Refusing to play the fame game By Steve Canavan scanavan@lancashire.newsquest.co.uk MANCHESTER lad John Bramwell and his band I Am Kloot are not ones for big publicity.

Not for him the front page covers in NME or the dumbed down interviews with over-happy radio presenters on daytime radio.

He is a local lad who lets his music do the talking and he did that pretty well on Kloot's debut album Natural History -- produced by Bury's Guy Garvey, of Elbow fame.

For anyone who has not heard it, the album is a no-thrills low key affair, played with an acoustic guitar, a double bass, drums and, perhaps the most important instrument, Bramwell's leery rasping vocals.

It is a fantastic record, worthy of a place in anyone's music collection. And fortunately for the lads, it ended up in Fran Healey's CD player.

The Travis frontman heard it, thought it was marvellous and invited Bramwell to support the Scots during this month's tour of Britain, beginning with Wednesday's date at the Manchester Apollo.

It is I Am Kloot's biggest gig of their short career and yet such is the demeanour of likable frontman Bramwell, that he is hardly bothered about promoting it.

Our first telephone interview goes something along the lines of: "Hi John. How you doing?".

Reply: "Oh, it's a bit early (It was 1pm). I''ll get my head together. Can you ring us back later."

When we did eventually speak 24 hours on, he was a decent down-to-earth bloke though he quickly admitted he wasn't keen on all this interview malarkey.

"We're not really a band who has massive media coverage because we don't go looking for it," he says. "Some people are never off the radio and TV but we're not really into that.

"We got to a certain level but the next stage was to go onto NME cover stars and Radio One and that's not us. We seem to get one really good article once in a while in the press and that's about it."

Must be looking forward to Travis though? "We've never really supported another band so I don't really know what to expect. Everyone is there to see Travis so they might just ignore us," he says.

"It came about because we met Travis in Japan and they'd heard our record and came to say hello. Then a few months later our agent got a call asking if we'd consider supporting them on this tour.

"It should be okay. I quite like their music. Driftwood is a great song."

It's been a rollercoaster year for I Am Kloot.

Bramwell has been knocking around the music scene in Manchester for years, working in Night and Day music bar booking bands.

He released a solo album Me, You And The Alarm Clock a few years back and then in January set up the band with a mate from Night and Day, Pete Jobson (bass), and friend of a friend Andy Hargreaves on drums.

After just two months together they were creating major waves in the music industry and now, 160 gigs later, are generally regarded by critics as one of the best groups in the country.

"The sales of the album in this country have been a bit disappointing," admits Bramwell. "They are pretty mad for us in Europe, especially France, but here it didn't take off in the same way.

"But each time we play a gig there seems to be more people there. It's a bit difficult because in England our music doesn't fit into any of the radio stations, whereas in France a song like Twist (with the memorable chorus "There's blood on your legs, I love you") is on the radio during the day.

"But I'm pleased with the record we made because it was a strings and paper bag job. We did it very cheap and tried to capture a live atmosphere and it worked well.

"I've got most of the next album written and when we finish the Travis tour we'll get in the studio and start working on it."

The Travis concert on Wednesday is sold out. If you're lucky enough to have tickets, go early. I Am Kloot are a great band and it's only a matter of time before they take off. PUBLICITY SHY: Members of Kloot