The touring test.

Where have you been?

We've been to Nottingham and Leeds, on the first, very tiny leg of our tour. Sorry to those in Glasgow who waited, with flowers and chocolates and other gifts and warm hearts, no doubt, for our scheduled arrival. We had to postpone. We'll be there soon enough, I hope.

Vanny van van, up to Nottingham. Looong vanny van van. Straight in, straight to the Rescue Rooms venue. Park up, load out, then follow one of the members of the other band around a million and one corners and roundabouts around and around again to our designated parking zone. Up and about, wrong turn after wrong turn, bundling around in our oversized van. 

Tired, then...soundcheck and...where's the dressing room? Oh, it's upstairs, up through another myriad maze of corridors and carpetless staircases and fire exits. Tired...

Tired...

Corners and unseen protractions of space and locked doors and unlockable doors so you have to press the button that resides on your right ankle if you hop on your left. Press it and then apply no more than 5lbs of pressure but no less than the gravitational force of the world's most recently birthed sheep. That's it. Now, the next door is a bit more tricky...

...but

WHAT'S THIS? A comfortable room filled with FOOD and a fridge filled with COLD BEER and WATER and HAM and LETTUCE and CRISPS and CARAMELLY BISCUITS. TELEVISION and an XBOX and a LARGE, CLEAN TOILET and all sorts of wonders. Nottingham makes you work for your destination, but boy were we happy to come across food for five and a kettle and a well stocked white box full of cold stuff. Nothing more settling for the 'first date of the tour'.

Really nice gig, really nice people coming up to us afterwards – thank you all for your kind words and support. If you're coming to one of our future gigs and aren't sure if you should come up and slobber over us once we've finished our mind-blowing set, then don't hesitate – just do it. We're nice, sometimes, and we will tell stories about you to each other in the van, afterwards.

We had time to spare, then, following the Glasgow cancellation, so we got to hang out in the city and spend some time with our totally random and very generous host who put us up for NOTHING but love and a cheap meal. We saw her giant print of a piece of broccoli that she'd hitch-hiked back from Barcelona, and made a pretty much consistent racket in her dining room with our new found table football obsession.

We went shopping, like professionals do, and it turned out that later in the day, on a stroll, after visiting one of the many characterful pubs that Nottingham has to offer, that Jeb, Ed, and Seryn, wondering about in the street, had been recognised by someone working in one of the shops. I don't think we've been recognised in the street before. The worker, however, was too shy to come out and say 'Hello' and so, apparently, her friend/co-worker had come out to tell these three fools that there was someone inside who wanted to say 'Hello' but was too shy.

Shy, too, however, were these fame-stricken fellows, unaware of how to take this as anything but news.

'Cool!', then, was apparently the comment of the day. Their resultant shame and embarrassment at not having gone in to say 'Hello', when I met up with them again later, was a joy to watch. They too, it seems, turn shy when presented with these situations they are not used to. I would, obviously, have promptly marched into the store raspberrying my own triumphant fanfare, scaring any would-be conversationalist into submission before their gag reflex could get them fired from their work.

These three superstars, however, struck by indecision and too much Curb your enthusiasm, carried on about their day in anxious awkwardness and indecision, leaving, no doubt, a curled up heap of Phoria fanhood fastened to the floor, the dents made by knees on carpet healing only as quickly as the hope-shaped hole punctuated into this poor person's psyche.

Anyway. A non-story, but a little insight into the curious oddities that can, on occasion, beset us.

Onwards, then, after much wine and whisky, to Leeds, where it was hot.

We hit the 'waiting' wall, a little. Trapped in the van between the back of the venue and a commercial car park, humming, 'hacking the sack' as those boys do, and just...waiting.

A nice gig, not without its slight technical difficulties, but still those who came were again kind and enthusiastic.

'I want to get home, tonight.' - Trewin.

Leeds to Brighton, then, leaving at about 23:30.

Mission.

Coffee and Subway.

Another service station. Another grand palace of worship to the consumption of convenient foodstuffs and cold, white floors. More toilets, designed like a labyrinth where every door leads to a new hell. The doors to someone else's floating poo are adjacent and unmarked.

Some of them kipped, from time to time. I was front-row-centre, jeering the two swapping drivers into wakefulness with cigarettes and mint humbugs and the standard 2am conversational patter. Grotesque scenes of a sexual nature, twisted into necessary decisions. Would you rather? What would you do if? Which pop singer/musician leaves traces of his fingers behind? Eh? Can you guess?

