Session.

‘It’s a Brighton vegetarian cafe. It’s not like the one on London Road – it’s like...a Brighton Vegetarian Cafe. It’s hateful and awful but it’s also pretty amazing.’

I’m trying to arrange the day with the woman. There is a vegetarian cafe in Brighton that a friend once took me to that I’ve been meaning to let her in on. They have these wraps (I’ve forgotten what was in them) that taste like [I’ve forgotten exactly what they taste like]. (They probably taste like exactly what was in them.) I’ve also forgotten what the name of the cafe is.

One possible cause of my cognitive uselessness is last night’s post-shoot ‘celebration’.

They started work at about 9am, shifting gear around and setting everything up for the arrival of the very talented and excellent Alice Humphreys, who would be shooting us for the day. She worked with us a week or two ago on a new batch of press shots, and we thought it would be fun to get her in again to shoot a good time fun live session for the benefit of the internet.

I turned up well behind the stated schedule, following a mishap with three tins of WD40 and a caffeinated whooping crane.

So we set everything up, we got what lighting we could, sterilised my infected wounds, and tried to make sense of this feeling of performance in front of one person. That was very odd – to perform for one person while performing for everyone. We knew that we were no longer in a practice session, but at the same time we were not playing a concert.

There are various levels of performance, and ways of performing. You do not perform the same onstage at the London ICA in front of a thousand people as you would at Delila’s 85th in the dining room of Restful Pines Retirement Hotel. They simply don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do and I think knocking out the back wall to make space for the lighting rig caused more problems than it solved.

No, you have to adjust your performance to the occasion.

So what is this occasion? A hovering camera. There is no air moving, there is no crowd. There is focus on yourself and focus on the music – and it’s all being taken down; it’s all being noted. There is no transcendent moment, here. There is no ether into which you throw yourself. It’s all being taken down like courtroom portraits – here’s a man in his emotion, now scrutinise him. Here’s a man in as much vulnerability as he can take. Here is a man projecting every fibre of himself onto the world – now watch it forever. Forever and ever. NSA watch it. GCHQ keep it. Look at their faces look at their little eyes darting around in uncertainty. They’re play-acting. They’re fakes. Are we? Are we overdoing it? No. How do we know? We’re underperforming. Are we? We’re overperforming. No. None of it ain’t going nowhere. Nothing’s disappearing, is it? Nothing’s getting forgotten. Nothing’s lost...nothing’s gained…how does my hair look?...oh god…

So we had a few beers to lighten up, and that progressed into a party of us heading down to a Brighton pub to start the night early and end the night upside down, strapped to a tofu kebab and being dragged home on a skateboard by a kindly fox. Sunglasses Indoors was the theme of the night. Also the band game Five Card Rocket, to which – once they have been officially codified by the Phoria Occupations Organisation - I will one day explain the rules.

All in all, while the difficulties of red-light syndrome do exist, the day seems, from my current slanty angle, to have been a success. We did lose ourselves in some of the performances and we did try and create a nice little package for people to enjoy, as we always try to do. You'll see it once it's all been cut together nicely. It ain’t anything like suffering, this malarkey – but there is something in there that asks to be shared, so we try and share it.

So today, being Saturday (as it is), and that being after such Friday (yesterday), I need some vegetables. I need vegetables and I need love.

Don’t we all?

Do have fun, in whatever mischief you may partake.

Tim

P.S. Remember to follow our Instagram @phoriamusic, and our Twitter too @phoriamusic. Chat to us. We like it. Go to www.phoriamusic.com for details on our upcoming tour.

...and what could be more entertaining than that!?

Will the collective memory of the internet lead to cultural stasis?

That's the interesting and brand new, exciting question I've been re-asking myself.

I was going to write, like many others have, about Latitude festival (where we played and stayed last week), but - unlike other people who have written about it - I don't even know if there's anything to write about.

It is thought that fiction allows you to empathise better with people and situations (see: Alien). It could be seen almost as a kind of exposure therapy to help us contextualise future experience. This is usually something said of written fiction, but I prefer the example of when the band went to Slovenia and while the vast, cool mountains of that country filled all of us with a deep sense of joy and peace, I couldn't escape the voice in the back of my head that said “Yeah, but I've seen it all before in Skyrim.” (For the uncultured swine: Skyrim is a video game.) The only difference is that in Skyrim, people talk to me.

So the reviews that I've read of the festival mostly consist of a dispassionate list of acts, and submissions for an apparent competition to see who can least creatively describe tents and trees and people in a field. And I wonder if that's because where in decades past there would be a new review every year, nowadays every review or story from every year remains available online, so there's nothing really left to say, or, more importantly, for the reader to know. If 2016 was basically as good as 2014, you have to write something the same, but different, and only different for the sake of having a review of the 2016 version of the event.

But is it possible that we have been so exposed to this kind of permanently available media (Photo no: 3429485325485439464348543574584345. Caption read: “Look! Young people at Glastonbury covered in mud!”) that the glut of available descriptions of the event and subsequent 'exposure therapy' has desensitised us to some degree to the actual experience?

