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Winchra time posted 30.10.08

It’s cold, f-king cold and I don’t ever remember the evenings getting so

dark so early. Bright pink finger syndrome in the mornings before I go in

to my work. Winter has come in seemingly like a sledge hammer blow to the

face, it’s time to mummify ourselves inside hats, coats and scarfs.

We’ve been doing lots of recording recently, it’s strange to remember back to two months ago when there was about 7 of us sitting in the hot control room with window open and fan blowing while we sweat to our pits, thanks to all the gear radiating heat at 100 degrees Celsius. It seems like there’s just not enough time to get everything done when it needs to

be done in about an eighth of the time. But you know if there were more hours in the day you’d fill them with stuff you didn’t want to do, a catch 22. Still, hopefully we’ll get some demos finished very soon and available for download now that the harvest is over…

Someone Else, Long Distance and Sympathy are our newest three songs which you may have seen us play recently on our tiny tour string of 4 dates last weekend. Someone Else is probably one of the lighter songs we have at the moment with duel drumming by AK and Birdy while Long Distance and Sympathy are a bit rockier.

Of the four shows we played three were with a band called Tripwires from Reading. A nice bunch of lads with some wicked songs, I hadn’t seen them prior to us playing together but wished that we could have played a few more together as I was quite getting in to them. Hopefully we’ll do some more together soon. Last Thursday we played Salisbury Alehouse, and then the Bristol Louisiana on Friday of which we finally discovered the backstage area which we never knew existed before(!?). I must be getting stronger beyond control as at the end of our set I managed to snap the mic stand in two with my bare hands. I don’t remember getting on it much that night but the next day we all felt like shit and all tired out. Probably some higher power telling us ‘you should have not stopped touring!’ After the show we decided that at 12am when Bow’s Bday would start we would all take our tops off in respect to our hot driving tours in Spain. 12am hits on the motorway and shortly after we head into a service station. Do we put our tops back on? That’s not how we roll. The look on most people’s faces at 7 of us lined up next to each other in front of the urinals with no t-shirt on and walking around the services when it was icy freezing outside was worth it.

Anyway the Saturday was Bowman’s 21st birthday and for which Lauren at the George where we were to be playing that night tricked the venue all out with balloons. Amongst Bow’s presents was a Boss Space Echo effects pedal which actually puts him at a disadvantage as he now needs to shell out £100 for a big enough pedal board to fit them all on. Ah, looking back to the days when all he had was a tuner. How times have changed. Soon we’ll have to buy some extra stage to take with us on tour to be able to use all our gear at shows. The George show as always was wicked with a great turnout and a whole crowd rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ for ‘Bowlash. We’d been looking forward to playing it all year and it didn’t disappoint, thanks to everyone who came out and made it so. After the show we went out in Andover to some of the shite ‘clubs’. Somehow a maraca managed to get into circulation, no-one knows how but I think it was being shaken on the dance floor all night, passed between us when someone got arm ache. There was also a plastic machine gun with sound effects at one point. At some stage of the night I was wasted and trying to speak Spanish and German to a Brazilian who spoke Portuguese. Obviously the maraca was still going at this point…

Next after that was a gig in Downend near Bristol. The backstage of this was actually a skittle alley, and after the majority of us playing a nice harmless game for a few minutes Bowman and Ruggers get so narked with the noise that Bow steals all the bowling balls and takes them up the other end, squatting down on top of them so we can’t play anymore. Spoil our fun. We then decide to make a racket by chucking a tom hard case around the alley until Bowman gives in. After the show I had the worst ever chicken chow mein, it looked like early learning centre food, a bit too high contrast and slippery.

At the moment we’re thinking about single two and are really eager to put it out as soon as we can. It’s unconfirmed yet as to what song it will be though. We’re trying to do as much recording as possible and we’re managing to swear in everyday conversation more and more, using the F word as an adjective for the same word. I blame it on the farmers.

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Whist is ein single?!! posted 14.09.08

It’s Monday morning and only by 53 minutes but it’s going prey swell. Our debut single is out RIGHT NOW!!! It’s been strange because it’s all that I’ve been thinking so much about for the last however many months and now it’s actually here, the release of one ‘A-side’ 3 minute 23 seconds of music by a ‘band’ who are trying as hard as they can to be as true to themselves musically as people as they can. Looking back it’s strange having a single out only now when all that it feels we’ve done: playing random shows that you think are going to be the best thing you’ve done but won’t turn out like that, practicing when work permits it, writing songs, the tours, self doubt and misbelief, taking gambles that you hope you’ll win on. It does feel good to put all the work we’ve put in so far into a physical product.

