The Fable of the Van, or 'How to Make an Album Underwater'.

We were cruising just fine, until a problem came up.

The van’s engine, until then our must trusted ally in the fight against Achieving Nothing, was sputtering, groaning, and cutting out at random intervals. Its glitchiness started just as we entered London—as if the four wheeled veteran had made an effort to wait for the best time to finally admit its frailty but, in a case of combustibilia nervosa, was guilty of a gross miscalculation.

Sometimes on failure the engine would burst into life, and roar, bringing us smiles of relief. Sometimes it would crank and its tones would veer up and down, like a hoover singing a Christina Aguilera song. Sometimes, after the engine cut out, we found ourselves riding a large, yellow, four-wheeled rock.

This blog entry tells of the first time we drifted over to the side of the road.

We got everything started again, and, making decisions on what to do, approached Blackwall Tunnel. If you’re not familiar, Blackwall Tunnel is a long...tunnel, with no place to pull over. Tons of traffic makes its way through it every hour of every day.

There were stories about people who had broken down in there, causing tailbacks for miles and grinding half the city to a halt. These stories hit the whole of London. Some wanker’s broken down in Blackwall Tunnel...

It was rush hour, and after numerous delays we were running late for our gig at OSLO. We had to risk getting all the way through. Cars were piled up on either side of us, trailing down into the dark entrance. The opening scrutinised us like an eye. It scowled. It knew what we were up to.

‘That’s the point of no return...are we sure we’re going to do this?’

To our left was the final turn-off before all traffic was funnelled into the black by a hundred signs.

‘We don’t want to be the ****’s who break down in the tunnel.’

‘How long will it take us to get around to another crossing?’

Phone’s were whipped out. Sat-navs smashed with sweaty palms.

‘In this traffic? About forty-five minutes to get there, and then we’ll have to get to the venue from there aswell.’

‘Right. I guess we don’t have a choice, then.’

And then the engine died.

‘Oh no...’

We drifted forward a few feet, restarted the engine, and scarpered off the main road on the last turn-off, out of everybody’s way, to pull over, spend five minutes on our lives, and make a decision.

Everybody had something to say. Six people all trying to figure out whether they themselves were stupid. Who was the most wrong person here? What’s the gamble? What’s the here and there? How long to wait for a fix? How long to take an alternative route? Do we run the same risk whatever we do? How late can we afford to be? What’s sunk? What’s up?

We are, when it suits us, a democracy.

Four votes to two: we go through the tunnel.

Ed’s arms are folded.

I’m jumping around the cabin.

‘You just have to believe, Ed. We’re all on board. If you don’t believe, then it falls apart. If we all do it, we’ll make it through. Trust me. That’s how it works.’

‘It doesn’t though, does it?’

‘No. But YES! DO IT ANYWAY. FEEL IT. BELIEVE IT. COME ON!’

‘It’s an engine, Tim. An engine that’s going to get us into trouble.’

I believed in that engine, and I believed in my bandmates.

We turned onto the main road again, ready for the great eye to take us in like a tiny photon, indeterminate, of unknown status, either a particle of success or a wave of unmitigated failure. Breakdown inside the eye will mean the gig is off, and London stops.

We passed the point of no return.

‘COME ON!’ We all chanted. Ed rested his head on one arm.

‘She’s been fine since we last started her,’ Trewin said. He revved the engine and it purred.

The traffic slowed as four lanes merged to two.

COME ON.

Once the lanes had merged, there was space. The traffic kept moving at a steady pace. The entrance to the tunnel moved over us like an eclipse, and from then on it was all concrete, tiled artery and grim, artificial roadside light.

Ed clenched his fist. He was silent.

The rest of us shouted.

‘COME ON! WOO! WE CAN DO IT!’

And we all believed into our bellies and we all starting singing football chants. There were three things to the experience: the doors of the lorry in front of us; the ochre warp of the tunnel walls passing on each side; and the sound and sensation of song and will in that cabin, driving us forward. We were already at the end, tasting victory. We had already succeeded. We were over on the sweet otherside, in the sun, nowhere to go but forwards in every direction. There was no questioning it. We had the sheer volume of voices on our side. We had taken our gamble, together, and we had won.