("Ha! Look! Someone diving into the mud pool!" "There are twenty videos on the Guardian 2013 archived live-feed of the best festival-mud-dives 2010-2012. They're much better if not exactly the same." "OK. I'm off to watch Paul McCartney again." etc.)

There are categories and formats that dictate whether or not the content (reviews, media, etc.) - and the thoughts and perceptions contained within - can be recognised as such. It appears to me that what matters in a (hypothetically) desenstitised world is not what the highlights of the festival were, but only that there were highlights. The answer to “What were the highlights?” no longer necessitates the name of an act or event, but more “What were the highlights, you ask!? The highlights were good!” because the elements of a review (and to some extent our own personal expectations of our experience) have been so categorised that it matters only that the criteria for a review or experience were fulfilled, rather than a more abstract sense of what elements made this experience different/of and/or better/worse/tinsel than/from the rest/others./

So are we in danger of entering a period of cultural stasis brought about by the permanence of electronic memory inadequately servicing a desensitised audience who respond to contextual format (commonly labelled content) over actual experiential and/or narratively justified content?

On another topic, we've been practising hard through the heat and the haze, ready for Blue Dot festival this weekend. It's a festival not only about music, but about space and science and stuff, which we like, so that should be interesting even though I could just look up and the sky and be all like “I've seen it all before.”

We're also booking dates and that, for touring and stuff. Even though we've done that already.

We're also booking dates and that, for touring and stuff. Even though we've done that already.

You've already read that bit.

(We're also rescheduling the launch gig. Sorry about all that. Trewin is much better than he was. It was a bad few days. We will make it up to you.)

So it's Friday. The goose is getting fatter and I've got to find some stories to tell.

Grin at someone this weekend. It doesn't matter who.

And grin. Don't smile. Grin. If you smile, I'll know. It's not the same. Give them a knowing grin.

I'm telling you, it's not the same.

And I will know.


Tim


PS. I promise you something fun from Blue Dot. I promise. Perhaps a treatise on common wheel-arch design and the modern people carrier. Or a drawing of me rubbing a tank.

Pick it up.

We've been away.

The album got done, so we packed up and shipped out. Our faces had become to each other like the lost keys you keep scanning over, but never actually see and recognise. We saw more of each other's noses in that time than we did of walls. I don't even consider the guys as people any more - they're now just cardboard cut outs with loudspeakers attached, repeating the same stuff over and over again about reversing the car to get off their leg.

So we span in our various directions, for a while. Sure, we had a party or two, but all work stuff has been getting done over Skype and messenger services and things. It's been that kind of time. All briefs and contracts and mock-ups and things like that. You know, the gleeful stuff.

We've all been away on our respective desert islands, biking around the countryside, sitting in front of screens editing videos or other music or personal projects; scrubbing tiles in an underground kitchen somewhere - slinking our psyches into the shredder of life to try and take some of the thatness away. 

Consider our last few weeks a weekend with the kids at a leisure park, where only once or twice has it been necessary to duck behind a tree and take a phone call from Louise about the Marchester account. Tell them it was sorted on the twenty-third and I'll get Bill to call the contractors about upgrading the roofing.

We're very lucky to have a number of very good people doing things like releasing the singles and sorting tickets at gigs and things and all that monkey hair that turns to mush in such precious brains as the band members'. Thank you here, monkey hair manipulators.

So PRAISE THE CEILING we're meeting up in person today for the first time in ages to sort out some last bits of peripheral artwork, and really get some more of it done, yeah? Everyone's going to be happy about that.

Trewin will sashay into the room two hours late, big sunglasses on his face, one arm out to the side, asking what the fuck we want him for – he's got a car waiting, he's got other things to be doing, and who are we?

Seryn will be sat in the middle of the floor, cross-legged. In his right hand will be a toy train and it will be flying through the air. It will be making a “brum, brum” sound.

Jeb will have his PC set up in the lounge, and will be rocking backwards and forwards. His eyes will be red from coffee and strain, and he will be muttering to himself. Something about aliasing. He will look pale and ill.

Ed will be hoovering, checking behind the back of the sofa Jeb is sat on, and asking Seryn to make sure all the play-doh stays on the table, please, because he's not going to scrub that out of the carpet if someone steps on it.

I will probably be sat in the corner. Alone. Speaking to the floor. After a while the others will look at each other and ask “When's Tim getting here?”

And after ten hours we will looks at a picture that we no longer recognise and collectively shrug and say “Alright then.”

-

So Volition's out on 3rd June, and we've had a few singles out and all that. Thanks for your support on this, all. We're really glad these things get such good responses and we're really glad people like them.

We've got to get back into the swing of it all after this little break. Spring is here. It's time for drinks outdoors, yes? It's time for “fun” in the “sun”, isn't it? Isn't it? That's what we're supposed to be doing, isn't it? Those are the rules, aren't they? That's what it's all for in the end, isn't it? Five minutes in the British sunshine, eh? 

