Last night

Glasgow held the best surprise - over the road from where I played,
none other than one of the best bands in de whole wide world - yo La
tengo! Seeing them In London on Sunday too!

no show

...so the postman came and the door bell rang.. i got over excited,
only to be handed a few letters & no box! NO BOX!

maybe tomorrow.

please tomorrow!!

so today i spent most of my afternoon in the post office in town
sending out t shirts & cd's!

thank you to all who have ordered them today.. you can sleep safe in
the knowledge it'll keep us in tesco finest tea bags & taste the
difference pizza's all winter.

tomorrow's job, in-between my actual job of working on some new songs,
is to find a suitable tent for bestival! I cant wait to see Kraftwerk
again, it's going to be very different to last time.. that was in the
royal festival hall about 5 years back, possibly as far removed from a
field of 25,000 people dressed as space invaders as you can get... its
going to be great. if only there was new songs from them but i know
better! precision & perfection clearly takes its sweet time.. bit like
my pick ups actually.

pup's again

>
> i haven't been posting on here much lately, since the tour in april
> actually which seems like years ago with all that has & hasn't
> happened since.. anyway, just heard my pick ups from curtis novak
> have cleared customs.. i had visions of customs taking one little
> look & sending the 4 suspicious looking unknown objects with many
> wire's poking out straight back to Minneapolis to explode but it
> seems not, thank you customs person. now, postman, don't make me pay
> you the earth to make you hand them over, please!!!!
>
> i had planned to be a little geeky & record before & after sound
> clips as i've two identical jazzmasters & have rewired one whilst
> keeping the other intact but strangely/sadly the other broke at the
> gig last saturday, somehow the electronics decide to de-solder
> themselves inside sometime after sound check & before plugging it in
> for last 3 songs of set, anyhow, no before & after's
>
> off to bed now so i wake up in time for the postman... can you tell
> i'm just a little excited about these?!
>
> matt
>

Wiring

Currently Replacing the electronics to make happy home for some much
needed new pick ups.. Hopefully it'll sound better and I don't destroy
it

Stamp

The train conductor just made my
Ticket look better

Pianet big super muff fuzz

Here is jack rockin the pianet with not one, yes, two big muff pedals.
My
Camera didn't seem to pick up the smoke sadly

Recording

We've had a good week recording!

bad day.

day four - gronnigen

day three - amsterdam

one of our best gigs ever.. amazing place.

day two - nijmegen

my view across the stage


finding the venue





i didnt know jesus was dutch.










a windmill


Breakfast!



this is the oldest town in holland i've been told..? great place - the gig went well, everything turned on, nothing was forgotten.. our first time playing outside of our home country.. still no cloggs... and walking through the city has made me want a bicycle again! and the cd shop in the town had our record - great shop naturally.

day one - travel through france, belgium and holland

super tired.. 5 hours sleep in two days, but the drive was good, apart from an hour of crawl coming out of belgium into holland.. we stopped for lunch in Antwerp.. forgetting it was Sunday and all would be closed, we did manage to find a lovely coffee shop and Paul took particular liking to the "spectacular architechture" :-)

o.k, i must sleep. first gig tomorrow in Nijmegen... cant wait.

Matt

Chocolate

Best chocolate bar ever!

Juno time

Here's jack making some rather nice textures from this nice synth

Velcro time

Building the rig

Now and again

First time I've seen it!
Looks great I think

Hull

Song time with Paul michael

Darlington

A nice sight - best attempt at fulfilling our rider so far this
month.. Thank you to inside out in darlington.

Ok dinner

A happy stop on way north along the a1

Mechanics - happy ending

Mechanics part 2

Mechanic for a day

Cambridge

Soundcheck

Back in Birmingham today..

My hometown!

Playing with asobi seksu who I've heard good things about.. So that
could be good!

Still going strong

Birmingham

At night - looking quite Stereolab!

Holy cow

The curry

As discussed on the radio..! The curry didn't dissapoint! Look at the
size of this naan.. Phewee

Groovy

Really is swinging round here you know..

Recording

Recording drums today on new track, currently called 'get going again'
untill we get a different title, it's one we did for the rob da bank
session last week...

We all really enjoyed the gig last night - one of the best - thank you
if you came!

Matthew

Back of the road

The monster is soaking up some rays before we set off to London..
Doesn't she look nice?