Borg Diaries

Subsource and Akil Jurassic 5

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:56:00 +0000

The Reason (Parasite) - The Making Of

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:08:00 +0000

For me, The Reason (Parasite) is a key track in the upcoming album, 'Tales From The Doombox' - it's certainly one of the strongest and it's the only representation of drum'n'bass that will be featured on the album. But it also has a lot of memories for us, as the seeds for this tune were originally sown way back, way before Subsource became the entity that it is today.

History - From Parasite to The Reason

It was sometime in 2004 during our first sessions before Kimba came onto the scene - Paul, Nelly, Stu and myself had the beginnings of the track laid down and had provisionally called it 'Parasite'. At the time, we were working with Stix, (Jerome Kalinani), who was also part of the Real Elements (Malawian hip-hop that Kimba was also with). I remember him turning up to lay some vocals down on the instrumental we already had. We had attempted to get the track to him a few times previously but with he was adamant that 'something will come' in the actual session. Usually, a disregard for pre-planning something like this equates to a wasted precious studio session but the way he was saying it that day just seemed to dispel our fears. He turned up with a blank notepad and a pencil and within 90 minutes he was leaving, having written and recorded two verses, the chorus, breakdown and multiple vocal takes on all the sections. Fast work indeed.

The original 'Parasite' ended up being a feature of our experimental live set-ups for a while, it stayed and outlasted all the other songs that were incorporated into our first sets, well beyond the time that Stix left to return to Malawi after having a religious call to be back there spreading the word of Christianity through hip-hop. The track scored our first synchronisation deal - with Big Up Productions, a rock climbing video production company. We featured on Dosage Volume 3 alongside Roots Manuva, but they chose to use Parasite as the lead track which then featured in the trailers. To this date, more than five years on, we still get e-fanmails from rock-climbers all over the world. I've been told by rock-climbing friends that half of their passion is about physical strength and the other half lies in mental grit and sheer belief. 'This is the reason why I live' resonates deeply with the feats that these athletes pull off.

Another 4 years later in 2008, American TV network CBS got in touch offering us our biggest synchronisation deal to date. The premiere of season 5 of crime-solving-with-maths-series, "Numbers", has a rock-climbing murder sequence and it's Parasite they want to use. Whilst it's an entertaining show, that particular section didn't work nearly as well as in the Dosage video. I conclude that it's music that's good for doing extreme sports to and not so good for murdering people to.

The funds we received from CBS through this deal paved the way for us to make a good push for producing a quality album. But by the time we were finishing the album earlier this year, the sound of 'Parasite' was something we'd moved away from in favour of chunkier, dirtier bass and crisper drum sounds. Around eight of the tracks were confirmed and we realised that there was no drum'n'bass set to be on the album. Since the DnB section of our live sets are the parts we like the most, we needed some representation of it on the album, so under a tight album deadline, we locked ourselves in the studio for a couple of days and the new 'Parasite' was born. The original version was more laid-back and drew comparisons to 'Red Snapper' and the resurrected track gives a nod to its origins with it's vocal chorus hook and a hint of rhodes. All other instrumentation was written from scratch to bring it into 2009 and Kimba 'unleashed a masterpiece' with new lyrics for the verses. It was complete.

Some might be wondering about the story of how we ended up with parentheses in the name - in true Subsource style it wasn't quite intentional. To avoid confusion with the original, we'd decided to rename this new version, 'The Reason'. We'd been bouncing the artwork cover for the album between the designer and ourselves more times than was necessary in order to iron out the kinks in layout, format and spelling. In the end, it all looked great, except somehow we all managed to overlook the fact that we'd still called it Parasite on the back cover. Oops. So to attempt to avoid confusion, we've now got both titles in the title. So if you get an album when it's released in March next year and it says 'Parasite' on the back cover as track 8, you know you've got a copy from the first printed batch :)

The Video

A budget of 200 pounds doesn't get you anything remotely close to being a good video. But we had a cracking director/producer on-board (Colin Arnold at Surgery Productions) and Ollie Simmonds did some brilliant post-effects too to help produce something that is. We managed to attract the attention of NME TV who wanted to playlist it on their Sky 3 channel - for a video on this kind of budget that would usually be unheard of. A spanner in the works got thrown when we discovered there is something called a 'Harding Test' for possibly epileptic seizure inducing material. Our video had just failed it.. no national broadcasting for us this time. Doh.

So the single is out there on iTunes, 7digital and most other online retailers - get it (and the brilliant Jocks' Chapter 2 Remix by JP from the now-disbanded Goodbooks) and play it loud and proud. It's possible we've got an iTunes app coming this way to go with it but unfortunately Apple seem to be delaying this process way more than they ought to. Until then... This is the reason why I... I... I...