Eh?

Isn't it?

It's Thursday already. Wednesday seems like it was only yesterday.

Pretty slick stuff, I insist you'll agree.

Now get out there and kick your life in the chutney without fear of losing your shoe.

Me

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

"That's not what I said."

While throwing eggs at a cow (I was trying to make breakfast) the other day, a woman in drab, beaten clothes approached me, handing me a pamphlet.

“Time slows down as gravity increases!” She barked.

I didn't trust her skin and clothes because they blended in to one another.

Here gives you what the pamphlet said:

–

The dome has a ceiling as wide and capacious as the sky.

Beneath your feet is sand, and as you look around you see many soft shaped figurines posed as walkers. Each is attempting to make its way to the centre of the dome – the direction in which you, too, are heading.

In the centre of the dome, at ground level, augmenting the impression of vastness given by the gentle golden arches that soar above you, is a large black orb that at first glance appears lost in some orgy of vibration.

The black orb spins so fast that there can be no point of contact between perceiver and object, yet any person would insist, to any interrogator, that it is there.

You make your way towards the orb, breathing in air that thins and becomes easier the closer you get.

You start to feel light, and move with great freedom.

Closer to the centre of the dome, you notice that the sculptures change their posture. At first they were proud. Some were holding hands. Now they are separate, and some of them have fallen to their knees.

You keep walking, your arms swinging.

Your brain starts to fizz as breathing becomes so easy and smooth; you feel the thrill of gliding on ice. Your feet almost hover above the desert floor, they feel so light. Your chin rises. Your chest puffs out. Your body fixes on the orb, and you continue past the sculptures. Some of them show signs of struggling under weight.

You begin your approach, and the vibrations of the orb start to affect you. You now tilt your head and wince, but keep going as something in you says you cannot stop.

Soon your easy breaths become strange as the air begins to pulse. Now you walk and you see your skin move out ahead of your bones. The air distorts as if manipulated by heat. The sculptures around you are all on hands and knees. Some have curled up into balls and some stretch out in desperate worship of the orb that now stands over you, filling up the sky.

You continue as best you can but you feel a clash in your imagination. Every movement double takes at the rate of vibration you feel from the orb. You feel that you have already taken each step when in fact you have not moved. You see the orb and you reach out to it, but your body does not. Your hand is by your side. It rests as now, and moments ago when this feeling first arose. Your hand is out in front of you as if the task were already performed.

The sequence rolls.

And you are not there, or behind, but right here, existing as a point of past and future thought. You drop forever to the ground, inhale with limitless lungs, and now forever stretch one rough hand out towards the orb.

–

“What in stupid hell is this?” I said.

The lady, taken aback, shrugged beneath her rotting cotton.

“Religious... it's like religious things. It's about...look...”

She wagged a finger at the pamphlet.

“Here – this bit here. In the words.”

“I haven't got time for this! I said, “My band have got an album to finish!”

Ha ha ha! What a laugh, eh readers?!

Tim

Have we got everything?

Wake up.

These grunting, mucky bastards are your family, now. It's time for a family outing to Basel. Love your family, immediately and forever. Family delights. Family cares.

Shut up.

It's early morning and everyone's forgotten something. Grandad's forgotten his drum pads. Mum got too involved in something and left the immersion on. You aren't wearing any underwear, but you don't tell anyone.

Locked up.

Put a scrunched up bit of paper in a shoebox and shake it around. Shake it around for hours in joyless monotony. Shake the travel maraca.

Cheer up.

The hours pass like a dripping tap filling a swimming pool, but at least you're all here now. It's the Phoria-Smythington's family outing to Basel, and your first stop is some French place called Mulhouse, where you stumble out of the van and into a chrome and neon karaoke bar with a live performance of “A Whole New World”, inspiring you into wellbeing again along with a “beer”, which is a device you attach to your arm with a mechanical tongue that licks a little patch until it turns raw, which in turn tells your brain to release a new album of endorphins so your body and stuff can enjoy it all and the family can have something in common: a raw, bleeding patch on their arms that makes them feel great.

Roll up.

What's that? It might be a new day in a new country, but this family hotel has stars outside.Mum is happy she'll have a clean floor on which to do her ironing. Dad is happy he can put his slippered feet up and watch TV and pipe up intermittently about the state of the road. Little brother James has a soldering iron, two kilograms of semtex, and a behavioural problem. Grandad needs somewhere to settle in, and your room isn't ready yet. It's Room 101. This makes you happy and apprehensive, as you wonder what they're preparing for you in there. Turns out life in there is the same as life out here. Go figure.

Set up.

