XFM - Eddy Temple-Morris

Yep, that was it, we just got played.. great to have his support. "Look out for these boys.." Hopefully we can get him down to a show so we can blow him away as much as he did to me at the finale of last year's Glade festival..

Gig Review: Thurs 30th March - The Bumper, Liverpool

A fine impressive debut in Liverpool.. Petebox (like beatbox.. cos he beatboxes.. and his name's Pete. See? Pete.. box.. clever!) was pretty cool. Wasn't expecting much on a Thursday, but Liverpool seems like a friendly and happening place. Will from Chibuku seemed pretty impressed so hopefully we'll be asked back to the legendary Barfly next time.


Above: Petebox

Missioned the four hours back after the gig and finally rolled in at 7.30am. The transition from night into morning - from music for clubbers to an overly chirpy Chris Moyles is so much more harsh than the gradual reverse slide at dusk.


Cheers to Nik Torrens for taking pics during our set.

Rumour has it that the legendary Eddy Temple-Morris will be playing out 'This Town' on national radio for the first time tonight on XFM. (Between midnight and 1am) I don't envisage a skipping-down-the-street scene turning all the radios like in 'That Thing You Do' but Eddy's support (apparently he likes what we do..) would be a great boost for this year's plans.

No release just yet

Actually, it looks like the real release date is the 16th April. If you put 30p into a pot every day between now and then, you'll probably be able to buy it. But to be honest, I have no idea how much it costs either.

Review

Gig Review: Sat 24th March - Brickyard, Carlisle

Feeling not-so-fresh from the previous night, the seven hour drive didn't actually seem too bad.. perhaps the gift of perspective lingering from haunting memories of our recent Glasgow journey.



DnB DJ/Promoter whizzkid Adam Form who we bumped into last night at The Boileroom was still in a partying mood as we were leaving at 10am, so he joined us as guest of honour for the roadtrip. Taking him up to endure this weekend experience felt like a direct parallel to NASA taking space tourists on missions. Mental note made for when we're really needing a financial boost. Subsource gig tourists would need to be extremely fit, capable of carrying heavy weights without dropping them and well skilled in the art of persuading other drivers on the M6 to 'toot for peace'.



Well we'd been worrying about the show for a while, because the Herbalizer pulled out a couple of days before the show leaving the Rehab guys in the lurch, but God-bless those Cumbrians, they'd come in droves to see us rather than him, and loads of people we spoke to hadn't even heard of him. (However, they were all still very eager to join the Stuey-led 'Herbalizer is a wanker' chant in mid-set)



Digitalis pulled off a blinder of a show - not only was it their debut set, but the drummer kid's only seventeen.. pretty mindblowing, and great to see one of our most avid supporters (since smuggling himself into the Brickyard underage a couple of years back) take to the stage in the name of live dance music.

Our vinyl single was out yesterday. We'd have made a bigger fanfare about it, except that we've got no idea where you can get it from and the label (Spinout Records) is being quite precious about this information. It'll be due on Beatport and DJ Download at some point within the next few weeks. Possibly.

Gig Review: Friday 23rd March - The Boileroom, Guildford

I left the Boileroom about an hour ago, leaving the others who were still drinking away to be 'responsible' for loading the van and getting it home. I figured getting some rest before making the trek up to Carlisle in under 6 hours time would be the sensible option.


Chris did a great job with the sound, but I was even more impressed with his patience with our after-show antics and generally getting in his way whilst he was trying to tidy..


Another fine show from Ability.. keep a look out, this guy's live sets are getting seriously good.


Spinout pre-release vinyl on-sale for the first time.. official release is Monday.

Okay screw this, I need sleep and I'm going to bed. More pics of friends and supporters by clicking on link below. Was a great show for us tonight, just worried about tomorrow's Carlisle show. We were supposed to be playing alongside The Herbaliser but he pulled out last minute...

Subsource@Boileroom

Non-Gig Review: 16th March 2007 - The Arches, Glasgow

It took us just under ten hours to get there, and about the same to get back. We didn't even get to play. Thanks to some mess-ups somewhere in the organisation of the event (and nobody seemed to be accountable), there were far fewer people than expected at this Vice Magazine live show, and by 1am, when we were due to go on, there was nobody there barring organisers, other bands and the bar staff. It was originally our promoter's night (Rob from Soundcrash), but then the night got amalgamated by the venue with two other nights: Vice Magazine live and a local bands night, where it was being funded by Vice sponsors - Topshop and Lee Jeans, meaning tickets were free too. I'm still not exactly sure how it happened, especially on a Friday night at one of Glasgow's premier music venues (one of Mixmag's top ten clubs, of which only two are in the UK) - but this Cube-like construct of a night demonstrates exactly what can happen when the administration chain is so long that those dealing with the financial side of things don't have much to do with actually entertaining the punters. The blame probably falls mostly on somebody at the venue, but I'm still pissed off with the soundguy from last week to feel much anger about this.


Above: The mighty Noisettes in action


Leo from Goodbooks, after their show

Max from Goodbooks, after their show, ranting about the poor organisation

Infinite Livez and the Japanese dinosaur DJ guy - putting on an outrageously brave show as the last guests were filtering out.


