Track or treat.

This story manifested itself in the band's studio toilet.

- 

The beast moved through his own grotesque physique with the fractional perfection of the most oppressive industrial machinery. His limbs, long and dark, rolled themselves around their hinges and joints so smoothly as to unnerve the most fastidious engineer. The beast’s knees—such was the distorted nature of his earthly apparatus—danced at a crooked tempo around the top half of his body as would those of a preying spider. He tended to keep his arms in front, like a destitute beggar, but when his filthy twig-like fingers were not on display his chipped and yellowed nails would shriek and squeal as they scraped whatever ground was desecrated by his gait.

I shrank into the antique sofa as the figure loomed above me. The furniture in this room was once infused with the illuminatory influence of hope, knowledge, and novelty; but such sentiments had long since rotted to an unpalatable stew. The entire room, and the other souls in it, once flush with the erotic inevitability of new dreams, now stank of sterility, and served only as well as a cracked cauldron might serve any conjuror. The beast himself had not always been as he appeared to me today.

In the cemetery of time there stands a monument so vast as to nullify the most saharan sun. The monument stands as manifestation of my testament today - that the past was brighter; a thing filled with carelessness and drink and the plucking of young flowers. Alas, the tempest of change has weathered its words so deep that the finger of my memory now runs uselessly over a blank plane of dead rock. Night after night I have rested against this crypt, knowing that to tear it down would be to free us all from its torment, but gripped also by the knowledge that to live now can only have meaning if it is to return the monument to its days of gleeful shadow, when we, and all around us, were as paltry to its gaze as mites to the grandest god. The man who builds his own house cannot let it crumble. The desperate gambler, ensnared by chance, cannot quit when he is behind.

The beast, as that is what my friend has become, might yet be transformed. If there is a curse upon us, let it be lifted by our names and by our works. Let it be lifted by the blessings of swift endeavour and the charity of luck.

Please, dear spirits, lift this curse from us.

From my already sunken vantage point, suffocating in an ancient and discarded leisure, I sensed the beast lowering something towards me. It appeared to me as some sort of disk. Its bottom side was encrusted with untellable muck and swirled with a kaleidoscope of freshly hatched maggots. He brought it down slowly, towards my chest, and as the disk, like our hallowed moon, continued its inevitable course beyond its point of eclipse, his face revealed itself with its narrow eyes and baying crowd of stained and rotten teeth. Present also was a number of vessels, each as grim as their courier, each holding an amber-brown liquid that I knew well.

Putrid steam rose into the high room like the spirits of evil men.

“Cup of tea?”

“Are we running the set again?”

A chill of horror ran through my bones.

“No, we’re going to work on new ones.”

-

My dreams are no longer so fitful, dear reader, as before these words were uttered. That very day, the beast did seem to me more human, his movements more serene, his words less mournful of what he had forgotten.

I still spend my muted hours wondering through the shadowed graveyard. I still yearn for the words that once adorned that prideful construction that reaches up into the sky beyond any tree, beyond any vault or temple, but of late I have walked beyond the shadows, and in that light I have seen the dead dreams of other men, and among them, I should swear, I have seen my own thoughts—of fear, of hopelessness—as they were when I first saw the beast in all his frightful nature. Such fears, such nightmares of fresh horror, have escaped me since the beast uttered the words I here describe, and, as free thoughts, those accursed strikes of cerebral torment have found no fertile ground but this – the dry and heavy earth of zero. They are no more.

So now, when I search the stone monument for any path, for any inkling of what once was and what should next come to be, I trace my fingers a little lighter, and, in doing so, no longer do I overlook the pathetic cowardice of a grim fate, and no longer do I shun the spirits of death.

Quite the opposite.

A. Ghost

Sunday service.

They look into your eyes and see your gratitude.

Your face: Thank you for spending years building and maintaining your arms and lower back so you might spend every sunday afternoon on all fours, my feet perched on your spine.

Their eyes: Alright.

Ah, the internet. It is without boundaries. Unless, obviously, you want to find anything remotely interesting. If you want to find out what your Auntie’s dog smells like today or read about the effects of kale on the inflammation of the pineal gland, the internet is the most happening place to be.

So, putting it together, we’ll all be spending our Sunday afternoon using our loved ones as footrests and browsing MedLine articles (I have an itchy pelvis), won’t we?

NO!

Did you see that coming? Certain views of digital ontology might suggest there was nothing to see! But you did see it, didn’t you? Look! It’s there!