But we hadn’t. Yet. The tunnel was a long, and soon my throat cracked. Nothing changed. We saw no progress. After a few minutes, the white lorry, moving at the same speed at us, appeared static—a square void hovering in focus. The tunnel walls no longer passed in blurs but were blurs, like paintings. It had all turned to simulation; film set. Now our songs served not only to take us above the river where we could breathe but also to make the inside of this cabin real. We asserted not only our beliefs but the existence of those beliefs. We made ourselves real and looked at each other with doubts about our destination. We had fallen victim to bravado and brain chemistry. What were we doing? We kept singing, up and down. We should have called for help. The engine stayed smooth, but we faltered. We're not going to make it, are we? We were lost, on a path with only one road...

And then the pitch of light changed, from pub-tooth yellow to pearlish white, around the outside of the white lorry that now looked dirty and real.

‘YES!’

‘COME OON!’

‘VINDALOO...VINDALOO...’

The traffic stopped and we could see the ridges of the tunnel’s round exit.

‘I can’t believe we’ve done it.’

The traffic moved again and we moved off.

And then, twenty metres shy of the tunnel's exit, the van’s engine went dead.

‘NOOO!’

We cranked the thing and pumped the gas as the white lorry sped away from us. We drifted forwards shiftlessly, like a piece of debris lost and aimless in space. We chanted and hollered at the engine, at the world…

‘There’s a big guy behind us,’ said Trewin.

And the big guy blew his horn as we slowed:

PPPHHHHPHRPRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP.

Which echoed down the tunnel.

‘...Christ.’

We were almost to a standstill, losing all momentum. Cars were slipping by us on our right, with ease.

COME ON.

We all shouted at the top of our lungs, cajoling each other and ourselves.

Ed shifted forward in his seat, an energetic smile on his face, completely in the throes of a new emotion.

Other cars were beeping around us.

The van stood still. Trewin cranked the engine.

‘Alright! I believe! I believe!' said Ed, 'We can do it! Come on, Buttercup!’

Our van is called Buttercup.

And we all called her name at the top of our lungs.

...

POWER.

And we roared out of the tunnel, almost rearing on our back wheels, beeping our horn. Trewin threw his arm out the window, clenching his fist, and the big guy behind us, a huge metal tanker, blew his horn again, short and repeating along with us. We caught up to the traffic and settled in the London evening light, ten minutes away from OSLO.

We arrived on time, and, as the venue had no lift, carried our gear up six flights of stairs in silence.

Tim

P.S. The album will be done. We have a date. What that date means, we do not know. Whether we get there in time depends on whether we can will ourselves across the river to the other side of the tunnel. Eh? Eh? Do you see?

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

Just come to the gig tomorrow.

There are glitches on some video games that have gained relative internetty fame where the characters appear not with faces and freshly rendered, plump fake flesh, but merely as eyes on stalks, sometimes with wide, toothy, lipless grins.

"I do."

Cheery elements of facial features suspended in mid-air.

That's pretty much how we are right now.

It's been a ring-around-the-rosie of various illnesses and viruses in the band, culminating in my laying on my stomach in the middle of the practice room yesterday trying not to sing a symphony onto the floor while Sez handled his sneezed out snot like the sands of time; forever trickling through hands, flowing like Italian dough, the others looking on through braeburn apple eyes regretting every decision they'd ever made.

We've all had something or other over the last few weeks. I can only hope we're over it, now. I certainly feel better. I give it an hour. I found a pecan slice under the fridge but I'm being sensible and trying not to eat it too fast.

So, after how-many-days?-I-have-forgotten of wall-to-wall rehearsals, we're on the last day of them today. We are getting it together, of course, for this show at Cargo...tomorrow. New material, and all that. Always worth a mention. Album songs that you wouldn't have heard before. Just a couple. Just a couple of newbies thrown in there being heard for the first time tomorrow night. With a string quartet. Just a couple of new songs. From the album. Just a couple.

Shit. Is it tomorrow? It totally is.

Don't worry – we're ready – it's just that it's been so long since we played in the UK that the whole idea of playing has become a little alien. 

It's too early.

But then 

Tim

Look at the horizon. That's me, there.

