It’s been one of those years where we start out working on one thing, and end up working on MANY THINGS, all at once. Years where we don’t release an album are weird like that.
In MARCH we aired songs from our new musical ‘Paradise Rocks’, a musical that re-imagines Milton’s Paradise Lost as a low budget Hawaiian Elvis movie from 1959, on Joyzine radio (you can listen again here) http://croydonradio.com/podcast/show.php?HistoryID=e9af8323-6793-001c-faf6-2bb7fdf22fca and previewed the songs at duo/ Super Special shows in Brighton, Stuttgart, Montabaur, and Karlsruhe throughout the year.
Performing songs from a fully blown musical with just a piano, a guitar, some vocals, and a Talk Box… ( see here for what the hell that is: https://vine.co/v/hldIEX9Ym6j Thanks Keith Totp!) …is quite a feat. There are some beautiful BEAUTIFUL songs on this new musical, in which I get to do my full on Disney Princess impressions, and we’re looking forward to developing the show in 2015, by dog ARE we. Here’s a photo of Fran preparing herself for one of the parts during our first script read through… 
On the 5th March one of our favourite bands (wink wink nudge wink wink) The Thylds released ‘NATIONAL TREASURES‘, A Double A-Side featuring The Thlyds latest – recorded in prison with the support of the Youth Outreach Musical Expression Service – and the debut tune from Karen Condom and the Gash ‘ON THE BUS‘. It is of course OUTSTANDING, and both Thornton Halfwit and Karen Condom are clearly going places in 2015.
In APRIL… we spent much of it rehearsing for the MOTHERFUCKING ORCHESTRAL EXTRAVAGANZA in May… but did have time to catch The Islanders, A lo-fi musical by Amy Mason, Eddie Argos and Jim Moray, which we really, really enjoyed. https://www.facebook.com/theislandersshow
Then, IN MAY… OMGEEEE
With the brilliant and patient assistance of Martin White, we performed an ORCHESTRAL EXTRAVAGANZA with The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra which was one of the best shows we’ve ever done. It is so SO wonderful to hear the songs as you’ve always imagined them, with harmonising parts in strings and brass and woodwind. When they develop the brain chip which turns the doo-bee-doos in my head into string and brass notes, I’ll probably never leave the house again. You’re not likely to hear ‘Class’ or ‘I Used To Sing’ in the same way again, and if you weren’t there you won’t quite get the magic, but here’s a short little clip to give you some sense of what it was like… https://vine.co/v/M6g2dAL0tIY
Also in May, my mum sold up and moved away, so I had fun looking through old things of mine from when I was little Julia Indelicate. Here is the funniest primary school report I found… 
I expect I was outstanding in my field HUR HUR HUR
In JULY Simon asked on the internet if anyone wanted house shows in Germany, as we were going over anyway to visit my mum, and by golly we got THREE shows… Stuttgart, Montabaur, and Karlsruhe… We had a pretty hilarious time doing them, the food was great, the people were TOP, the shows were LONG, AND… We got to watch a fair amount of the World Cup while we were over there. Watching the German team doing so well WHILE IN GERMANY was totally bodacious. Here is a review of the Stuttgart gig, which is in German: http://www.gig-blog.net/2014/07/07/the-indelicates-05-07-2014-wohnzimmer-stuttgart/
There is a complete ‘Year of Gobbles’ video which contains all of the Vines we did with the Puppets while the World Cup was on. It is a great way of introducing yourself to the wonders/ horrors of Gobbles Hand puppets. The football ones are VERY funny (to us?) though. The ‘Don’t Look Now’ one is probably our best Vine so far…
In AUGUST we supported POG at their album launch, it’s a great GREAT album and I did some singing for the tracks I feature on on their album and Simon did some rockin’ electric guitar solos. Check it out here, it’s ace: http://pogband.co.uk
Also in August, we did as many others also did… Simon’s Ice Bucket Challenge…
Julia’s Ice Bucket Challenge…
In SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER we played full band shows with Al, Emma, Nick, and Louisa at The Rhythm Factory, 93 Feet East, and a Halloween show at Paper Dress Vintage. Everyone in the band was ace, I’m really looking forward to working with them on all the new material in 2015. For Halloween me and simon dressed up as Alice Cooper and Unity Mitford… Classic Indelicates outfits… Alas I do not have adequate photos of the rest of them, but I seem to recall a Margaret Thatcher panto costume…
AND THEN, in NOVEMBER…
…We released a VIRTUAL REALITY SINGLE for the OCULUS RIFT!
It was called… 
And as well as an A-Side experience, it has a B-Side experience… 
It is a blend of environmental storytelling, music and small-scale exploration – a proof of concept for the future of VR as a format for popular music. IT TOOK SERIOUS WORK that was WELL HARD. We’ve invented an entirely new artform…
AGAIN! 🙂
It is NEW and exciting 🙂 We went to an EXCELLENT Meetup in Brighton to try out many of the projects people are working on in VR, it was brilliant and I very nearly fell over during one of them 🙂
Here is Tom trying it out…
Here is Emma Indelicates trying it out…
Here is Simon pretending to be Cartman from South Park’s episode about the Rift… 
Here is Simon’s mum trying it out… 
And you can read about it/ download it/ find out what the hell it is HERE
http://www.indelicates.com/VR/index.html
In DECEMBER we managed only one of our Christmas shows as, due to sickness, the London one couldn’t go ahead. Hopefully we’ll reschedule…Here we are being sombre… 
We saw some good friends from the US in 2014, AND we got to eat at St John…
And we both spent much of the latter part of the year writing music for the next LP helped, largely, by listening endlessly to old ’50s and ’60s sci-fi like Ray Bradbury’s ‘Thirteen’ and ‘X-Minus One’ which, if you haven’t, you should SEEK OUT!
The Drowned Man was AMAZING.
So was The Wind Rises.
The new Ratatouille ride and area at Disneyland Paris is GORGEOUS.
We want to thank everyone who has played with us, supported us, helped arrange shows for us, helped brainstorm ideas with us, bought us coffee, helped Julia with accounts(!), been kind, been thoughtful, been smart, and spent time with us.
Have a very Happy New Year, and an excellent 2015.
Love,
xXx Julia Indelicate xXx