It's all meet, meet, meet.

                Good God, the bags under my eyes are heavy.

                We’ve got two very excitable people in our garden, sorting out the guttering and shouting about how ‘it’s like a fence at the Grand National up there.’ One has just passed through the living room/bedroom/everything room, and told me about how his favourite concert was when he went to see Pink Floyd in 1987. I’m sat cross legged on the bed, in my old lounge pants, wearing a stinky t-shirt, and so absolutely shattered that I’m talking in that low, groggy way that you do. I’ve also just woken up... Basically I appear absolutely wrecked, to the appropriately trained eye, and it’s only 9am.

                If I appear in a state of insobriety now, however, it’s nothing to how I was on Wednesday night – the whole band and a few other tag alongs had a big one to end a big day in old London town, popping between places where people wanted to talk to us about one thing or another. I think I ended up on one of my late night solo monologues – something which everyone I know has to go through with me at some point. When the sun is tucked up and the flow of the evening has trickled into an inlet, I always wonder how rooms empty out so quickly – usually right when I start talking. When the sun comes up, I realise what I’ve done. I walked home along the seafront in the wind and rain as punishment, mumbling ‘nonsense’ to myself. I flay myself publicly here, too. For shame.

                But the meetings were good. Very good, very enjoyable, and we got to see a lot of London. That’s all I can really say for now. I was going to write a bit about how I wasn’t wearing jeans, but instead a slightly lighter, brownish fabric that shows up liquid and splashes of water like nobody’s business. Going for a wee became a matter of very intense precision so as not to make myself look like a cow in the shade or perhaps a monotone Jackson Pollock (take your pick from those two). These things pop into your head when you’re meeting people. I’m not going to mention any of that.

                The men from outside have just gone. I always try and offer people tea, but after recent slips and...not needing any more mugs, we don’t have enough mugs. If I was to just make a drink for them in the one mug we own, I’d end up having to pick a favourite and, as every parent knows, that’s not fun. Essential, but not fun. I could of course have made them one cup to share between them, and then just put two straws in it. Well, they’re gone now. You live, you learn.

                So yes – things look good. Really good, actually. Apart from the crushing sense of shame and despair, I can look forward to the future a little. That’s rather novel. All the boys feel the same, as one or two raised glasses will testify.

                Right.

                They’re gone.

                Time to put the coffee on.

                Have fun,

                Tim

P.S. Come to this one, of course. Just don't invite me to any after parties.

                

Mo music, mo music, mo music.

Another week, another week.

It’s been social, it’s been fruitful.

Two new songs popped up out of nowhere (Trewin), which, as usual, put things in a mass of choice-al [made up word mine] crisis. It’s like Ed, Seryn, Jeb, and I are running naked through a forest (yes), skipping through the low-lying leaves and rubbing ourselves against the monkeys while Trewin, poking his blow gun out of a stealth drone, takes us down with sweet paralysing poison. We’re now on the floor, in the mud, all covered in drool and talking nonsense...and then the poisonous effects of Trewin’s darts take effect! (At that point I expected you to think that the drool and crap was to do with the darts, but then cunningly confound your expectations using ‘sentences’, which, if I was unsuccessful on my first attempt, I have surely achieved now.) WOOOGLADTOKNOWYOU

So the poison (songs) takes us off into a magical world of unreality (music) but leaves us still and shaking on the ground in cold jungle moonlight. Let’s just throw them all out, yeah? I don’t mean in the bin, I mean into the ether. Into the great beyond. Into the broad faces of those who love us. Let’s just bung them out and throw CDs like frisbees off the top of The Shard, hack the BBC news site and get the mp3s blasting out - changing all the headlines to things like ‘Jeremy Hunt finally sees moral and economic short-sightedness in non-specific Americanisation’ – making people happy and hopeful. Let’s slide our pieces through everybody’s letterbox. Let’s turn every streetlight into a projector, showing all of Jeb’s videos on a continuous 24-hour loop across the entire country for the rest of time. Let’s replace police sirens with ‘Once Again’, so anybody in trouble can just get a hug and be OK and then sit down with the police officer and have a chat and everybody can do the same and we’ll have a cup of tea, yes? Let’s have a cup of tea. And when the kettle boils it’ll sing a Phoria song. And Grandma’s slippered feet as she collects the kettle will play out a skittish little Phoria beat and she’ll dance and smile as a tear, rich with regained memories of hope, slowly forms in her eye, around which lays the cruel cartography of a life so hard until this moment. And  then the new octopus blasts a foghorn in her face.

And then we wake up. In the jungle. Trewin hovering around above us, having written another ten songs while we were comatose. And now we don’t know what to do.

But that’s OK.

It’s all very good news.

We’re very flattered to be mentioned on this blog list of the best tracks of 2013. Any list that has us at No. 1 above Arcade Fire and Beyonce is OK with us.

