I am sitting in the tiny dressing room of the Molotow Club, in Hamburg, Deutschland. The crew (mostly Avalon Gold) is setting up the stage with our gear. I am effectively banned from helping with the set-up these days thanks to A) our crew being fiercely protective of their territory and B) my incredible ability to break most things that I touch. We arrived about half an hour ago and I drank some excellent coffee and am feeling generally pretty good about things.

In the van today, we’ve been passing the laptop round doing an interview for a German Website. Here is one of the questions and answers:

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In the booklet [of your new album], you mention the rise of an illness. Are you speaking about apocalypse, judgement day? If so, what do you presume will it be like?

No. There’s too many people in places that hold huge power that believe that there’s some kind of judgement day coming, which is a terrible, cowardly way of not taking responsibility for your actions, in my opinion. The only destruction coming our way is resolutely man-made. Which means that it’s our responsibility to stop it. What the booklet is trying to say at that point is that the world that we, as people in bands, or who love music, and who have found themselves in this rich Western world have things in place that enable us to buy cds, listen to them, go to shows. We all have our own lives and troubles to deal with and all of that is completely valid. But with our lives in 65, at least, is coming an increasing awareness that our world is not the real one. It is a safety net that hides us from what’s actually happening, which is that the majority of people in the world are being kept powerless for us to be able to live like this. As I’m typing this to you I am wearing a shirt from a chain store clothes shop that will have been made by kids in China or Indonesia. My cheap sunglasses were made in China too. The nickel in my laptop will have come from mines somewhere in, (I’m guessing) South America or Asia run by mercenaries and militia. I am in a van in the middle of a European tour that is eating petrol that will have been traded in US dollars, a failsafe that allows the US government to spend trillions on military power despite being the country in the most debt, which allows it to keep control of organisations like the World Bank and the IMF, which make sure that the poor countries stay poor… It’s all right here in front of us, but we’re conditioned not see it. Whether we like it or not, with climate change and dwindling resources, our world and the real world are going to start blurring together. The illness will find us one way or another. It’s up to us whether we embrace it like the civilised people we actually are, or hiding our heads in the sand and keep buying stuff.

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Nothing quite like a hot & sweaty van filled with 8 boys wearing shorts to focus your ability to be cross about things. Apparently.

We left the UK early Monday morning.

Last Saturday we played our first ever ATP festival. It was an awesome experience. Sincerest thanks to the people that voted us on, stayed awake till 2am and danced as badly as we do to our confused beats and noises. It was quite, quite, special. We got to bed about 5am, got up again at 7am and spent the day
on motorways to make it to our final UK show, at headline gig at Koko. We were all pretty scared about that cos it’s a big place, but we were really proud of the line-up we’d managed to pull together for it.

Rolo Tomassi – Best show of theirs I ever did see. There’s fire in their eyes and they’re gonna flatten that current crop of haircut bands who like primal, angular guitar noise and screaming are accessories rather than art forms. Can’t wait…

The Mirimar Disaster - Fucking heroes. I had to watch their show from the ‘Green Room’ on a widescreen, HD TV even though they were only 5 metres away from me because I was waiting to be interviewed. Things like that can only happen in places like London. But they look pretty cool on screen and out front, so I’m told, their show was like an army of hedgehog riffs marching upon fields of cross ghosts.

Josh Pearson - Cowboy. What else is there to say? They just stuck up an interview with him on Drowned in Sound. Check it out. It was an honour to tour with him. His noise knows no bounds.

Leathal Bizzle - Only Rob got chance to speak to him, but all the right reasons came up in all the right places during their conversation. Dead good. We all like all kinds of music, right? So why aren’t there more of these kind of shows? Is this what gives rise to mediocre genre bands? The need to fill band support slots with bands who aren’t as good but sound the bit the same, so the main band look even better?

Anyway. Then we played and we messed up one of the songs a little bit but yous were all so kind to us. And there were so many of you!! Thanks so much. I don’t know right now when our next UK show is gonna be, but it’s real good to know that you’re all out there waiting.

Since then it’s been a haze of roads and incredible European food and the welcoming of Matt, our driver/TM into the 65 fold. He has no idea what adventures await him.

Belgium provided excellent crowds, food and hosts. Netherlands the same. We still get suprised that people are showing up at all these places so far from Sheffield.

So back to tonight then. The Molotow. Robs has just stopped hitting drums really loudly outside and I can hear bass lines, which means it’ll be my turn to soundcheck soon. Tomorrow we head to Denmark. We’ve never been there before.

Oh – also, we’ve pretty much run out of t-shirts. Apologies to anyone coming to see us over the next few days. We’re trying our best to get hold of some by the time we return to Germany and failing that, our new webshop will be up and running any day now, selling some sweatshop-free specials.

The film-a-day 65 crew You Tube channel is still very much active. Seasoned Filmmaker Dave Holloway has left the tour and taken his laptop and visuals with him, which means that Maverick Filmmaker Dave Wolinski is bearing the responsibility for all that ensues. It might not quite be a film-a-day, but stay tuned.

That’s it for now. Hopefully get some photos up for you soon.
Take care, 65kids.
Paul.