Date Signed: December 2024
Label: Long Branch Records
Type of Music: Pop-Punk/Alt-Rock
Booking: Atonal Agency
Publicity: Atom Splitter PR, amy@atomsplitterpr.com
Through perseverance and hard work, electro-emo pop trio Air Drawn Dagger are starting a new chapter. Vocalist Maisie Manterfield and guitarist Lewis Budden began writing songs at the back of a cake shop in England around 10 years ago. A few members came and went until they found drummer Ross Dore to complete the group. Air Drawn Dagger’s name is an homage to Macbeth and signifies “characterization of an emotional outburst.” Over the years, the trio have released music independently and embarked on extensive national tours and numerous festivals. The band got a sampling of signing to a label when they released their EP Songs to Fight the Gods to with Silent Cult in 2023.
“We've been independent for such a long time,” Maise confessed. “That's another reason why we decided that a label was a good fit for us now. We have done our thing for a while, and it was just nice to have somebody else's brains in the room to help us out. We felt like we'd stretched our knowledge as far as we could go, and it was time for somebody who could kind of just help us move into the next stage of things.”
The U.K. band decided not to stay too long with Silent Cult, opting to shop around for other deals. That hunt led them to a new deal with Long Branch Records, the imprint of SPV Schallplatten, Produktion & Vertrieb GmbH. “We reached out to a few different labels, and were just looking for the right fit, which for us was somebody who was going to add on to what we were already doing. Not necessarily taking the jobs off our plate, because we've always been a very self-sufficient band,” Maise says. “We just wanted somebody who was going to come in and be able to do the things that we couldn’t do, rather than being like, oh, we'll take all of this and do this now. And Long Branch was exactly that.”
“We got on really well—both Manuel [Schönfeld] and Maik [Krause] are both great. They're both always pushing, always kind of guiding us in the right direction,” Maise says. There is no stopping the trio as they’ve actively been releasing new music with Long Branch Records. Since their signing in December, they’ve released two bombastic singles: “Castle” and "Apparitions (featuring Tobi Duncan).” All this has been gearing up for the release of their debut album, A Guide for Apparitions, out in April.
