Don't ask; I'll tell.

One night down. Who knows how many more to go?



We know it's Köln, Hamburg, and a couple of nights in Berlin. Is that difficult? Is that really so difficult?



We haven't gigged in six months. How was last night? Edgy. Sweaty. Dark. One of the good ones. One of the adrenaline fueled ones. One of the ones that remind you of your first times out. What are the songs? I swear I knew them. Run it on. They're in the back of your brain, somewhere. There's a wire running from that place to your fingers. Open that gate and let it run while your sense of self goes somewhere else about three inches over your head and all you can feel is your heavy legs. Ignore your distrust. Just play.



Madness.



Come off and say hello and sell.



The road's always dark. Even in the day, it's grey.



What is it? Aren't you excited?



Maybe. Just let's get a little rest. I don't have time to speak.



The room's a carved out cavern. Stone faces and figures and winding stairways to standing room and strange, black iron cliffs. Fairy lights and chandeliers and one of those giant mirrors that can't have been made to reflect anything in its entirety. It takes in everything and belches it back and it mingles. Curry and strawberries.



So it's underground as we wait. Kick our heels and slip on suspicious leather backstage sofas and smoke. Food? We're not co-ordinated enough, and besides I'm so nervous I could throw up a lung and besides: this headache.



What are the songs? I knew them last night. I must know them, somewhere. I can feel them a little more, tonight. I can sense what they feel like; how they look. Hmm. We're playing them, I think. We've got a little more verve...



...woah woah woah. Don't hold on to it. Let that stuff go. Let it flowwwww. That's it. You're falling down a cliff with boulders coming down on top of you. If you grab a hold of anything, you're two-dimensional. Get your skin ripped off by the wind.



No blunt nose. A knife through time at the front of my face. Get us in. Get us booked up. Berlin, tomorrow. Hamburg hostel tonight. Pack it up. Send it on. Admittedly, wait for the bar to close. It's only an hour.



The beds. We've been here before. Get to the beds. In through the stupid sequence of doors. Every hostel has them. Swipe or click or press or code or DNA sample. Get to the beds. Up in the lift. Feel like you're falling. How is everyone? Good. Everyone have a good gig? Good.



Click.



The door opens.



Hot air.



What's the hot air?



“GNNGNGGNGWWOOOAAOAAHAHHHH.”



…



...what's that?



It smells.



It gusts in your face.



“GGNGNGNGNGNGNWNWNWHAOAOAHHH!”



Six beds. Five for us, one for...some other. An innocent fellow traveller.



Trip over his things. Tree roots.



Slink under these covers.



His throat has its own echoes.



“GnNGn. GnnGNGh. GNBBGBGBGNGNGGNGNNGWWOWOWOOAOOAOAOOOOOOAAAAHAHDAR”



You can feel it in your ears. It rattles your pants. The intake of breath slips your duvet off each time.



Four hours of darkness get away.



I get a little sleep and wake up enough to hear the boys in fits of laughter and sunrise dough-eyed insanity.



“Oh God.” they said. Seryn cackles. Jeb takes it less like fun. The tallest. The most likely to snap. We're desperate. We're desperate.



“I'm going to sleep in the van.” said Ed; paragon of silent practicality.









“GNGNGNGWWWOOWOWOWOOOOOAAAHHH.”



No problem. Just like any other day, but longer.



"I can't do this." someone said.



The rest of us laugh.












Tiny little objects that make up the whole. Tiny little situations that come together to form the trip.



Like when I skated across the pavement on dog crap and the rest of the band convinced me I smelled like shit for the rest of the night. That was good. Crouched down in the shower with a spare toothbrush, cleaning the grip on my shoes even though I can already see that everything is clean but now here I am soaked and laughing and cleaning invisible animal stink off my stuff. Hamburg hostel save me now...



The smell was never there.



These things are great.