Ingredients:

1 banana

2 knife fulls of peanut butter

2 slices of bread (white or wholemeal, but never seeded)

a tilted jar of honey

Lightly toast the bread put peanut butter on the bread slice the banana on the peanut butter on the bread tilt the honey drizzle the honey on the banana on the peanut butter on the bread grill for five minutes or until the banana starts to brown wash down with coffee and a coffee and whatever tobacco products you might have to hand and end up sprawled on the cold hard patio having chewed off your own arm.

We're kind of back, after the Christmas break, looking for winter berries and hot pockets to snuggle in. It's cold here. Everything online might be polished enough to successfully deliver eternal escape, but a computer screen can only keep you so warm.

I fear I may have to leave the comfort of my tiger-print slumbering table. It's dry in here, and outside it rains. But the tracklist is real. The album for the tracklist is real. Sorry – the tracklist for the album is real. We might be getting together today to further the infinite new of culture. Sounds exciting, eh?

All the stuff is ready at the band house. Just half-an-hour down up the alley.

But...the bed. This bed and the state it's in. It's got memory foam on it and I just picked up a new duvet. It has an aura. If temperature is a measure of the movement of atoms, I think the rate at which my body is expelling some musty odour is creating the heat I find myself in. If I leave it a couple more days I might even start to save on the lighting bill. I should not draw this experiment to a close, yet. Neither for the band, nor to reverse my twenty-odd year decline in social status...

I've also got things to do, don't get me wrong – I'm not looking for a day of zero sum.

I'm looking for a day of pulling puppet strings from behind a simmering pot of letters, like an evil Grandma cooking soup.

We've got a few meetings tomorrow, too, in that London, with some people or something who want to enjoy being a part of what we do.

If they like hot beds and bananas, they'll be just fine.

We'll let you know how it goes.

So speak free and loud, and listen out.

Tim

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

We all do what we must, don't we?

It's a chore, isn't it?

Releasing an EP, playing the launch at St. Pancras Old Church to a top-notch bunch of you lovely, lovely people, cruising around London afterwards dreaming of the future with so much tiredness in your eyes that you look like you've been soaking your entire head in bleach... (I wrote that 'so much tiredness' bit first and then tried to fill in the end. The idea of us soaking our head in bleach is accurate in terms of our appearance, but it doesn't really work, does it? Still, you'll get what you're given.)

It's a chore.

So, today's a day off.

No. 6 in the iTunes electronic chart, highly recommended by those nice folks at Radio 1, word going all over the globe about us, apparently. Display. Display Display Display. American Display. Vinyl Display.

So yesterday was the London launch. Saturday is the Brighton launch. Do come, if you're about, and/or tell your friends. Come come come.

That's it, then. Display is OUT! OUT and ABOUT! (Except for our friends in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We had to push it back a bit over there, for reasons.)

Today, then, is kicking back (which is really taking its toll on my legs) and watching Seinfeld and wasting my time on video games and drinking tea and picking out the wallpaper for my future swimming pool.

It's going to be a good day.

Tempted to head into Brighton later. You know when you're like 'I could go out. ...maybe I fancy going out. Staying in sounds nice, though. I don't know... Maybe I'll go out. Will people be out? Of course. Is that good? Sometimes. If I go out, will everyone go inside? Will that be bad? I wouldn't mind having the whole town to myself. I could lick all the gutters without being judged and smear 'myself' over all the shop windows. But can I be bothered?'

You know when you're like that? Well that's how I am.

Nah, screw it.

If you need me, I'll be bringing the ruckus. Just follow the slug trail through town.

Have fun on this Tuesday; it might be your last.

I only mean that it might get rebranded to 'Pleasure-day', or something, to convince everyone that life is good now that we're finally seeing the benefits of a precarious and limited economic recovery. They can finally afford to run the air conditioning at full tilt in the back of their limousines. Oh, praise be to those on the supply side, for when tempered by an active and caring government they truly are the arbiters of all that is good and pure in this world.

Yes, let's just sit here at the bottom of the hill...

That's enough of that.

Stay safe, and thanks for the love! Keep it coming!

Tim

Death and bad PR.

But why are the kids crying?

