Looking outside the dressing room, I can see Simon hitting his vegan-friendly shoe against a bin to try and get all the sand out of it that we picked up on a beach earlier today.

There were nuclear-scale winds blowing and some kids were paddling in sewage. Apart from that, it was pretty nice and relaxing. Some of us played deathmatch frisbee while others watched:

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Afterwards, Joe met a bull and climbed a mountain. Look here:

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Back on Monday morning we jumped into a splitter van to head down to Oxford for our first English show of the year, full of nerves and mostly-bad haircuts. Breaking in new songs is always a pretty scary thing to do and with this new album we’ve spent the past two months working pretty much flat out on translating the stuff we recorded into something feasible.

Plus, you know, people have a lot to say about the new album (I wonder how they have heard it before the official release date? Intriguing…) and sometimes some of those things are about the production being pretty quiet (Turn it up! Please! It works! Listen to Harvest by Neil Young!) but you and us both know that the 65 live show was always going to be something altogether different. And for ‘different’ read ‘deafening’. The kind of thing that you can’t ever capture on record, so why even try?

So anyway. We’ve spent months trying to do that whole ‘integrating live electronics into a live band set-up’ which is our Modus Operandi and now it is gigs and we get to shakily put it into practise.

The day after Oxford was Cambridge. The day after Cambridge was Brighton.
All three of the shows sold out so thanks to all who came. Thanks for the cheers when we got stuff right and the patience when stuff went wrong. Thanks also to the excellent Cats & Cats & Cats (pleasure to share stages with you, lady and gents) and the always-outstanding Youthmovies. After the Brighton show, fuelled by Absinth and a spectacular taste in shoes, they drove straight to a studio to begin work on their new album. Keep an eye on them…

Yesterday started really early, then involved a ferry. Then a load of driving. At some point later than it was supposed to happen, we rolled into the Ekko club in Utrecht. First proper Netherlands show for some time… Was fully good. Vegetarian & vegan food was supplied which did not make Avalon Gold, our sound guy, be violently sick. This is in stark contrast to the vegetarian & vegan food we were fed in Brighton, which did. Afterwards, we drove to the ‘Hotel Oh Really?’ and drank good whiskey to mediocre reviews and wondered what it meant that 65daysofstatic has reached the lofty heights of being
too freaked out to read the music press any more. What else are we supposed to read? Literature?? That’s a slippery slope…

So right now we are in the Patronaart in Haarlem, which is an excellent venue the likes of which would make you cry. There are at least 8 types of cheese in this dressing room as I type and also cans of fresh orange juice in the fridge. There is even Alfalfa, which I thought was a star of some description, but turns out to actually be a kind of cress.

Back in the winter, Simon wanted to call our new album The Cress Wars.
True.
Also, he keeps breaking either bass guitars or bass amps. This is what the inside of Simon’s broken bass amp looks like:

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If anyone knows what’s wrong with it, please tell us. Or, perhaps more usefully, buy us a new one.

Tonight we are being supported by The Kilimanjaro Dark Jazz Ensemble, which involves Bong-Ra, who is outstandingly good. I would urge you all to go to his site and download his Peel Session. It is monumental. In fact, here is the link: http://www.bong-ra.com/mp3/peelsession.mp3. Please do this now. Another one of his bands is called Servants of the Apocalyptic Goatrave. We played with them in Doderecht last year and I believe we will we encountering them somewhere in Europe again in a couple of months. Details are not to hand. Apologies….

Later tonight Trentemoller is playing at the club we’re at and we’ve been invited. He is a very good Dutch DJ, apparently. Could this be the mythical Eastern European Dance Party we’ve have been chasing!? Does the Netherlands count as Eastern!? Maybe I’ll ask Trentemoller. Although, there is a shark drawn on his dressing room door in chalk, which makes him a lot less approachable, in my opinion. On our door, there is a chalk drawing of what looks like a weasel drinking a cocktail and saying ‘Urp’.

I’m not sure what this means.
Except that, clearly, it must be cocktail hour.
Make mine a G&T.

Tomorrow we are playing a festival with Explosions in the Sky, a band to which we are oft compared but have never seen. We will bring you a full and frank interpretation of the experience here as soon as we’ve stopped stroking our beards in a serious manner.

Onwards, 65 kids! Don’t lose hope! We’re back on the road! It’s all starting to make sense again!

Love you.
65daysofstatic.

A random selection of photos:

The Black Spider on a beach near Haarlem:

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Simon on a beach near Haarlem:

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On a wall near Hotel Oh Really?

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Paul in the van:

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The End of Days:

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Boats on a beach in Brighton:

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Where we played in Cambridge:
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English farmers latest fashion trends:

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Al from Youthmovies:

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Paul trying to be James Dean:

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