MARK OWEN (Take That) + Guests The Limelight Belfast Friday June 20th 2013

By Love Belfast

May 3, 2013

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Limelight Belfast presents MARK OWEN (Take That) + Guests Friday June 20th 2013

Tickets on sale Friday 10th May priced £25 (excluding booking fee) from www.limelightbelfast.com www.ticketmaster.ie Katy’s Bar & Ticketmaster outlets nationwide. Northern Ireland customers 0844 277 44 55 & Republic of Ireland customers 0818 719 300

NEW ALBUM ‘THE ART OF DOING NOTHING’

RELEASED JUNE 10TH 2013 TOUR DATES IN INC BELFAST FRI 20th JUNE

The Art Of Doing Nothing by Mark Owen will be released by Polydor on 10th June. It is the singer/songwriter’s fourth solo album and most collaborative today, and his first since Take That reunited in 2006. It is, says Owen, an album about each everyone’s “massively significant, tiny little speck life”. Owen will take his show on the road in June with an eight date tour including a finale at Belfast’s Limelight 1 on Thursday 20th June. Tickets go on-sale on Friday 10th May at 9am from www.ticketmaster.co.uk 0844 277 44 55

The record fills the gap where Owen was supposed to be putting his feet up.When Take That finished their record-breaking Progress tour in 2011, they agreed to take a break for a year. Except, contrary to his new record’s title, Mark Owen isn’t very good at doing nothing. He had to be doing something. So he sat in his garden and did some sketches for an animation, then some painting. When Ben Mark and Jamie Norton, his long-time songwriting partners turned up, what he’s done for most of his life naturally became the focus. “I’ve been making songs for 20 years now and I don’t really know what else to do,” he says, “it’s my hobby and my day job all in one.” Gradually, the trio’s chats developed into a concept: The Art of Doing Nothing. It was a notion of creating by not forcing things, by just letting the moment take over. “We didn’t think too hard about the songs,” says Mark. For the obsessive Owen, this was a new approach.

The result is Owen’s most free-spirited record yet, imbued with his own vulnerable, charismatic blueprint. It was recorded at The Rabbit Hutch, the studio located at the bottom of his garden. That sense of freedom is best captured in the expansive, swaggering pop swirls of Stars. It’s that rare thing; an intimate anthem, the sort, perhaps, that only someone who has spent most of his adult life playing stadiums could come up with. Others get to leave their mark too: the delicate orchestral swirl of S.A.D. features a mesmeric vocal from Salford chanteuse Ren Harvieu (“she had a beautiful energy, she was amazing,” remembers Mark), whilst Heaven’s Falling’s stomping synth-pop is bolstered by a frenetic appearance from London rapperJake Emlyn. “It just pours out of him, he’s amazing, full of charisma and life,” says Owen. Extra production input from Charlie Russell and Brad Spence and Katie Halil’s illustration only add to the sense of The Art Of Doing Nothing’s collaborative ethic.

This approach also stretches out to a competition that Mark is launching with Talenthouse. Entrants will be able to submit a painting, illustration, photo, piece of writing or another form oftheir choosing to show what The Art Of Doing Nothing represents for them. “It feels better somewhere in my psyche to call it a project rather than a soloalbum, because so many people have contributed,” says Owen. The focus, though, is bound to be on him. And rightly so. At ease, and on a break, he’s made his best record yet.

Owen will take his show on the road in June with an eight date tour including a finale at Belfast’s Limelight 1 on Thursday 20th June. Tickets go on-sale on Friday 10th May at 9am from www.ticketmaster.co.uk 0844 811 0051 / 0844 826 2826

June

Sun 9th Sheffield Leadmill

Tues 11th Bristol O2 Academy

Thurs 13th London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire

Fri 14th Birmingham Institute

Sun 16th Glasgow O2 ABC

Mon 17th Manchester Ritz

Wed 19th Dublin Olympia Theatre

Thurs 20th Belfast Limelight