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

An actual natural scenario.

I have a confession to make. I live a double-life. I am a double agent, trading secrets between the worlds of poverty and riches.

        My little dwarf of a bed-mate and I (and, I know, certain other members of the band) have regular dealings with her majesty’s Government concerning aspects of our personal welfare and our potential success. This is to the norm, and the presence of such a safety net and support network is not only welcomed and appreciated by us, but should be by all, for its myriad of societal benefits and the sense of solidarity for which it stands.

        Despite the undoubted best intentions (undoubted) of all involved, however, sometimes these systems will have cream-buns stuck in them somewhere – moistening the cogs and creaming up once creamless intricacies of previously perfect governmental processes. This particular cream, then, has been the subject of my morning so far, and has been for the memorable past. I am not, however, the party that dropped the bun.

        So, there is a stress. A direct, unnecessary and unexplained stress upon my very status as ‘person in a house’. Others have similar, politely unutterable problems.

       

        And so I take a step of desperation. A step that only the bravest yet most compromised agent would take. I maintain the cognitive dissonance of an imagined Reverend Charles Sheen, and draw from the completely imagined twin conflicting bank accounts of Jeremy Hunt, simultaneously. I make turncoat, if only in my head.

        Today, then, the other shoe in the bush on the other hand of Phoria is in central London, where we know several meetings of great importance to our future will take place. These are meetings that not only most bands, but most anyone-ers, would earnestly desire to be a part of not so much for any positive outcomes, but only to hear a yes or a no. Just to take part, as is the British way.

        Today, I and the rest of the band straddle both camps. Our bodies are weary, in all accounts empty, but our minds are flush with new ideas and avenues – new inlets of potential futures flowing all the time. Positive, moving forward – as much as we can, for now. We occupy both the bottom and the top; a coarse and inappropriate reflection of my favoured media.

        New material still coming. Promised soon.

        Little tastelessness.

        Tim

P.S.: Our next show.

Three little gigs.

What a couple of days/weeks this has been.

I’m typing this on a half melted, half absent set of keys on my hardy little laptop. My lady and I (absent) had a relatively minor fire in our flat two days ago. Two days ago while the band were stranded just off the A2 in London, our van Binky having broken down about 20 mins from the The Old Blue Last where we were scheduled to play for some very interesting people. Half of the keys on my keyboard are gone, so in an act of poverty driven defiance I’m typing directly onto the little rubber buttons that usually rest unseen behind the wall of helpful Roman characters. I don’t recommend this technique. I will now call it ‘Xtreme touch typing’.

As the fire spread, licking the Terminator and Metal Gear Solid posters and other ephemera that line the wall of ‘Tim’s corner’, my heroic little bundle of sense exhibited the attitude that got everyone through the last few days – sort the guitars first, and everything else can be sorted later. I smiled with relief (after asking after her wellbeing, of course. Of course. Ahem.) as she recounted her tale of leaping over the bed like a kangaroo to save my precious Rihanna and Betty (a relic-ed US Stratocaster and baby blue telecaster, respectively) from Satan’s faulty-hairdryer-fuelled clutches. They are safe and warm [sic], and thanks to my constant drilling of my girlfriend [sic] in the most dangerous and irresponsible ways of tackling large fires on your own, my precious collections of dangerously graphic ‘art’ films and hate letters to Michael Gove remain unscathed. Please show your love to her under the codename ‘Fire-officer Grimsby’, should you so wish.

Meanwhile, as she was pansying around with that shit, Phoria had three gigs in three days, four days after our return from eleven days on the road through Europe. That’s a total of three hundred million days.

Thanks to all who came to all. Your support is so incredible and we really appreciate it. It’s so nice to do what you do through all the stresses and worries and waiting three hours for the recovery services and flagging down amazing strangers in vans who take you to the venue in exchange for a modest fee and people you met in Croatia who come to the gig and take you in and buy you beers because you have nowhere else to stay, and at the end of it all see a new bunch of smiling strangers who so kindly express their enjoyment of what you’ve just smashed out through a suffocating sweat onstage. The promoters, also, showed a great deal of patience in dealing with us and our Laurel and Hardy ways.

So it has to be said that the day is done for me. All the band have earned a day of rest. Ed’s going on holiday, so the focus for now is on the new EP, which is taking shape for release this year. That’s right. Bloodworks was our nemesis for a while. A slow, cold war. This one’s going to be slick and easy. The songs have been brewing for a long time anyway – now all we have to do is pour the tea (tea being a metaphor for the songs) and wait for you to spill it all over yourselves in bed because your partner didn’t realise you had a hot drink in your hand and moved around really violently to improve their view of Ainsley Harriot’s Go-kart Meringue Vol. VII.

So yes, a new EP. Gigs. More stories from Croatia, once I’ve sorted a new keyboard.

I’m going to watch Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and eat chicken nuggets.

For now, have fun, and remember: sort the guitars first, and all else shall follow.

Tim

P.S. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

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.

Downbeat. Upbeat.

Right, well...

It's now the Monday after the Friday after the night before.

We got home at about 5am last Friday morning after our EP preview at The Queen of Hoxton. This late arrival was the result of a long drive involving three failed sat-navs, Seryn needing to be dropped off near a shepherd's bush, our nearly running out of fuel, and numerous diversions leading to the seventh circle of the M25. Ed and I were the only ones awake as we approached Brighton, keeping each other perked up by telling detailed stories, usually of an explicitly romantic nature, of time spent in the company of various renowned tyrants. Result of: 22 waking hours.

And all that (diversions, lies) after the big gig itself.

If you came, thank you. Oh, and we're sorry about that massive technical hitch that left us stranded onstage without a synthesiser, and without hope, for what in reality was about ten minutes, but what, onstage, in the reflected glare of bright lights in hopeful eyes, felt like about seven hours. If you didn't come, there's a brief explaination of the massive technical hitch in the sentence preceding this one. You missed out on a peek behind our IKEA scenery. Pay no attention to the frantic sound engineer behind the curtain. I like to think of it as a John Cage-like experiment in anti-music, but incorporating the progressive-jazz spirit of entirely unintended improvisation. That's how I like to think of it.

Still, we previewed the EP, and, even if, briefly, it was a preview of what it would sound like if you tried to play it through a shoelace, I liked it.

Away from all of that, away from the horrors of mass transit systems and sickening software slip-ups, away from broken down vans and this little itchy patch of skin in the groove beside my achilles tendon, away from thinking about the war-mongering alien species living in the centre of the sun, who have so far missed our planet with their gravity slingshots of solid rock and gas giants but who will, inevitably, be named our great overlords, forcing us to bow down and kiss the slimy robe of God-saint Tencatu, famed as Prime-master, merciless slayer of the weak; away from that...

/There was a bit of good news here, which I have now edited out as it might not be happening. Good. Good. Let's move on./

/This blog is now empty of positivity./

Enjoy your panicky christmas shopping, everyone! I don't know what to get for anyone, either.

Except Ed.

Tim