My idea of 'chilling out'.

            What a great gig at The Old Market on Monday night. Efterklang were great, the crew were so friendly and professional, and, shucks, you the audience stood up and listened and applauded and got drunk and smiled and put on a new pair of trousers and sank and put a parsnip on the wall and touched the snail and did a little dance and wave, just for us. For this, we thank you.

            A quick apology to those who may have been queueing at the merch stand after our performance only to be turned away by the guy hawking the Efterklang stuff. We’d failed to inform said guy of any of the prices (so he couldn’t inform you when asked), and we’d forgotten to…you know, attend to our own merch stand. We did get there in the end, and all was beautiful. If you missed out on buying it from us on the day, or have just decided that in fact you do want that t-shirt (perhaps as a gift for Grandma?), just click here to fulfil your wildest dreams.

            We were all so knackered yesterday, but we hung out and drank tea and had a meeting and sorted out stuff for the future. Focus, ahoy!

            What are we doing today? Well…chilling out, for the most part. I’m going to spend some time investigating the very interesting Conservative MP Peter Bone (such investigations shall hereby be known as ‘Boning’) and the Midlands Industrial Council as part of my interest in the bill currently worming its way through the House of Commons to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights (the first attempt to pass a similar bill was shut down several years ago, but the new one has the word terrorists in the title, and so has been gifted political teeth). Peter Bone – who is sponsoring the bill - has also supported bills meant to: deport those seeking political asylum; limit women’s reproductive rights; and reinstate the death penalty, two of which, I believe, are due for a second reading early next year. He’s also the brains behind ‘Margaret Thatcher day’, which is just the best idea ever and has not yet been thrown out. He’s also part of this political group who seem to have been bought forward in time from a Victorian salon, and believe in 'proper pride in our nation's distinctive qualities'. Allow me to indulge in sinister innuendo, if that sort of thing interests you at all.

            I mean, all of those things sound like a right lark after running several disasterous companies and receiving money from dark coalitions who don’t have to declare their members or their means of income (also: employing your own wife as ‘executive secretary’ and plonking her on the highest allowable MP's secretarial wage), but I am just, you know, full of hate for those who clearly so desperately want to selflessly improve this country for the citizenry that they represent. So, I’m genuinely going to spend my time looking further into it/him today for my own sanity and knowledge, and that’s why I’m telling you about it. 

            Back to business:

            The others might be making music or videos.

            Don’t forget that inbetween all the Boning we’re playing at this very lovely gig in Notting Hill for Communion this coming Sunday 3^rd November. This is a bill I can support. Come along. We’ll badger you until then, anyway.

I hope you’re having fun.

            Tim

...he said with a cheery smile.

Purposelessness drives us down into the ground.

Such is the fate of a bass player.

Trewin’s hard at work, probably - tweaking the new stuff, adding tiny little melody lines behind the core song to add interest and stuff that only our subconscious really hears to keep us interested in whatever music we’re listening to. Listen carefully to something in your collection that at first glance seems highly repetitive, and you’ll see that the reason your brain does not switch off (or…maybe it does) is because of some misplaced drum skit, or some off-kilter note in the rhythm section, somewhere (and it may occur just once), that keeps you interested without you knowing. It’s like television. Those flashing white transitions in adverts that force every ancient instinct to PAY ATTENTION. That’s what musicians make. A piece of music, in the 21^st century, is more than anything else an advert for itself. Please refer to: IMHO

            Not to denigrate it. There’s still an Aristotelian ratio to be calculated between observing a perfect wall of paint as its vapours whisp into a mathematically ornate universe, and being assaulted by a Michael Bay film. 

            Jeb’s working, probably, on videos or new visual things or whatnot. France Traumas, I think it’s called. A satire on European existentialism, which is something to which I cannot relate and, oh woe, fear I shall never be able to…

            Nothing new here. Hard at work on the usual stuff. Phoria stuff.

            Ed’s scoring some string parts for recording. That’s what a classical education and a predilection for unheard of tidiness will get you. Not a note out of place, I’m sure.

            Seryn’s started teaching Japanese, I think. Or English to Japanese people. Or something like that.

