After playing a gig virtually every night through May and the end of April, The Others are cutting down on live shows to concentrate on writing new songs.

NEW SINGLE:
On Friday June 5th we will be going into the studio to record two tracks, Psycho Vision and In The Background, one of which will be released as a FREEEEEE download only single via Playlouder.com

Watch The Others online:

Xfm Xposure night at The Barfly is here
While you can watch our gig on a tube train here, or via NME.com here.

Here’s some more press; recent tour reviews, a few more single reviews our recent NME features and some interviews:

From NME (week ending 5th June):
&pm, Saturday May 22, Hammersmith underground station, west London.

One hundred crazed fans of rock’n’roll agitators The Others hijacked a tube train as the craze for guerrilla gigging reached new heights. Assembling after a text message tip-off, members of the band’s devoted fan faction, the ’853 Kamikaze Stagediving Squad’, packed into a carriage. The band played a 30-minute set through portable speakers while singer Dominic Masters sang through a megaphone - to the exasperation of the helplass British Transport Police. Piling off the Hammersmith and City Line train at Liverpool Street, the fans then stormed the station and into history. “It’s pure do-it-yourself, we’re not trying to be clever,” Masters told NME. And as if that wasn’t punk rock enough, he added: “The only thing I’m worried about is that not everybody can afford the tube fare.” ’For The Poor’, indeed.

From Poptones.co.uk:
This is the New London Underground:
The Others Take to the Tube

Have you ever taken the London tube? You are either on it during rush-hour with people packed upon people, pressed up - face-to-face, unnaturally and intimately close to complete strangers, either there is no air or it is polluted with stale-coffee-smelling breath until you spill out into the streets like ants-in-a-farm.
Or it is the dead silence of all-other-times. An eerie silence pervades - like an unspoken rule, that if you talk -- you will be regarded with paranoia and suspicion. A silence which kills the soul. Like, once you enter into the automatic tube doors, you forsake humanity, in place of an android palette of emotions.
These are all symptoms of Big-City-Living.
Once when I was taking the tube to Brixton – a crackhead had gotten onto the bus and proceeded to take off her clothes and perform acrobatic manoeuvres on the passenger bars. No one said a word. No one looked. It is the unspoken etiquette of the tube to act as if all-is-normal when all-is-not.
But it does makes you wonder: what if it was broken? What if you started to push the boundaries. What if you had a teenage riot on the tube? What if you started to stage-dive over passengers? What if you heard music? What if you started to make the tube fun?
When The Others played their gig on the tube last weekend – they broke the rules of etiquette. They made the tube fun.
O.K., let me say this again, a gig on a tube.
It was the abandonment of the musicians' communication 'protocols' and 'regulations' and ability to play games that have that have now officially set them apart from the rest of the indie-street urchins that regularly play clubs and not bloody tubes.
The Others have joined the prankster club. An exclusive club: Spiritualised playing on top of the CN Tower "the highest show on earth", Sex Pistols playing on the Thames during the ‘77 Jubilee, Lightning Bolt playing on the back of a truck with their fans following on bikes, Beachbuggy, in a van on the street in Leeds, outside a Pavement gig and the Rephlex Parties in Aldwych Tube Station. And of course, the umpteenth impromptu events staged by Pete Libertine and Baby Shambles.
Why did they join this club?
They pulled a situationist prank.
And as soon as the gig ended, the reports of what occurred flooded through the internet.
"Allo allo, I'm back early from the tube gig. Just thought I'd let you know stuff that happened. Left The George about 7.45, proceeded onto the eastbound platform. Had to wait for the amps to arrive so we let one train go, but then all crammed into a carriage on another platform. And then the fun began! Although I was near the back, it was a great atmosphere, 'specially from the 853 (but of course). British Transport Police boarded the carriage behind us at a quite early stage but proceeded to do bugger all. So off we all got at Liverpool St. As the band left the train, there was much rejoicing (not least from Underground staff)".
And so now, The Others; Poptones very own boy-band, have staged their very own electronic ‘68 French Paris student-revolution of situationism to the underground of London. Situationism is an idea about the city and how most people tend not to stray outside a triangle formed by their place of work/education. And you pull ‘situations' as an electric shock to wake people up from their big-city sleep and force them, for awhile, out of their work/commute/home grooves with this symbolic, city-fed, forced weirdness.
Right..
So, is it a "Grand Bombastic Unreachable High Art Impulse", as opposed to a bunch of radical anti-social nihilistic kids having-a-laugh and knees-up on a tube?
Whatever it is – or was - it is better than the camp-monstrosity careerism of bubble-gum popsters of Busted, The Darkness and McFly. And helluvalotmorefun....