In other news, Jeb and I set up the band projector in our top-secret bunker the other night, and experienced this shotgun cartridge of a film:

I can only recommend you do the same (if you have three hours). It is a Friday, and all that.

Do stay well. Have fun.

I’m off to dig in the made up word mine.

Tim

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

8:14, if you use the twelve hour format.

Goodbye then, 2013.

You were the year of Bloodworks, of Red, of Croatia, of Heaven, and that misunderstanding behind the bike shed.

You were a year of joy, of happiness, of getting no sleep thanks to the Auto-bahn, of swimming in Lake Bled, of that My Bloody Valentine gig.

You were a year of pain, of frustration, of nearly-theres, of not-quite-rights, of bumbling bundles and of misplaced bass notes that ruined the whole song but that’s OK nobody noticed oh no hang on they’re all looking at me just look at the keyboard and pretend you didn’t do anything wrong oh shit what note are we on oh god I think it’s an F# but if I’m wrong it’ll sound so much worse than it already is 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 OK it’s the chorus coming up just relax get back and retrack the phatness yes there we are.

Oh shit no that’s not it where the hell are we oh yeah we don’t play the studio version when we do it live that’s ok just dance like you’re really into it don’t go red don’t go red have a drink ok move your arms and stuff move your neck in a really jerky way that’s cool.

Oh good the gig’s over who was in the crowd? Oh shit oh well they probably didn’t notice because I covered so well oh no hang on I’m still in my house I didn’t leave the house well OK let’s play video games then.

Oh no I just woke up in the hospital apparently the crowd came up onto the stage and knocked me out for wrecking the gig that’s OK we didn’t get an offer from the record people but the WWE want me so at least I’ll be richer than these other fuckers who can’t even make it sound good when their bassist is playing all the wrong notes and knob out all over that shop.

Oh no they’ll probably read this now what have I said I must learn some self control .

We can’t wait for this year. Everyone’s feeling it. I don’t know if this is just a feeling that everyone gets at this time of year, and I’m just applying it to our situation, but still...I can feel it.

Hopefully you can, too.

I saw in the new year with some good friends, in the rain, all of whom were wilfully helping a complete stranger who had passed out in the street and was throwing up copiously on himself. Honestly, I preferred it to spending that moment in the company of sweaty-armed strangers, my beautiful face pressed against their pits, and getting the funny eye from that guy hanging around the bar, playing with his belt buckle.

But then, I have an odd sense of humour/the good life.

I’m tired.

More EP news, soon enough.

Have a good one. Get back  to it, and all that.

Tim

santa bring me spare parts

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring, except for a mouse.

That knocking was caused by the clicking, with care,

Of hopeful young Trewin, who sat working there.

The band were all gathered, stuff spewing from their heads,

(not ideas but old drinks and cheap takeaway breads),

so all that we dreamt of was dismissed as crap,

and all went asunder, for a Christmas Eve nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

Jeb sprung from a hole with a grunt and a splatter.

Away to the window he flew with a flash,

and out of it fell, with a scream and a crash.

The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,

chilled Jeb’s bloodied head, bloodied legs, and torso.

He stumbled and bumbled and lurched to his feet,

a trail of teeth; bones, curdled red on the street.

‘Mmeeerrrrr’, said old Jeb, as he lurched through the door,

blood covered his face, shirt, shoes; stained the floor.

Holes punched  through his head bared his pulsating brain,

though his skull was crowned white by the petrified rain.

‘It’s Santa!’ yelled Seryn with great childish glee,

and quickly manoeuvred to sit on Jeb’s knee,

‘For Christmas I want…’ Seryn started to say,

but stopped all a sudden, as Jeb’s legs gave way.

‘Gaarrrrgh!’ said the Claus now sat slumped on the stairs,

These things were the stuff of young Seryn’s nightmares.

He passed out and smashed his young head on the floor.

The wind proved his killer - decapped by the door.

The house now looked festive, though sounded like hell,

filled only with screams – no carols, no bells.

In the night, tints of laughter, as from afar I looked on,

through the sight of a sniper, should anything go wrong.

Trewin surfed downstairs, for something to drink,

stepped over Seryn’s corpse, not stopping to think,

that Jeb might need help, no legs, fractured skull,

Trewin thought of music, ‘These tracks, they sound dull…’

‘Ah-ha!’ thought the Trewin, ‘I’ve got it at last!

That section needs brass! A grand trumpet blast!’

Then I, like an angel, abseiled through the ceiling,

and sent out my own blast to send Trewin reeling.

‘But you hold no trumpet?!’ he screamed, hands on his ears,

as I kicked in his eyes, wiped spiked boots clean of tears,

‘I'm using my arse.’ I said with a smile,

before blasting another, with great rectal style.

‘THERE’S ONE MORE WHO’S BEEN NAUGHTY!’ I sniffed through the house,

Ed stayed in slumber, curled like a woodlouse.

