Staking their claim

Forget your Readings and your Glastonburys – the best little knees-up on the prairie is the Truck festival, which takes place on Hill Farm, Steventon, in Oxford every summer. Never heard of it? That’s okay, it’s more of a low-key, unassuming little indie bash, than an incredible spectacular sprawling extravaganza, and I mention it only because the man behind it, Robin Bennett,is also the co-instigator of Goldrush, a band who have come to the attention of hotpress, courtesy of a singular double a-sided single ‘Same Picture/No Change Given’, which is possessed of a delicate amber-tinged sound, that they describe as “pastoral and spacious”. Quite.

Robin is also the founder of Truck Records, that name, please note, inspired by the Kris Kristofferson road movie, Convoy, and which includes Black Nielson, Four Storeys and The Stars of Track and Field on its artists roster. As the man tells it, Goldrush started life three years ago when Robin and his brother Joe formed an outfit named Whispering Bob, so-called after the husky Old Grey Whistle Test presenter Bob Harris, the “only local celebrity” from their hometown of Didcot. Also involved at this stage was the band’s “wizard of weird noises” Joe Jef: “In the very early days we wrote and recorded an album’s worth of material, but ended up scrapping half of it and releasing the best tracks as a mini-album , Another Fine Mess.”

Whispering Bob recruited G and youngest member Garo to fill out the sound for live shows a year ago. “We realised that the sound had changed and it was basically becoming a different band, so we renamed ourselves Goldrush, ” Robin says.

Proceeding with his tale, he recalls, “After hanging around for a while, waiting for people to give us money, we got bored and decided to do it ourselves, on our own label. We’ve set up a home studio on our mate Alan’s farm (also the location of the Truck festival). We’re recording stuff and working on it through the computer. Not that technology can be trusted – a song we recorded yesterday was accidentally wiped off the computer, so we’re gonna have to do it all over again,” he groans. “We’re basically producing it ourselves with a bit of help from our friend Phil Vinyl who has worked with Placebo and Gene. Then we’re plotting a limited release EP and a few singles to build up interest this year before we put out a debut album.”

Look forward to it, and if you fancy a foretaste as well as a nice day out in the country, The Truck Festival, established in 1998 and, in past years, featuring bands such as The Pecadilloes, Murray the Hump, The Unbelievable Truth and The Blue Aeroplanes, is set to happen this year around 21st-22nd July. There’ll be gold in them there hills, I guarantee you.