The gigs. Or the hosts. Or the strange hours spent in German industrial estate cold, where there are vans that sell alcohol, and you can see the whole city reflected in the river while the party starts. Or 4am sing-offs with strange Scottish tourists in smoke-thick cafes. Hallway sleeping. Strict adherement to parking regulations. Smiling. Time off. Ripped clothes. Packed shows. Backstage stretches and labyrinths. Curiousness. Funny technicians. Meaningless telephone numbers and venue hunting. Wrong turns, and laughter.



Tiny little memories that don't cohere, yet. But a great feeling of warmth and comfort and work.



And then home. And recording and a great gig, last week, in a church that was too easy to shrug without looking. Oh, yeah. Here with the choir and strings. The fucking massive light show looks nice.



If you need me, I'll be backstage with a glass of water.



So Melatonin is out, too. It's getting about in the press and that and on the bloggys and the playlists, which is nice. Got to keep hinting at what's to come. And who knows what that is?



We do. We've heard it.



We've heard it all.



You've just heard the single.



You haven't heard the whole thing, have you?



No.



No, you haven't.



See this?



Believe it or not, it's my tongue.






Tim

Snap.

To be in a band, you must be able to take good photographs.

It's no secret that at this point in time, you need to have a visual aspect to your music. Be it big boobs (check), eye-catching hairstyles (and how), or a steel spike installed in your forehead that rams in and out forty-five times per second (installed but not near forehead); you need some eye-smash that's going to “hook” the “punters” in, in the words of the “industry”.

This has been the case since many years ago some clever-head realised that Elvis, though he had good songs, didn't need good songs. Instead, he could get away with miming along to the sound of a stick disturbing a tray of bones so long as he'd continue to wiggle his hips like a bee.

If Elvis wiggled, kids would jump and scream. It didn't matter what they heard. So true was this that coins would often spill out of the kid's pockets and fall up into their mouths, whereupon they would choke and vomit out their hamburgers and Coca-Cola. This meant that a large number of the crowd at any given concert would slip over and break their backs. Soon, outside in the cold distance, appeared Presley Ambulance Services Inc. vans. These vans  would take the crooked kids from the venue, operate on their spines, and then charge extortionate medical bills. The “Elvispitals” sole staff were Elvis androids, which meant the children would be happy to receive diagnoses of false chronic conditions leading to repeat visits, and more bills. Elvis would also personally scrape the vomit-coins from the concert floor after each performance, skating around on his blue suede shoes and singing under his breath:

“Elvis Presley, gonna git yo' sick-coins.”

Many sheeple don't know that the living Elvis now owns the moon, and that the phases of the moon are in fact Elvis attempting to cover the moon in its Vegas suit, which blows away and then he has to start again, frustrated and alone.

You can only achieve this level of ownership if you have a good image.

-

While it made sense in the earliest days of recorded music, over time "image" became less a means of representation, and more a means of enhancing and/or dictating the impression an artist might have on their audience. At one point, the artists smiled and wore suits, because that's what was respectable. Then people (read: the rebellious youth) started to spend money on what was not respectable, so someone had to figure out what was going on and dress artists so the growing rebellious youth didn't miss out on having something to buy. You could even trick an audience into thinking someone was not respectable when in fact they were, using their appearance.

Then it fanned out into a million different ways of doing it. Today, we're sold cartoon characters to believe in, with surrounding endorsements and cod-inspirational sentiments, rather than things to listen to and engage with on any level other than “Yes”.

It's not the rule, but it appears to be the norm.

Thanks, Elvis.

We had a photoshoot the other evening.

It can be fun to put this stuff together; figure out what a photograph might say. Be a bit cheeky with our representation. Figure out where the line between “different” and “unmarketable” sits and then gleefully kick it away because it doesn't matter anyway, and you're making this all up just to have something to moan about. These patterns are pure invention and the result of the unhealthy influence of the Frankfurt school on your dainty little mind so many years ago.

It's a camera.

Smile.

Tim

Bzzzzzz.

You have to take your time, in life.

You cannot rush things.

You cannot constantly race the clock.

You have to take the time you are given, and more, if you need it.