NO!

But weekends are a time of relaxation, yes? Whether that means forking in the flowerbeds or chucking some dough in a hot oven or sitting back and tapping a button or two, we’ll be taking this time to chill down and wind out, won’t we?

This life doesn’t work like that.

The new tour brings new material. Songs, as written, are like blueprints. You can listen to the recording as many times as you like, but live performance, like a group of swimming cows, is a whole different cattle of fish.

So this cold Sunday will see us all bejumpered and beleaguered, huddling over guitars, keyboards, and a trying to roast chestnuts on an open project file as, in our own separate domains, we practice and put parts together for the new stuff.

Then there’s the prospect of heading to the studio to sort out some technical issue or other that’s been bugging us for weeks to which I seem to hold the key. I’m a bit like a Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman for the 21st century.

Dr. Tim: Computer Man.

I’m not sure I like it, but I’ve pretty much become imprisoned by facts.

My morning was a glorious shuffle of croissants, coffee, and an awesome documentary about the first George W. Bush presidential campaign.

My afternoon and evening will be nothing of the sort. They will be pigeon-holes of pain and suffering. I shall have to play music, and I shall have to talk with people, fully clothed.

And my loved one shall weep, balancing my shoes on her back in my absence, looking up at only a rotten watermelon on a broom handle, and hearing only the gentle crushing of her spirit in my absence, like a polystyrene cup in a boxing match against the moon.

We shall overcome.

But learn from me: relax this day. Endeavour may only lead to suffering, and from suffering: endeavour.

Break open your circle.

 

Tim

 

P.S. I love working on band stuff. Come see us on tour to see what I mean. www.phoriamusic.com for dates and details. We really will be playing new material. Follow us on twitter and instagram @phoriamusic.

Better never than ever.

I’m running late.

I try not to run late, but sometimes I do.

I’ve got a lot to do, and I guess I have enough time to do it in, but the things don’t get done as smoothly as I’d like them to when I try and do them. I come up against brick walls, against personal road-blocks, and against constant changes in plans, directions, and problems. So, sometimes, I wake up when everything’s fallen apart already and decide to take it easy. Just lay in bed a little while longer, just saunter into the kitchen in my pants and pour my coffee into an unwashed cup, just lick the crust of yesterday’s lasagne off the inside of the microwave, where it exploded. That’s breakfast. That’s my life.

I’ll spend an extra twenty minutes on the end of my bed, fresh out of a long-quick bath where five minutes turns into ten turns into twenty, and let the towel and my hair wet the mattress as I sit here doing this thing.

The lads will be together, doing something – I don’t know what. Working on tunes or something. Working on some album we’re making. Getting ready for some tour or other (www.phoriamusic.com for dates and tickets). I’m supposed to have gotten one of the new tracks down, by now. I haven’t. It’s there, but it ain’t down. I’m not useless, I’m just creaky. We’ll work on it in the practice room and it’ll be fine. It’s a bit of polishing – nothing serious – but I wish I had it down because now it’s going to be effort.

I don’t want any effort today. I want to sit here and play video games with the woman. I want to eat filthy food off filthy plates and smear melted chocolate all over my chest and have that be-boobed thing lick it off me. I want to climb naked onto the roof of the house and pitch a big flag on it with a picture of me with a crown on my head, then spend the afternoon setting up searchlights to illuminate it. Then I want to sit outside the front of the house in a lawn chair, wearing sunglasses and sipping long cocktails and screaming my name. If anybody walks past I’ll point at the flag and they’ll smile and nod their head.

They will.

But no. The band denies me that.

Well, I’m going to be fifteen minutes late. Let’s see how that learns the bastards.

Tim

Do you like your sense of vision? Follow @phoriamusic on instagram, then, lest you miss out on imprinting our lives onto yours.

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.

The most accurate portrayal thus far.

This place is an abattoir.

One hundred miles in every direction – all you see is hanging red bodies that look exactly like us.

You’re taking the guided tour.

Your tour guide is delivered directly to your optic nerve.

It’s me.

It’s my face and it’s in your head.

‘Look at this shit,’ I say. ‘Look at this rotunda of absolute bollocks. This is us. We did this to ourselves. What do you think goes on here?’

‘Fun?’ you say.

‘Ugh. I guess.’

‘Finish the album.’ you say.

Tim

-

Phoria guided tours are available throughout Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, this November. Visit www.phoriamusic.com.