From The Independent - 28 May 2004
The Others: The kids are all right
London, Saturday night. Teenagers are crowd-surfing down the aisle of a moving Tube train. Two carriages have just been commandeered by 200 fans of The Others, who are somewhere at the front playing a gig, announced over the internet hours earlier. The crowd-surfers are the self-styled 853 Division, the commandos of The Others' private army.
The Others are signed to Alan McGee's Poptones label, have been dubbed "the most worshipped new band in Britain" by NME, and have released one single, "This Is for the Poor", which just missed the Top 40 last Sunday. It is a good, class-conscious anthem, but it doesn't explain the band's fervent fan base. That has more to do with what happens after the gig, when singer Dominic Masters, 26, leads us through the streets to a pub near his East End home for an impromptu after-show party. As usual, fans too young to travel home alone sleep at his flat in their dozens. Others arrange house shares between themselves. Masters has also persuaded a promoter to let underage fans into clubs after hours, so no one has to be left out.
In the two years that The Others have existed, they have built an innocent, idealistic society around themselves. Playing music a world away from corporate fame and fortune, to hardcore fans whom Masters knows by name, the band's shambolic gigs are an excuse for exuberant teenage bonding.
"I know they're quite basic and everything," one teenage girl tells me, standing on a Tube seat to glimpse some action, "but what more do you want? They're not playing for the recognition. It's like they're playing for you." Now that the recognition is coming, of course, the fragile, private world The Others have built is in danger of dilution. But when I meet Masters, all that worries him is how to keep his ideals intact.
"What happens when there's too many people to care for?" he wonders. "Because partying with the audience, spending time together and not being on a different level is important. If they're putting an investment into your life, you should try and give as much of your life to them. And if it grows like it might, I've got to work out better ways to make sure that there is still equality, so that no one feels excluded."
The Others' movement seems mostly about fun, and tiny, intoxicating acts of rebellion - like the boy who illegally lights a cigarette during the Tube takeover. But Masters does detect some shared values. "I've got a boyfriend, see, called Johann," he shyly admits. "At first, when the band was going off, I didn't know what our appeal would be. When the heterosexual, Oasis kind of kids supporting us found out I had a boyfriend, I thought there might be some kind of backlash. But nothing was ever said. When we socialise, there are loads of gay kids, some Asian kids, some black kids, some real south Londoners, and kids up from Hertfordshire. We get the kids no one else wants."
The notion that The Others are a home for the excluded is emphasised by "This Is for the Poor", a calling card specifically rejecting the wealthy. The glut of posh girls merrily moshing to it on the Tube therefore leaves Masters utterly nonplussed. "This is a contentious issue," he says, brow furrowing. "I wrote 'This Is for the Poor' genuinely for my own social class. I can't say that it's an inclusive song. I find it hard to understand how a middle-class kid could go through the pain or troubles that a lot of working-class kids have to, just to leave home. There is this divide, and I wanted to write for people like me."
Masters's roots are in Somerset, the son of a strong mother who sold marijuana to get by and a welder father who left when he was four. When he got out at 18, to study politics in London, he was soon dealing to students himself before "getting a bit carried away", and quitting just in time. He was married then, too, to an Israeli girl in a New Romantic group. For a while, he lived the conventional life, and dreamed of joining the Civil Service. Only when that hope was dashed, and the loving cocoon of his marriage collapsed, did he think of rock'n'roll. Becoming a face on London's underground rock scene, he pretended to be in a band. When the Portuguese rockers The Parkinsons called his bluff by offering him a gig, he formed The Others just in time to play. The Parkinsons took the fledglings "under their wing", then The Libertines "adopted us". It's a fan's story, more than a star's.
The cloud on the horizon remains the limits that Masters may one day find to his vision of an inclusive rock'n'roll community, when not every fan who jumps on stage can be trusted, or named. But that won't stop him trying. "To give people a good time - I think that's a good quality," he muses. "It's just, how long can you give them a good time for? After the concert and the sleepovers, when it goes back to normal life - that's when you can't keep looking after them. That's why we should try and build something out of this, so that if it does only last for a few years, we can at least forge a community centre out of it, or a youth club, or a pub.
"Maybe a pub," he decides. "Because it'll take two years to get the money together - and by then, all our fans will be old enough to drink..."
'This Is for the Poor' is out now on Poptones
Source: Independent 28/05/04