Definitely we have to thank everyone who’s supported us up until now, it’s been pretty sweet and we owe you our hearts… you know who are are.
So Drifting Away is out on CD right now. You can buy it from our myspace or website and it’ll be on itunes in exactly a week so you can get it in delicious internet 128kps quality on 22nd Sept. This week should be wicked, come celebrate the release with us at Bristol, Camden or Marlborough this week, it’s really going to be ace I promise.

In other news it has been Crispysock this weekend in our hometown Andover. Our good friend and legend Crispy passed away three years ago and this year was the third annual Crispystock; and judging by the state of the majority of us who took advantage of the celebration of his life it was wicked once again, paying homage to the big boy in true inebriated fashion perhaps.

Thanks to everyone who supported us at Sugarhill and the Bear, I have to say they were both the funnest shows we’ve all played in aggeessss. It was muddy but we absorbed the muddy brown-ness and life got better. We saw some great bands, namely Broken Records; they were amazing. I loved the strings. I also enjoyed Johnny Foreigner, they were pretty sweet also..


So make sure you continue supporting us like the wicked people you are and buy Drifting Away! If not just buy to get the b-side which sounds quite nice I think. It’s out on the internet now, from our myspace or the website in CD format. Next you’ll be able to get it a week from now in itunes on the 22nd of Sept.

finally thanks everyone for your ongoing support, see you next week in Bristol, Camden or Marlborough!

team sion sion xxx

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Recording Shenanigans... posted 6.08.08

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DEBUT SINGLE: DRIFTING AWAY posted 17.07.08

‘Drifting Away’ will be Sion’s very first single. It will be out in September on CD and also on itunes. You will know the exact release date as soon as the finalities are dealt with.We now have the artwork for the single, you can view it in full hi-res shiny-ness here. The release party for the single is going to be a show at Dublin Castle in Camden on the 17th of September. We’re going to be doing a FREE coach up there so stick that date in your diary, on your forehead and engrave it into your skull as it’s really important that we get lots of people up there! The B side for the single is going to be an acoustic version of the song, recorded at Oakcuts Studios.

We want the airwaves back… In other news we’ve been play listed on our local 106.4 Andover FM so if you’re about our way you can catch us on the radio.

See you soon
Sion x

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Single soming soon! Recording done... posted 8.06.08







So after a nice little sunny weekend break to Paris for me, last week we were in the studio.

Recording our debut single.

Exciting stuff.

And it sounds good.

It will be out in around a couple of months, the release date will be confirmed soon but the artwork looks cool.

We recorded near Tower Bridge in London with producers Ville and Matt Leppanen in their very nice studio (if you had been there you would have seen me pining over much recording gear I can’t afford. Ah well). Hopefully we should be on tour again (it’s been too long) just after it’s been released in promotion of it so you will be able to catch us live again soon..

After a couple of days recording we played a couple of shows last week also, one in London and one in Bristol. London was good but I really enjoyed the Bristol show a lot more; all the bands were good and it was a really nice atmosphere, the Louisiana is a nice little venue too.


So at the moment now we are preparing to put out our first single and writing more material for our album. We’re building a recording studio into the flat where we practice at the moment and so will put some new demos up of new and unrecorded Sion stuff. I just need some more gear but I’m jobless currently so if anyone would like to send some money into the Sion charity or help us win the lottery we’ll buy you a beer and an ice cream. At the moment songs we have are ‘Laced’, one called ‘Tokyo’, a slow Sigur Ros style one and more mish mash of tunes. It’s different and getting there towards being something we’re quite proud of and you will hear them soon. Or we’ll scrap them and you’ll hear something with the lyrics ‘‘she’s so lovely’‘ 100 times. Because that sells. Apparently…


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No more. NO MORE VAN. posted 17.03.08

























That’s it. There’s no more to it. If we spend one more millisecond in our van I think we are all going to suffer from a spot of spontaneous human combustion.

Well.

Thats what we thought.

But we’re still here…

So we’re back from Spain once again to scrape the funbus’s towbar once again on British speed bumps and to try and endure paying more than 50p for a bottle of red wine. I suppose you want to know how it went? Pretty sweet I’d say, but only because it’s of late become an involuntary catchphrase of all of us. Other new little catchphrases and things came out during our little trip (I’m going to refer to it as a trip from now on, 4 gigs doesn’t nearly count as a tour no matter what some bands think) including the following:

Quotes:
‘smooth as a cucumber’ – Ruggers
‘kez – ya bastard!’ – all
‘tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap, tap tap’ – all
‘grow a pair’ – all

Cocktail drinks from our new portable minibar:
The Sexy Boat (all round favorite)
The guar
It’s not that bad
Grow a pair