Akil (Jurassic 5) In The Studio - Paul's Account

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:04:00 +0000

In the summer 1998 I would have been 16 breezing around Scotland full of teenage lust, trying to by booze for parties, jamming til the early hours and listening to cherished slabs vinyl religiously. One record that defined that heady summer was the debut J5 album, with its old school vibe it took us as far away as possible from Finzean in the Highlands of Scotland, which by the way is no Mecca for Hip Hop, just sheep an coos. I later saw the band perform at Brixton Academy to a sold out crowd, so when Akil from Jurassic 5 pulls up outside Subsource headquarters a converted garage studio called the trench in Stuart's back garden it feels totally surreal but absolutely amazing!!!

Akil dropped by The Trench to laydown some vocals on an alternative version of "Street Soul Music." Its gonna be part of the release when the album drops to get people ready for the sunshine. Just got to lay one more verse with Kimba who is out in Africa visiting his family for the next week and then it'll be good to go.

Before Akil and Tom his tour manager had to hit the road, pre-imminent departure from Australia and New Zealand, we had a little time to kick back and jam. While Stu had his acoustic double bass to hand, I was left with what I could find lying around, which turned out being an old watering can from the back garden. Quote of the day "In the garden with my man on the can!"

He said some touching things about his thoughts on the band, and the whole experience was obviously a massive honour (for us!). Slowly we're getting to connect with some of the musicians that have influenced not just me but the whole band.

Thanks to Akil and Tom for taking the time out of their schedule to come and hang with us and a big thanks to Colin arnold for supplying us with footage of the event. Colin will be filming a documentary about the band leading up to the release of our debut Album. Nang!

The Reason (Parasite) Tour / Dreadzone Tour

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:06:00 +0000

Seven gigs in two weeks. Like any journey, being on the road puts a different perspective into life and reminds you of the important things in life. Good food, good drink and good sleep are things I've been reminded to appreciate this week. Living off service station food and sleeping in vans is probably not something you'd want to ride out in the long-term for the sake of health and sanity. Considering the six of us have been living in such close proximity over the past 90 or so hours often with little amounts of proper sleep, I think we've done pretty well this time round to not have a single argument. Or maybe we did, I was just too tired to remember it.

Being Dreadzone's tour support has been awesome - spending time with these veteran dub legends has been a great experience and given us an insight into sustaining a career in this ever-evolving industry. The band and crew are a brilliant bunch.. rarely a dull moment and very generous with their rider.. (that vegetable chilli at Colchester was a touch) we feel so looked after.. thankyou Greg, Spee, Leo, Earl, Chris, the other Chris, Johnny, Loki and Danny! And whilst we're at it, we also need to thank Paul's sister Zoe for putting us up for a couple of nights (we snuck into De Montfort University and crashed in halls there.. hello to William and KK who had to deal with finding random, slightly stinky musicians passed out in their kitchen in the morning). Also thanks to Adam and Sophie for putting us up in Bristol despite the fact that they had parents visiting their new house within the hour that we left.

Tonight's gig in Narberth had to be the highlight of our Dreadzone support gigs.. good to see a huge bunch of familiar faces from Carmarthen (you know who you are) - we had a chance to let loose and fully enjoy the Dreadzone set.. keep an eye out for their album which will be due out in March next year (around the same time as ours.. save up your pennies so you can buy both)

Electric Circus last week was also huuuge, thanks to so many of you for coming along and supporting us and the Circus2Iraq charity. For those of you who followed the blog previously, you'll know it's something that I was involved with a while ago and something that I strongly believe in. It's quite rare that you meet someone who has as much integrity and will as the mastermind behind all this but I'd urge you all to keep an eye out for future events they hold. Ruth always manages to pull together a tremendous crew and variety of artists for the most eclectic party where fun just drips off the walls. Hooray for dancing bananas and naked chainsaw-juggling men. Very pleasant surprise to see Shingai from The Noisettes who took time out from her busy schedule to come and see us again here too.

I write this on a laptop as we're in the final stage of our journey home - it's been a relatively painless journey - the van has performed remarkably well (we're having to top her up every 90 minutes because she's losing water that quickly) the only major hitch was Stu managing to lose his bass effects pedal somewhere at Scala, meaning that one gig was done with the bass not sounding quite as intended and sp we had to make an emergency visit to a music equipment store the following day to get a new one. Nelly then got militant on the van packing, arming himself with a clipboard and making a thorough list of every item that needed to be packed so that we wouldn't lose anything else ever again. We promptly lost our merchandise board at that gig.