Haven't you heard? Rik is dead! The people's poet is dead!

But how can Rik be dead when we still have his poems?

Dammit, death. Why did you have to have to...

Ah, never mind. We're as bummed as all of you, OK? Just see Richard Richard off with a two-fingered salute and we'll have done with it.

We've been weeping into our keyboards, then. Blue sparks flying everywhere. We'll be sporting new hairstyles at the launch this coming Monday. Think Dr Emmet Brown mixed with 80s Tina Turner.

We've been going at it really rather hard. OK? We've pretty much spent the last seventy-two hours getting stuff down: putting new samples on new gear, getting stuff wrong, trying to make a couple of lights look like Guy Fawkes farting on a candle at the wrong time.

It's good to be so concentrated.

Let's see what happens. I can't emphasise enough how excited and/or shit-panteningly scared we are about the launch on Monday. Not so much the launch gig at St. Pancras (which I'll mention here again), but just...getting Display out of the door on its heels. Nothing but a sleeping bag (vinyl sleeve) and a couple of quid (no metaphorical analogue, here); out on its arse (music). I know the fine people at X Novo have been doing one of those bang up jobs I so often hear about.

Loads of radio stuff, which we're really grateful for. I even had an old friend get hold of me the other day saying he'd come across our stuff accidentally on Radio 1, and is now, at last, a fan. I've been telling him to listen to us for years.

Basically this whole 'growth' thing (not that one – I've had that lanced) is just an opportunity for us to weed out the wheat from the chaff as far as our extended social networks are concerned.

It's a very hurtful experience.

Keep listening, then.

Tim.

What's the do?

What's new?

Well, we had three tracks at once in the HypeMachine chart. It's a kind of blog presence aggregator which tells you who's the most talked about artist across the internet. We had it with Red and Emanate, and now Undone has done the same. That's cool, right? This remix of Once Again is in there, too. It's lovely to have so much support that we start getting involved in these things. It's a clear sign that things are moving forward. I mean, we love what we do and have loved everything we've done so far, but moving forward in our online presence and getting more people involved is just so good; knowing that we're able to reach so many people by doing what we enjoy.

Thanks, everyone.

Undone, if you're not aware, is now available to stream. Display is on its way. 16^Th June. You can pre-order via iTunes (UK, US) OR take a look at our limited edition vinyl, available here.

Two launch shows; one in Brighton and one in good old London town, at one of our favourite venues. We're talking to the string quartet. We'll be...stringing them along.

Eh?

Eh?

So clever.

We had a rehearsal yesterday for our appearance at Wychwood festival tomorrow. First festival of the season!

Ed hands me a sustain pedal, back in the Phoria house.

'Tim, I've got to go and sort something – can you please remember to bring this to practice for me?'

'Yeah of course!'

So ask me why I left the rehearsal room and got in my car just as we were getting started. Go on. Go on, ask me. Go on.

He got his revenge. 7-0 on FIFA 13. 7-0. I'll get my revenge, though. I wonder if his gear will be at the gig tomorrow, or whether it will have mysteriously disappeared into a ditch somewhere along the A27.

I wonder.

Otherwise, it's work. More new stuff. Talking to people. Doing interviews, watching the reviews come in.

Getting ready for an exciting recording session at a very famous studio at the end of June. Who knows what'll come out of it. Music, probably.

Jeb's working on a couple of videos for us and other people, which should make their appearance soon enough. He showed me some of the drafts yesterday and they're really impressive. I mean, like, really impressive. Damn him.

All I've seen Seryn doing of late is sprinkling salt on buttered toast. What a wacky neighbour.

And I'm just sat here typing.

The weekend's coming up. If you can't feel the sense of pure unadulterated ecstacy that I'm trying to force through this post, then to be honest you're not ready for the weekend ahead of you. I'd pretend it's Monday tomorrow and go back into training, if I were you, which I could well be without your knowing.

Perhaps I should put the keyboard down, now, and play Fez for the rest of the day.

If you're going to have fun, make sure you grease your toes with butter, first. It aids the dancing.

Pleasure, as always.

Heartford O'Helt.

(Tim).

[intentionally left ironic]

‘Brrrrr’, said Binky.