Driving down into Spain we drove through a snow storm, hail, pissing rain and really bright sunshine, perhaps the Big Man was trying to deter us. We were just pretty narked we didn’t get to see France Pants at our now customary stay at the same 2-star hotel on the journey down. We hoped so hard, but he just wasn’t there. We did make some great cocktails though.
Our first night in Spain after much ferry, motorway, toll booth and (new) ‘log book’ in our travels from the UK was spent in Spaindover, a little village outside Madrid which we rent for the duration of our gigs there. After quick nip down to the shop for some inebriating consumables, we watched Die Hard 4 and managed to find out that we were all characters in the plot. Bowman was (!) Bowman, Birdy was the bearded Warlock, Hunt was the computer geek and I was the greasy hacker.
The following day we met up with our Spanish manager Victor from Anima Pop and he took us to their rehearsal room so we could practice and get tight again after the perils of France had shook us of all tessellation with each other. If only there was a big bridge over France… We can only hope. The Spanish Carrefour’s are cheaper than the French ones too. Anyway the first night in Spain we played my favorite venue there, the Costello club. It’s really nice there, quite small but a really good atmosphere, it’s like a tunnel to the stage. We were drinking discovers and singing along to Buzzer’s set like ‘twas once again 1899. The next two nights we played again in Madrid before setting off for a long drive down to Gandia which is in the south near to Valencia. Our first night in Gandia we had a night off as a show was canceled so we took advantage of the cheap alcohol there. After drinking possibly too much red wine at the huge beautiful posh expensive chalet (not) that we were staying at, we decided to go out and hit some clubs, of which we did not get into. Probably a fault on my part.. We did manage to get into a house party by Birdy continuously repeating a recently learnt Spanish phrase, ‘él está loco’, which means he is crazy. He being me, hanging from Hunt and Birdy’s shoulders in the middle of the road after failing the seemingly impossible task of walking in a straight line. The way home saw many (very humorous from an onlookers point of view) involuntary bundles with Birdy being on the bottom. He has the scars to prove it.
Following a very hard gig due to our sheer exhaustion and the poor turnout due to elections in the area, we realized that we wouldn’t travel fast enough to catch our ferry home so we decided to travel through the night to make it home in time. We were already pretty sick of the sight of the van due to the traveling we had already done. Previously to pass the time activities included reading, attempting to snooze, playing Supermario and receiving much frustration, listening to music, eating ZERO F-CKING TOLERANCE food (this means any food you buy is food for you or else it is gone by greedy hands before you know it. I didn’t bring any with me so I just settled for Miaow, which ISN’t catfood, contrary to prior belief), taking some great snaps and doing a certain stadium sports chant that shall remain nameless. This trip however was the first one we’d done overnight with us driving so the only prioritys were to drive and to sleep, only one of which happened. I’ll let you guess. Birdy did get the biggest zing driving through deserted northern Madrid searching for a petrol station: after looking for one for absolutely ages we finally found one on the other side of the road, but in a town with red lights at every junction and no-left-turn markings everywhere. He decides after much deliberation to turn left anyway at which point a Copper pulls up next to us and follows us for the next 15 minutes. Zing. Every junction we pulled up to had red lights, I’ve never seen so many traffic lights condensed into a straight road. Ironically this town was completely deserted and they were all red. Damn and Zing and such. We pulled up to a petrol station to get some juice for the funbus and get a drink to quench our parched throats. Bowman then goes to the window to buy a bottle of water and some Orbit, at which point we all pissed ourselves at him asking for some ‘aquas e orbit’ and ripped it out of him for the rest of the trip. Orite geeza, oil av sum worter and sum fackin orbit, orite guv?! i laarv my fackin orbit, dun i!! So anyway we drove solidly from 10pm until 4:30pm the next day, 18 and a half hours to be precise with probably about one wink, 40 wasn’t even close. We were shattered and sick of sitting in the funbus. The rest of the trip was just traveling home, being knackered and having fun on the deck of the ferry in gale force winds, there that’s it.
The day after arriving home I had to work early morning, which was great fun as you can imagine after arriving home at half 12 frickin shattered already.
Last Saturday we played a show in Andover at Harrow Way school. This show was seated, which was quite weird for us but it was fun to play, I think there are various youtube videos you can check out of it. Thanks all who put the effort into organizing it and obviously everyone who came out to the show. We actually sold out of every single t-shirt we have, so some new designs will be on the way very very soon, watch this space.
We’re playing a local(ish) show this Good Friday at the Barn in Salisbury, so if you’re about come on down and if you’re not about come on down. See you soon.
AK xxx

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The Boglin who found his way home. posted 17.02.08



I can’t tell you how nice it was to play another show. Thanks to everyone who came out to watch us at Dublin castle last week! We hadn’t played in ages and had just been writing and rehearsing so it was much needed to play a show and let out some of our energy (or just play somewhere other than in the flat where we practice!).