We'll start with proof of life and see what happens next.

Yesterday, sat here, in the exact same spot I’m sat in now, I wrote the first Phoria blog post I’d written in nearly eighteen months. The last blog post was published on 25th July 2017.

It wasn’t an easy thing to try and write. I flipped between truth and lies, between silliness and sincerity, between going into everything as an act of defiance against common sense and going into nothing as an act of defiance against myself. Could I craft a balanced approach, perhaps? Well, what’s the point in that?

Sorry, I’m being dreadfully rude.

How are you?

We do care, you know.

So the second album is underway. It has been for a long time. You’d be sick to know the amount of music we’ve either thrown away or put in a cupboard. It’s all there. I have no idea how much of it you’ll ever hear. We did those two songs Rrotor and When Everything was Mine. Thank you all so much for your support on those. Especially in odd times it’s good to know people are still out there, enthusiastic about enjoying what we do. If you haven’t heard them yet – get on Spotify (or whatever music service you use), and check them out.

We’re on the road in November. Germany, Switzerland, and then London and Bristol. Check the dates and the tickets on www.phoriamusic.com. We’re out mainly to escape the studio for a bit – feel the wind in our hair (…) and have some fun. We’d love for you to join us, or get your friends out if they’re in or near any of those cities. We’re told we put on a good show.

So it’s Sunday, the world is in turmoil, the psychology of young people is as twisted as a marshmallow stuck in the gears of a revolving restaurant, and it’s impossible to do anything without the putrid stink of electronic analysis hanging in the atmosphere.

What are you going to do? Drink too much coffee and watch five series of King of The Hill back-to-back?

You’re damn right you are, you little fluff-basket.

Go on. Away with you.

We’ll be more, in time.

Until then…

Have fun.

Tim

All entries will be considered.

There's something on, then, isn't there?

We're off to Switzerland in a few days. I used to know when and where gigs were happening, but I've long since become far too important a person to bother myself with Google searches or remembering what I'm told by anyone. That we'll be in Switzerland is all I know. If you live anywhere near that rather pleasant land, you should do a Google search (or use whichever search engine/impulse monitoring system is your own personal favourite), find out where we are, and come and see us to say hello. I'm not giving you any clues as to where in Switzerland we'll be – I've only just got through the door, and I'm knackered. It's...a treasure hunt. It's a clever marketing tool. You're very impressed.

A trip to Switzerland means a long journey in the van. I like those, usually, but this time it looks like I'll be doing a bit of driving. I haven't driven the van in about five years, so I'm a bit worried about it. I mean, I worry quite a lot, about quite a lot of small things, but this time when I ask myself the question What could go wrong? The answer, of course, is: Well, everything, really. You could unintentionally end lives.

I prefer my life to resemble a SAGA holiday in a chemical storage facility, rather than that of any kind of modern 21st century go-getting can-do musician. I'd rather break my leg and talk to the nurses at the bottom of the mountain than stride to the summit and open my arms to a cheap postcard of God next to Brad and Linda (although they both seem very nice.)

So I'd rather sit in the back and read and be grumpy and sing and make bad jokes and throw cream cakes at the windsreen and play “make Ed cry more” than have to actually take the wheel, and be responsible for any aspect of the success of the trip.

Do you understand what I'm saying to you?

Doing is not what I do.

Hey...maybe you could win a prize...

You could drive the van to Switzerland!

It's a clever marketing tool.

You're very impressed.

Tim






[P.S. I have subsequently noticed that there is information on the gigs on Phoria social media channels. That's good - but not so good for you, as the treasure hunt is now over. I repeat, winning is now a concept from your past. Forget about it. That's over. Live now without hope.]

Strange.

Has anyone figured this stuff out yet?

There's no excuse for not knowing where you are and why you're there (here). You've had plenty of time. Don't tell me you gave up on trying to get a grip on things?

I don't mean to make you feel bad, but I expected a bit more from you.

We've done a few things since I last posted on here. Texas, Krakow, London…

But let's keep it contemporary-local.

Organic.

A few of us celebrated last week at one of the houses out in the country.

Trewin was central to the organisation of this small shindig, so we ended up with a marquee and DJ booth that, were nature to get you on your shoulders at three o'clock in the morning with eyelids not for lifting, you may well have mistaken for the Pyramid stage at that other thing that goes on every June.

