This week The Voluntary Butler Scheme debut album ‘The Voluntary Butler Scheme At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea’ will be stream as album exclusive on My Space – so what are you waiting for www.myspace.com/thevoluntarybutlerscheme.

‘The Voluntary Butler Scheme At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea’ is the debut album by Rob Jones, a 23-year-old pop prodigy penning songs of classic sound, vivid imagination, and tin-pot ingenuity. Rob’s studio may, by his own admission, be nothing much – “just a bedroom full of wires and keyboards” in his native Stourbridge in the Midlands – but his ambition is by no means stuck in the bedsit. Three singles to date, ‘Trading Things In’, ‘Multiplayer’ and ‘Tabasco Sole’ have blended The Jackson 5 and classic Motown to an instinctual, home-made aesthetic. Not lo-fi, nor hi-fi, but a sweet marriage of the two.
“I love loads of classic production sounds, but then I’m trying to be disrespectful to it somehow,” says Rob. “You know Money Mark? He’s got so many classic elements in there, those great Stevie Wonder keyboard sounds, but he messes around with them, disrespects them – that’s the approach I love.”

Such production ingenuity might mean nothing, mind, if it were not for the wonder of the songs – warm, observational pop polaroids that live in the everyday, but suddenly seize your heart with a simple but affecting turn of phrase. Whether he’s singing “You can’t go treating my heart like bagpipes no more” on the gleaming beat-pop of ‘Multiplayer’, or pleading “Until my watch runs out of battery, I hope you stay by me” atop chiming piano and soft brass on ‘Until My Watch Runs Out Of Batteries’, the Voluntary Butler Scheme write songs that make you smile, but ring true, too. “A lot of my lyrics could be construed as slightly novelty, but I don’t think they come across that way,” says Rob. “Like, the line on ‘Multiplayer’ – it’s kind of funny, but you wouldn’t laugh at it. I think it’s a bit sadder than that”.
‘The Voluntary Butler Scheme At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea’ was recorded in a month-long stint at a studio in Stockwell with producer Charlie Francis, known for his work with REM and the High Llamas, and a handful of guest musicians. For live shows, though, Rob is insistent – right now, the Voluntary Butler Scheme is him, and him only. “Onstage, I’ve got a piano, guitar, drums, and a synth, and I try to loop things together to a big climax before I get on the drums and finish it.” It’s a scattershot approach, but that’s part of the appeal. “People are always quite generous when things go wrong… I think a little bit of unprofessionalism is a bit endearing!”

Which isn’t to say you can’t get involved. Head over to www.myspace.com/thevbschopshop and you can find the materials to make your own remix of ‘Tabasco Sole’ – or simply listen to remixes by the likes of Akira The Don or Gold Teeth. Or follow the example of the Christal Connections Line Dancers, who heard the Voluntary Butler Scheme play a session on Dermot O’Leary’s Radio 2 show, emailed to ask where they could get the song, and wound up dancing in the video. Some might say it takes a special talent to write music of such broad appeal, but Rob doesn’t sweat it. “I read something that Phil Spector said in some sound magazine about the recording of ‘Be My Baby’,” says Rob Jones. “He was asking, ‘Is it dumb enough? Are people going to get it?’ I’m not trying to make my music dumb, but I think maybe there’s something in that… stuff feels so much more honest when it’s simple.”

UK Gig Dates

Sat 1st Aug – NXNW festival, Wigan
Tue 4th Aug – Firebug, Leicester
Thu 6th Aug – Buffalo Bar, Cardiff
Sat 8th Aug – The Oakford, Reading

Tabasco Sole is the new single from The Voluntary Butler Scheme, aka 23-year old West Midlander Rob Jones. Think of The Jackson 5’s I Want You Back crossed with a Mellow Gold era Black County Beck through Jim Noir’s psych tinged observations, and you’re not far off the poptastic sound of this boombastic track.

“I was trying to write a really non-sensical tune with words that have a party rhythm,” says Rob. “So it was me trying to do a tune that wasn’t about hot babes, even if the choruses are.”
Rob composed the track on Christmas day (after dinner, and having listened to a Motown compilation with assorted family members) and recorded it, like the rest of his output, on his ultra-basic home set-up in Stourbridge (“just a bedroom full of wires and keyboards,”).

The Voluntary Butler Scheme is an entirely solo pursuit “I’m a total hobby-ist when it comes to recording – I love the process,” says Rob. “I get a big kick out of working on my own, and if I’m bored, or not feeling it, then I just stop.”

On the B-side, there are treats aplenty in new track Split, an ace Akira The Don mix of Tabasco Sole and a wonderfully ramshackle cover of the Giorgio Moroder/Phil Oakey classic Together In Electric Dreams.

“I recorded Electric Dreams cause I was fed up of the stuff I was writing and just wanted to get nerdy on some recording,” says Rob. “I’d heard that tune on the telly the day before and didn’t even realise it had verses, so I had to learn them quick when I was tracking.”

The single will later be found on The Voluntary Butler Scheme’s debut album, The Voluntary Butler Scheme at Breakfast, Dinner, Tea, which is currently being mixed and will be released in July.
The Voluntary Butler Scheme’s previous singles have been championed by the NME, BBC Radio 1, 2 and 6 Music and XFM, and Rob has played sessions for Huw Stephens, Marc Riley, Dermot o’ Leary and Jon Kennedy. Declared “one to watch” in publications as diverse as Q magazine and The Sun, even that old nutty boy Suggs has stepped out and declared himself a fan.

As for the name, it comes from Rob’s time living near Bourneville, where voluntary work schemes were set up for laid-off Rover workers at the Longbridge plant.. “I imagined a voluntary butler scheme – it made me laugh for about 10 seconds – and I haven’t laughed at it since!” says Rob.

VBS release their new video for Multiplayer directed and produced by Simon Deshon. – Multiplayer is out on Split Records March 2nd 2009

After last summer’s critically acclaimed, debut ‘Trading Things’ EP; a beautiful and brightly textured compilation of home-made love songs and candy coloured sentiments, The Voluntary Butler Scheme (a.k.a Rob Jones) returns with ‘Multiplayer’.  Imagine Tony Christie on vocals, add the  happy-go-lucky dance stylings of Junior Senior and then for really good measure you’ve got The Jackson Five popping by to make a nice refreshing cuppa.

This is the distinctive VBS sound and ‘Multiplayer’ a warm, twinkling love song, full of tender couplets and gentle pathos, “Love is a game, a game for two/ Love is a game I wanna play with you” layered delicately between dancing guitars, a melange of wobbling instrumentation jellies, hand claps and shimmering woo-woos.

‘Multiplayer’ showcases Jones’ sweet delivery with occasionally sardonic undertones, ‘Don’t go treating my heart like bagpipes any more’. Biting Northern wit from a mild-mannered Midlands’ boy.

You can just see Jones sitting neatly in his bedroom, wistfully noodling whilst deliberating on love’s wild edge. The thrill of the chase is so much safer from a distance. Rob Jones is a kitchen sink romantic, making up love songs out of the materials of the everyday.

www.myspace.com/thevoluntarybutlerscheme