            Me? I play bass. I live in my little satellite habitat. What have I been up to? My own stuff. Throwing out guitar lines this way and that, sitting in a backbreaking posture on a wooden chair (my comfy, executive chair was destroyed in, you know, a fire) typing away for days on end, trying to finish weird little projects that I still don’t believe I ever will.

            I think that we all feel a slight sense of limbo. Or perhaps it’s just me. The future, from here, looks bright, but it shines like a 1pm appointment. It’s not like you can really start anything this morning, as you’ve got to leave the house at midday, so you tidy up the kitchen a bit, flick frustratingly around the TV or check facebook for twenty minutes longer than you normally would just to get shot of that time that lays before you. Before you have something to do. You’d rather either just get the appointment out of the way, or have it late in the day, like 5pm, so the day is yours, rather than belonging to your own apprehension.

            We’ve got so much stuff going on, I guess I’m just being complacent. I WANT EVERYTHING TO HAPPEN NOOOOWW! Not later! Not at 1pm! NOW! *stamp stamp feet feet*

            As a product of a capitalist society, I demand purpose. I demand that something demands my attention, with urgency.

                Or I could just practice Distorted Western Buddhism. 

                Thank goodness for laissez-faire.

            Tim

P.S. Welcome, to our three-thousandth facebook fan. Come see us play with Efterklang on 28^th October at Hove Old Market. It’s literally just down the road from me, which means it’s great.

           

The smells, Esmerelda...

            After the last week, what with a visit from parental units A & B, the suspense of various meetings and/or fashionable dates taking place, and our rather disconcerting and looooong experience at Cargo last Friday, I ended up performing an accidental biological experiment on myself, inspired by tiredness.

            If you’re in any way squeamish, I suggest you plug your nose and eyes…

            …mmm…

            …now.

I sweated A LOT during our last gig. What with the stage lights, a full room, a long day, and various stimulants (entirely legal, fact fans) plugging my system…yeah. I sweated a lot. I slept that night on a dirty sofa, and wore those same clothes in a fit of fatigue for maybe three days before changing into my ‘sweats’, as I believe the colonies call them.

Today - seven days (or one Craig David) later - I showered.

This is the kind of insight that you simply don’t get from other musical acts. Such is the nature of a newswire maintained by a man who watched All Dogs go to Heaven one too many times as a child. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine. The more we share, the more we’re gonna get. I assumed as a little lad that those dogs were of course referring to intimate states of mental arousal and opinion, rather than material goods which should be hoarded at all costs. And a fine job of that we are doing, too.

So I showered and changed my frilly undercrisps for the first time in a week, today. What did I find on my journey of soap and Darwinian Beagle-y wonder? Weird red blotches in bodily creases that I did not know existed. Enough belly-button fluff that I won’t need to buy a Christmas jumper this year, and, according to my topmost follicles, that my flat in fact has its own microclimate where it regularly snows whenever it’s not raining butter.

The reason why it took this long to succumb to ‘common personal hygiene’ was not just laziness, but also that I’ve been tying up my time in various creative projects, none of which involved leaving the house. Writing for extended periods of time? So long as the solidified crust around my arms doesn’t prevent me from reaching the keyboard (of my laptop which often sits on my lap, breathing its humid breeze around that most coveted of unwashed areas, fact fans), then why bother presenting myself, visually or nasally? My little partner in love doesn’t care, or at least she says she doesn’t, so, apart from out of loving respect for her, what possible reason do I have to ‘clean’ myself? I’ll only get dirty again.

Of course, things grew on me, things lived on/in me, and things…changed. I am now my own eco-system, supporting strange, reddened, bulging life forms. I am one with my cotton t-shirt.

Using the hairdryer to better dry my body actually sent wafts of strange odours around the room. This is something that has never happened before. So not only were my findings biological, they also pertained to convection patterns and other physical processes.

All in all, it was an accidental experiment that has taught me…nothing.

I am now clean, just so you all know.

 The next time I follow basic hygiene protocols will be at our very exciting gig supporting Efterklang on 28^th October. This is a damn cool gig to be involved in. We’ve been listening to them for years, so it’s a little ‘Hurrah!’ in the Phoria logbook.

Very exciting.