If anyone has managed to acquire the silver box with the bass multi-effects pedal in, please get in touch. It has Subsource written on the side and a phone number.

I'm not far from my own bed now. I haven't missed it, but I'm looking forward to it. My body clock is exactly 12 hours out of sync of where it really ought to be and when I wake up I suspect it won't be the time of day I'd like it to be.

Final Touches

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:03:00 +0000

The final touches are going on the album over this week before everything starts going to the final mix and master which will take another month or so. We're not exactly sure which songs are going to make it just yet.. we'll see what we think when everything comes back.

Street Soul Music continues to be elusive in getting that sound that we're happy with. Since it was first written four years ago and we've spent hours and hours listening to different mixes and trying different parts, it's become pretty difficult to re-approach it without wanting to run away from it screaming. Mr. Frisk (who was responsible for the stomping breaks remixes of the last single) has helped us loads with a couple of ideas to bring it into 2009 compared to the original mixes out there back from 2005! Fans who have been with us for a while will also remember Parasite which we stopped playing live a couple of years ago. It's going to be back in a new guise completely..

Summer approaches and we've got a little bit of time to prepare new songs and get gig ready for the festival season. That's er 11 days before Beach Break Festival (uh guys if you're reading this, we really don't have long..) which should be a fine start. Other highlights for the summer that I'm really looking forward to include Workhouse, Guilfest and Solfest which should all be huge, and of course Glasto.

I've not been blogging so much recently, Twitter seems to be more the way forward. (Blogging for those afflicted with ADHD.. you don't need to set aside 15 minutes near a computer and you can even do it whilst you're on the toilet. Perfect.) So check us out there if you've got your own Twitter, or thanks to the wonders of RSS, it's syndicated on the front page of our main site. (Or stick it in your own RSS reader)

It wouldn't be an update without of course letting you know how the van is doing. We were hugely worried about having to sell it due to the M25 emissions restriction but thanks to Boris, we can keep it for a while longer. We've been talking about getting the damn thing serviced because the horsepower seems to have dropped to a point where we're stalling in third gear when going uphill on the motorway which isn't good at all.

Current albums in the van that we're listening to include The Anomalies - Free Soup Social, which is brill if you like big hip-hop/funk/mash-up stuff. I was dead chuffed when Murf from The Anomalies gave us a couple of albums for free when we played at his venue up in Hereford. It's got the best album cover I have seen for ages and track 11 Oldskool is absolutely killer. I'm tempted to do a cover or a remix or something.

Also we're still listening to The Hoff's album. Can't remember which one it is, but Swampy bought it for £1.99 at Asda. As he says, "It's surprisingly good. Well, actually good is the wrong word. It's surprisingly enjoyable."

Breakspoll 2009: Best Live Act Nomination. Please Vote!

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:00:00 +0000

The kind folks down at Breakspoll have nominated us for Best Live Act in the 8th international breakbeat awards. Please spare a minute to cast a vote for us at the Breakspoll website. The awards ceremony will take place at Fabric on Thursday 26th Feb and will no doubt be a massive party oozing tasty breaksy goodness.

The Prodigy

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Well over the past few years of blogging I am sorry to say that it appears I have fallen into that journalist trap of writing stuff purely in an attempt to be entertaining to the few readers who do stumble across this blog. As a result, I don't necessarily hold the opinions that I'm writing about I do have a tendency to exaggerate ideas and be very blunt for the sake of fickle entertainment. For that I apologise and I'll attempt to write in a more mature manner in future. This is the Internet after all, and you never know, even one of your true heroes could end up reading it and you'd be pretty devastated if you ever upset them.

I should also note that everything here is totally my own responsibility, not Stu's nor anybody else's in the band.

The Tale Of A True Slackers Convention

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:46:00 +0000

8:00pm - oh look, we've managed to arrive at the venue on time. that hasn't happened for a while

8:30pm - we've even set up really early

9:00pm - i hope the mixing desk comes in soon

9:30pm - we're popping out for fish n chips whilst we're waiting for the mixing desk and cabling to arrive

9:47pm - gosh it's very cold outside, is there any more vinegar, could you pass it over? ta

10:15pm - that was tasty but i feel a bit bad about not eating very healthily tonight. the mixing desk still isn't here? does anybody think we can pull it off without it?

10:40pm - oh dear, it's not happening.

10:55pm - well that's the third time in subsource history we've set up and not played. first e-mail to mail@subsource.co.uk telling us the location of the other two gigs wins a rare CD promo copy (given only to press so far) of our latest single, "Dark Is The New Light". Hint: G and P

11:10pm - well i'm going to synergy then. seeya later. oh yeah it's called luminopolis now.

