French Disko

Köln-Strasbourg, June 21

Our first show outside of Germany was in Strasbourg, France. This was a get-in/get-out experience; late afternoon arrival, driving from Köln, out early the next morning for a long drive to Regensburg. No time to see anything of Strasbourg beyond where we were playing. Normally about a 3.5 hour trip, we added time for Scott to meet up with relatives at a highway rest stop in southwestern Germany near the border by Strasbourg.

The show was at Hall des Chars, an art/performance space on the outskirts of the town centrum, a short walk across the river from the Petite-France area. A DIY kind of night, we played in a long room, the gear set up on the floor about 1/3 of the way in. As with all of the DIY/art spaces where we played, the people treated us very well. Josh, who runs the Hall, was also bartender for the night and put us up at his apartment.

For this show, we were joined once again (and for the last time on the tour) by The History of Colour TV and a Scandinavian free-form jazz combo Yes Deer.

Once again, we played to around 25-30 people. Not only was the venue a bit out of the way, we were competing with Fete de la Musique, a day of music across many countries. Scott took pre and post-show strolls downtown to check it out, reporting back on good-sized crowds and good music.

By this point we had played 4 shows, and this was the 2nd in 2 nights. We could feel the build from the Köln set…even better attention to dynamics and to each other, especially on the drone outros. We took advantage of the plentiful space behind the stage to add some showmanship to the opening…Geoff beginning with a few minutes of noise loops before we walk from behind the stage to our instruments to start with Little King. From that mellow opening it was a steady stream of uptempo, right thru a strong close with Slowboat.

Strasbourg set list:
Little King
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Wired
Energy
Day for Night
Slowboat

If you've noticed that Anon has been missing from the set two straight shows, that's no accident. After it didn't work that well in Oldenburg, we decided to strike it from the rotation.

The only damper on the night was finding out the the History of Colour TV van was broken into…passenger window smashed, GPS and a sleeping bag stolen. For Marcus that meant a long ride back to Berlin sitting next to a bed-sheet covered window. It also meant explaining what happened to the guy who rented them the van. But he rents vans to bands for travel, so this can’t be the first time a window’s been smashed.

It was a blast touring with HoCTV…they’re good people, good musicians, fun to hang out with. Their sound is a bit darker than ours, but listening more and listening closely, plus hanging out with Jaike and Marcus, you see that there’s a strong melodic sensibility there. It ended up being a good mix of bands...different enough, but similar at the core. Jaike’s vocals are a bit buried in the studio mixes, but live, especially in sound-check, we could tell that he’s got a great voice…expansive, expressive. We’d miss touring with them…the next show would be just us, followed by a few dates with other bands, mainly Evvolves.

Thanks to our gregarious and gracious host Josh, the night was late and sleep was short. Awaiting us Sunday was a long drive to the Bavarian city of Regensburg.