Wednesday 30 July 2014

The Toury Party.

 So here we are, then. Another attempt to balance the honesty of five idiots in a van with the need to publicly defend ourselves from any accusations that might come our way, or inadvertently create some sense that we are nothing more than a bunch of slobby losers who aren't right for your company.

'Hello? Bob? Fire those Phoria boys. What's that? No, I've never heard of them either.
What? We never hired them? You're a good man, Bob.'


We've just come home to Brighton. In an echo of our trip home from Nottingham after the first leg of our tour, we played the gig and then immediately left Manchester. Another multi-hour slog through Britain's midnight oil. Again I sat in the front, cajoling the drivers and making them question their own existence, all the while celebrating the end of the tour proper by drinking lots of rum and clouding the issue of my bronchus.

I can't say I didn't have a good time.

This was the set-up for most of the tour. Windows open in the sunshine, expressing ourselves through t-shirt tan lines and supermarket lunches. Dusty petrol stations and driving songs and catchphrases and the relentless rumble of Binky's diesel engine and the stench of cheese and dripped, fishy brine. Take your shoes off, put a smile on your face, and watch the frames of every chain store change before your eyes. Sometimes tall, sometimes old, sometimes sterile and worthless to visit but sometimes unusual and archetypal. It's a funny old country.

We lived mainly on kindness. Parents and friends of friends and family and strangers at gigs who'd put us up and leave us with a key as they went to work in the morning, leaving a note on the counter saying 'Help yourselves.'

Kettles were very important.

The business was good, too. Promoters varying wildly from those who don't arrive to those who do and dote on you. Ain't no food nowhere, to big pub-grub burgers that gave us reason to lick our ever more bonying fingers in public.

Man cannot live on carrots alone.

Sometimes smiles, sometimes grunts and a lift of the head. Who's the sound engineer? He's the friendly one, the quiet genius or the too-talkative fallabout who knows as much about what he's doing here as you do.

People are people. Ain't nobody perfect and this ain't no attack, but this is how a life like this be, if you're not aware.

So, resisting the urge to list every town and describe every drink and force every night into one hundred words of unreadably shuffled little letters; that's your lot. Maybe you got a sense of it.

Thanks to all those who came to the shows and deep thanks to all those who helped us on our way around the country.

I didn't think I missed Brighton as much as I did.

We're still moving – down to Farm Festival on Saturday. For some reason I don't see it as part of the tour, but some people say it is. I don't care. This is here, now.

Then it might be a little time off.

We might lock ourselves away; studiobound and writing. Who knows.

Maybe we'll put our feet up on the rocks of Brighton beach, and look at the sea for a while, waiting desperately for someone to recognise us.

Who knows.

Have fun, wherever you go, whomever you go there with.


Tim

Sunday 27 July 2014

What else do you want from me?

                Trewin took a wrong turn.

                ‘This is the inner strata of the moon.’ I said.

                ‘I know,’ he said, ‘let me just do a u-ey.’

                Fucking bundles of particulated rock and bits everywhere. All grey and no light in there. We’d stumbled into our new network of anthill tunnels thanks to our little computerised map, which told us to turn right at Dulwich and then shoot four-hundred-thousand-kilometres-into-the-air and smash into the nearest ancient bag of rock we could find.

                Trewin was reversing.

                ‘You’re OK my side.’ said Jeb.

                The gear in the back fell down with a clang.

                The rear corners of the van were being smashed in now, struggling against the compact force of the fucking moon.

                ‘What are we doing here?’ said Seryn.
               
                ‘I don’t know,’ said Trewin, ‘but luckily Tim has this habit of lazily backing out from the interesting aspects of these accidental psychological investigations and introducing lazy post-modern excuses for meta-plots that suck all tension from the story faster than Niles Crane’s psychological probe.’

                ‘I understand that reference and what you’re trying to say.’, said Ed.

                I stayed quiet. The audiences here on Luna were of a greater size than those up and down our regular stretch of bum. The architecture here was better, too. Still large swathes of post-war influence, but post-‘year-of-Los-45-intergalactic-bosonic-mega-conflict’, rather than the whole 1945 thing. Rather more parochial, that one. Turns out from one of the markings that this old thing is a fragment of the skull of one of the animated rock giants who fought on behalf of the Emperor Beeg Chonsn.

                ‘The tour’s going well.’ I piped up as glass smashed around us.

                ‘Where are the babes?’ asked Seryn.

                ‘They’re at the other gigs, for now.’ I said. ‘And mainly on Earth.’

                ‘I don’t want to go back.’ Said Jeb.

                ‘We don’t have to, if you don’t want to.’ Said Trewin.

                ‘Let’s fuck off into space, then.’ Said Ed.