You cannot run the risk of the bee you just resuscitated being trapped in the van with the five of you, should he not get out on time.

That's why I wrote the rulebook.

But Trewin didn't have time to read the rulebook.

So he picked the bee up from the tarmac at the ferryport and let it rest in the van as we waited to board, slowly nursing the little dot back to health with the caramel from a Mars bar.

I could have had that.

The bee came to life as we tumbled across the bridge thing, into the belly of the ship. We hadn't let the little thing out to rest when the call came for us to board.

We are not the types to give up on ill bees. You should know this by now.

So as it rose like a tiny sharp zombie, we all started shouting and panicking and flailing our arms. Because it's a bee. And it was flying around in the van. And real men don't cry. They flail.

We fanned it out through the open side-door (Trewin was hanging from the van – encouraging the thing out like it was a nervous fawn) just before we disappeared into the hole. We watched it buzz its way through the various criss-crosses of metal and the ship's rigging. A dot of the sky was being redacted by a pissed-up censor.

We would not have got so panicked were we not so rushed.

We needed more time to feed the bee.

We didn't have more time to feed the bee.

We didn't have time to do anything – we were due in Norway in two days.

–

Evidently, we had not had the time to read the booking arrangements for the hostel, either, as after a sixteen hour drive along the dizzying and never-ending tongue of the Autobahn we discovered we had not fulfilled the criteria for a late check-in.

Never mind. Laugh.

Death laugh.

Where's open?

Where will have us?

The clock hands start spinning.

There's a place. It's big.

We have to go to bed now. We have to be up in four hours.

Oh, we've already slept. Where next?

Tick tock.

Gothenburg.

Drive.

What's this now where's this?

Nice people, and a nice flat down by the river. Have a brisk walk. Flick through Swedish television. Nothing's good. Give nothing a chance. Flip, flip, flip. Down your beer, don't sip it.

We have to be in Oslo tomorrow, and I don't know where I am.

–

Get up and get out.

What's outside the window?

Trees.

“What's the scenery like driving through Scandanavia?”

Trees.

Where are we?

Oslo.

Get in. Set up. Good. Soundcheck. Nice. Everyone's nice. Hello, yes. Yes, thank you. OK, great.

Soundcheck finishedNO TIMEget onstage whoops no time sorry good luck.

Blast it. Every beat played punctually and every applause coming no more than 1.7 seconds after the end of each song. Good. We've got a schedule. Thanks to everyone for being so kind.

Where are we going? Bar. Downtown. How long? Twenty-minutes.

One hour later. Still walking.

And Norway doesn't sell alcohol on a Sunday. Did you know this? I didn't have time to read up on it before I left. I drank mine too fast.

Dry. Sobering.

So we have to get there quicker.

Jeez, get on with it, right, drink it up and laugh and spend and get into the hotel in 3 a.m. Norwegian perfect daylight. No bedsheets. They cost extra. You pay for their quality, no doubt.

So now morning and your brain's a needle on a scratched record and sprint back up to the festival site in the hot sun.

“You drive to Norway for one gig? Are you crazy?”

Don't answer him, Seryn – we've got to go. We're on a very tight schedule and if we break it we will die.

Crash, bang, wallop through to late nights in Copenhagen and Cologne (I don't have time to find the o with the umlaut) to very efficiently let good generous friends catch up with us on our race to a grim and abandoned finishing post that doesn't exist.

Quick. Up and out, again.

The ferries are on strike. The roads are clogged. Quick we have to make it.

We have to get there.

There's no time.

The sun stands still and the people walk around their dead cars, gesturing. The queues span around you in a circle and a police car slips by every second.

Time is passing us.

Our lives are bleeding out.

I can feel it.

I can feel it.

We're being crushed by a million still tyres.

Our fuel is burning.

I can feel it.

–

So, you have to take your time, and not rush things.

Just as soon as we hit our stride in the journey, it was time to come home.

Just as soon as we started making stories, ours was over.

So take your time with it. Rest a little, or get up and do something in the blackness.

