THE GRUBBY MITTS THE POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP TOUR MONDAY 28 JULY @ THE CATHOLIC CLUB QUEEN STREET, BLACKPOOL, FY1 1PU (NEXT TO GRUNDY ART GALLERY) DOORS AT 7PM TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE HERE WITH LOCAL SUPPORT FROM TRIKILITOPS This Summer artist Andy Holden and his band The Grubby Mitts will tour the UK performing only at artist-run spaces. Tickets for the shows will be available with a pre-order of the debut album for £7 and as stand alone 'pay-what-you-can' tickets. Tickets will also be available on the door. The band will use the form of the rock tour as a way of curating a series of events exploring the concept of friendship, and will be performing live a body of music they have been writing and recording for the last seven years. The music is described as post-MI!MS: short loops, repeated phrases, post-everything, and non-hierarchical; a delicate balance of pessimism and optimism, irony and sincerity, electronics and melody, art and pop. The band perform with numerous objects, such as a marble, alongside a more traditional band line-up of guitars, drums, samplers, keyboards, and saxophone. For this tour Andy Holden's video projections will be combined with new projections by a selection of artists who are linked to the spaces in which the band will perform. For each event a designer has been commissioned to create a new poster, which will provide part of the archive of the project. The band will play nine artist-run spaces around the country, linking these together for the first time and transforming each space into part concert venue, part exhibition; with banners, posters, projections and specially selected support acts. The tour will be filmed as the basis of a new video work by Holden, also provisionally titled The Politics of Friendship. To celebrate the announcement of the tour the band are giving away a free MP3, a re-mastered version of their debut single, To a Friend's House the Way is Never Long. There will be a new single and album released to coincide with the tour. Free download: https://soundcloud.com/losttoysrecords/to-a-friends-house-the-way-is-never-long “a thoughtscursion... oddly moving and hypnotic... only a churl could object”, - Drowned in Sound ''...Wonderfully sad, with huge conviction and emotion”, “Grubby Mitts, if your listening, I’m sad to break this to you, although I suspect you already know, but Grubby Mitts is not a name I'm going to be seeing atop the hoardings of Brixton Academy one of these days, or the Manchester M.E.N Arena, or even the Glasgow Barrowlands... but I do very much like this record." - Steve Lamacq BBC 6 Music