Interviews:
Teletext - Planet Sound

“This is for the poor, and not you rich kids.” A wonderful sloganeering chorus for a debut single, but one that’s been ignored by enough rich fans of The Others who can afford to buy the single and propel it towards the Top 40.
Quite right to as TIFTP heralds a band of deviants who are set to unite the dispossessed.
Singer Dominic Masters and bassist Johnny Others tell all.1/8

******

As their name implies, The Others are outsiders united together. Even their origins are purely accidental.
“I knew The Parkinsons from going clubbing,” recalls Dominic Masters. “They offered me a support slot. I said yes, only I didn’t have a band.” The Others was the first name I thought of.
The gig was in a fortnight. James I knew from my last band, he said he could find a bassist, then we went through three drummers in a week.”2/8

******

The Others initially only formed for a one-off gig supporting the Parkinsons
“It went really well,“ recalls bassist Johnny. “So we played another gig, and then another…“ Was there a point when they realised they were a proper band? “Mm, hasn’t happened yet.“
“We’re from completely different backgrounds, different parts of England - Somerset, Brighton, Manchester - that were a mess. There’s four very different personalities in the band.“3/8

******

A band who appeal to outsiders, The Others’ accidental origins mean they feel that way with each other.
“We’re not friends,” admits singer Dominic. “We’re a ragtag bunch. Our drummer’s like Animal from The Muppets, our bassist looks like Robert Smith. We don’t even fit in our own band.”
Bassist Johnny adds: “I play our single and I think ’What IS this?’ There are four people playing four different songs. It works, but it shouldn’t.” 4/8

******

Helping to unite alienated people, The Others have already garnered their own devotees, The 853 division, named after a London street sign, complete with their own website at 853.co.uk.
“Dominic invites people back to his flat for parties after gigs,” explains bassist Johnny Others.
“If you see a band, it follows you have something in common with them. The least we can do is give something back, help create a community.”5/8

******

This Is For The Poor says it’s “not for you rich kids,” so are The Others out to exclude anyone from their fanbase?
“There’s nothing romantic about being an underachieving indie band,” Johnny Others counters. “I hate the ‘If others like it it’s a bonus’ attitude.”
Dominic Masters muses: “I wrote that for people of my class. I went through so much strife just to get here. I’m sure I’m not alone, it’s for anyone out there who’s been through what I have.”6/8

******

A band for outsiders, The Others felt isolated from childhood.
“I had a …different background,” says Dominic Masters. “I scraped into London Guildhall Uni, then spent the first 18 months dealing drugs. I’d promised the tutors I’d get a 2:1 in politics, so I knocked off the dealing.
“I lived near a train track, and the noise of the trains meant I couldn’t focus in the day. I studied midnight to 6am - and I got my 2:1” 7/8

******

The Others are currently on a tour of venues near stations at the extreme ends of lines on the London Tube.
“I like conceptual bands like British Sea Power, “says bassist Johnny. “Ones who think beyond being just another indie band. So I like us to play where people don’t normally go.”
Singer Dominic adds: “People have to travel to see you in town. We’re coming to the suburbs to see them instead. You have to make an effort, don’t you?”8/8

******

More Single Reviews
From Amazon.co.uk

Avg. Customer Review: ?

?This is for Everyone, May 18, 2004
Reviewer: billy_bilo from Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire United Kingdom


This single is a marvellous debut by popular London band The Others. Their sound is a mix of the best of 77 punk and early Blur. Title song 'This is for the poor' is certainly not just for the poor. It is for anyone who appreciates good music. The Others are from the same breed as The Libertines and Razorlight. The second track on the CD, 'How I nearly Lost You' is good enough to be a single in its own right. It sounds like Joy Division meets Jilted John. Lead singer Dominic Masters looks about 12 but the passion he puts into the songs on this CD proves he is much more mature than he looks. Watch out cos The Others aren't just here to make up the numbers!