We have nothing ahead of us, now.

One festival, close to home. And Europe...later. Much later.

The album is roasting. Slow roasting. We've covered up the timer with our pants and are drowning out the ticking by screaming.

We're doing nothing but peeping through the little window with our thumbs over our heads, pressing the button for the little yellow light.

We're taking the necessary time.

We're not rushing.

I'm going to lie motionless on the floor, hoping somebody feeds me a Mars bar.

Oh it's time for FUN. EH? ISN'T IT? EH? YE

                Right. I’m supposed to tell you about the photoshoot we went for, aren’t I? That’s the kind of thing that usually turns up on here. I tell you about the horribly early morning that only took its toll at 9PM yesterday, when I looked at my phone (goodbye, horology for the unenthused) expecting it to read ‘late into the night’ when in fact it read ‘you just bombed the town of Circadia’. 

                I tell you about the journey up. Five of us facing forwards in a car, having a puffy-eyed laugh, rather than rattling about in the van with the threat of a cymbal stand in a face-hole looming its chromed head at every red light.

                Then I say that we arrived at our destination, in a kind of ‘phew’ tone. A feeling that even this description of that phenomenon has managed to induce a little. Don’t ask me how it’s done. And there’s the bare sarcasm, layered thickly like the similes that often appear here, too.

                Then a funny thing that happened. Something relatively small but humorously magnified. Ed was worried about something in a sandwich, or Trewin realised he’d left his washing on a goat so we had to rush home. Something like that. Nothing like that really happened. It was literally a normal day with very little adventure. The photoshoot was fun and we’re very grateful to Rhona for doing it for us. We’re either getting more professional or more boring. I see no evidence of eitherTHERE’STHATSARCASMAGAIN(hee hee ho, mateys!)

                So we’re back in it now; back in the actual description of events rather than an attempt at having fun with the format. We just drove home. That’s literally it. We said loads of funny things and talked about the shortcomings of various Hollywood franchises. People in a car. You know how it goes. Imagine times you’ve been in a car with people (not that time you parked around the back of the industrial estate because your divorced friend said she really wanted to try it but needed someone there in case ‘something goes wrong’ and then you realised that in fact you have a fear of gloveboxes so you vomited all over her skirt and she had to drive you to the hospital because you were starting to retch your leg bones up around your ribs and through your dribbly, bile smeared lips) I’m really out of ideas and still very tired have a nice weekend I’ll let you know how we get on with the new material next week.

Happy Mothering Sunday.

Tim

Soundwave festival is taking place on the Southern coast of...

...Croatia.

This has been the theme for the past...eight or nine days. It's all any of us can think about, it's all any of us are acting upon, and, at the expense of our bellies, it's the only thing that's making those small numbers shrink even further into oblivion. I see the descent and subsequent rise of those pretty little figures marked 'overdraft' as the final death throes of reason and accountability. 'F*ck it', we say. We're still young, and we're going to drive across Europe to play music at a massive party festival.

Lake Bled in Slovenia; one of our scheduled stops. Not pictured: The relentless march 

of industrial and economic progress.

The road holds its own promise. Ed, myself, and Trewin will be sharing the driving equally between us. Trewin insisted yesterday - 'For the duration of the trip, we become 'Yes Men'. We take everyone up on any offer of accommodation, parties, whatever.'
I'm certainly up for an adventure (see: not being held for ransom).

So, there it is. All is booked, and the only thing that's been packed so far is my Speedo.

Oh yes, music: the art of the musician. Well, we got together for the first time in a long time yesterday, Trewin's voice having finally healed. That's right, you heard it here first (unless you're in the band, a circumstance of which there is a 5/7,079,000,000 chance). We weren't great to start off with - rusty hinges and all. Towards the end we got it, and tonight we'll be down there again, smashing away and big lumps of songs until we remember how to play them, and how to break them into a million pieces in front of thousands of people.

Talking of breaking things; millions of people, the CDs arrived, finally:

Not pictured: Mountains of cash; Alf Ramsey chainsaw juggling.