8:30am - look at the snow! IT'S SO PRETTY!

That was the single release week

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:24:00 +0000

Buy the new Spamsource single.. and many, many thanks to all those that did. At this moment, we don't know how well we did - we were hoping to make it into the indie charts within the top 100 or so but information is currently still eluding us at present time.

It's a bit of a relief having that week out the way, where every conversation was spent trying to mention it as subtley as possible, especially when you can't remember whether the person you're speaking to has already bought multiple copies for their extended family as Christmas presents for the next 3 years.

So now we're thinking ahead about the next single, looking to build on the success (or failure - we still don't know which) of this release. If you forgot to buy it last week.. go ahead and do it.. total sales still help us out too..

More imminently we're preparing ourselves mentally for the coming month where we'll be driving El Diablo Bastardo over 3000 miles (approximately the distance from London to New York) to play in far-flung places such as Berlin, Paris and Stoke-On-Trent. Stu and Nelly have told me that they've upgraded the East Wing of the van to include luxury sleeping quarters and seeing as we're going to be spending a good few nights cooped up in sub-zero freezing conditions (is Inverness inside the Arctic circle?) we're going to need them. Something tells me this is going to turn into more of a survival boot camp than a band tour..

Iglu & Hartly. Drop Beats Not Bombs

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:48:00 +0000

Hereford - Supporting Iglu & Hartly

Na na na na nahh, IN THIS CITY, na na na na na nahh, IN THIS CITY.

Backstage, the frontguy with long hair, presumably Iglu, is serenading me in Californian falsetto.. do you know this song? It's like totally awesome man. And the thing is as much as I was trying to dislike these catchy shplangy guitar pop songsters, they made every effort to actually make the effort to be amicable to everyone. They're alright, for Americans. Admittedly, the guy who's girlfriend that had her tongue down Hartly's throat might not share the same opinion. As we observe the drummer leave the venue with a young teeny bopper on one arm (and two on the other), citing, 'the soundman has taken the last bed at the hotel and I don't have anywhere to stay', my best reason for hating them is that I'd quite like to be them for a day.

If I didn't have to put up with playing shit music.

Birmingham - Drop Beats Not Bombs

Straight from the Holiday Inn in Hereford to Birmingham for a proper party. Four stages of music into the early hours, we had the honour of performing on the outdoor arena - out of the side of a custom-built double decker bus that has stage and PA built in. It's all well and good closing down a street for it but it actually gets too bollockingly cold to party outside in November.

Hallowe'en in Barrow. Testing out the Nord Wave

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:39:00 +0000

Some gigs make you feel old. Props to the Monster Monster crew for throwing this party.

Very eerie after-party. We found ourselves huddling for warmth in this spooky disused restaurant. With outside temperatures plummeting, we had a bit of a spinal tap moment as nobody had a clue where the van was parked except Kimba who had retired to the safety of the van hours earlier. So the rest of us roamed the streets at 4am getting totally lost.. it truely could have been the fateful demise of the band had guest soundman James not managed to answer his phone..

Look I've bought a new toy and I'm resenting it heavily. With the laptop crashing one time too many I've bitten the bullet and spent stupid amounts of money to sacrifice a lot of flexibility for a little bit more reliability. Okay, admittedly, there's something a bit sexy about the Nord Wave but considering what you can achieve with software on a laptop I feel like I've had a lot of money taken from me for a piece of gear that doesn't have huge amounts of technology in it. It just happens to be the only hardware synth on the market right now that does what I need it to do. Gah.

Mini-review:
It's a good, solid build. Well the knobs feel nice to turn, the stone mod wheel is cool but doesn't give enough grip for rapid wobbing. I worry about the weight of the wheel causing eventual damage to itself.. the mod wheel does need to be pretty durable to survive a Subsource tour, we'll see. Pitch-bend range is restricted to having one global setting rather than per-instrument which is annoying, but it is hands-down the best action on a controller I have experienced. There's absolutely no dead-zone and responds to the slightest of force without any unwanted motion.

The sole strength of the Nord Wave lies in being able to import samples as waveforms - this is a job it does well (with a slightly cumbersome software interface).. at this price you'd expect a better graphical display on the keyboard to let you know what you're doing. Given the amount of scope this synth offers I'm a bit confused as to the presets it ships with. There are some nice, warm sounds on there but the ones you'd be most likely to use suck pretty bad. (i.e. Piano/Rhodes). Plenty of strings/choir/pad sounds. Not sure how useful the synthesized trumpet/brass/accordion sounds are going to be useful to anyone. I'd love to meet the man who buys this for the accordion preset. Seriously, what are you thinking Clavia?

