Advice to those people trying to get featured on a blog (not just 17 Seconds): try and do it with something interesting in the initial e-mail.

Safe Barracks simply put ‘Shine Your Shoes?’ in the subject box. They also said that if featured, they promised to disclose one fantastic joke. If it’s a good write up, they would up that to two jokes.

Well, as well as offering the possibility of jokes (how could I refuse that?), Safe Barracks are an Irish-Iranian project based in Hackney, East London. They write, perform and produce what they call (rightly) cinematic pop in their own studio; combining orchestral elements with big beats, synths and vocals. They are Kaveh Ayati and Patrick O’ Keeffe, I am not going to assume which is Irish and which is Iranian, that would lead me open to accusations of stereotyping. Although you may be interested to learn that according to their Soundcloud Kaveh was raised by wolves in the mountains of Iran. While learning to howl, he found his life path in music. Patrick heard these howls. He trekked many days and nights across deserts and ice and found Kaveh, in a cave, shredding on the bass.” It is also possible this is not the truth, but it is possible that this is more exciting than the truth (By the way, the description abut how Belle & Sebastian came together on the back of Tigermilk is fictitions. Stevie Jackson told me>)

There are five tracks on their soundcloud page at the moment, all of which can be downloaded. They are working on a new album, which they hope to release in late May or early June.

Check them out:

More tunes can be found here at their Soundcloud

…and assuming they are fit for human consumption, I will share their jokes with you, dear reader(s)!