3 & 4 & 5/8/09 Skipton

We’re holed up at Nick’s folks house on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors running through old material and working on a new arrangement from scratch to be recorded next weekend with Jack in London.

Radiant sunshine keeps giving us the impression that the label may have accidentally sent us ot the south of France…

6/8/09 Cambridge

I’m reading bits from Oliver Sacks ‘Musicophilia’ and navigating on the journey which is all on the A1 from Skipton, a road I never really knew about previously. There is some trepidation as our past touring partner and general navigator Dan Bridgwood Hill is tied up with work and not present so we are relying on a satnav and an A to Z, rather than his stoic and zenlike presence.

First serious discussions of educational theory and practise erupts. Paulo Freire leads to all kind if places…This kind of thing, as well as debates about the exact meaning of the word “esoteric” and what it may point towards, are usually our main talking points on the road. Rest of the time the conversation is usually completely infantile and debased with a shared vocabulary of 150 words and body sounds.

The gig is in a bookshop come café bar ran by real Italians who tell Kirsty her voice is “BELLA“ in no indistinct terms. People wear flat caps and tweeds jackets unironically in Cambridge and climb on bicycles and ride off into the night. Even though I have visited something like 19 countries in my life this is probably the strangest place ive been to. Mainly because I had no idea a place in the archipelago I am from could be so civilised. Im flabbergasted and delighted. We play with rad musicians too, C. Joynes rocks out and onwards from Takoma and Molepaws delves into old school record player and tape loop ambience.

After the gig Xav feeds us really good bread, a selection of cheese and red wine. Then he starts putting on late 60s Californian psych records. Totally amazing.

7/8/09 Brighton

Gig is a on a newly established community garden on Lewes Road, we play in front of a tiger painted on a wall and have a small fire wafting smoke across us and a charming appreciative audience mustered by Bela and Lianne H.

Look carefully in the picture and you can see that Nick’s mind has melted and is pouring forth as a source of light…

After the gig we go to rave in a farmhouse next to the A23. It totally blows our brains and none of us are quite stable for the rest of the tour.

I wake up in the passenger seat of the car with vehicles flying past below and Kirsty and Bela looking down on me, a can still within reach. Our cohesiveness as a touring unit comes to the fore as one member of the band casually sicks up an apple they’ve just eaten while the remaining two try to understand what the map means.

After we drive to a lovely beach in Rottingdean over the South Downs and get I get sunburnt and deranged even though I tie my Skull Disco t-shirt round my head.

8/8/09 London

Nick and Annabel are super happy exchange reading lists on Jewish culture and swap ideas relating to the possibility of conversion (was possible back in the day, bit trickier now unless you want to go for all the religious side also) sometime before Spoono relayed the wonderful possibilities of Debussy living in yr left hand and Takoma in yr right. Discover via Karl (the third housemate who’s laid out a set of harsh and dark acoustic numbers that night too) that there is a book about the AACM, im more excited than I have been for a long time and head up to Charing Cross Road to sniff it out.

Zeke turns up and makes the great sketches you can see of the group live in action and carries out his on going anthropological and psychotheraputic survey using only the question “If you were a superhero, what would your super power be?”

People actually dance to our “dance” number the tune Bansull and we rejoice. Realise my lung capacity needs to improve greatly if im going to play my Jaw Harp every single night. This inability later has dire consequences in Manchester, relating to the possibility of hyperventilation and how this affects the delivery of oxygen to the brain. The ability of the brain and body to function on less oxygen than that which is actually necessary is seriously depleted. As Milford Graves maintains:

“music produces sound which is a manifestation of variable changes in atmospheric pressure…In this respect music is a motivator for the transport of the essential factors of the life force- oxygen.”

9/8/09 London

Record new tune with Jack later in the afternoon. Its still without a name but im sure it’ll come to us. The tune is roughly named as being from the Wolf Valley but the melody doesn’t seem to have a specfic title attached. It should appear on a 7” with Spoono on the other side in the near future to be released by audioMER over in Belgian.

Later we go and eat curry goat and rice and pea from Peaches restaurant in SE5. Absolutely recommended.

Earlier in the morning I ate a filthy meaty roll followed by a huge baklava and a potato latkah in a pitta.

10/8/09 Llanfairfechan

Ten minutes into Wales and we’ve already found an abandoned castle on top a mountain built by Welsh princes’ with difficult names and even more complicated historical threads. Sheets of mist keep threatening us to be followed by bursts of brilliant sunshine. As Edwin sagely informs us “Wales is pretty black metal init”.

Gig is in a wood next to a beach. We can see the sun setting over Anglesey as we play and there’s a huge mountain covered in old quarry workings, tumble down buildings and cranking rusting machinerys to our right which we walk up the next day with Edwin and get a healthy dose of sunshine, though when I look in the mirror I start to suspect that I may have lost the “youthful” elasticity of my skin although everything else seems pretty radiant; the sea is an unexpected blue and you can’t see any sign of human habitation. Ed tells us he once saw a dolphin in the sea down there.

Before the gig we take rest at Edwin’s mum, Evelyn’s house with cups of tea and good quality talk. People keep dropping in from every direction seeming excited about the gig later. Evelyn cooks us really tasty home grown veg roasts and spuds for tea. We head down to meet Ed and others at the crossroads and then the beach and so to the forest as its called. Sweet guys play Leonard Cohen songs before we play. There is miles of incredible beach and coast line everywhere you look and in the other direction green mountains and undulating hills. We have to force ourselves to leave; it’s really all quite extraordinary.

11/8/09 Leicester
There’s a guy who’s wandered into the gig who on discovering we’re playing Norwegian songs starts on,

“Han Gabrack? Han Gabararack? You must know him?! Saxophone player! He’s Norwegian, Yann Gubluckarack!”

We shut our eyes and launch into what we affectionately call “ the horse song” which is really a mediation on a dark medieval tale about the black death and the eternal suffering and struggles of mammals whether conscious of themselves or not. Check Erik Satie’s “A Mammal’s Notebook”.

Kirsty sways and leads from the front like the “lusty, vibrant and violent” ( you dont believe this, check the Metro write up later…) front woman she has grown to be through a healthy combination of learning to be a primary school teacher and touring consistently in front of baying Spanish punk rockers holding only a violin and a voice to destroy and enlighten at 3 metres.

Victoria, Dave and Jim play a cracking set of newly improvised space jazz also. Jim kindly videoed throughout the evening see more here.

(all pictures of Leicester gig by Nicholas Birchall)

12/8/09 Sheffield
The mothership is a huge orange and pink cloud gently sitting squashed on hilltops off the A616. We’re driving towards it at a regular and energy efficient 60 miles per hour and im pretty much convinced were about to be picked out of our rented speeding silver rocket and carried off.