Out for a family meal. A day and a half of travel with sweating, grubby skin. Set-up, thunderstorms, bad packets of meaty euro-tubes and weirdness. The enveloping, soapy bubble of family in a totally new place (a whole new world), now made fine by clean and smiling hosts and a truffle dinner in one of the twisting gullets of the town. A smiling waiter who's had ones-just-like-you in all day, and sniffing clientèle who make haste soon after your arrival. Is that the ricotta, or those boys? Either way, it's blue. Eat your boeuf and let's get out of here. They're tickling each other and doing things with the breadsticks.

Mess up.

Manson had a family.

Yours barely know where they are. A square, somewhere. A growing crowd of people. You're setting up equipment that looks like a telephone exchange and one link in the chain keeps stuttering. Not now. Even the sound technicians have a nervous smile on their faces. The heat and the tiredness. You're not on edge so much as standing on the fronts of your ankles. This is new. Why do it new, now, Equipment? It can work. It will work. Do an interview with mum - moments before you get onstage - in a daze, being asked to comment on the state of inequality in Switzerland with a fresh mic and a big glass eye in your face, going out to people in their armchairs who have the option to change the channel; to change their immediate company.

You say you could do more about the issues, but right now, in this state, you don't know if that's true.You look like a hayfever-stricken frog.

You start playing – the family sings its Christmas songs – and you demand a Red Bull and chug it onstage. Your vision spins. The crowd gathers. The cameras are on and running you out of town in thick wires. Everything works, but instead of tiny keys and skinny strings there are bell-ropes and pulley systems and old mechanical workings that you have to heave and push and grind and wade through. Your performance hangs by a single thread string in a knife-throwing practice room.

Pack up.

Take it down and put it away. You did it and it all ends with a raucous cheer. Now the sun starts to set and you need that tongue-comforting thing to start licking your arm again. Head out into the cereal bowl to see what's happening and who's dancing. Another band finishes. “Thank you so much, everyone! We'd love to stay and party, but we have to go and catch our flight.” You recognise them. They're that family from down the road who puts the cover over their car and has a rotation of doormats. Their front door is spotless.

Your front door is a length of tin foil hanging from the ceiling.

Some people in the crowd suggest you're famous in this place; that Dad has taken you by the hand and dragged you onto the rollercoaster. You don't know about that. People are nice, though. Meet people and make them feel uncomfortable.

Walk across the city to a club. You don't go underground, but you regret that in the morning. Stroll back through to the hotel and watch everybody do like they do everywhere else. It's Friday, and the family takes a break from one another. The kids are in the crèche; the adults are in the lounge.

Fuck off.

Fuck off to the family home in the morning because you've all had enough. Sing a song or two and whistle up your own arse to enjoy the echo and put a plaster on your arm and on others' arms with a Nightingale smile. Sit in a chair and waggle your legs and get a boat.

Do it again.

Get some new equipment and get ready for Piknik festival in Oslo.

It's a long, long way away and there'll be other things to do.

How are we getting there, Dad?

I bet you thought I was full of surprises?

In a data driven world where it is possible to so comprehensively think and feel so many different things in an ever diminishing span of time, it's increasingly difficult to pick one idea for which it's worth getting out of bed in the morning. This might be caused by a childish loss of the ability to concentrate (which is easy enough to blame on 'the internet' just as it was on 'the television', 'the radio' and 'the paintings on the wall', rather than seeking the cause in our own personal failings and primitive need for quick slaps of quasi-cerebral occupation), or it might be that, in general, ideas are so diffuse and large swathes of the culture so homogenised that distinct ideas no longer possess the laser-like ability to energise in the way that they once did. So, one may wake up, have, achieve, do fun, and then sleep, perchance to dream, with little source of lobo-motive energy but pre-packaged plastic packeted slates of creatively perverted carbohydrate. There is as much negative to be said about this cycle as there as positive. There is as little left to preach of it as there is vitamin D currently being pressed through my veins. (So many people cared and feared for me and my paper white skin, eighteen months ago, when overloading yourself with as much vitamin D as you could possibly take became a strange source of Great British Pride until kale turned up at the bottom of an aeropress and ruined things for everybody who'd got it all so right, so far.)

And I guess that's kind of what I'm talking about. The world I see that runs rampant in screens and speakers is a flat plate of boring ideas, executed largely by pretenders, mainly for people whose primary interest is themselves and how selfless and nu-new-age they can appear to be to others while buying clothes made by slaves and paid for, with quivering and fearful hands, over a counter attended to by either a tax-dodger or a pseudo-socialist so pierced that they whistle when it's windy.

But perhaps that satirically emphasised point of view is just my own, if that makes it more easy to discard.

Hurrah, then, for a new energy in the Phoria camp, so we might at least attempt to avoid this fate of cookie-cutter drudge and despair and perhaps break through to something a bit different.

New shit. New shit. New people and things and ideas. New music. New directions. We're having discussions where we bash our heads against each other more hard than before to try and come up with something that'll work. We're all sensitive folk, and we're all finding our way, but we all see that we've been sucked into this particular breadth of the temporal vacuum where relevance is more relative than it ever has been before; where age and work can be more easily packaged and sold; where the ability to energise others with whatever you're doing can be achieved more succinctly, through a million different channels all at once, and in a million new ways.

