clad self-belief. Steveless is the fifth Manic Street Preacher, the one jettisoned when it was decided that the kids needed their ears pampered with Next catalogue rock, not attacked with hurtling cymbals. More's the pity, but Dan Newman is no mean keeper of the flame. Venue Magazine

Rare outing for the steveless full band, a brash, quirky pathwork of Mark E Smith rambling and scattergun guitars with hints of White Stripes and Iggy Pop. Venue Magazine Ashton Court Festival review

A composite review of three seperate recordings by Steveless, one of which is a John Peel session- yep, the old sod has beaten us to the punch again. Steveless is a Welsh fella (currently in Bristol Uni) who writes distortion-destroyed and fucked up blues extrapolations lasting, typically, between one and two minutes. They're throwaway but no less great for that; if someone was going to cover the middle ground between Bob Log and the Pixies then thank God it was this guy. Buzz Magazine

The latest Steveless incarnation by maverick Bristol outsider and blues mentalist Dan Newman, the last great discovery of John Peel, the Steveless full band is a noisy pop racket playing genuine real 'songs'. Making equal use of rambling, synth squeals and the lost art of white noise, to create a mess that's scarily humable and that should make you smile and fall on the floor. Think The Fall meeting Lonnie Donnegan in a library and then shout very loudly to get some sort of an idea of the full band: Steveless. Spikey, quirky, edgey, fuzzy indie-pop. Dan has songs, attitude and a spark that draws you into his world and his music. Surpisingly tight considering this was their first gig together. A Life Among Normals

Steveless. Yet-a-bloody-gain. Went down well considering it's rather quirky music at a community festival. A bit tighter than on Friday night, they seemed to suit my mood and the festival's mood rather well. Dan took a leaf from Geisha's book by destroying a guitar at the end of the set. He's also good on stage - the best lines of the weekend went to him "Blackbud are shit. Who hates Blackbud?" and "That was a song about...me. This is a song about...me. You have to give the people what they want." Ace.   Rating: 9/10   Life Among Normals