The Nord site states, "Great samples are not determined by their size in bytes, but by how well their detail and character are preserved". When it comes to imitating real-life instruments though, synthesized modelled instruments just don't cut it for me and in terms of sound I'd go for big, high-quality samples any day.

When it comes to the electronic sounds, there's plenty of scope to play with a two oscillators, two LFOs and a nice polite filter (very useable and playable but won't let you get properly angry filter sweeps like Novation would - then again, I can see it as a safety mechanism for avoidance of rupturing big soundsystems and violating health and safety guidelines at gigs). Again at this price I'm disappointed at not having a second filter and multiple types of overdrive over the single 'tube overdrive' offered.

I couldn't possibly recommend this to anybody who wants to jump in and make a great sound straight away - to get anything decent out of this you're going to need to spend some time creating and tweaking your own sounds. For this much money, you really shouldn't have to. Personally I'm looking forward to seeing what the Waldorf Blofeld keyboard has to offer which is out very soon, is much cheaper and seems better specced.

The customisability of the Nord Wave is a great thing but Clavia don't seem to be taking advantage as much as they could... they should have boosted the sample memory available (the 256MB it comes with must be dirt cheap to manufacture these days), increased the number of banks available and had an area on their site encouraging users to form and share vast arrays of sounds. Then get Rob Papen/BT/Brian Eno or anyone of their ilk to do a few celebrity soundbanks and hey presto.. it'd be a true winner.

On BBC Radio With Nihal

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:37:00 +0000

Kimba, Stu and Paul chat to Nihal on BBC Radio Asisan Network to Nihal about music with a message. Find out more about what inspires the band's music in this interview through the BBC iPlayer this week. (From 2:12.30)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fc9xp/Nihal_04112008/

Stereo MCs. Does anybody watch Hollyoaks?

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:16:00 +0000

The past fortnight has taken us back to The Croft in Bristol for what was in my mind the best gig since Glade in the summer. The amount of energy expended by the audience that night was something else. Also we got to wish Holly a happy birthday, probably one of our longest-standing fans who we get to see once a year (she won best-dancer award at one of our first shows http://www.subsource.co.uk/blog/2005/05/from-muff-jamm-night-winners-of-best.html)

Getting to support the Stereo MCs the day after at the Brixton Jamm - another great gig. We stuck around to check them out too, which was interesting but had the sardine-in-a-tin thing going on.. the place was rammed to capacity (or probably even over that) which makes a good vibe, but getting a decent oxygen supply can also be good too.

Finally a return to Hull (where I am always on guard since the first time I went to Hull, me and my brother were almost killed by a massive 'TO LET' sign that happened to fall from a church as we walked under it. Surely we would have been dealt a fatal blow to our heads if it wasn't for the fact that we happened to be also walking under a small plastic bus shelter as it happened - ever since then I have always maintained that God's been out to get me. I can safely say that once more I've been to Hull and back and gotten away with it.

So after playing at Funky in Hull, we're out n about talking to the crowd and promoting the single. I sit down next to this one couple and ask them if they saw the live act. They say no, they just got here and within two sentences the guy proudly tells me that the lady he's with is Leanne from Hollyoaks. I try to tell them a little more about the music we do and she says, 'I hope it's nothing like this' as she points her thumb over her shoulder towards the banging drum n bass in the background. I size her up and it's pretty clear that she's probably more at home at a shit club in Oceana listening to shit house like Cascada or something shit like that. So being a diplomat and a realist, I figure they're not going to like the single so ask them not to sign the e-mail list because they'll probably think we're shit. But we're talking major C-list celebrity here, so I ask her to write 'Leanne from Hollyoaks missed Subsource, but thinks they're probably shit' and she promptly obliges with an autograph.

I've just been on the cast list on their site and there's no mention of a Leanne so maybe I've been had. But the look on her face when I told her that, 'it's probable that she'll think we're shit but at least I know for fact that Hollyoaks is a big steaming pile of shit' tells me otherwise. (And that was my cue to promptly leave). If anyone knows anything about someone called Leanne being in Hollyoaks (apparently stage and actress name) please get in touch and clear things up for me.

I've been a bit ill with the cold and inevitably being cooped up in the vehicular deathtrap on wheels with the others I've managed to give it to them too so we're all a little bit ropey at the moment as we get on with promoting the single online where we can. It's getting a bit ridiculous constantly pushing it out to people, I even tried to sell it to the postman this week. Please show your support by pre-ordering the single if you can. In the words of the great Ringo Starr, pre-order the single with peace and love, peace and love.

http://www.7digital.com/artists/subsource/dark-is-the-new-light/

Peace and love

PRE-ORDER SINGLE ONLINE NOW!