Thursday and Friday last week we were up in Bristol recording a new song with the (working?) title of Wolf Parade, courtesy of NP Records. Something to do with drummer’s infatuation with animal t-shirts methinks. The studio just in the basement of a house in a back road, but it was wicked: a room just full of amps and cabs, a sh*te load of effects pedals, lots of really cool analogue gear and many many many twinkly fairly lights for a ‘great vibe man’. Notable was Matt (engineer)‘s midi Les Paul with built in ebow. Quite possibly heavier than the moon, but we got some cool stuff from it; an ebow vibrates the strings meaning you can play notes with infinite sustain by just putting your finger on the string(s) and it sounds like anything but guitar, it’s wicked. Thanks to the cool array of gear we got to do fun stuff like bi-amp with a guitar part going through two different amps and two different phaser pedals at the same time. I had to work unfortunately on the first day but came up on the second to do my vocals but could have spent a whole day just talking with Matt about gear and technical electrical jargon. Regardless of the recording, Bowman came out of the studio on Friday evening one happy and nostalgic boy at the sight of his newly-owned Boglin goblin-hand-puppet-thing. It’s definitely going to a good home.

We also finally have management in the form of Steve Orchard, he’s helping us out at the moment which is great. About time.

Right cold cold cold it is very cold sitting here typing this, I am going to get a big fat hot coffee now I think. Go and check out Wolf Parade up on our myspace player now!!

AK

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GETTING THERE NOW. posted 2.02.08


Getting there now!!

SO WE HAVE NEW SONGS (in the making) and they are taking their time to come together but we think (or do we?) that they are, which is good. In a week or so we are going up to Bristol courtesy of a Bristolian label to go in the studio and lay something new down. The new songs have working titles of ‘tapes’, ‘hey, luxembourg!’ and plain ‘untitled’, mainly because it is. I think we are pushing through into our new musical vein with these ones, definitely.

NEXT NEXT Wednesday we are playing Dublin Castle in London and are doing transport there and back for you which is all for 3 quid which includes the ticket price, that’s a bargain and a half. It will be our first show of the year which we would normally be ashamed to say as it means we haven’t played for aagges but we’ve had more pressing things on. Like being skint and drinking and not sleeping and practising and realizing the awesomeness of napoleon dynamite and getting outbid on mackie desks on ebay. So come down!!

We have seemed to have had quite a lot of positive response from the demo we recently did which is super swell indeed. Let us know what you think if you already haven’t!

For those of you who have ever watched a comedy called flight of the conchords, i think after watching a certain epidose we realized we actually used to be that band. Except without the stalker girl. We did have a ‘manager’ with a goatee though… (it wasn’t ginger but it was a goatee, they are great for the emige). Oh and we found the formula for speaking in a New Zealand accent which we will be patenting shortly.

Right that’s it. See you in London or in Spain in March!!

b
xxx

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We are all deaf in one ear because I am. posted 17.12.07

Yah hello I thought I’d come on here and write you a little blog to keep you going through the pain in the arse cold weather.
So less recently we were on tour around Europe! Some phrases to help describe that tour could be;
Stolen Luggage
Sniffer dogs and drug squads tearing our bus apart at the Italy border at 6am
Amsterdam
Jagermeister
Free alcohol
The buffet at Hard Rock Cafe in Warsaw
Pretty sweet and ‘well good’
Rain in Spain
France Pants (a guy we saw at a travel inn in France staggering round the hotel at 3am wearing just a shirt and y-frunts halfway down his arse with a can of lager asking for a cigarette. No, we didn’t have any for him)
Bread and meat
The bus: The A lounge & The Blounge (B lounge)
Spilling hot tea on macbooks
Amsterdam again?!?

Both parts of the tour were amazing for us, the first 2 weeks we went off to tour Spain with Anima Pop in the Funbus and staying in our own little rented house for the duration. Notable things which happened on this trip were spending copious amounts of time and money travelling and searching for (and finding) somewhere that did Spag Bol (namely a Big Delicious Bowl) and also the 16 hours solid travelling home to get home a day sooner. The second bigger half we were on tour with Oceansize in their big double decker tour bus with them. The whole thing was so amazing, I got home and wondered if it actually happened. But then I realized that Ruggers and Birdy have no clothes left compared to before we went away, so it must have. Cool.
The past few weeks we have been settling in to trying to pay bills, and so getting back to the real world of work, not so sweet. We have been writing as much as we can and have some good (I think?!) and new stuff coming your way soon! Thanks to who came out to our George show and Hobbit one just last week, they were fun. I don’t think anyone was expecting us to come on to Match of the Day (not that I really did!?) either.
I’m currently sat here typing practically deaf in my left ear after perhaps over-using my new set of earphones, it’s not that nice..
If you’re out and about on Christmas eve you can catch us playing in Newbury at a venue called the Monument. Go on, come out and give yourself a nice hangover and some piercing tinnitus for Xmas day. Me, I have to work at 11am…

POSTED BY AK

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