Treva Whateva - didn't get to play either.

We did manage to get 10 minutes of a decent soundcheck thanks to Ali and the Goodbooks guys so we were prepared to put the disaster of last week behind us, but unfortunately it didn't matter in the end.


Above: Spotted on the way out of Glasgow - we should have just sent these guys in to do our job that night.

Kimba obviously had the same thoughts as I did about cabin fever in the van.. although he had the foresight to just bypass it altogether, and once we'd reach Scotland, he announced that he'd booked a flight back to Heathrow rather than travel back in the van. Due to some incredible timing, it just so happened that we were passing Heathrow as his flight got in, so we picked him up from the airport - where he eagerly flapped a newspaper at us, which succintly captures the spirit of the weekend.

Scotland, here we come..

Tomorrow is Friday morning. I'm getting up at around 5.30 am to shower and iron clothes, before meeting the guys at around 6.30. We're picking Kimba straight up after his night shift from Tesco at 7am in the morning before beginning the journey. The AA website says it should take 7 hours.. so we're estimating 9 or 10 in the van. I haven't even thought about the gig, I'm just thinking of as many things to stop me going insane in those ten hours. My trusty DS will occupy my for about an hour before my head feels fuzzy, a book will last about 30 minutes before I feel queasy. I'll burn off a copy of the Arcade Fire album so I can check it out properly, and there's earplugs for when ten types of hell inevitably get unleashed through the van's now-working sound system, but after that, boredom and restlessness/irritability/cabin fever sets in.. and if that doesn't drive us all insane, the journey back will.

Gig Review: Sat 10th March - Cargo

 

In this man's hands rests the outcome of the final sound we output, and I'm not exactly sure what this guy was doing different to our usual trustworthy sound engineer at Cargo, but it was pretty atrocious. In the words of a Subsource regular: We were crucified by the sound guy. To add to his ineptness behind the mixing desk, he then left us squirming on-stage halfway through the final number by killing the instruments one-by-one resulting in a rather undignified finish to the set with unamplified drums and a vocal mic to end. Complete twat.



Above: Digitonal warmed up nicely, but came off stage fuming about the poor sound.



Shorty and Saffrolla pulled off a blinder of a DJ set. They sounded good. They're DJs - they plug in and then all you have to do is remember to pull the volume up. Well done.


Crowd chants in unison: "Vocals up! Guitar down! Put your hands up if you have ears!"

I'll have calmed down by next week. Thanks to all those that came to support as usual.. x

We've made the big time

OK, so arguably it's always gonna be a sticking point as to when you define 'success' as a band. (First happy fan? First record deal? First time you make money off it?)

Anyway, thanks to my bro managed to find the first pirated copy of our stuff here

It's the Hook'n'Sling dub remix of soon-to-be-released 'This Town'. Dub meaning there's no vocals on it, so you could download it and you'd be good to go for a karaoke session.

To me it seems more significant than when we got played on Radio One... I mean, anyone can get played on radio and a million bands have done and never went anywhere, but to have some random guy (in Russia) to like your stuff enough to bother to stick it on the Internet, that's a milestone. Fingers crossed we'll see the full release on a bit torrent soon too. And let's hope this blog isn't nearly as popular, otherwise I'm going to get an earful from the record label about encouraging piracy.

Big show at Cargo tomorrow - we got a big long list of you who are down for concessions.. it's gonna be one huge party, seeya there!

x

Gig review: Friday 1st March - Kingston Uni

Above: Tasty, fresh ideas for the Subsource logo perhaps? In the Space Bar at Kingston Uni, there's a Subway almost within arm's reach from the stage, but unfortunately closed by the time we got there.

This unpublicised gig in aid of Fairtrade was just a secret low-profile one organised to warm us up for next week's big show at Cargo. So there were a few people milling around not really expecting anything and we weren't expecting much from them either, but they got a little groove-on going by the end and we were pretty happy. Except the closed Subway that teased us at the side of the stage. A fun show, made more interesting with a few mishaps thanks to the small stage (Paul's set-up attempted a stage-dive, but he managed to catch it in time and my laptop dropped to the floor after our wide-footed bassist took a step on the power lead).

Below: 3 weeks of non-playing takes it's toll on Stu's fingers

Just a rehearsal

It's only been 3 weeks since the last gig but it seems like half a lifetime ago again. Time has a habit of passing slowly when not much is going on.. we've had a bit of downtime whilst Stu's been in India for a couple of weeks and has returned a happily tanned and engaged man (congrats to him and Nat!). Nelly's been stuck in his house with DIY bathroom nightmares and turned up to rehearsal having not washed properly in 10 days and smelling pretty bad for it. Paul's had a weekend away but been handling the phone calls for upcoming gig arrangements and I've moved house and been busy putting things in and out of boxes.


Above: Back to rehearsal at The Rooms in Farnham.

Below: Unfortunate post-rehearsal incident as Nelly reverses over a post which manages to gouge out a sizeable part of his engine from his car. Curiously, his car still seems to run fine without it. Here he's doing Edvard Munch proud indeed.