In a world first for a Palmerston North rock band, the Bing Turkby Ensemble are releasing a concept album, and a set of collectable cards!
The stunning artwork was created by Hayden Lauridsen of Dirt Box Charlie.
The CD booklet has illustrations plus the complete script of "Summon Forth the Mangonel" so you can read along as you listen.
Plus you'll get a set of four collectable cards, depicting the members of the BTE and their manager Jim Keltnenhausen, along with their statistics, special weapons, and/or favourite colour.
Welcome to Castle Turkby, the greatest feat of engineering on the Xanthrian plain. Many months have we laboured, to prepare for your coming. The band's wizard manager, Jim Keltnenhausen, did cause us to go forth unto the realm of Xanthros, there to seek the fabled Sword of Xanthros and glean great powers, and then come back and make him a lot of cash.
Take your honoured place by the fire, drink deep of the Xanthrian mead, nibble on a vegetarian sausage, and listen to the minstrels, for they telleth of our journey.
The minstrels you will hear on this album are:
Bing Turkby – rowdy geetar, yelling, accordion, sax, ukulele, master of Sleipnir the 8-legged horse, slayer of the philosophical wishy-washiness, favourite colour: blue.
MacDeth – bass, ukulele, the clap of thunder, growling like a demon in torment, taunter of the feckless, wizard level five, master of the keys, the scroll and the scrubbing brush.
Slapskins McBOOOM – drums, computery stuff, ukulele, clapping heartily with good cheer, knower of the slightly arcane, swordmage triumphant, diviner of the bottomless depths wherein dwell the sacred secrets.
Tyrone T. Blowhard – sax, beastmaster, keeper of the werecats, bane of the afternoon sleepiness, avenger of the people whose house got burned down when last the demon wizards did visit town.
A note from Bing:
Some of these songs (Menage Ottawa, Geomorphic Immunity...) were inspired by the spines of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I blew the dust off a full set in Castle Xanthros' Library one day, and I noticed that each volume had examples of words on their spines. So the volume that went from Un to Zo was labelled United – Zoroastrianism. I thought that was pretty cool so I wrote down all the word pairs and made songs out of them. So just in case you're wondering why some of them are a little weird, it's because of an encyclopedia.
For you literary types, Bing has written a book to accompany the album. It's a 20,000-word action/fantasy/comedy/stupidity novelette called"Tour Trouble", featuring the BTE members and sundry henchmen, mages and bakers. See a preview here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFohHJL_dcw
Purchase your copy here: http://amzn.to/qnB3kF, or here: http://bit.ly/qODqdR
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