Japan Tour Update & SXSW
JAPAN
It is with a heavy heart that we must announce the decision to postpone our upcoming tour of Japan. We were due to fly out at the end of April for a week of dates, mostly with Maps & Atlases, but due to the ongoing earthquake and tsunami crisis we have been advised to hold off until later in the year.
One of the areas worst affected by the earthquake and tsunami was Sendai, the home of the Arabaki Festival where we were due to play next month. Our thoughts are with all who have been and continue to be affected by the tragedy. This is obviously a subject close to our hearts and we wish our family and friends in Japan the best.
It’s incredibly easy to donate to the relief effort, please go to the British Red Cross Online and do your bit. Also, here is a list of charities compiled by The Guardian, most of them accept donations using SMS.
We are playing a relief fundraiser in Bristol. It will be an amazing show. Details are below, please come and support the cause.
Japan Fundraiser
Tickets are £6 in advance, all benefits go towards the Japanese relief effort – Buy Now
SXSW
The dust is just starting to settle after a whistle stop trip to Austin for this year’s SXSW festival. It seemingly went in the blink of an eye.
We played three shows during the week we were there and made the most of visiting the trade show and panel seminars too. Free beer was in steady flow and we enjoyed the great hospitality of the Texan people, including budget taxi replacement ‘Garet’ who was cruising around in his pick-up truck taking advantage of the lack of public transport and taxis by piling folks in the back in exchange for tips and banter.
The festival is everything you read about and more. Nothing can really prepare you for the sight of 40,000 people walking the 1000m strip of bars, clubs, shops and street corners in search of the best sounds of the night or just the next free beer source. Everywhere and everything is a potential venue. Every venue has a queue (badges get in first we learnt). Twitter is full of people who are seemingly having a more ‘#awesome’ time than everyone else. You almost have to ignore the noise to enjoy it, find your corner, your special thing, and try and avoid the hype and hustle.
The day time is rife with house parties, secret free BBQ’s and stories of bands playing weird and wonderful locations across the city. The sun baked us on the sidewalks, we ate an unadvisable amount of pizza and relied on energy drinks to get us through the night.
In amongst the fun, we saw A LOT of bands, among the favourites were Braids, Adebisi Shank, Zechs Marquise, This Will Destroy You, Tog, Errors, Helmet, Eskmo and Mount Kimbie. Tried to avoid the massively hyped bands, we can read about them on all the blogs. We just hope we didn’t get lost in the noise of it all…
Here’s a short video of our experience at the festival, we filmed and edited it with a little help from Sebastien Dehesdin and Kim Harrison-Lavoie.
THANK YOU
Our journey to SXSW really started in October 2010 with a complex application process for both a place at the festival and funding to get there. Monotreme Records were instrumental in this process, as well as providing vital funding and support. We could not have been there without them. Additional funding came from the amazing folks at the PRS Foundation and the UKTI, who we are incredibly indebted to. Clash Magazine put us on a fantastic showcase and were great to us. Mangham Parker was a wonderful host and gave us an ideal place to stay. Bryan Crowell drove us around in his pickup truck; no idea what we would have done without him. Check out their band The Low Lows. We also had the pleasure of sharing our accomodation with the guys from Tremble Tremble, check out their blog, they are great.
DUSK TILL DAWN
We were so busy at SXSW that we didn’t get around to mentioning our single ‘Dusk Till Dawn’ is now available on all good digital stores, courtesy of Monotreme Records. It’s backed by an amazing remix by our friends Capac. Check it out on iTunes and Boomkat.