‘Grrabbabararabrabrbatatat attt tatt tata ttatat.’

From Our Van in Vanvana by Van-key Moon.

So our delicious van – the van that took us to Croatia and back with nary an issue but how best to express its apparent love for us – started throat singing like Frankenstein the other day. Five minutes down the road from the house, it was. We were due at our Hoxton B&K gig in about three hours.

                We drove home. What to do?

                Take it to a friendly garage?

                Money. Time. Fear.

                Rent a van.

                Frantic calls.

                ‘Yes, this is van.’

                Trewin and Ed went with themselves in Ed’s car. Jeb and Seryn took the wholly sensible step of going inside the house while we waited. I sat very still and silent in the broken down van and stared into space.

                I heard a rumbling coming up the hill. Diesel.

                Trewin beamed from the open window.

                ‘You’re going to be so excited…’ he said.

                Ed and I have a history of giifting large and valuable amounts of time to the video games Tekken II and Fifa. I go round fairly often – usually an hour or two before rehearsal or something – to relentlessly thrash him to within an inch of his life. Eh? Eh? What’s that, Ed? Oh sorry I can’t hear you over the wall of servers separating your response from this indeleteable wall of text. Should I redress the balance and say that you’ve won, like, one game in six months? Should I, Ed? And that was even before we found out that the controller I’ve been using is a bit dodgy? Hmm? Eh? Yes, I’d love  a coffee.

                …so we discover that there’s a PlayStation in the back of the van. The van with plump and bulging leather seats, pregnant with hours of inactivity.

                Ed 

n

i

p

s home on my instruction to get the games, delaying our departure by about six minutes. A harmless sacrifice, in my opinion.

                ‘Where’s Ed?’ asks Trewin.

                ‘Erm… dunno. I think he’s dropping his car back.’

                I run away from the conversation.

                I literally don’t care about anything but playing video games in the back of the luxury van at this point. We decided that Binky (the name of our regular van, if you don’t yet realise this) should never know that we’d been out whoring, and that it would be disrespectful to denigrate her out of earshot, especially considering our history with her, so we reign in our praise on ‘Overlord van’, as I shall now call it.

                Overlord van was literally a dalliance. A costly, baroque dalliance. Think of it as nothing more than the lunch-hour activities of a city-bound banker or politician. You know – the self-proclaimed moral arbiters of society.

To remain happy in the Rick Parfitt we shall have to flick that switch we all have and reorder our memories. Force feed our brains the food that makes the remembered imaginary.

                So the trip up there was good.

                Then the gig. Lovely. Great stuff from Groves and Amy Studt. Thanks to all of you who came down to see us and thanks to the good people at IAM for putting us on. We were really pleased with the turnout. If you didn’t come then I ask you: What the hell else were you up to on a Wednesday? Fishing? Where were you going fishing in the centre of London? Some pavement? No, no, no. This doesn’t add up at all. I refuse to believe your harmful concrete lies.

                The gig was fun. I pretty much destroyed myself. That’s always a good thing.

                So – in, out, play on the PlayStation.

                Little story simplified: Ed was winning. ‘Someone get out and help me park, please.’ ‘OK Trewin, but don’t turn off the ignition because I’m winning against Tim and I never win. Turning off the ignition turns off the games console. I’m literally just about to win.’ ‘OK.’ Brum brum brum. ‘OK that’s good.’ (turns ignition off) ‘Oops.’ ‘Oh Trewwwwwiiiiiiiiiiin!’

                I promise, that’s all from mine and Ed’s little obsession. I just couldn’t leave that little bit out, as I often say.

                So then we went inside and did the usual, wrenching up my favourite landscape with the usual means of tectonic transit. Big green bottles and tinnys and candles and cigarette making apparatus and snacks springing up everywhere and everyone laughing and planning our next move towards total world dominance. Release dates, etc.

Release dates.

I outlasted everyone, again. Everyone. I ended up finishing my wine and dismantling prematurely discarded fag-butts to craft glorious machinations of charred health on my own at sun o’clock in the morning. Mmmm. Good?

                Morning. Everyone’s happy. Drive home.

                No games, please – I’ve forgotten how to use my eyes.