We've also got t-shirts. That's right, pledgers - after promises and promises and apologies and 'a couple of days' turning into a couple of weeks, we feel we managed to break your spirits just enough to eventually send some stuff out to you. You'll see them in a couple of days, weeks, months, etc. (Seriously: they're going out as I type.) (Sorry again for all the delays.)

Both products will soon be available for purchase.

So, that's it. What with hay-fever taking my spirit from me and Croatia occupying my mind, that's all I can be bothered to write. I feel it adequately informs you how we are, what we're doing, etc. While also adding another aspect of personality to the public perception of Phoria. Likeable? Perhaps not, but (supposedly) consumable content with which the audience is able to engage, which must, like our home-spun cheese, be regularly churned.

It's another hot, sunny day, and it's FRIDAY! 

Have an ice cream and stare at the sun.

Tim.

PS. We have a spare ticket for accommodation and festival entry which we're looking to sell. If you're interested, email us at phoriamusic(at)hotmail.com

PPS. That (at) is so that spambots that scour these blogs can't steal our address and send us loads of penis enhancement pills. We've got plenty of those already. So put an @ there, not (at). You probably knew this already, but I'd hate for you not to come to Croatia with us just because of one little mistake. You in particular. Yes, you. I am actually referring to you as an individual. This is not a trick. CROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAATTTTIIIIAAA

 

Everything's all white.

First of all - apologies for my recent outburst of enthusiasm re: that rubbish white stuff that's been falling on our roads and roofs all week. It was unprofessional, ill considered, and am told provoked smiles in some parts of the UK. This has never been my intention.

As punishment, I'm in Ed's basement flat on the other side of Brighton, stealing a little heat from his tiny halogen heater and emailing lots and lots of lovely friendly people who are definitely going to give us gigs, right? Right? I mean, I'm not just here with frozen fingertips and a cold cup of tea, sneezing from some feather pillow Ed's got stuffed behind some wall cavity (I've scoured the entire flat for every alternative) for nothing, am I? Am I? No? No. (Yes). No. I've watched Wayne's World 2 enough times to know that gigs can be organised by even the most cloth-headed of bumbling long-hairs using the power of: magic. So all I have to do now is just use magic.

The band have been sending messages back and forth to each other all morning about ABBEY ROAD tomorrow. All I can say is that I haven't been this excited since I realised I could use magic to book gigs, and that was about 14 seconds ago, so you can imagine how excited I was then, and am now, and will continue to be, forever. It's so damn cool that we're heading up there to put the polish on our first single Red. Trewin in particular has worked harder than a student's kettle on recording and mixing this thing and it's going to be great to get it finished at one of the most renowned studios in the world, then release it through Akira Records this year.

A couple of interesting newsy and clicky and fun things will be coming your way very soon, but not yet (hence 'soon') so I'll just whet your voracious appetites with this very sentence. Look back over it should you wish to read it again.

Don't forget, you can catch us this Saturday 26/1/13 at The Prince Albert as part of One Inch Badge's Sea Monsters festival. We'll be playing alongside The Physics House Band and Ed Prosek. Here's the compilation album, of which we're proud to be a part.

Life is one long stream of fun.

Tim

Phoria! Tonight! Live! Sold out! Cancelled!

It's never nice to cancel a gig, especially on the day of the gig itself.
I was all worked up for tonight. I'd had a shower and everything, I'd trimmed my beard, furchrissakes, and I'd even arranged my clothes (CLEAN CLOTHES), neatly, at the end of my bed, as a caring parent would do, so as to facilitate a full sense of occasion.
I know that Ed had baked a special cake, Jeb had, through bloodied tears, crafted a tributory wood carving, and Seryn had put together a special outfit just for the occasion which, he told me, was based on a rumoured ancient Atlantian ceremonial loin cloth.

All of this effort...all for what?

We're truly sorry to have let you down, especially if you bought tickets just to see us. We'll be in London again soon, and we'll be sure to give you a special wink and a smile.