The Others are the Children of the Clash!, April 28, 2004
Reviewer: retrolover


I just got this in for the University paper that I review singles for andwell, McGee has signed more Children of the Clash and The Libertines!
Rock'n'roll alienation. Loneliness. Poverty. All the truly great songsare drenched in the stuff. The Others 'This is for the Poor' is a teenagetrash anthem. Yes. AN ANTHEM. In that great accidental tradition of the true Anthem: disagreement sloganeering, cathartic, catchy-as-fuck andpsychotically gleeful as it wanders in the muck of London withhands-in-pockets, heads down and wary. Like any true outsider in London,would. And much like in 1992, when Suede - the original glam heroinpunk singer Brett Anderson wailed about '...all the love and poison ofLondon', the Others are doing the same. Only this time there is no loveonly poison in Londontown. And in doing so, "This is for the Poor"has become an answer record to that great English post-punxxx outsidertradition of The Jam - Strange Town and The Smiths - London.
With Peter Hook's lost unholy bass parts at the wrong speed it starts offominously and like a flick of a cigarette in the face, it explodes into pure '89 Jesus and Mary Chain guitar-trash heavenly violence with singerDominic Masters screaming 'This is for anyone that's left their hometown...'like the last Buzzcock: doing anything they have to do to find theirgroove until it becomes pure epiphany, and their imputed doomy darknessbecomes legitimate. And fucking fantastic.

From Playlouder.com
The Others - ­'This Is For The Poor' (Poptones)
Since forming Poptones Alan McGee’s track record has been about as good as Shergar’s, that’s after the poor bleeder got kidnapped and murdered; but The Others have a raw energy, and an agenda on their first single that’s more than admirable. “This is for all the poor, not you rich kids,” bellows the lead singer sounding like a wee cocker-ney shoeshine boy, although the rich kids probably won’t mind too much as they drive off in their porches pumping Sean Paul out of the roof. Still, it’s good to know which side we’re on from the outset.

From London Metro 17th May:
4/5
The Others have spawned a fan-flamin-tastistic angsty rabble-rouser here-the sound of proper stroppy garage rock that sounds, unlike so many of their contemporaries, as if they’ve never seen a trustfund in their lives. Marvellous.
Andrew Williams

From Manchester music.co.uk
The Others :: 17 May 2004 / Poptones / 3 Trk CD By JA
The Others have nailed down a raw sound that exploits the disjointed beat of a drum set against a punching bass line. Chanting vocals and obtuse guitars provide an intoxicating blend of Wire, ATV and the needy angst of The Chameleons. “This Is For The Poor” takes the spirit of Chelsea’s “Right To Work” and the sparse brilliance of every art.politic song pre-1979. At last there’s someone singing about something for the right people…’This Is What Is Wrong With This Town Of Ours. . .this is for every disappointment… ’ – The Others provide a genuine, reactionary cause, where love songs are dead and society needs correcting. Track 3 could be the very early Gang Of Four moshing with Jesus of Mary Chain with Mark Perry sneering over the top.
MMMM

Our NME Radar piece:
On the Radar
Britain's Most Worshipped New Band
‘They've got the craziest fans around and they haven't even released a record yet. We ask Others frontman Dominic Masters and some of their followers why they're so special."
I would never stand up and say ‘I am a leader...' mumbles Dominic Masters. ‘But I must be doing something right. I must be giving our boys something they didn't have before. Come to our gigs and you won't see the cool people, who look like their mothers were all fucked by the same person. You'll see kids that don't fit in... you'll see the others'.
The frontman with London's rising post-punk agitators The Others, whose debut single, ‘This is For the Poor' is a raging call-to-arms for the dispossessed, Dominic cuts a dishevelled figure, looking like a youthful Damon Albarn on a club 18-30 holiday in Arcadia. But it's easy to understand why he is so beloved of his fans. Like his ‘big brother' and neighbour Pete Doherty, Dominic is utterly devoted to them as they are to him. And they get pretty devoted.

‘We have this group of fans, the 853 Kamikaze Stage-Diving Square, and they're pretty hard core. They have rules: you must drink a certain amount of alcohol or take a certain amount of drugs, and it has to be full-on proper stage-diving. I saw a swan-dive into the crowd the other night...'