                The van by now looked like a piece of over-frozen vegetable. Its well pencilled lines, its once ripe and bulging wheels, had given way to a wrinkled old prune; disastered in assuming that all this old dust would budge.

                We reached the moon’s surface, but not before having to get out and push. It was surprisingly easy, in zero gravity.

                A large silver bird with square blue wings swooped around us.
               
                ‘Hello.’ It said. ‘I’m your satty-nav-sat.’

                ‘Oh!’ said Seryn, ‘You’re a stimpsons!’

                The bird turned toward us.

                ‘How’s the tour going?’ It asked.

                ‘It’s difficult to say, really.’, I said. ‘The drives are long but fun, the crowds vary between thin and thick but are always friendly, we’ve had a few upsets, we’ve had a few pleasant surprises, we’ve had a few strokes of luck and a few attempts to buy our legs at half-price. Some people have been good, some people have been bad. We’ve been up and down like a yoyo (though nobody’s thought of cutting the string), and sometimes, sometimes, we sit quietly as the landscape strokes our sides, thinking about how sweet all of this really is.’

                ‘Do you want to be friends, then?’ It asked. I got the impression it wasn’t really listening.

                ‘What, after you took us all the way out here? Is that why you brought us here, to ask if we want to be your friend?’

                ‘More than that.’ It said, as five tiny holes appeared around its reflective belly.

                It grew larger as its atoms trickled down to the moon’s surface. Far away, the Earth turned into a giant, judging eye.

                The bird put its vast, hot wings around us.

                ‘I thought we could just…you know…hang out for a little while?’

                --

                Cindy was crying.

                Green emerald dress and smooth blonde, curled with precision and a new, natural maturity.

                ‘But Dad!’ she whined through bubbles of black liquid, ‘It’s my birthday! Why do we have to do what you say all the time? I got all dressed up for nothing!’
               
                ‘Just a second, dear.’ He said, his fingers smarting from loading Cindy’s chair into the boot, but still tapping furiously on the little blue screen that illuminated the cabin of the car.

                He’d texted Cindy’s mother, already.

                ‘Gna b l8.’

                She’d received it as the last few invited guests had arrived, flustered.

                ‘We had a little trouble finding the place.’

                ‘Dad! Daaaaaad!’ through tears and tears.

                Her fist thumped against the rear window.

                The car now rocked with frustration.

                ‘Just a second, honey!’ he said.

                Then, under his breath.

                ‘Fucking sat-nav’s gone.’

                Oh, and someone else, taking in the scent of the forest, their fingers hovering lightly over the bark of a crumbling tree, watched all of this, trying to make out in the dim light if the driver’s side door was unlocked.

Sunday 20 July 2014

The touring test.

Where have you been?

We've been to Nottingham and Leeds, on the first, very tiny leg of our tour. Sorry to those in Glasgow who waited, with flowers and chocolates and other gifts and warm hearts, no doubt, for our scheduled arrival. We had to postpone. We'll be there soon enough, I hope.

Vanny van van, up to Nottingham. Looong vanny van van. Straight in, straight to the Rescue Rooms venue. Park up, load out, then follow one of the members of the other band around a million and one corners and roundabouts around and around again to our designated parking zone. Up and about, wrong turn after wrong turn, bundling around in our oversized van. 

Tired, then...soundcheck and...where's the dressing room? Oh, it's upstairs, up through another myriad maze of corridors and carpetless staircases and fire exits. Tired...

Tired...

Corners and unseen protractions of space and locked doors and unlockable doors so you have to press the button that resides on your right ankle if you hop on your left. Press it and then apply no more than 5lbs of pressure but no less than the gravitational force of the world's most recently birthed sheep. That's it. Now, the next door is a bit more tricky...

...but

WHAT'S THIS? A comfortable room filled with FOOD and a fridge filled with COLD BEER and WATER and HAM and LETTUCE and CRISPS and CARAMELLY BISCUITS. TELEVISION and an XBOX and a LARGE, CLEAN TOILET and all sorts of wonders. Nottingham makes you work for your destination, but boy were we happy to come across food for five and a kettle and a well stocked white box full of cold stuff. Nothing more settling for the 'first date of the tour'.

Really nice gig, really nice people coming up to us afterwards – thank you all for your kind words and support. If you're coming to one of our future gigs and aren't sure if you should come up and slobber over us once we've finished our mind-blowing set, then don't hesitate – just do it. We're nice, sometimes, and we will tell stories about you to each other in the van, afterwards.

We had time to spare, then, following the Glasgow cancellation, so we got to hang out in the city and spend some time with our totally random and very generous host who put us up for NOTHING but love and a cheap meal. We saw her giant print of a piece of broccoli that she'd hitch-hiked back from Barcelona, and made a pretty much consistent racket in her dining room with our new found table football obsession.