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:09:00 +0000

Counting down the days now, support your friendly, neighbourhood punkbreaks band:

http://www.7digital.com/artists/subsource/dark-is-the-new-light/

Here you can pre-order all four versions of the single for the bargain price of £1.79. (That's 44.75 pence per track).

Subsource featured on Numb3rs tonight (US)

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:16:00 +0000

'Parasite' will be featuring in the hit TV crime drama Numb3rs tonight in the US on NBC as it returns for its fifth season premiere (Episode 5x01: High Exposure) 10:00pm ET/PT

SUBSOURCE ON SKY SPORTS TONIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Tune into Sky Sports for the first ever Barclaycard World Freerun Championships to hear 'Disarm' become the anthem of freerunning as Subsource provide the main title music. Highlights from the event that brings together 23 athletes from 18 countries will be shown tonight (Monday 22 September) on Sky Sports 3 at 7pm and Sky Sports 2 from 10pm.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:12:00 +0000

Bows And Arrows is available as a free download. It's the B-side to the upcoming single on our own label, Doombox Recordings. Get it here.

Waveform Festival: Mud Is The New Dry

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:10:00 +0000

So we all made it to the final festival of the season. With the organisers clearly trying to avoid another tragedy like their sister festival mudrise, their relentless online campaign running up to the date promised a drainable chalk surface, metal trackways help to access in and out and they even had a weather forecast on their own site showing three full days of beaming sun.

We turned up to promptly discover all live acts on the main stage had been cancelled for the day due to rain taking out the power to the main desk, much to James's dismay.

Still, on the bright side, I think it's definitely been my favourite mud this year. Mud has never been this beautiful.

Stu, Paul and Kimba did a hot little DJ set on the main stage instead.

And then we kind of played a live set down at the Cat's Cradle stage. As one random Myspaz appreciator put it: "Hey, saw you guys almost play a gig at cat's cradle on the weekend!". After 3 tracks we'd run the power down and the generator couldn't keep up. Apologies to Wobbly Squadron especially who'd just spent over an hour carting their gear through the mud to play after us and couldn't. And thanks to everyone around at that particular time, vibes in their were great.

No chance to clean up. Just a little bit of van sleep, then it's straight to Birmingham.

Many thanks to Emma (Pixie) for holding the festival together for the duration of our stay

Grass Roots Festival, Peterborough

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:52:00 +0000

Massive apologies to everybody who turned up to see us for this one.. we were really looking forward to hitting the Peterborough crowd but well, sometimes things aren't meant to be. Technical confusion meant that not quite all of things that needed to be plugged in actually got plugged in. The end result being that it looked like performance art where we set our gear up, stood there for 45 minutes looking turning increasingly more red before pulling our stuff off.

Yes we got paid, thanks, but it was kind of embarrassing especially since we didn't get a chance to announce on a microphone what was going on.

On the bright side, we got to see our friends Step 13 and Nila Raja who both did top sets. And it's another one that we'll definitely remember.

Oh, also big thanks to Shaun Streams for helping us piece our van back together. The gaffer tape wasn't quite doing the job. ("When you can't fix it with gaffer tape, that's when you know it's properly broken")

V Festival (Strongbow Tent)

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:18:00 +0000

We came. We played. And our van lost a fight with a tree.

Tree (Winner)

Van (Loser)

"Err guys, I've kind of made a hole in the van" (Biggest Loser Of All)

Vibe Bar/Proud Galleries

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:25:00 +0000

It's been five months since we played London and in comparison to everywhere else we seem to have played recently, it seems very very close to home. (So close, that you're back home and the sun hasn't even come up yet) Traditionally, we're not as suited to Sunday and Monday nights, and I'm remembering that a sober audience and a wankered audience are very different beasts.

Monday 4th August: Vibe Bar
At the Vibe Bar, we get to say goodbye to Martin as he leaves for sunny Los Angeles. Martin gave us our first ever shows at The Spitz when we started out and it's good to be able to see him off with this farewell show.

Sunday 10th August: The Proud Galleries
We're grabbed by some guy with a camera and hustled into a corner for a quick interview. We're spectacularly bad at interviews.