Dominic is also something of a class warrior with strong opinion about the ‘disgusting social climbing' antics of some of the indie scene's best known faces. ‘I don't know how rich kids - or even middle-class kids - can relate to my lyrics,' he says, before bursting into a capella version of ‘Almanac'. ‘These songs are for kids like me, the kids who couldn't afford to stay out drinking in expensive pubs, who couldn't afford the most fashionable clothes. These songs are for the working classes, for my boys.'

Comments from the fans:
Lisa, 22, Temp
Dominic is very appreciate of his fans. He'll always call you before gigs and you round for a party afterwards, but it's the music that really excites me. The gigs are always wild, and a lot of us have become friends through the band.
Andrew 18, Student
A mate of mine introduced me to them originally and I just took it from there. They're just exhilarating to watch. ‘This is For the Poor' is just so fucking catchy and cool.
Anthony, 18, Supermarket Assistant
The Others are like us - normal blokes talking about everyday things. They know what it's like being skint so they'll get us into gigs for free. I can't explain them at all, they just seem to come out of nowhere and make perfect sense.
Josh, 18, Lead Singer of the Paddingtons
My band sometimes supports them in London, and in the last six months, we've noticed the crowds getting crazier and crazier. Dominic is a great frontman, but his band as a whole just have this awesome energy in the way they look and play. ‘How I never Lost You' is a hard-on-the-back-of-the-neck-sing.'
Andy, 18, Student
Like the Libertines, The Others have a message - be who you are. They're not in it for the money, they want to do it their way. The great thing about them is that they worry about their fans more than they worry about the band.

Live Reviews:

From Teletext - Planet Sound
THE OTHERS Walthamstow Standard

Most supposed bands who consider themselves punks are lucky if they get a few people tapping their feet. The Others have mayhem in the front rows, a dozen people on stage by the end.

Yet, despite Dominic Masters’ twitchy presence or the ratty, snarling This Is For The Poor and Stanley Bowles, to pigeonhole it as punk is ludicrous.

This is for the goths, the ravers, the fey kids, the moshers, this is for the poor, the sound of the suburbs, The Streets… and this rocks. 8/10by John Earls

From Gigwise.com
Saturday 01/05/04 The Cribs, The Others, The Vagabonds @ Academy 3, Liverpool
by Will Williams More Indie Articles...
‘Axe hero’ isn’t something you could accuse The Others’ follically-challanged six-stringist of trying to be. Between his minimalist pickings and their bassist (who, conversely, seems to be wearing both Ian McCulloch and William Reid’s mid-eighties big haircuts at the same time) deftly throwing Joy Division-esque basslines into the mix, frontman Dominic Masters jumps around the stage, yowling his skinny little lungs off. This is raucous art-punk at its best, like some southerners who decided they could be The Fall but got it wrong in a brilliant way, and if new single ‘This Is For The Poor’ isn’t one of the best oddball indie rawk singles you hear all year, then there is clearly something very special brewing somewhere. Another interesting aspect of The Others, by the way, is the fact that, despite their obvious star quality, they look shit. Like, really shit. Which, whilst being bad news for photographers, can only suggest that there may be something exciting about to happen: a new generation of rock stars are spending less time on their wardrobes and more creating something you might want to listen to three months after purchasing. Are we getting over-excited? Well possibly, but stranger things have happened.

From Heathenangel.co.uk
The Others, XFM X-Posure Night @ The Barfly, Camden, 5th April

Having seen them play a disappointing set with The Libertines last month at Brixton Academy, I was a little apprehensive as to how The Others would play, and indeed be received. What I didn’t realise, however, was that there is a devoted following of Others fans, who sang every word with as much passion as the National Anthem, and declaring their love for über-quiet bassist, Robert Smith doppelganger Johnny. Perma-pissed singer Dominic, who had to help out the ever growing number of crowdsurfers, seemed to be having a great time, and songs like “Almanac” and “How I Nearly Lost You” whipped the crowd into a frenzy. By the final two tracks, the poptastic “William” and forthcoming single, the angst-ridden “This Is For The Poor”, the audience were pogoing like crazy, and by the end of the set, there was even a stage invasion.
Copyright Alex Wisgard, 2004

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