Mushroom Cloud of Hiss

Warsaw, June 26

Our last show in the old eastern bloc..Lepzig, Berlin (we played in what was East Berlin), Prague, Ponznan and now Warsaw…

This show had us buzzing for a long time after the last notes of glorious and crazy noise finally quieted from the speakers. The spirit and energy at Chmury, the space we played in Warsaw, is vibrant, unpretentious, and varied. The Facebook page describes it as a clubhouse - an apt description.


Good coffee, great beer selection, an incredible vegan hot dog…the coffee-shop front half of the space is a good place to spend an afternoon. The bartender/barista for the evening rolled up to the club dressed in all black, dark shades and black scarf, hair dyed a greenish white…she looked like a goth Audrey Hepburn heading to a funeral. But like everyone there was incredibly nice.

The back room performance area features a good-sized stage and a very good sound system run by a guy who really knows what he’s doing. Knows the equipment, knows the room. Sound engineers like that make a touring band’s life so much better.

It’s set back in a cobble-stoned courtyard in the Nowy Praga (New Prague) part of town. Chmury shares the courtyard with a bigger club, theater space, a bar that looks like it’s right out of the Paris Left Bank circa early 1900s…cool art on the building walls…when we rolled up we knew it was going to be a good night…the vibe was spot on right away.


This was our 3rd and last show with Evvolves, a band Geoff and Jules found in the course of booking the tour. A bit noisier and low-fi than us, they have a compelling sound and look. Two women, two men…Bibi plays keys, Maciek Mat on bass (which he plays on guitar, using effect pedals to change the sound), Magda plays electronic drums, but live…doesn’t just call up pre-programmed patterns, actually plays the keypads live as the band plays. Her boyfriend Pawel Gie is on guitar. Pawel and Magda strolled up to the club hand-in-hand, she dressed up hipster smart, he looking a bit scruffy…like I imagine Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon must have looked walking up to CBGB’s in the early days of Sonic Youth. We bonded well with them…they’re a blast to be around. It was Julie’s birthday, so during Evvolves set they got the audience to sing the Polish happy birthday song. They seem to be part of a very cool indie scene, centered around the club.

All of this combined for an amazing show. We were in good form, this being our 3rd show in 3 nights, the second 3-in-3 we pulled a 7-day span.

At a pre-soundcheck meeting we discussed the idea to use the Illuminate outtro to fold in a couple of minutes of the Joy Division song Transmission. Jules had the song in her head since at least Regensburg, singing it aloud as we walked along that town’s streets. With no real rehearsal, just a brief pass at soundcheck, we pulled it off. Geoff got the guitar line, I was able to pull that bass riff from memory…it worked in the way it’s going to work when you’ve been playing a bunch of shows or rehearsing a lot in a concentrated stretch of time.

We invited Pawel and Maciek up on stage with us to make noise on guitars, Bibi and Magda sang a bit. Once the crowd caught onto what we were doing they were all in, singing along to the “dance, dance, dance to the radio” line. Maciek and Pawel stirred up some great noise..they were the last to leave the stage.

We were spent…our most energetic set in a great space, great crowd…I’ve already written that Copenhagen was an incredible set, an amazing end to the tour. Before the Copenhagen set we weren’t sure it would be able to match the spirit of the Warsaw show.

That’s how good Warsaw was for us.

Warsaw set list:
Black and White
Mountain
Day for Night
Duck and Cover
Slowboat
Illuminate (w/ Transmission in outtro)