Five Cornered Drone

Leipzig June 13

Can’t say enough good things about Noch Besser Leben in Leipzig. The staff there treated us very well, especially Timm who helped us arrange back line and then did our sound.  The music room is on the second floor of the building, above the bar. It’s essentially an apartment - two main rooms and a small bar area that likely used to be the kitchen.  No stage, so we played right on the carpeted floor, with about 20-25 chairs set out facing us. The carpet and the wood moulding made for a nice warm sound, and meant we didn’t have to turn the volume down as much as we thought for such a small space. Once the room filled up with people plenty of sound was being absorbed. Good sound combined with the adrenaline rush of it being the first show of the tour made for a very good set, a great start to the tour.  We played a mix of old and new, including almost the entire new album. 

Set list:

Black and White

Mountain

Division

Race to Mars

Energy

Anon I, II & IV

Puzzle

Wired 

Illuminate

Slowboat

Mountain, Energy and Illuminate ended up in some intense sustained drone outros with some cool in-the-moment bits like Geoff sitting in an open chair in the first row, Jules with some keyboard vamps and sounds and me (on Illuminate) taking advantage of the drone in D to play the open D and repeat the opening riff underneath. We played for a little over an hour, long when you consider most sets in the US on 3-band nights are between 35-45 minutes, usually 40. We could feel a bit of a drag in The Puzzle and Wired but we finished strong on Slowboat. Getting used to playing longer sets will be a good thing…we'll learn how to manage energy and intensity on a longer arc, how to read crowds and keep them with us as we vary tempo and dynamics.

The crowd were great. We had about 25 people there, none of whom likely knew much if anything about us. They paid attention, there was hardly any chatter, hardly any staring down at smartphones, warm applause when songs finished. After the show a few folks also came up to talk, and we sold a few records. All in all, a very successful start to the tour.