During the show there is a guy dancing in a baby blue t-shirt that made it for me. After the show as I'm ordering a chicken curry from a stall on Camden High Street. "WHAT!? NO! What are you DOING!?" A local guy behind me informs me that I'm dicing with death by eating meat and implores me to stick to the vegetable pizza which I do. In return for saving my life, I told him I'd plug his music.

http://www.myspace.com/silvertieandthemagpies

Sleepsource Does Gashfest

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:44:00 +0000

"Come to Gashfest, it's just round the corner from Kendal". I'm sure I heard this from at least three different sources before this weekend. With an enormous amount of luck we found the clearing in the forest that the directions vaguely hinted at and we rolled in at around 7:30am.

If it takes over four hours to traverse, that's actually a fucking big corner.

Revellers at Gashfest were still up and partying so we joined them for a bit and then a few of us went for a stroll to play pooh-sticks and admire the local fauna.

By mid-afternoon, sleep seemed like a really good idea. This year, sleep has definitely become one of my favourite hobbies and at risk of sounding arrogant, I'm actually getting really good at it.

Somebody suggested once that we don't actually play gigs, we just like to drive our van out into fields with hills and do man things together. (And some other people have even started calling us Bumsource.) That's why I should really remember to actually get photos of the actual festival for evidence.. this blog post won't go down well at all.

Even more mud. Stuey has lost his wellys and borrows Paul's. This I think was the beginning of a downward spiral. Cold, wet and millions of miles from home is fine but cast a welly-less man into a British festival and watch him suffer like no man should.

Night falls. Between a van full of equipment and a stage we have yet to grace, there is a barbed wire fence and 25 feet of deep, slushy mud - the kind where you're worried about losing a welly but also worried about a full body slip. (One day I am going to document and categorize all the different types of mud you are likely to encounter) Spirits have been crushed and we toy with the idea of just going home and cutting our losses instead of playing to the three totally munted people currently flailing in front of the stage. We're still one pair of wellys short too, but we'd have felt pretty bad about travelling 400 miles here to not play. So we play.

It's a shame we can't enjoy this unique party since we came so far for it, but Nelly's left his cymbals at Kendal Calling which we pick up en route, and then we're back home to rest for Monday's gig at the Vibe Bar in London.

Kendal Calling

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:19:00 +0000

1st August: Kendal Calling

The AA routeplanner says it takes 4 hours and 38 minutes to get from Guildford to Kendal. We round this up to 8 hours to make allowances for timekeeping disabilities and our van. (Which after a £900 repair bill is now almost-roadworthy but the rear doors don't lock). Halfway to Kendal, we find out that we're actually on 2 hours earlier than we'd previously been told. We miss our set and they kindly re-schedule us for 1am.

Conditions on-site are muddy and wet. We've already gone slightly insane from the long journey, well aware that we're heading up to the Scottish Borders the following day.

Backstage as Dizzee Rascal's doing his thing, Beardyman confesses that he also missed his set - although whilst we were pelting it up the M6 as best we could, he was chatting and drinking in the hospitality tent when he missed his.

As we go on, the tent is rammed. Everything else has shut down. Perfect. But it's hot, humid and sweaty but gaffa tape loses its stick under these conditions which isn't so good when you're relying on it to hold all your electronic equipment together. Not a flawless set. Laptops just aren't durable enough for our gigging purposes, I'm going hardware synths/samplers when I have enough money.

By the time we get our gear together, it's 3am. There's no way we're getting tents up in this mud, so we drive straight to Gashfest.

July 2008: Life and Glade

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:12:00 +0000

5th July: Life Festival

Our first ever international gig, and we've been racking our brains for weeks to figure out how we get our ridiculous amount of equipment on a plane. Stu's got a heavy-duty coffin for his bass and the rest of bundle as much as we can into suitcases at the mercy of the Ryanair luggage handlers. Our fears are confirmed as we spot our suitcases being thrashed onto trolleys from the windows of the plane.

Kimba waiting for a bus.

Ali (soundguy for this particular gig) and Paul at the bus stop waiting for a taxi.

At the train station waiting for a taxi.

After an endless amount of waiting, the 7-seater taxi pulls up. There's 6 of us PLUS all our equipment. Don't think they quite thought this through...

The light show and stage is amazing.. didn't get to see much of the rest of the festival though.

After another taxi journey, we look forward to the final flight home before realising that they're flying us back to Stansted instead of Gatwick. Yet more waiting as Nelly's girlfriend Kate comes to rescue us in the van.

Essentially, life is all about waiting. Sometimes you'll do important stuff in between all the waiting.

13th July: Shrewsbury Buttermarket (Workhouse Festival After-Party)

Unfortunately we didn't get to play the Workhouse Festival this year (they've already had us two years running) but they missed us so we went down to tie up their festivities for their after-party.

Good to catch up with The Anomalies again who we've bumped into a few times on our gigging travels.