Whether it will all amount to water and ash is something we will have to deal with as it comes, but for now the mere promise of doing something new, whatever it might be, is getting us going, and giving us a little glint in our eyes, and making us look forward to the future.

Let's see what will happen today.

I'll probably fall asleep in an hour. All this energy is tiring me out.

Tim

It's like you've got one of those dentist's mirrors and you're using it to peek around the corner of our lives like a Hollywood spy.

So we've got an interview today. Cool! Not a bad way to spend a Sunday evening.

It makes you wonder how to be, though. How do we turn up? What do you wear to appear in words? Does it change anything? Who do you appear as? Yourself? Maybe. What if even you find yourself somewhat of a doof? What risks do you run in putting up a front? Especially if you question your own judgement on what makes someone not a doof. Using the word 'doof' marks you as something of an ass on its own. So what do you do?

Are you charming? Who knows? Could you pretend to be? Maybe.

Are you disarmingly humble? No.

Do you risk, in projecting an air of confidence, appearing to think that you're more talented than the person on the other end of the dictaphone thinks you are? Where are we then? Does that air result in your convincing people that there's more to you than first appears, that perhaps your work demands an even more positive appraisal? Or do you come off as some arrogant and clueless little thing, convinced of its own superiority but ignorant of how opinions are formed in other peoples heads?

What if you come across as caring too much about how you're taken by others?

What if you come across as alarmingly insecure, or worse, boring?

No, conversations are too big a risk to take. Expression is too big a risk to take. What I think we should do is just sit indoors and never talk to anyone, ever, about anything at all. Like Kate Bush, but without that nagging history of success.

Maybe it doesn't matter. At all. Maybe it's all OK. Maybe there's no such thing as expressing an opinion or attitude that doesn't potentially alienate a large number of the people you're supposed to be trying to get on your side. Maybe if you try and please everyone you just end up going into politics, claiming that The Big Society is part of some grand spiritual mission rather than an attempt to rip out hard fought for governmental support for people who weren't born into a comfortable network of potential. Are there no workhouses? No? Then they should build their own.

So who cares, eh? These questions rise and fall, and the only answer is to go and do and be and not care about it. Have fun, and ignore the sirens and riots that result outside the pub door as a result of what you just said.

I hope you're well, having your Sunday. I keep saying it, but things are coming. We are working, and we are happy with how it's sounding. Artwork, at the mo. That's where we are. The sounds are there. It's coming. And we just might know when, but, as is usual with self-production, we're taking the time to do it right, lest we alienate anyone; lest we fail to appeal to every living thing and come across as people with ideas.

Tim

This unpopular post written with the aid of self-reflexive irony.

I enjoy it, anyway.

We’ll start at the beginning, then, as is the fashion.

Not that there’s much of a middle. Or an end.

Oh good: I can relax.

We hit Bristol last week and we’ve only just recovered. Thanks so much to everyone who came. Start the Bus is a great venue – really friendly and accommodating. It makes a difference when you get a good crew and a good vibe before the gig. The crowd grew in numbers while we were onstage, too, which is always good. Yeah…basically it was good and everyone was friendly and had a good time, is the crux of the matter. A bit of a non-story. This whole ‘starting at the beginning’ thing has fallen at the first hurdle to be honest - although that in itself would imply a linear narrative, which of course this inevitably has as it is, like music or baking a delicious cake, something that you cannot help but experience as something persisting through time, meaning you’ll naturally apply your own sense of narrative to it. If you didn’t recognise that I didn’t start at the beginning at the beginning (which I actually did) then you wouldn’t be able to say ‘He didn’t start at the beginning’ when your friend asks ‘What’s the first thing you notice wrong with this?’ Mileage may vary by tolerance and/or imagination.

But you digress.

It’s been a funny old week. One of those where not that much has changed but you feel like you’ve been up to loads. What that does mean is that you’re filled with the enthusiasm of busy days but with very few meaningful stories to tell if you, like me, were stuffed from a young age with a suspicious modesty and a tendency to slip subtle hidden messages into your blogs. It’s like life: at the end of it all you’re just left with a dull hangover; your brain feeling like a well-wrung dishcloth and your body blalaaaaaaaa

BLALAAAALALAALALaALAALA

aaaaaaaaand your tongue fingers licking at a keyboard with nothing much to say, but a sharp and distinct urge to say it, as usual.

Look, we’re a way in to the week, now, OK?. Oh no, it’s only Tuesday. We’re, like, a day away from the beginning. That was good, wasn’t it? Remember when the week was new and fresh and exciting, just like every Monday? It’s somewhat erotic, isn’t it? That first thrust into the week ahead, teasing Tuesday like a FILTHY WHORE?

It’s not, is it.

Music.

The band.

Enjoy yourself, whatever you’re doing.

Tim

Exactly the kind of thing you should expect in the 21st century.

There’s a chill in the air, isn’t there?

