Download Album Now (£3.95)

There’s very little doubt that Forerunner’s EP ‘Hold Your Fire’ is pushing out the boat. Having been born and raised in the musical metropolis of Brighton, the quintet have spent their lives being surrounded by a broad and varied music scene, an upbringing that is clearly reflected in their debut project.

Kicking off with the slow building ‘I Need You’ , the scene is adequately set for the EP. With Earthy acoustic guitars strumming from left right and centre, Pete Coggan’s somewhat ethereal vocals are pushed up above the rest of the mix, helping to establish an intentional sense of emptiness when the guitars drop out and all that is left is bass, a touch of drums and voice .This is met with stark contrast when the chorus kicks in and sweeps the listener off their unsuspecting feet with an ‘all guns blazing’ chord progression that sees the song through to a satisfying end.

Dynamics play an important role in cultivating Forerunner’s sound and sense of style, something that is demonstrated in the title track that comes in at number two on the set list. Comprised of a dirty, memorable guitar lick that makes frequent appearances throughout the song, a strong combo of melody and lyrics and a great range of thick and thin textures, ‘Hold Your Fire’ has all the makings of a signature song that the group are remembered by. Their ability to complement each other as a band is really brought to light in this song, with Sam Liddiard’s bass lines never conflicting with Jotham Oakley’s beats, and Pete Coggan’s vocals riding perfectly over the top of the organised chaos that is that of Forerunner’s instrumental side.

Other memorable tracks on the album include ‘Save Our Souls’, a ‘Mutemath’esque epic with droning electric guitars and intricately technical drums, and ‘Fly’, a comparatively subtle, piano based piece who’s lyrics (the repetitive use of the phrase ‘fly away’) might be slightly better suited to an easy jet advert. However, what ‘fly away’ lacks in lyrical content, is made up for in beautiful simplicity. Both of these tracks are positively oozing with Forerunner’s original sense of style.

Despite what the name might suggest, Forerunner’s EP really doesn’t hold it’s fire, and that is meant with every positive connotation. By choosing to opt out of the ‘I can’t believe it’s not a Sunday’ vibe that has become very prominent in many of today’s worship albums, forerunner have established themselves as a band that not only hold lyrical content in high regard, but strive for a quality of arrangement and dynamic prowess that both pleases the ear and begs it to take a second listen. It would be wise to keep an eye out for future projects from this quizzically, quirky quartet.

Download Album Now (£3.95)

Our band took some time out of rehearsing our usual worship numbers to play at the CCK Leader’s Party. We did a full hour set featuring some classics from MJ, Maroon 5, Stevie Wonder, Jamiroquai and more…

Was a hugely fun yet stretching experience for us. Recommend it to any band if you get the oppotunity – the discipline of learning a load of function songs beat for beat, helped us raise the game a lot. Anyways here are some videos from the rehearsals and live performance. (I got promoted/demoted to percussion)

Our good friends The 29th Chapter have released a single mainstream – Invincible. It’s an absolute tune.

They very much feel God is calling them to move into the mainstream world right now and we wanna support them as much as possible. The single was released on Monday 22nd Feb and they basically need 15000 people to buy it in the next 2 weeks to make the top 40.

Please will you stand with our brothers and support them by buying the single?

1. Buy

There are three easy ways to buy it:
iTunes £0.79
Amazon £0.69
HMV £0.79

£0.69, easy peasy – that’s peanuts. Or even better why not buy it 3 times from all three places? £2.27 in total, that’s not even a pint (all three will count towards the total). The charts close 11:30pm Saturday night so be quick. Check out their website, or facebook page for more info.

2. Make some noise…

Please can you tweet, facebook, myspace, text, email this around to anyone and everyone and get people to buy! Here’s the direct URL to the track on iTunes http://bit.ly/brNNdr

For more info check out at www.29thchapter.com
Thanks for all your help.

A series of articles on prayer written by Joel Virgo are currently being featured on The Resurgence Blog, a resource based in America and run in partnership with Mars Hill Church Seattle and the Acts 29 network.

