The Big Pink

Electro-rock duo

The Big Pink are an electro-rock duo from London, England, comprising multi-instrumentalists Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell. The duo signed to the 4AD label in 2009, and won the prestigious NME Philip Hall Radar Award for best new act. To date, they have released four singles, with their debut album A Brief History of Love released in September 2009.
Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell started making music as The Big Pink in 2007, taking their name from the debut album by The Band. Furze used to play guitar for Alec Empire and run the record label Hate Channel with Cordell. Cordell (son of Denny Cordell and brother of Tarka Cordell) had also been releasing records through his own label Merok Records, which featured early noise rock releases by Klaxons, Titus Andronicus, and Crystal Castles. After joining forces in mid-2007, the band issued their first single "Too Young to Love" on 7" vinyl in October 2008 on the House Anxiety label. The single was limited to 500 copies worldwide, and features a homoerotic photograph by Dennis Cooper as its cover. Similarly, a limited edition 12" single for "Too Young to Love" released in Japan only features more of Cooper's photography as its cover.
The Big Pink signed with famed British record label 4AD in February 2009. On February 25, 2009, The Big Pink won the prestigious Philip Hall Radar Award for best new act at the NME Shockwave Awards. The duo were presented the award by James Allan and Caroline McKay of Glasvegas, who had won the award in 2008. In April, 4AD issued the duo's first single for the label, "Velvet," which Pitchfork Media described as "undeniably immense, but it's a tribute to the Big Pink's skill and maturity that it still manages to sound intimate," and awarded the track a 7 out of 10 rating. The single was again self-produced by the band and mixed by Alan Moulder. A 7-minute remix of "Velvet" by Gang Gang Dance followed as an online-streaming single. The Big Pink provided a cover of "Lovesong" for The Cure tribute album Pictures of You: A Tribute to Godlike Geniuses The Cure, which was made available with the February 25, 2009 issue of NME. Following the releases, the duo opened for TV on the Radio in Europe before embarking on their first headlining UK tour. A second single on 4AD, the non-album track "Stop the World," was released as a limited edition 7" single on June 29, 2009. The single was co-produced with Paul Epworth.
The Big Pink's debut album A Brief History of Love was released on September 14, 2009, with the band's fourth single "Dominos" released a week before. The band produced the album themselves at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, and Rich Costey mixed the album. Cordell told BBC 6 Music that the album encompasses "every different aspect of love... The good, the bad, the boring, the exciting, the dreams, the nightmares, the whole thing." Nationwide tours of Europe, Japan, and the United States occurred August through the end of 2009, with dates in Australia and a secondary North American tour set for spring 2010. They also supported Muse on their UK arena tour in November, and in turn, provided a remix of Muse's song "Undisclosed Desires," which was made available on the single released on November 16, 2009. The Big Pink are scheduled to appear at the 2010 Coachella Festival in April. On February 24, 2010, "Dominos" won Best Track at the NME Awards.

Subscribe to Ticket-talk for updates on forthcoming The Big Pink shows.