The Calder Val­ley, West York­shire is a ver­i­ta­ble hotbed of tal­ent­ed new artists. So when a well-loved venue runs into finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, local bands ral­ly to help. Work­ing Men’s Club and W H Lung have con­tributed exclu­sive tracks to help the Gold­en Lion in Todmorden.

Yes, Tod­mor­den’s The Gold­en Lion has set up its own label called Gold­en Lion Sounds in order to raise funds to secure its future. A 7‑inch is the label’s launch record, with oth­er artists such as Jarvis Cock­er, David Holmes, Jane Weaver and Goa Express on board. The first EP fea­tures vinyl exclu­sives Work­ing Men’s Club  ‘John Coop­er Clarke (Stephen Mallinder & Benge ‘Con­spir­a­cy’ mix) and W.H. Lung (‘Sym­me­try’ edit)

The Gold­en Lion has sur­vived the area’s flash floods, and last year had a run-in with Calderdale Coun­cil for paint­ing the build­ing yel­low in prepa­ra­tion for the Tour de York­shire. The pub­’s team have been instru­men­tal in look­ing after the town by pro­vid­ing social­ly dis­tanced take­away food dur­ing lock­down. Despite the cur­rent prob­lems, man­ag­er Gig Mattha­nee is opti­mistic they can get back on their feet.

“After I had chat with friend Andrew Meecham a well-known name who’s hung out at The Gold­en Lion, DJ-ed and per­formed live as The Emper­or Machine and Bizarre Inc, I was inspired to set up the venue’s very own inde­pen­dent record label Gold­en Lion Sounds”, says Gig. 

The spe­cial­ist record label plans to release a bi-month­ly series of exclu­sive sev­en inch vinyl records, all lim­it­ed and num­bered fea­tur­ing musi­cians and DJs who have played live or DJ-ed at The Gold­en Lion since its incep­tion. So far Work­ing Men’s Club, Goa Express, W H Lung, The Lounge Soci­ety, David Holmes, Jarvis Cock­er, The Emper­or Machine, Jane Weaver, Andy Votel, Crazy P, Nucle­us Roots, Zion Train have all con­tributed tracks which will be mas­tered by local solo artist and engi­neer Andrew Liles.

The Gold­en Lion has also launched a range of exclu­sive mer­chan­dise includ­ing T‑shirts, Sweat­shirts & Totes designed by under­ground artist Wall-Russ a Dutch-Bel­gium design­er based in Ams­ter­dam & Bom Seo aka Bom Car­rot illus­tra­tor, artist and singer from Korea.

So do please dig deep and help the Gold­en Lion with this 7‑in beau­ty or any oth­er gor­geous merch on their website.

For more infor­ma­tion on some of the bands men­tioned:
Inter­view with The Lounge Soci­ety
Inter­view with Work­ing Men’s Club
Gig review W H Lung

Pre-order here:
http://www.goldenlionsounds.com
https://goldenlionsounds.bandcamp.com/

Lead pho­to: Andrew Weather­all out­side the Gold­en Lion ©David Croft
Tod­mor­den pho­to © Richard Fowler