So I left a timed bomb there to tick by his head,

Soon he, like the others, would be messy and dead.

Now, all alone, I stopped at the computer,

Exported the tracks, like some dark cyber-looter,

And sent all the songs to the good girls and boys,

So this Christmas day, was the Christmas of noise.

Alas, corrupt files, ‘Porn virus’, I knew,

The music was lost, but I knew what to do,

‘C:\sendChristmastohell.exe’ I typed in the datum,

so Christmas was taken, and ruled, now, by Satan.

‘Well done, Tim’, he said, as he lit a cigar,

‘The boys are now dealt with – you, child, will go far!’

But I knew what to do as I lined up my sight,

‘Merry Christmas to all,’ I said, ‘and to you, a goodnight.’

His horns away flew with the shotgun's great blast,

Dominion was mine - some power at last!

I repainted hades a shade of magnolia,

And Christmas? Under me? There had been none holier.

Epilogue:

Twas the night before Christmas, and Phoria were dead,

But hell gave ideas to my all-knowing head,

The power to raise all the band from their graves,

And use them as musical (and other) corpse slaves.

----

So that, if you hadn't noticed, is that.

Don't forget THIS, also.

Do enjoy whatever you do. I'm putting this up just before heading out for Christmas Eve breakfast with old friends. Leaving the house before coffee is not something that makes any sense to me.

Enjoy yourself, pity me, egg IDS.

Merry Christmas, from All Of Us.

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.

'All these...moments...will be lost in time, like the smell of your shoes when you use our new product!' [Quote from 'Glade Runner'.]

            Whatever I say here, it’s the bread in my head talking.

            Right, so, what’s been going on?

            Saturday night we only went and bloody well recorded with a bloody string quartet didn’t we? Eh? Only went and strummed and pickled along with some proper bloody musicians, eh? Ed got to accompany one of the violinists ‘practicing’ some Vivaldi during one of the breaks, as you do, which pleased him so much I thought he had a banana lodged in his gob.

            We did it all in the recording studios at The University of Surrey, with the very able and amicable Oscar (Oskar? Oska? Glen?) Somethingorother who also very kindly put us up at his house after our 3am finish. The evening ended with us blearily watching the pale blue glow of sunrise appear behind net curtains while drinking some remarkably dodgy sherry. Thom-of-the-Novi was also in residence, filming all and making every mistake watchable a thousand times over. We’ve handed the footage over to Edward Snowden for safe keeping, so it’ll be viewable soon.

            Sunday was something of a write-off, then. We went to the effortlessly sterile PC World in short-notice-search of a big hard drive to take the previous night’s recording from Oscar (Oskar? Oska? Glen?) Somethingorther, and also to back up all of the work currently teetering on the precipice Trewin’s computer. Imagine. It’s all on there. It’s all on there, dangling by a thread of computer failure. One wrong website, Trewin. One wrong website…

            And I, like so many defence contractors, have already seen his search history.

            In the waning words of the world’s worst; Fred Durst: Back up, back it up.

            We also treated ourselves to a Sunday feast in Frankie & Benny’s (despite my fervent protestations) which was like eating some dinner inside an arse. Our waiter was a dude, but the food tasted like someone had read a cookbook backwards. My stomach made noises I’d never heard before, that evening. There’ll be samples of it on the new EP.

The sounds, that is.

Then, just as soon as I’d fallen asleep in the van and then the next thing I know woken up the next day in my own bed, it was time to play The Haunt with the ever wonderful Mt. Wolf.

Here’s an example of their music which both the band and their existing fans will no doubt find an achingly predictable choice, but I’ve already put the work ‘achingly’ in front of ‘predictable’ in order to emphasise it, so I’m pretty much running the risk of post-modernism as the sentence descends into a wry smile of nonsense.

(I tried everything to embed the video on here, but it seems Google are unable to integrate their services properly unless you're a Government, so here is a long hyperlink and explanatory sentence.)
 

This song’s been in my head for a very long time. It bangs the shit out of your bones if you go and watch it live. Go and watch it live, then.

The Haunt gig was good. Thanks for coming down, those who did. Those who didn’t, find Doc Brown, go back, go watch. I’ll thank you as my memory alters.

            Last night was our gig with the same band in Heaven. That’s always fun to say. Another good gig – perhaps our biggest yet! Despite my really rather painful neck problem making me feel like an emotionless statue onstage, I think we all had a really good time.

            Good work, gang. Keep following – all sorts of news and other delights are flowing freely from our rusty pipelines.

            Today, then, is a day of restful delights. I’m currently sipping my second coffee, I’m about to stand in my freezing back garden with an invigorating little cherry ended friend, and then I think I’ll spend the day inside under a blanket trying to complete Half-Life on the PS2.

            Because that’s how bread rolls.

            Have fun, whichever baked good you choose to become.

            Tim

           

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

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