ALONG with heading out to London, Newcastle, Glasgow and Bristol to launch their latest album, rock band Deaf Havana also plumped for the smaller country town venue of Marlborough.

The band will be signing copies of their fifth studio album, Rituals, at Sound Knowledge in Hughenden Square next Thursday, August 9, from 1pm.

Ahead of the meet and greet, lead guitarist Matt Veck-Giladi said how much he looked forward to going somewhere that wasn’t one of the big towns. The band will again be heading west at the end of the month to play at Reading Festival.

“It will be awesome, I can’t wait,’’ said Matt. “Reading is the festival where we always have fun and hang out with our friends.’’

Deaf Havana have a number of famous friends, including the guys from You And Me At Six, who they tour with regularly, but Matt says that for him the most surreal experience was supporting Muse in Germany and Bruce Springsteen at the Hard Rock Calling Festival.

“Springsteen is one of our favourite all time artists and seeing and working with Muse was simply surreal,’’ said Matt.

It was almost a given that the guitarist would join the band, which he did in 2012, as he is lead singer James Veck-Giladi’s brother.

What the rest of the musicians didn’t bargain for was Matt’s tendency to ‘rock out’ and fall over on stage.

“I have fallen about five times. There are a lot of cables around and James likes a rug on stage, which I tend to trip over... but it does feel nice under-foot compared to a normal stage,’’ he said.

Sinner, the new single taken from the album, was chosen as BBC Radio 1’s Scott Mills’ single of the week.

The band are no strangers to national radio, winning support from Zane Lowe, Sara Cox and Huw Stevens.

“Radio is being played in the car, at work, all over, so it broadens our audience, it is a good thing for us,’’ said Matt.

Rituals is the result of a new musical direction for the band as James and sound engineer Phil Gorrell found common ground to work on for the album.

Matt said: “It is full of songs that are quite confessional on James’ behalf; a sort of working towards saving relationships. We had known Phil for about a year, and when we got started on a demo with him we liked the way he worked, so we did the whole record with him.It was a different process for us, we were using different instruments, more collaborative, enjoyable but hard work.’’

Also on the album are the backing vocals of the London Contemporary Voice Choir. Matt said: “We worked with them for a War Child Charity gig and we wanted to do something with choral work so we got in touch.’’

Joining the brothers in the band are fellow East Anglican musicians Lee Wilson and Tom Ogden with keyboard player Max Britton hailing from High Wycombe.

Originally James and Lee started playing together during high school, and then at The College of West Anglia in Kings Lynn they met Tom and Deaf Havana was born.

Matt says that none of the band have ever been to Havana and the name was just a random choice of words that stuck with them.

There’ll be a short acoustic set at 1pm on Thursday 9th in the shop itself with the whole band signing copies of ‘Rituals’, available on CD, deluxe CD, LP, mulberry or white coloured vinyl and cassette.

If you’d like to attend, simply pre-order a copy of Rituals to get a wristband by calling For more details of the Marlborough meet and greet call 01672 511106 - Flicky Harrison