We went shopping, like professionals do, and it turned out that later in the day, on a stroll, after visiting one of the many characterful pubs that Nottingham has to offer, that Jeb, Ed, and Seryn, wondering about in the street, had been recognised by someone working in one of the shops. I don't think we've been recognised in the street before. The worker, however, was too shy to come out and say 'Hello' and so, apparently, her friend/co-worker had come out to tell these three fools that there was someone inside who wanted to say 'Hello' but was too shy.

Shy, too, however, were these fame-stricken fellows, unaware of how to take this as anything but news.

'Cool!', then, was apparently the comment of the day. Their resultant shame and embarrassment at not having gone in to say 'Hello', when I met up with them again later, was a joy to watch. They too, it seems, turn shy when presented with these situations they are not used to. I would, obviously, have promptly marched into the store raspberrying my own triumphant fanfare, scaring any would-be conversationalist into submission before their gag reflex could get them fired from their work.

These three superstars, however, struck by indecision and too much Curb your enthusiasm, carried on about their day in anxious awkwardness and indecision, leaving, no doubt, a curled up heap of Phoria fanhood fastened to the floor, the dents made by knees on carpet healing only as quickly as the hope-shaped hole punctuated into this poor person's psyche.

Anyway. A non-story, but a little insight into the curious oddities that can, on occasion, beset us.

Onwards, then, after much wine and whisky, to Leeds, where it was hot.

We hit the 'waiting' wall, a little. Trapped in the van between the back of the venue and a commercial car park, humming, 'hacking the sack' as those boys do, and just...waiting.

A nice gig, not without its slight technical difficulties, but still those who came were again kind and enthusiastic.

'I want to get home, tonight.' - Trewin.

Leeds to Brighton, then, leaving at about 23:30.

Mission.

Coffee and Subway.

Another service station. Another grand palace of worship to the consumption of convenient foodstuffs and cold, white floors. More toilets, designed like a labyrinth where every door leads to a new hell. The doors to someone else's floating poo are adjacent and unmarked.

Some of them kipped, from time to time. I was front-row-centre, jeering the two swapping drivers into wakefulness with cigarettes and mint humbugs and the standard 2am conversational patter. Grotesque scenes of a sexual nature, twisted into necessary decisions. Would you rather? What would you do if? Which pop singer/musician leaves traces of his fingers behind? Eh? Can you guess?

Prints.

Prince.

Long.

Drive.

Home at 6am. No sleep since Nottingham. We even hit a traffic jam at 3am on a diversion from the M1. In a fit of joy, we took the nearest capillary lane that lead South. One wrong turn turned it into a horseshoe. Back in the queue. Where does this lane take us?

Someone else's farm.

Back in the queue.

So now we have a couple of days off in Brighton before Leicester on Tuesday.

Here are the dates:

22nd July - The Cookie Jar, LEICESTER
23rd July - Oakford Social Club, READING
24th July - 60 Million Postcards, BOURNEMOUTH
25th July - Birdcage, BRISTOL
26th July - The Sunflower Lounge, BIRMINGHAM
29th July - The Castle, MANCHESTER
2nd August - Farm Festival, BRUTON

Come and see us, do.

We're much more interesting than these posts make us appear, and much more likely to sell you merchandise and give you aural pleasure.

Sit correctly.

Tim


P.S. If you live in any of those cities and want to have some fun and give us somewhere to sleep, get in touch through any channel you can think of. Facebook, email, twitter...

We'll try our best to make it worth your while and something else about sleeping at yours for free, please.

Wednesday 2 July 2014

A perverse crossover of earnestness and crippling 21st Century anxiety.

Five-thirty.

Five-thirty in the morning.

I didn't even want to go to Abbey Road. Who's ever recorded anything there, eh? Eh? Come on. For goodness' sake.

Five-thirty in the god damn morning.

Still, Ed knocked on the door of the Phoria house looking chipper. Sez rolled out in the way that he does, all silky hair and a distinct focus on 'breakfast time'. Trewin, as usual, was full of beans – throwing van keys in the air and what-not as he talks to you.

I slept through the A27, needing a tea.

London traffic. A sea of cars sitting dead in the shitty morning sun. Everyone beeping and sitting perfectly motionless, except for the people adjusting their hair or their make-up. Seryn.

So, traffic – which is what happens when you flood an inlet – and then bundling across the pavement like a wagon in the wild west. In through the out gate. Honestly. And who says rock and roll is dead?

We slither out, excitable but...focussed.

Sign in at reception. Sign in for your session at Abbey Road.

'Yes , Hi. We're here for the session with x at Studio three.'

Mmmm.

And then we're in! Skipping down the halls, as you do, into the first open door. All dark and wood. All deep red rug and dead headspace. The peace of the treated walls hits you in the chest. A meet and greet, suddenly. The students we'd be working with. This was all set up by Berkeley, Boston. It's their session, but they pretend it's ours.