               

                Valentine’s wishes to those of you having a tough meterological time of it in at the moment. We’re on the South Coast, but are not seeing the kind of badness that lots of you are. Do be well, or ‘do-be-do-be-do be well’ as Fred Sonata would say.

               

                We’ve been all around the houses this week. A couple of days of recovery, a couple of days of great big work and more new songs for live purposes. Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes as always, new avenues and futures and all that as usual. The same old stuff in that everything is new. Consistence in novelty and excitement. It’s pretty good, really.

                I’m just putting together the last bits of my ‘Valentine’s day surprise’ for my loved one. It’s a 21^st century musician’s lifestyle simulator – the most realistic one yet! First I will succumb to an absurd desire to destroy my body and mind, then we’ll live in one damp room with nothing but books and guitars for company, and then this evening we’re going to feast on scraps of rat and cupboard shavings! Ooh, she’s a lucky girl. Then she gets to agree to everything I say and agree that everything I do is good so I don’t crumple into a pool on the floor, weeping into an essay entitled ‘What I want to be when I grow up.’

                I think the rest of the band have the same kind of thing ‘planned’.

                Happy Valentine’s Friday!

                Telston

                Tim’s top tip: One thing missing on Valentine’s day? i.e. human contact? Simply drink heavily and manipulate a hand puppet into a selection of depraved acts! Or, order a bunch of flowers delivered to your door alongside a card that reads ‘From yourself.xx’ Upon receiving them, immediately open the card, stare the courier in the face and declare ‘They are flowers from me that I sent to myself.’ The courier will run away so fast that they’re bound to knock someone unconscious in their retreat. Hey presto! A Valentine’s date is yours!

Wh.oosp

I try and avoid all forms of activity, where possible.

Honestly, I’d rather stare blankly into space, thinking about nothing at all, than get up to make a cup of tea, or pull someone from a burning building. I’d rather sit and watch, and think about how I’d have done it differently, than actually do it. This is not so much a product of my own laziness, I tell myself, but in order to protect others from my often disastrously enacted actions. Like ‘fixing’ my neighbour’s oven.

After several internal band appeals, however, for someone to fix a private playlist on the ever useful Soundcloud, went unnoticed, I took it upon myself to fix it up, to make it all sprucely, to ‘sort it out’ as I believe the productive people say.

This is what led to what Ed correctly called ‘Soundcloud-gate’, the other day. In my haste to get back to avoiding all activity I accidentally rushed through the uploading process on three of the many tracks I was putting up, and made them public, which, unknown to me, sends out a blaring call on facebook for everyone to LISTEN TO THE NEW PHORIA TRACKS THEY’VE JUST PUT UP ON THEIR SOUNDCLOUD. 

Whoops.

Imagine my horror (I immediately realised what had happened, because, while I’m as dumb as the next man, I still haven’t read enough Government white papers  to have that level of fecklessness really rub off on me) as I sat and watched the play count rise over a period of about twenty seconds. ‘No worries,’ I thought, ‘I can quickly set these tracks to private and no-one will be any the wiser.’ I nipped one of them in the bud. One play on the play count. Whoops! Back to the main menu. What? The other two now have four plays. Quick! Another one bites the dust. HOW HAS THAT THIRD TRACK RECEIVED SIX PLAYS IN TWENTY SECONDS? Private. Done. Crisis averted?

Ring ring.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hello Tim. Yeah, I’m just clearing up this mess you’ve made. How’re you?’

At first I thought it was the local sewer maintenance office, but it turned out to be Ed.

‘Did you know it comes up on facebook whenever you upload a public track?’

‘No.’

‘Well...now you do.’

So, some of you got a listen. Luckily, two of the tracks are ones that we’ve flirted with publicising for some time. Not too bad. They’ve been up on Soundcloud before.

One of them, however, was a brand new sprinkle of joy. The ‘new sound’. A track from the new EP. This was the one that received one listen.

There is one fan out there. One fan, among the many of you. One, real, person, with ears, who has heard it. Who knows what they heard? Did they like it? Did they immediately remove themselves from the facebook group having succumbed to the last straw, losing all patience? Did they ascend to a higher plane of consciousness? Did they go and live in the middle of the ocean, hoping never to hear another human-produced squeak?

We may never know.

What we can know, however, is that I subsequently went to Ed’s house, apologised again, thanked him, and then maimed him sorely at Tekken II.

He didn’t know that would show up here.

Aside from all the screw-ups and flip-kicks, we’re getting stuff sorted for showing you our big one at St. Pancras Old Church on 7thFeb. We’ve got the strings, we’ve got the vids...we’ve got the power. You should come. Tickets. They're limited and they are selling.

So, that’s it. Another week done. New Year’s is long in the memory, but never fear – something is just around the corner. I have no idea what it is, but it’s inevitable, right? I mean, that’s what corners are for.

Enjoy yourself. Have a nice weekend. Don’t step on any snails in the dark.

Tim

Hugh, more or less.