                And then it was home. Bacon sandwiches, tea, and a lingering feeling of a job well done.

                Well done.

                More soon. The new songs at the gig were just a taster of what we have in store.

                Be well, and enjoy your Friday - you never know when the next one might be.

                Tim

               

Blog entry number: Dalmations.

Where are we, then? What are we up to, eh? Are you hungry, are you? Are you hungry for more? Are you? I am.

Where are we, then?

Well, we signed off on one or two things last week. That’s good. Nothing like ‘OMG Phoria are whatever big now’ kind of stuff, but really good and exciting stuff nonetheless. We’re proud and happy to be working with everyone we work with which is a great position to be in and we feel very lucky especiallyinthisphaseofourcareer, which we can only hope is the early phase. Imagine if it isn’t. Imagine if this is the late phase. Imagine.

Go on.

Shit, isn’t it.

I mean…that’s it. The waterwheel just keeps spinning. I didn’t know it had it in it. Still the music pours out of the speakers, still there’s a frequency that needs tweaking, a spread that needs balancing, a trinket that needs placing just on the edge of the mantelpiece so despite the comfortable chair and fine whisky we’ve laid on for you there’s still this little sense of urgency in your chest demanding that you don’t let the little thing fall off despite our telling you specifically not to touch anything before we left the room to go and find our special lubrication provided to us by a time travelling future gravel-as-auto-erotica entrepreneur.

That’s where we are. That’s how we’re trying to make you feel. Don’t touch it. We left it there on purpose. It won’t fall. Or will it? Your synapses are telling you it will. But will it? No. Trust us. Oh, hang on…

Repeat.

Repeatitagain.

We’re on this list, which is good. Very nice people at Gigwise. They’ve been really supportive. We like them. The whole list is great and it’s lovely to be among those names.

If you trust their opinion, here’s the facebook page of our next gig in London. Get it up on your feeds and that and hopefully we’ll see you there.

Sez has started pumping out playlists for everyone to get their well-used little ears around. Here’s one.

This week?

Sort more stuff out. Keep everything moving. Build a house out of litmus paper.

It’s Monday, and I’m sorry for that. If anything big happens, I’ll call you on a dog's bones.

Tim

It was a gig and it is one that we played.

I’ve decided to write this while all the strange colours and shapes from last night are still somewhat vivid in my memory. Good, no? I’ve got my second coffee of the day on the go after just getting through my front door, so let’s start with the joys of gigging.

Those who came to our St. Pancras Old Church gig are very beautiful people. Thank you so much for your support. Nice venue, no? Interesting, fun...a little strange. I thoroughly enjoyed shaking all the religious artifacts with incredible bass power during soundcheck. And in the gig. Big shout outs to Cate Ferris (‘support’ act. She ‘supported’ us with her songs. ‘Suppooooooort.’), Louis D’aboville who sorted out that whole light thing we had going on, and to our fabulous string quartet who, despite playing instruments that aren’t made of buttons that go BBRRRRRRRRRVVVVVVVVVV, still manage to make music. Thanks to Communion, too, for putting the whole thing on. [If I weren't so knackered I'd put links on all those names, but I'm knackered (see earlier in sentence) and some of this bit is an edit, so I'm essentially writing from beyond this entry's grave. Woooooo-oooo.)

I’d like to say that my highlight was when the church bells from across the way started ringing during the quietest and most tender moment of the gig, but that would be my favourite moment in a kind of twisted way which, after having such a good time, I’m not feeling. My actual favourite moment was the end of Posture. We just smashed it and then ended up getting a tidal wave of reaction which, when you’re standing up there, makes everything go away and you can just drown in the flood of sound. It’s very difficult to describe how it hits you, if you haven’t experienced it. It’s like it goes straight through you and your mind kind of hooks onto it as it passes through and you suddenly find yourself living a mile or two behind your own skull. Awesome.

Look at that – a little sincerity, albeit dressed up as something hideous and garish so that I might protect myself from my own feelings. Makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Me, too. Let’s sit in this puddle we’ve made for ourselves for just a moment. Tum-tee-tooo.