With over 20,000 subscribed followers, the blog is a significant resource and speaks into the lives of many.

The series looks to the book of Nehemiah for lessons in how to pray fervently and effectively. Please take a look at this helpful resource and be encouraged to share it with others.

eMusic are offering 45 free music downloads when you sign up to their online music store.

Sign up on their cheapest deal, £9.99 a month for 24 downloads (£0.42 – cheaper than iTunes), and get 45 tracks free. So that’s 69 songs – almost 7 albums –  for a tenner! Compared to £40.71 from iTunes…

No contract, you can just “cancel at anytime with no hassle!”…. sign up for a month, sweep up your downloads, then pull the plug. 10 quid, you’re laughing.

Today was CCK Women’s Day, 400 women across Brighton gathered for a day of worship led by Jules Burt, teaching from Wendy Virgo and Livy Gibbs (married to Stuart, planting a church in Greenwich, London) and ministry time. The day was lead by Kate Virgo and her excellent team. The talks will be online soon, so keep tuned in for those…

If you’re a bloke, we’re having a CCK Men’s Weekend soon and I’m sure we’ll post up the talks for download. Will let ya know

Managed to sneak in for the worship as my band were playing. We were the only 5 males in the room… so I didn’t hang around for long(!)

Jules’ songlist was:
Psalm 95
Sing to the Lord (Lou Fellingham) E
Famous One (Chris Tomlin) E
A Father to the Fatherless (Paul Oakley) D
Majesty (Jack Hayford) D
All Authority – chorus (Desperation Band) D

After much thought, prayer and discussion, we’ve decided to hold-off running the CCK Worship School Conference for this year, with the intention of picking it up again in a couple of years.

Why?? We are experiencing a particular season of growth and transition at CCK, which requires a ton more focused attention and energy accross every aspect of CCK life, certainly including the worship department… so for this next season, we wanna give as much time as we can to building something outstanding here in Brighton. (More on this another day…)

Is this the end of Worship School? Absolutely, not!

1. Blog. In the mean time, WS will primarily be a worship training blog from the WS team, Stuart Townend, Lou Fellingham, Phatfish, Joel Virgo and myself, plus some special guests now and then. Subscribe to the RSS feed for all the headlines, or follow us on…
   
   
2. Twitter. WS is regularly tweeting short helpful insights for worship leaders, musicians and worshippers.
   
   
3. Conference. We do anticipate hosting the WS Conference in the not too distant future. We’ll keep you posted as soon as we have more on this.

Well that’s the news from us. We shall keep you posted as things develop.

Simon

Well, it’s that time of the year where we up-the-game as a band, and take a quite few evenings out to rehearse rehearse rehearse like crazy as we’re leading worship quite a lot at events this summer, some of which will have albums produced from them… Together On A Mission, Mobilise, Newday, Rendevouz Bible Week France, CCK.

Some of us have been playing together as a band for the last 10 years, whilst the others have joined at some point over this last decade. Over that time we’ve learned a whole lot about what actually makes an effective, fruitful rehearsal… and what makes a frustrating, draining and fruitless one.

So over the next few days and weeks, I’ll try and organise my thoughts on this and get some succinct posts up answering the question ‘What makes an effective rehearsal?’ But in the meantime, here’s a little video of our rehearsal from last night..

Worship School is now on Twitter and Facebook.

We’ll be tweeting our latest blog posts, updates on the Worship School main site and anything else we think you might find interesting. Follow Worship School on twitter

Of if you’re not into tweeting, join our Facebook group and we’ll post out similar info to keep you updated.

Facebook, twitter… what will be next?

Why?

To keep you up to date with Worship School news, a hub for theological discussion, a few songwriting thoughts and any resources that will hopefully inspire, encourage and challenge you.

My friends and I from the Worship School team, Stuart Townend, Lou Fellingham and Joel Virgo, will be the main contributors towards this blog, but we may have some special guests posting now and then.

Worship School has always been about building the local church for the glory of Christ. Our hope is that this blog contributes richly towards that end goal.