            Christmas is just around the corner, isn’t it? Can you feel it? I can, weighing on me like an elephant. Every penny counts, so don’t be surprised if we can’t send you all an individually engraved solid gold statue of Seryn on the toilet. I can barely afford the one I bought for myself.

            The new EP is being groomed, like a prize dog. The last few hairs are being glued into place with Copydex. You know, the stuff you used in primary school then never ever used again, and don’t forsee ever using again, because it smells so bad and you go home and realise you’ve got a bit of it stuck to one of your fingers and peel it off and roll it up into a ball and play with it for a bit. Yeah, like that.

            I have no idea how it actually sounds. It’s become a part of the furniture, now. We hope everybody will like it.

            It might be being put through some interesting channels. We’ll know more when we know more, and you’ll know more when we decide to tell you we know more. For now, we know enough, and that's enough to spur us on and keep us believing through the cold, dry nights.

            This intense poverty is taking its toll on our sanity, I think. I say this every now and again – such is the way when you get five young(ish) people working together, chasing after an oasis. The power of belief can be enough, for the most part, but sometimes it fades and you’re left alone, in a desert, surrounded only by voices coming from far away, telling you’re not good enough, and should be doing more to ‘get us all out of this mess’. Still, you’ve got to plough on, haven’t you. ‘It’ll be fine’ is pretty much the band motto. I just romanticise it into a kind of 21^st century bohemia. Maybe this will all be looked back upon in one of those ‘I love 2013’ programmes, beamed straight into your eyeballs using Google Retina, and it’ll be ‘Oh yeah we had to hold our house together with bits of string and use guitars made out of felt tips. Great times. I’m so happy we went through that and developed character…’ all the while resting our feet on some slave or other, sipping 25 yr old Glenmorangie in our Canadian mansion while our enemies dig in the dirt outside for a briefcase containing £100,000 that we told them we hid somewhere, but didn’t.

            We’re still straddling that line between envelopment and isolation. It’s a tightrope, for sure, but we are definitely getting there. We have to remember that.

            We have you guys, anyway, and that’s enough to get us through. Of course, as always, your support and nice words make all the difference.

            So, the cold has snapped in, Christmas has taken all the jolly out of us, and now I’m just a whining old wind-up merchant. The best kind of company, and the best kind of person to let you know how we’re doing, now and then.

            I didn’t mean to bum you out. Don’t cry. We’re fine. The future looks rosy, but it’s like when the iPhone 5 comes out and someone says ‘You can’t have it right now, you have to wait for the iPhone 6 – it comes out next week.’, and you’re all ‘Well that’s OK, that’s great. But I’d very much like an iPhone 5. Like, now.’

            Temporal materialistic urges transferred onto idealism. That’s what’s going on. That’s what’s healthy.

            Have fun, and stay warm, whatever you’re up to, or not.

            Tim

PS. Say hello to Mr Ando.

George Osborne covers my girlfriend's income.

There’s this girl who lives in my house. It’s her birthday today.

For my birthday, earlier this year, she bought me (among other things) an 18” Terminator 2 doll (‘poseable battle exoskeleton’) and a Kindle. I’ve looked at the Terminator doll every day and thought ‘Oh Stan Winston, you genius. You’ve built the scariest motherfucker in the land and made a whole generation fear for the future.’ I’ve also used the Kindle every single day, taking food out of the hands of starving orphans who I would so often fund with my book-buying charity splurges. It’s all electronic, now. If I didn’t enjoy contributing to human suffering so much, I’d feel bad about the guilt.

A challenge appears: What in the heck do I now buy for her that will in any way compare to two of the best gifts I have ever received?

What do you do, Tim?

I don’t know.

You could buy her some diamonds? Perhaps an extravagant vomit of flowers delivered to our door every day of the week leading up to her birthday? A sex oven?

Get real, Tim. A sex oven would just be a present for yourself. She’ll see right through it (through the little window, at least. When the little light’s on.) At least there’s a timer. 

And she can control the amount of gas.

Anyway, I got her what I did: a mound of tat. There are two ways to approach the inevitable couple-gift-wars on a budget. 1) The nuclear gift. Pretty much what she did to me – inadvertently creating a rod for her own back when she did it. Her future is fucked. She’s peaked too soon. Or 2) Buy a whole mound of tat, substituting quality for quantity.

Worked like a charm. She totally fell for it. Who’d have thought a 4” LED illuminated perspex statue of The Virgin Mary would prove so popular?

           

Then…someone turned up at the door. An entire governmental department squeezed into a little brown envelope. One of them jumped out of the first thumbed opening and smacked me in the face with a frying pan. My girlfriend laughed. I was on the floor, bleeding from the nose and eyes. She continued opening the envelope but she couldn’t reach the end before they’d burst out of the lumpy, writhing package she’d been wrestling with. Someone ran over my head on a unicycle, and I swear the naked trapeze artist stole my design.