Handshakes. 'Hello.'

They're all clean. I slept in Jeb's bed (his presence in all but scent is regrettably ommitted from this story), and am who I am, so you can imagine how I felt. I'd just been in the back of a stinking van after a four-thirty start, so how do you think I was? Why did I suddenly have to face fifteen or so grinning Americans?

No, no. I kid, of course. 

Really.
 
So setting up guitars, then. Setting up guitars in Studio 3 of Abbey Road studios. No big deal, really. It's not like I've wanted this exact moment for the entirety of my colourful career so far, noodling around after school playing Guns n' Roses covers, all the while dreaming of doing exactly this, here, right now, strumming my freshly-strung telecaster in the same place any teenage hero I dare mention had strummed their own, so to speak.

So I played a little Pink Floyd. And the whole band, having set up, segued into a kind of chilled out funk jam for a couple of minutes. Ed was on a real Rhodes.

Man.

Time to work.

CRICKETS!

The fire alarms in the building, it turns out, we're being picked up by our guitars, and were forcing the sound of chirruping crickets down the microphones.

Numerous solutions were saught.

Trewin ended up sitting like a Yogi, trying to angle his guitar away from anything,to stop the buzz.

Still, we've just started recording, so sshhhhh. Quiet in the studio.

Cameras. Cameras everywhere. Everyone's documenting everything.

I found out later that there had been two ambient mikes placed in the studio, so as to record the goings on during the session. I'm a nice man (don't look at me like that) and don't often say things that I mean out of turn, but...now the paranoia strikes. What if I made a bad joke? What if I was having some fun just being a little bitch? I'm sure I didn't say anything. Oooh. I know I screamed. A lot. But then, that's just what I do.

40 odd takes of two halves of a song, in the end. Jesus, lads. Get your acts together. They don't call me Three-minute Douglas for nothing, you know.

Everyone's in and out – not knowing where to go or where they should be, but focussed. Always moving with purpose, despite not knowing how best to fulfil it.

Lay down the bass, Tim.

Synth was easy enough. Bass guitar was not. My hand had become a lump of lead. I played my balls off and, on holding the last note of the last take, screamed over a sustained note as I held back my left pinky, which was cramping its way towards the fretboard, ready to ruin my good time.

I showed it, though. I told it who was boss.

An original Hammond through a Leslie speaker. Our balls were literally exploding into dust at the sounds and the toys and the atmosphere and the people. Ed could have been skipping through a field of marigolds. Trewin had his eyes on everything.

It's a fucking magical place, I tell you.

FREE LUNCH AND DINNER.

Say. No. Mawah.

Back to Connie's. She's a violin player, playing in the quartet (made a quintet by the appearance of her fabulous bass player friend), for a quick beer and, good lord, sleep.

Do we sleep?

Do we?

God, we peeled ourselves off the floor that next morning.

I had to look at the financial district of London through caffeine-free and sleepless eyes. I had to watch the wankers in the back of their cars, skimming a little bit off everything, causing all the problems that we are told they are the answer to. It was one hell of an energising hour.

And I had the day off, on day two! I'd played my three god-damn instruments. It was the turn of the string-quairntet, and a bit of piano, and Trewin's vocals. One of the most magical moments was when Trewin, attempting the vocal track, very quietly asked for the lights to be turned off, and in the control room we were left in complete darkness but for the panoramic glow of the mixing desk. I just stared and listened, one of which things is something that I have never done before, ever.

And...I mean...it just happened. I spent the rest of the time at the back, getting drawn unnecessarily into an offensive joke swap. I swear, mum – I don't know any. We just...hung out and chatted with these fascinating and wonderfully friendly American students and, clearly, very kind, humble, and inspiring staff.

Their professionalism out-marked mine by a-thousand-to-one.

But I played Pink Floyd in Studio 3 at Abbey Road, which they didn't.

Then, Connie's. Or maybe not?

'I could go home.' (Not my words.)

Ah, a car park debate.

'If we ever come against an option where we choose whether to be men, or mice,' said Trewin, 'can we choose to be men?'

Agreed.

Back to Connie's. Again. More beer, this time.

More getting a knock from a frustrated neighbour because we were waking little children across the complex.

More dancing to tunes we didn't know., in our alcohol soaked pyjamas.

After all, we'd just been to Abbey Road, and we didn't have to wake up at three-thirty the next day.

I'm still getting over it.

We're on tour, next. Let's see how it goes.

Have fun, whatever you choose to play in Studio 3 of Abbey Road Studios.

I know I played fucking Pink Floyd.

Did you?

No.

Tim

Achieve.

All milky and lava-lamp-ish the street-lights reflecting on my big red car bonnet as I curl it round at night all sound and echoing engine...