So, one of the members of the string quartet, who I won’t mention by name because it feels odd to (and I don’t know why), suggested we head back to hers after the show for a little chill and a drinky-poos. There’s no other way to end such a fun night, really, so after a couple of trips to a couple of Greenwich’s finest twenty-four hour supermarkets we found ourselves fully boozed and parked up and inside the building. Inside a lift. The lift didn’t work, for a while, so we were then seven, closeted up close like those fish that come in those overly used similes. It was a couple of minutes after the fear hit that the door finally opened, us having gone nowhere and perfectly happy to consign the last few brushed-chrome moments to the funny bin.

Ah, stairs. Front door. ‘Let me just snap my front door key in half, and we’ll be in.’ she must have said at some point, someone failing to suggest that it might be better to unlock the door, instead. Do you have a spare? No. ‘Hello, flatmate? Where are you? I’ve snapped my key and locked myself out! Oh, you’re in town? Can you...’

No, no, no. No help coming. Rightly so. Not a problem. She was mortified. We, of course, found it funny. Jeb only wished we’d been stuck in the lift for longer so that this might have punctuated the evening even more effectively. She ran to get the ‘super’, which I can only assume means Superman because I believe Superman helps human animals who need the superior help. Hence: Sup ‘erma’ n.

We didn’t go with her, because no-one offered to. Ho-hum. We sat on the floor of the very well appoitment block and opened our beers, like everyone who crosses that line between the privileged and the redundant should. We laughed. We joked. We needed a wee, we tried to pick the lock, and we contemplated lowering Seryn down from the roof with my hair.

She came back, still horrified, no super.

Don’t worry – we’ve got a van, outside.

So we sat in the van, in the wind and the rain, and we figured out what to do next. I mean, drinking and laughing were the first two things, but then we had to figure out how to get a set of keys back from the centre of London at 2am.

Taxi.

Taxi booked.

More laughing. More drinking. More cold, wind, and rain.

Forty minutes passes.

‘Yes, Hi, we ordered a taxi earlier, just wondering if...OK it’s still on its way to him...’

Stupid laughs. Punning on the names of composers, the jokes far too scatalogical for a blog so sophisticated as this little brown bum. Let's just say that 'Rimsky-Korsakov' made an appearance. Not literally, obviously.

‘Hi, we ordered a taxi about an hour ago...’

They’re almost there, they say. Who’s got the baccy?

‘Yeah, ahem, we ordered a taxi about two hours ago and we still haven’t...’

Gluggety gluggety glue. Trewin found some extra-strong tape in the van, made a crown, and we started sticking things to his head.

The wind and rain were still battering the van, and here we were in this car park, listening to an awesome pirate radio station playing some incredible jazz and house. I don’t usually like the radio, but this I could get down with.

Glug glug.

‘Yeah, hi, it’s been three hours now and...’

Ahem.

‘What about [insert immediate despatch courier name here]? They’ll probably do it and it’ll probably be cheaper.’

Very good idea.

‘Yes, that’ll be twenty minutes.’

Twenty minutes later, it showed up. Awesome, truly awesome. We’re talking half-four in the morning, at this point. We were to subsequently learn that a taxi showed up at the location about half an hour later, with the taxi driver telling the person from whom the key had already been collected to ‘go freng yourself’, or somesuch. Ah, well.

So it goes.

Indoooooors!

INNDDDDOOOOOOOOORS!

Lovely flat, big sofas, massive double bass in the corner, laptop, various refreshments, post-gig-glow still in attendance plus the surreal nature of our time in the van...

We ended up laughing, laughing a lot, long into the night and watching the sun rise over the London skyline listening to Ella Fitzgerald.

It was difficult to know exactly when, as the night segued so gloriously into the day that I didn’t feel a click of instinct or routine, but soon enough the adults knew it was time for bed.

‘We don’t have any curtains in the house, so...good luck.’

Thanks.

So that was last night. I now have to stay indoors for the next five years to pay off the loan I had to take out to buy breakfast at a Costa coffee on the A23, so you won’t hear of any shenanegins like this for a long time.

All of us are having a well deserved rest. That was a big gig.

Thanks again for all your support, our dearest people.

Have fun, and let the caffeine start coursing its way through your system this Saturday night, it’ll help you write nonsense.

Tim