Prints.

Prince.

Long.

Drive.

Home at 6am. No sleep since Nottingham. We even hit a traffic jam at 3am on a diversion from the M1. In a fit of joy, we took the nearest capillary lane that lead South. One wrong turn turned it into a horseshoe. Back in the queue. Where does this lane take us?

Someone else's farm.

Back in the queue.

So now we have a couple of days off in Brighton before Leicester on Tuesday.

Here are the dates:

22nd July - The Cookie Jar, LEICESTER
23rd July - Oakford Social Club, READING
24th July - 60 Million Postcards, BOURNEMOUTH
25th July - Birdcage, BRISTOL
26th July - The Sunflower Lounge, BIRMINGHAM
29th July - The Castle, MANCHESTER
2nd August - Farm Festival, BRUTON

Come and see us, do.

We're much more interesting than these posts make us appear, and much more likely to sell you merchandise and give you aural pleasure.

Sit correctly.

Tim

P.S. If you live in any of those cities and want to have some fun and give us somewhere to sleep, get in touch through any channel you can think of. Facebook, email, twitter...

We'll try our best to make it worth your while and something else about sleeping at yours for free, please.

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!

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

...Croatia.

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

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

of industrial and economic progress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both products will soon be available for purchase.

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

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

Have an ice cream and stare at the sun.

Tim.

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

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

 

Audio-Retinal Sensory Experience.

Yesterday (Friday) was day one of filming for the Red music video.
So, of course, Thursday night...who should receive a mysterious telephone call?
'Mr. Douglas?' The voice on the other end of the line was stern and betrayed a lack of empathy for the sleeping patterns of others, particularly members of the band with cars.
'There's something we need you to do for us...'
And so the next morning I bounded gleefully from my front door before the sun could make its predictable appearance, heading into the heart of London to pick up a 'special' camera that can film back in time, or something.

My battered old car finally shuddered its way to the shooting location at around 11am. Fresh from a caffeine-free cruise through the capital rush hour and a long and winding jaunt to this industrial part of the East Sussex coast, I was met by Jeb, Trewin, cameraman Thom and our brave model Gab in howling winds and stinging, pindrop rain. I hadn't one leg out of the door before I was soaked through and frozen, and was met mostly with the downtrodden glare and grunt of people 'at work'.
'Camera? Ugh.'
It was like delivering a precious nut to a group of squirrels. I thought I was about to offer the cargo in my outstretched hand, but upon looking I saw that it had already gone, and the gang were already in the van, poring over its every detail and wondering where best to bury it for winter. Jeb shook his hair around, and we filmed it.
'Oooooh. That is well cool.'

Step two, then, without giving too much away, was to slap bits of wet fabric onto Gab, the insane fool who volunteered to stand on this freezing quayside in nothing but skin thin bits of muslin, and also to jump off it into the raging waters below. The wind was acting as a call to freedom for the smaller portions of Gab's new suit, so it was deemed necessary that I drive to the nearest superstore and pick up a little PVA glue, all the better to stick the little blighters to the body hair of our shivering volunteer.
'Anything else?' I inquired.
'Whisky.' Gab replied.

Filming resumed, Ed turned up. We sat in the van and smoked, drove around the quayside looking for locations, said hello to a fisherman, and ate sweets. Our manager and resident restorer-o'-sanity Ciara arrived at around three with sandwiches, crisps, and, most importantly, oh, how most importantly, the means to make hot tea.

The remaining hours were the most productive, and most pleasing for the technicians; full of food and, if you'll excuse yet love the pun (bun), on a roll.

The day ended hurriedly. Not an unpleasant situation for someone who wanted to curl up in bed since the moment he woke up. Jeb and Thom were off to see Sigur Rós in London, Ed had...something to do, and Gab was heading home for a 'warm bath'. Good call, Gab. Good call.

Tim

Everything's all white.

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

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

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

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

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

Life is one long stream of fun.

Tim

Posture!

It's Saturday. We're filming visuals for the 360 degree show. Time generously donated. See also: cameras, dancers, lights, space. Hot outside. Sunny. Close the curtains. More when complete.
My chocolate bar has melted.
The price of art.