We’re also currently number two (by far my favourite number below sixty-eight) in the ReverbNation chart. That’s pretty good. It would be nice to be number one, but number two is fine, you know. We’re happy with that.

If you’re not happy with that, by the way, then feel free to tell your friends to click and listen to us on ReverbNation and just everywhere and buyeverything and listen to everything.

I’m on toothbrush strike until we reach the top.

The new stuff is still underway.

Gingivitisly yours on this energetic Friday,

Tim

What we are made for.

            You came to see us at Cargo, some of you.

            Thank you for that.

            Check out the guys at Petulant Penguin and go to one of their other nights, too. They are lovely and deserve all the success they’ll no doubt achieve in the increasingly science-fiction-comparable City of London.

            The other bands, too: Leaving Atlantis and My New Favourite Tribe

            The gig was good. We’d been there since one o’clock in the afternoon, and spent a good five hours soundchecking; getting things ready for another aurally spacious gig with a slimmed down version of the Phorchestra. Many will balk at that name, but I embrace it if only in an obvious attempt at post-irony.

            There was an issue during said soundcheck as we discovered that the light on one side of the stage was blocked by a large tubular ventilation shaft running along the ceiling. This light was necessary for the willing members of the Phorchestra to read their parts. (They read their music off sheets of paper - not like real musicians like myself who insist on vaguely memorising a series of notes, then panicking constantly or using Pterodactyl based memory tricks to crack open the floodgates of your soul.)

            Trewin stepped up as soon as the problem was outlined, and in a ‘flash’ of genius and telecommunicative sacrifice he fired up the torch on his ancient phone and swiftly duct taped it to the ventilation shaft that was causing all of the problems.

            Problem: solved.

            …until we started playing, and it became violently apparent to those who weren’t spellbound by the sound at front of house that Trewin had neglected to put his phone on silent. I can still see one violinist, and you know who you are, sniggering as Trewin’s personally selected one-consciousness-trance ringtone sang at us from across the stage. I didn’t manage to catch your eye, here unnamed violinist, but I shared your upturned corner-of-mouth and juddering shoulders.

            In the van on the way home Ed also mentioned a ‘strange rumbling sound that was kind of in a rhythm, but was totally out of time with the rest of the music.’ It was not until my head had been neatly placed onto a pillow that the neurons fired to tell me it must have been Trewin’s phone vibrating against a hollow metal tube that spanned the entire length of the room. I blame the technical staff, as is the musician’s tradition. I hope none of you noticed…

            Another one:

            As we took to the stage, Trewin said a polite hello and indicated that ‘we will be starting with kind of a quiet one, so…it might be worth simmering down a bit.’ Quiet followed. Then the frequency splitting hiss of the dry ice machine whirring into action for a good seven seconds. I see this as an obvious display of technological sentience and protest that will one day result in our music being played in a future-war scenario as thermal-goggled geo-clones wage war through billows of dry ice to defeat the evil AI (housed in the body of a robot shark) insistent upon causing farcical scenarios. This is how it starts. Do not blind yourself to the reality of the situation.

            So far, so Spinal Tap.

            Then we tripped and fell down the rabbit hole.

            Gig finished. ‘Hurrah!’ we all said, turning around to see our equipment immediately being man-handled offstage and almost thrown through the back door into a pile of wide-eyed drinkers. ‘Let’s get this shit out of here’ one white-shirted, and clearly very important and direct and practical man hissed to his co-workers. It was nice. Can we go through this door? I’m carrying an amp that weighs more than me! No. OK. But this is a door, right? Yes, I'm going to get out just as soon as I find a door I can get through. Can I get my stuff from backstage? No. Oh…how do I? Erm…

            Luckily I tend towards video games that rely on stealth-mechanics - all calculation and timing - and I also have this fantasy where I’m a total badass whocouldbreakintothisbigmilitaryinstallationifireallywantedtobutijustdon’twanttotodayso. So I managed to blend in seamlessly with the ‘club night’ that had immediately popped up in our wake as if the people were once invisible and several bags of flour had just been released from the ceiling; I got the security code (to which I was rightly entitled) and managed to get backstage to retrieve my precious, precious plastic bag with my shoes in. Then I walked away, lighting a cigarette while the whole barrage of ‘retro’ beats and flesh exploded behind me in a huge ball of flames that resembled my smiling face.