I was ready to celebrate having made some leaps and bounds in recovering from (what doctor's have labelled) an RSI in my hands from which I've been suffering for nearly twelve months. It's made pretty much everything painful, and has well taken its toll on almost every aspect of me. Thanks to a few recent revelations, it looks like it's done with me for now.

So it all went on late with many a thump and a thud and tiny swimming pools popping up here and there as everybody dripped into the leaning hours. No doubt as Cheese hacked pink laughs at me and Trewin hugged away at me in his “ironic” flimsy shirt and leopard print spandex, they both thought, as I did, that it was all uphill from here.

Is that right? “It's all downhill from here” means all things are bound to get worse, but going uphill is apparently an “uphill struggle,” which suggests an uncomfortable quantity of hard work. So that's your choice, then? It's either a bad time, or drudgery?

Either way, the next morning, right when it looked like plain sailing, Trewin packs up some of the mountain of gear we had set up - no doubt in top form following a nice rest and a cup of nothing that could have actually made him feel any better - and proceeds to break his foot by dropping a big weight on it.

Not that Phoria fans are any strangers to W(A)eIghTS, eh?

So, no shock to us, there's another little setback that nobody planned for.

There actually is an interesting little project getting done as a first spurt from the new studio that you can wait for, if you really want to. There's not much else you can do with it for now. It's short.

I'm not on it.

No1 bestseller.

But all we can do is work, and all we can do is say hello, every now and then, and let you in to our little lives and show you what we get up to, sometimes. It ain't always good, it ain't always anything, but it's us.

What is the 21st century but a whole load of fuss about nothing?

And it looks like I've started writing these again, doesn't it? Sure, it's not YouTube, but we can have our fun through the written word if we all pull together, right gang?

I'll need you with me if I'm going to get back up to speed.

Don't leave me here with nothing but a broken footed weirdo for company.

Tim

"An ironic, self-reflexive subversion of multimedia brand interaction!" you shouted as you danced.

I'm the intrigued man, peeling back the curtain and standing at the window not only to look at you out there in the street, but also to better show you what it's like living in here. I'm opening the curtains wide both to wonder what the hell you're doing out there in the frost and mist and also to show you the stains on the walls from when Seryn threw that chocolate pudding at Ed, and Ed got scared.

Yes, the lightbulb is smashed, but we have ten boxes of matchsticks left. I stick them in my ears and nose and light them at night to keep a constant glow – replacing them as they burn out. It's like spinning plates. I'd smell my burning nose hair if I could, but when I inhale the wood goes up and jams into my brain.

But that light gets us through the time after the sun disappears around the side of the house.

...until the natural light comes back again, and you stand outside in your coat and fur-lined boots, peering into our ground floor den, trying to make out the shadows behind the tattered curtains and see how five men can live in such a space for so damn long. All you see are bodies draped and immobile like Greek sculptures, and plates and bowls built up to look like rock with the slow, sedimentary deposits of cheap baked beans and sauces and chips and a multi-coloured slew of dried on condiments.

The whole of the house, inside and out, is covered in molluscs and snails and slugs and woodlice and ants and grass grows everywhere, even indoors, like new life in old men's ears.

When Trewin says I can sleep I sometimes dream that I open the curtain and you are stood there as every morning - but this time with a small, blue and white box in an outstretched hand.

I yelp, and the band gather around the window like cats, pressing our faces up against the glass and each squirming for the best view.

You have brought a lightbulb for our room.

Ed lets you in, and Seryn stands on James's shoulders to screw the lightbulb in.

Ed clears the plates away.

You sit down and we talk to you and make you a cup of tea. It's a dark morning, so we're happy of the lightbulb. It's also cold, and we all drink tea with the steam rising up and occasionally hold the hot cups against our faces.

The woodlice go away, and the room starts to breath with the colour of comfort.

Trewin asks if you'd like to hear some of the new bits and pieces of music.

You say yes, and he starts to play it, and we all start to dance in the room that is now so warm, and clean, and bright, and dry.

We have the greatest time, and when I look at you I see you are so happy you came by.

But then more often than not I am awoken by my head smashing against the corner of a desk. I had slipped into careless sleep for a mere microsecond. A match burns its way to my ear lobe as Trewin chastises me for my nodding off. We have been choosing a method of audio compression for seventeen hours now. I huddle into my unwashed blanket and light another match and put it into my nose so everyone can live.

Why please can't someone please just go to the shop and buy a lightbulb?

Tim