Cajun Dance Party were a five-piece band based in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, England. They originally consisted of Robbie Stern, Max Bloom, Daniel Blumberg, Will Vignoles, and Vicky Freund. Blumberg and Bloom left the band in 2009 to form the band Yuck, while other members of the band went to university. Freund now performs with the band TML. No split was ever officially announced.

Biography

The band came into being when guitarist Robbie Stern invited Daniel Blumberg (vocals), Max Bloom (bass guitar), William Vignoles (drums) and Vicky Freund (keys) to start playing together, originally to participate in their school 'battle of the bands' in 2005 at

University College School ("Slowly but surely") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Mark Beard , r_head_label = , r_he ...

, in the same year as

Bombay Bicycle Club Bombay Bicycle Club are an English indie rock band from Crouch End, London, consisting of Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl, Suren de Saram, and Ed Nash. They are guitar-fronted and have experimented with different genres, including folk, electro ...

. In their first few band practices, the 15-year-olds began working on their first four songs, "The Next Untouchable", "Colourful Life", "Amylase" and "Buttercups", which were recorded as demos and submitted to their Myspace site shortly after. The band played their first few shows at the West London all ages club night 'Way Out West', performing in the bar beneath Brentford FC football stadium. Way Out West was well known for putting on many up and coming bands such as Jamie T, Late of the Pier, Video Nasties, The More Assured and

Laura Marling Laura Beatrice Marling (born 1 February 1990) is a British folk singer-songwriter. She won the Brit Award for Best British Female Solo Artist at the 2011 Brit Awards and was nominated for the same award at the 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 Brit Aw ...

. The organiser of the event, Keith Anderson, began to manage the band shortly after. Their first single, "The Next Untouchable", was released on Anderson's record label as a

limited edition The terms special edition, limited edition, and variants such as deluxe edition, or collector's edition, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints, r ...

7" single, with 500 copies being put into production. Cajun Dance Party's debut album was entitled '' The Colourful Life'', and released in April 2008. The band recorded the album sessions with

Bernard Butler Bernard Joseph Butler (born 1 May 1970) is an English musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the first guitarist with Suede, until his departure in 1994. He has been hailed by some critics as the greatest guitarist of hi ...

at the recording studio, West Heath Yard, owned by

Edwyn Collins Edwyn Stephen Collins (born 23 August 1959) is a Scottish musician, producer and record label owner from Edinburgh, Scotland. Collins was the lead singer for the 1980s post-punk band Orange Juice, which he co-founded. After the group split in ...

. West Heath Yard was also a music industry spoof which aired for a short while on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

in 1999, The album consisted of nine tracks, with singles from the album including "Colourful Life", "The Race", and "Amylase". The album was given 4/5 in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''. The band made many festival appearances in the UK and abroad, performing at such festivals as Reading and Leeds,

Glastonbury Glastonbury (, ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbur ...

Oxegen Oxegen was a music festival in Ireland, first held from 2004–2011 as a rock and pop festival and again in 2013 with dance and chart acts only. The event was regularly cited as Ireland's biggest music festival, and, by 2009, it was being ci ...

T in the Park T in the Park festival was a major Scottish music festival that was held annually from 1994 to 2016. It was named after its main sponsor, Tennents. The event was held at Strathclyde Park, Lanarkshire, until 1996. It then moved to the disused B ...

Underage Festival The Underage Festival was a music festival in Victoria Park, London that was open only to those between 13 and 17. The festival took place at the beginning of August each year. There were five main stages: the Converse Century Main Stage, the ...

Camden Crawl Camden Crawl was a music festival in Camden, London, which first appeared in 1995 and then was held annually from 2005 to 2014. Overview Rather than a single venue, Camden Crawl operated at multiple venues simultaneously, with different acts tak ...

, the

Summer Sonic Festival The , also known as Supersonic, is an annual two- or three-day rock festival held at the same time in Osaka and Chiba, Japan. The majority of the bands playing in Osaka the first day go to Chiba the following day and vice versa. The line-up co ...

in Japan and the ''

Les Inrocks ''Les Inrockuptibles'' () is a French cultural magazine. Started as a monthly magazine in 1986, it became weekly in 1995. Now it is a monthly again, since 2021. In the beginning, rock music was the magazine's primary focus, though every issue in ...

'' tour in France. Since the end of the band, Stern has become a barrister at Matrix Chambers, Vignoles works as a manager for the English Touring Orchestra, Freund remains involved in music production and sound engineering, and Blumberg is an artist and musician.

Discography

Albums

* '' The Colourful Life'' (2008)

Singles

* "The Next Untouchable" * "Amylase" * "The Race" * "Colourful Life"

References

External links

Daily Music Guide Colourful Life review

Live review The Point, Cardiff
{{Authority control British indie rock groups Musical groups established in 2005 XL Recordings artists