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No more. NO MORE VAN. posted Mar 17, 09:18 pm

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 Feb 17, 02:48 pm

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 Feb 1, 11:42 pm

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 Dec 17, 09:59 pm

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

Posted by admin