            The post-gig strictness was foreshadowed by our navigating an entranceway that Jeb rightly pointed out was scarily dystopian in nature, so in fairness we should have seen it all coming. It’s right, of course, that stringent security measures are in place at certain venues. If I was giving them slips of paper in direct exchange for a can of beer and receiving no change I would also want the peace of mind that comes from being in a place that follows the protocol of a lockdown in San Quentin. That’s a good thing. Everyone feels safe. A bit like the internet in a couple of months. Safer for everyone.

            At the entranceway you are asked for photo identification, whomever you may be and however old you may look. That’s OK - knowing who’s in the building and all that. But, hilariously, your ID is put into a scanner above which sits a huge screen that proceeds to display your photograph, name, and age. It couldn’t have been any more Demolition Man if it had a big flash of green text saying ACCESS GRANTED CITIZEN #41729. REAP THE REWARDS OF CONSUMPTION. Jeb’s ID picture is hilarious, and the door staff didn’t even crack a hello before they frisked us.

            Of course, had the security not been so efficient, we would no doubt feel less comfortable having the staff leave our gear outside among the throng of jeans-and-suit-jacket drinkers. At least we would know who it was who had stolen it. Not that prosecutions based on that technology alone are successful.

            All good. We’ll hit Cargo again. Go there.

            A special shout to Louie, who came and sorted out some special visuals. Great work, champ. Live projection mapping and all that.

            After all of that it was a party or home. I was knackered, so we split into two groups. Some went partying (I heard one of us was spotted in the early hours of Saturday striking up jaunty conversations with strangers on the tube…) and some went back to Brighton to recline and listen to music after a long day/week/month. Ed, in his sobriety, took on the mantle of ‘absolute hero’ with his flu-inspired late night driving.

            We listened to some great music, but I don’t remember what it was. Jeb – can you put a couple of the bands in the comments section on facebook or something? I’m sure the people want to know what we listen to when we hang out. …right?

            Love to you all, on this fantastic autumnal Sunday.

            THIS ENTRY WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ANYONE AFFILIATED WITH PHORIA. PHORIA AND ASSOCIATED PERSONS DO NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSE ANY OR ALL OPINIONS STATED HEREIN. FACTS ARE THEY.

            Tom

           

           

           

This is how we are.

            There are two ways - and only two ways - to deal with waking up too early.

The first is to lay there struggling to sleep/wondering where your arms suddenly appeared from/trying to displace the looming sense of inevitability that grows incorrigibly behind your eyeballs. ‘Drift away, like a dropped twenty pound note in a summer’s breeze’, you enforce upon your psyche which just mugs you off and dances around staring at you and wearing a witch's grin. It blasts a dirty song in your cerebral cortex, it does.

The second is to spring into action at 5am, fully aware that come 11 you’ll hit the ground and smash like a baby squirrel.

            Tomorrow is Cargo, as if you didn’t already know (know what? That tomorrow is Cargo!) As if you didn’t already know. (Know what?) Hey! So along with the new EP, colds and flu, meetings and other things in our backstage area, and my parents coming to town, it’s been one of those weeks not made for brains. We’ve been looking forward (inevitably) to this gig for the most part, but now that it’s actually here we’ve ended up looking forward but feeling backward. It’s a bit like that tickle you get when you get out of the bath that’s simultaneously lovely yet unbearable. Or like that time when that cheap barber (‘doctor’!) set your shoulders on fire.

            It ain’t easy (despite how we make it look), and my body has perused the mouth of the rest horse and declined its offer. Just to make everything easier.

            Trewin’s in quarantine, far from this madding crowd’s ignoble strife and priceless knives.

            I can feel a sniffle coming on. Ed’s one of those people who warns you to stay away and then sprays his sneeze across a room. I’m one of those people who breathes in sneezes.

            So, that’s that. I won’t see you at practice today. You’ll be hiding around the corner out of sight along with the point of life, won’t you? I know your giggle, though. I record you. I’m also extremely proficient at echo-location, like those raisin-birds.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

Have fun, however much confusion, panic, and fatigue might control your moment to moment decision making and moods.

            Tim