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i lie here, staring up at the stratosphere... posted 4.07.09

I’ve just got home from playing Winchester about an hour ago, my ears are ringing but it’s darn well good to be touring again. A couple of days ago we got home from Spain which included a three day solid drive in the van. It’s like the Shawshank Redemption (for whoever’s seen it), when we’re in there for so long it’s like we’re institutionalized and it feels strange being anywhere else..

Spain tour was wicked once again, very hot (40 degrees) so coming back to England is more bearable despite the English heat. Shows were fantastic, one tour ritual is a shot of whiskey each mid set, goes down a frickin’ treat. We’ve enjoyed once again cheap beer, which is always warm as it is kept in the warm fridge that is the Fun Bus. Tour food is rubbish. Crisps, baguette and chorizo (still mildly favorite!?), and that’s it. You never feel full, whilst trying to get inventive to feel full up new delicatessen tried was the ketchup and salad cream sandwich and the beans on toast (cold and just bread). We did get taken out for a delicious steak by our friends Fatima and Juan (spelling?) which was ace, it was like Christmas. Much sangria was drunk which made us much drunk on sangria. MacDonalds was overused, the highest frequency was 3 in two days, the first being a big mac meal for breakfast at 10am. it’s not big and it’s not clever.

In France we stay in Formula 1 hotels, basically rough 2 star hotels on an industrial estate in the middle of bloomin nowhere. They are all the same inside so on the way home we get up from our hotel, drive 8/9 hours then arrive at the next one and it seems like you haven’t traveled anywhere! We had a campsite in Madrid where inbetween shows we

- caught some sweet rays (stand ruggers next to a blackboard and all you will see is a John Deere hat, a pair of eyes and some teeth) – jammed in the sunshine – played frisbee; we invented a game which is good to play when you get up in the morning. everyone play frisbee and whoever misses their catch does a shot of whisky. we call it frisky, great game – sweated and got burnt, except hunt (merch roady and lout, but whole lot of fun) who was adamant he wasn’t burnt despite resembling a lobster – grew moustaches. bowman’s was amazing before he shaved it off, ak’s is growing still. we met the most amazing sound guy in Madrid, he was ‘tashe tastic, my idol.

one night mike was about to go to bed after post-gig-partying when hunt busts out the amazing line of ‘come on mike, you can get another litre in you’. it was only remembered by driver Geej who was the only sober person in our camp. the line was used many a time after that.

shows were so late, we were told for one gig to sound check at 9pm, we then went on at midnight then drove many miles to play another show at a festival at 5.15am!! it was nuts, when driving home it was getting light. during the festival our Spanish friend Kike went up on our Y axis when he picked up a bottle of 4€ whisky, held it in the air half a foot above his head and necked it, it was amazing, i can’t even stand it but there wasn’t nae a flinch. legend.

before setting off we installed a new sound system in the back of the van which is two speakers and a bass on the floor which has a volume control. in the seat across from the bass bin there is a corner where the bass is trapped and when you sit there all you can hear is wooom wooom wooom! even more when someone turns the bass bin up, worst seat in the van award goes to… and best seat goes to the one next to an ace photo on the wall from a certain type of french magazine…

tour songs have to be:
bombay bicycle club – always like this
minus the bear acoustic album (journey there)
enter shikari – juggernauts

normally we come home from spain and we’re deep in post tour blues but oh no we’re now blitzing the uk and it’s right, oh so right.

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Gig gig gig posted 12.06.09

This time next week we’ll be in the newly pimped van (it’s had it’s wheels painted, bling) cracking into warm tins of beer, tops off, travelling towards Madrid where we’ll be coming home to tour! Pre-tour itchy feet are the order of the week. We’ve spent so much time over the last year just rehearsing, writing and recording in our band room when we need to be out there playing! The agenda used to be tour, tour and more tour but it slipped in favour of writing songs which is important. When just write and rehearse constantly without touring you start to get cabin fever. It’s going to be a great month, I can’t wait!

We’ve been exercising a splutter of song writing diarrhea recently but have come out with some good tunes, and none of them with ‘new song’ as working title (they all seem to merge into one that way). Instead we have Bowman’s Rave, Pistol, Manana, Fizzbitch and my favorite, GUN! Things are getting a tad synthy but always epic. And smothered with 340 delay.

Oh yeah we played a local show in Salisbury last week, it was fun. We were playing the alternative/acoustic section whilst downstairs a metal gig was scheduled from the evening and could be summed up in three words: line six spider. Awesome. What else happened recently? We went up to Kerrang to do a session, we rehearsed, did some more radio interviews, rehearsed a bit, planned tours, rehearsed, plugged the single, rehearsed…

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Lights! Camera! Action!! posted 30.03.09

Packing the van is like one massive game of tetris. This was never more true than last weekend when we packed it early morning before departing to single two’s film set. The day after the shoot I opened the back of the still laden van to try and find some gaffa tape, only to be met by a black wall of cabs and flight cases with arms crossed and heads shaking, not a chance of finding anything in all that gear! I retreated. The film shoot checklist was:

School gym: check.
We did a few favors (wink) for a school teacher and managed to get a school gym to shoot the video in. It was big, wooden, reverby and had big gym ropes that we were climbing like we were 13 again. We were toying with the idea of the video starting with us cheesily descending from these ropes but in hindsight it was probably for the best.

Big tall lights and smoke machine: check.
Smoke machines are fun and mega cool, especially when you have 1.5k’s worth of lights shining through the smoke. Although the smoke makes you feel like you smoke about 60 a day, it does give your hair, drums and guitars a nice greasy conditioning coating. Lovely.

Gear, gear and a little more gear: check check.
Video shoots we’ve done previously were quite tedious and uneasy but this one was the complete opposite, if knackering! The amount of gear we had was one of my favorite bits, especially Rugger’s mega-stack-wall-of-amp. If only we could have patched it all in!! I do need my hearing though so maybe it was good that we didn’t.

A stellar film crew: check.
Blake Claridge was shooting the vid for us (all by himself!) and aside from doing a great job, he was a very nice chap also. Blake was all things lights, camera and action. Other crew included our mate Kev Scullion who took photos and had to use all that was left of his hungover strength to pull the camera trolley around us in circles while Blake crouched on it and filmed. I’m not sure he had that in mind when he came down but he was certainly cream crackered by the end of it. Jeej was as always roadie and camera puller on a slower scale, as was Candy who also did our make-up. On tea duty was Miss Fisher (known by the kids as ‘maam’), a home ec teacher who was right next door to us who provided us with tea and had to listen to us play the same song through about 35 times whilst trying to get some marking done. She only managed to do 4 pieces. Job well done.

The week before we had another film shoot but a bit more informal in that it was whilst we were playing a gig in ‘the flat’, our rehearsal space. Now this room looks crowded when we have anyone more than us 5 in it at any one time. At the gig we must have had about 60? We had never played a show in this format before, and what was planned to be a small intimate show with only closest mates turned into a wicked house party with pretty much everyone there entirely sh*t faced. As there we a lot of hardcore followers there from many a year ago we decided to play a mixed set with a lucky dip. At certain points in the set we would announce ‘It’s Brucie Bonus Time!!’ and we would hand a red lunchbox with a photo of ‘tashe glory Bruce Forsyth gaffa taped on each side to the crowd. They then pick a random old song from inside for us to play. The night got sweatier and messier as it went on, my only regret is that I did not get that pint of gammon that was being bbq’d and served in plastic glasses! I can feel a new breed of gigs coming on….

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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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