One of the ‘Dancing Clown Firework Army’ ran up to my girlfriend carrying a big creamy cake, handed her a fat cheque, then slammed his face into the cake (sending the cream topping flying into all of my electronic equipment) before farting Stop (Right Now) by The Spice Girls.

‘Oh yeah!’ my girlfriend hacked through fits of laughter as I lay comatose and leaking all over the floor, ‘A sweet tax rebate!’

Jesus, HMRC. Way to upstage the king. I was doing really well up until this point. I’d done pain au chocolat and everything. This Government.

So, now the only thing I can hope to get away with is fumbling my way through a cool recording session tomorrow where we’re hoping to do some live sessions of some of the tracks with the Phorchestra, and shuffling flat-footedly through our forthcoming gigs, 11^th, 12^th, and 20^th November in London and Brighton respectively.

So long as Santa doesn’t turn up in a fucking Mustang and start handing out chocolate covered credit cards, my mediocrity should go unnoticed, and even praised, just as planned, and just as I’ve gotten away with thus far.

It’s better to be the best regarded giver than to receive.

I hope you are presented with everything you hope for this weekend, whichever way you take it.

Tim

If music be the food of staring pointlessly out of the window, then who will tip the waiter? (You.)

There's not much to tell, all told. This has become a bit of a recurring theme.

Trewin, I assume, is working on new material. He's all holed-up, as it were, in a little flat overlooking Brighton beach with just a computer and two huge monitors to keep him in healthy company.

Ed, I assume, is out and about; teaching, going for bracing walks, singing and/or whistling as he trundles down the road to the bakery for a fresh loaf and perhaps a glazed doughnut - half for now, half for later. Skip-a-dee-doo.

Jeb, I know, is at Glastonbury. The line-up looks rubbish. I hope he's having an awful time. He's definitely having an awful time.

Seryn, I assume, has been queuing for the merry-go-round for about six hours now, not realising that he is in fact stood behind a plastic man meant to entice holidaymakers into Brighton Fishing Museum and so never getting the rush of wind in his hair that he so dearly craves. The attraction attendee also, going out of business, wishes only for a friend, and kills himself on a polymer unicorn's spike as the Wurlitzer plays on, and on.

Me, I assume, is/am staring our of our first floor window at a brick wall belonging half to next door, coffee in hand, listening to

 

for the first time.

This is time that is down, or 'down-space', as I believe it's referred to in popular culture. (I don't look at any popular culture except the interactive show 'Unrestrained Reverend Warfare', which is on a channel only I can access, though is made by a group of people popular within their own peer group (battery licking nuns), which I assume qualifies it as 'popular culture'.)

So now it is Saturday, and the sun is struggling to come through the dusty clouds.

I hope you have a lovely day, however isolated, however slow.

Tim.

The Master.

We do what The Master tells us we must. When The Master is speaking, all doors are closed and conversation dies. The Master promises greatness. We must obey the aural whim of The Master.

We're making a few tweaks to the latest master of Bloodworks. Unfortunately this fact, along with one or two other spanners in the toilet, means we're pushing the official release date back by about two weeks. Take that look of shock and utter disbelief off your face - those of you who have been with us from the start should know better by now. Those of you who are new: Welcome. This is how it is. Ask the older kids for advice.

Still, the tracks should shortly be returning to our Soundcloud (not too sure when, but very soon), all fresh and sexy sounding. It's difficult to link to Soundcloud on a phone, so google it (exactly why is it not in your bookmarks?) then click and share our Kickstarter, which, and do not ask why, is very easy for me to link to. Why, it's so easy, you could even link it to your friends and family! Easy, convenient, affordable, fun for adults and children alike! Get yours now!

What have we been up to? We spent last Saturday in a warehouse with a very brave model, a thermometer reading that merited a concerned phone call from Pingu (though I think he was just trying to get in on the act - he hasn't had any TV work for years. I hear he was trying to avoid being typecast.), and a very powerful pressure washer. Red music video. That was fun. Ed and I were in charge of the ambient music. My favoured track? Travis's Why does it always rain on me?

From that day on, then, it's been a mixture of blind panic and editing. Trewin and Jeb are taking our other model, Gab, down to some seaside location today to get a couple more shots and we're practicing tonight in prep for our Wednesday gig at The Old Queen's Head in Lundun on Wednesday at The Old Queen's Head in Lundun (Phoria gig, Lundun, T.O.Q.H) at The Old Queen's Head. We've also been liaising with some great visual artists with whom we'll be collaborating at next month's SoundScreen festival at Brighton Dome studio. Should be a larf. It all looks very promising indeed.

That's Munday, then. Newsy. No jokes. Goodbye.

Tim 

P.S. Please do what The Master says, and spread it around again. We need one last big push in this last week to take us over the edge! The edge of glory! Sung by Lady Babar, the French elephant popstar king.

I'm not even going to leave. I'm going to wait here until you share that link. Tum tee tumm.

*whistles*

*hums Antiques Roadshow theme*

I'll be here.