Kimba seems to have done himself some damage to his leg.

18th July: Glade Festival

Well if there's any one single UK festival that we thought that we'd truly belong at, it would be Glade - home of electronic music. After 3 years of dreaming about performing here, Ross from Liquid Records saw good sense to give us an excellent 8pm slot on the Friday and it was an amazing experience to see the tent fill up continuously throughout the set. Thanks to all for the overwhelming support on this landmark gig.

We partied hard. Except Kimba whose leg doesn't seem to be getting any better.

19th July: Westival (West End Centre, Aldershot)

Our best intentions to leave Glade for the giddy heights of playing in Aldershot were almost trashed when our van decided to have a hissy fit. It looks like the starter motor's died again, and we noticed that a couple of tyres aren't in great condition. Dreadzone pitch up and we hound them for a jack. Dreadzone's MC Spee rolls out of the van on crutches, perhaps demonstrating to Kimba the dangers of years of being overactive on-stage.

Slightly fatigued from doing a show the previous night, but we still do ourselves justice to the West End Centre crowd. But I'm off as soon as I can to get back to enjoy the rest of Glade..

Kept bumping into these very enthusiastic fellas from Carmarthen at Glade, said I'd give them a shout-out on the blog.

June 2008: We got ourselves a plan

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:50:00 +0000

6th June: Thimbleberry Festival

Swampy in a swamp

Like many a good festival, Thimbleberry started life as a party run for family and friends before growing over 5 years to be a much anticipated event for the community and surrounding areas. Run by a very nice farmer called Andy (who has the biggest hands we ever shook), a little bit of rain doesn't dampen the vibe of this festy. Anyway it's up north, it's always raining.

With hands that big, it would be a proper mighty slapping.

7th June: Shrewsbury Buttermarket

Straight down to Shrewsbury to Rock Against Racism. This is the biggest and best food rider we've ever been given although we have to temporarily break our oath to not ever eat curry before a gig. There are no on-stage accidents, although we've clocked up a double-digit number of toilet visits between us beforehand.

Fight The Bear are a wicked bunch of guys and put on a good show, as do Aziz Ibrahim and The Heavy. Aziz downplays the relevance of the gig to anti-racism, "This has got nothing to do with racism has it?". He gets a blank from the crowd so attempts to backtrack a little, perhaps without realising the semi-apathetic crowd proves his point. Still, for me, it's a pleasure to play under the banner of this legacy and whilst an anti-nationalist stance may not be needed as much as it did back in the 70s, I suspect over the next few years it may become more relevant if Britain slips into the economic decline that is looming ever closer. There's nothing like a good recession to help stoke racist tensions.

Fact: When Stu's really wasted he makes this same motion of wiping imaginary sweat off his head.

13th June: Isle Of Wight

After getting off the ferry and being badgered by a whole regiment of police officers and their dogs (wtf!? do we really look that suspicious?) we arrive at the festival. Fond memories of watching old footage of Hendrix, Joni Mitchell et al playing here are blown apart as they show adverts for cars, make-up and the best fabric conditioner on the massive screens in between acts. I wasn't prepared for all this blatant commercialisation at all. To cope, I retire to the comfort zone of our Strongbow tent backstage where I take advantage of drinking all the free cider that I am physically able. (Just under a quarter of a pint)

Big-ups to Chibuku Will, Stumblefunk Matt on the lights and DC Rochford (No. 1447) of the Ryde Constabulary for making this such a wicked show for us.

26th June: Band Meeting - making a plan

We've been scheming with our management for a while about putting out our own release. In the current musical climate, a lot of record labels are having a rough time - it's a risk to put the work in to invest in a new band and potentially, it may not pay off.. it seems every other day we hear of an act that's had money ploughed into it, only to fail. Over the past few years of gigging and hoping to be picked up by some label with money, the coin has finally turned and this seems like the best time ever to go it alone, starting from a grass-roots level and growing from there.

The mission statement is to release a single (currently aiming for October time) with the intention of reaching 1000 sales in the opening week. We have a shoestring budget comapared to that of even an independent label, so we'll be relying solely on digital downloads to count. There's no hiding the fact that a tremendous amount of work will be awaiting us and our management team.

1000 single sales in a week should make the top 80
2500 might make top 40
13,000 usually makes top 10
30,000 is enough to reach number one

Of course, all dependent on time of year and what else is in the charts. Coldplay's, 'Viva La Vida' reached number one with 23,212 in its week of release which was the lowest sales figure for a number one position this year.

Obviously we're not even gunning for top 40, but hopefully this gives you a better idea of what we're trying to do.