After a busy week of Brakes activities I'm hiding in from the drear and misery of our summer climate and enjoying some early morning Olympic television. The cycling is surprisingly exciting, especially the sprint although obviously it helps that the British seem to be top in this field. Some dormant patriotism seems to bubble up in me whenever we do well at a sport even if the sports the British succeed at are of the less popular variety. My mother made an amusing comment that Halfords will probably sell out of bikes in the next few weeks and all the swimming pools will be full to capacity.
Last Sunday Brakes headlined the At Home by the Sea festival at Brighton's Concorde 2. It was the second day of a weekend event at which the svelte venue was somehow magically transformed into a 4 stage indoor festival. Well actually one of the stages was outside under the arches, protected from the battering rain by a flappy piece of blue tarpaulin. Yes, it was raining. It didn't really bother me, I've sort of got used to it now. I hadn't made it down the previous day so I missed performances by Camera Obscura, Chrome Hoof and Brighton's very own Stuart Flynn and the Dirty Cakes. A band I was once in which now features our very own Tom and Alex White as well as ESP and Restless List's Matt, Mr Monster Bobby himself and several others. I heard the desk recording and it sounded brilliant.
Restless List opened up the backstage stage on the Sunday. They were loud and satisfying, first time Id seen them with new bassist/percussionist Matty who is a worthy addition for sure. The Shout Out Louds had nice looking guitars and were effortlessly good in true Swedish style. Slow Club played just before our set in the backstage area. They are a Sheffield based boy and girl duo in a Moldy Peaches vein. I made the mistake of sound-checking my bass before they'd finished their set and apparently my low end came blasting through the wall during an extremely quiet and tender part of a song. Eamon said I'd ruined their set but I'm sure he was exaggerating. I apologised all the same.
Our time came and we took the stage. I was nervous, hometown crowd, family present etc. It was hot and loud. A dedicated mob of moshers bobbed about in the middle of the reasonably sized crowd. I think it went well. I was so hot after and just couldn't cool down, need to do more gigs; I'm obviously out of practice.
The next day we rehearsed at 284 and wrote some new songs for our imminent third album. It's going well and there'll be a lot to be getting on with when we start recording properly so I'm looking forward to it immensely. But for the meantime we're doing trial recordings at Matt Eaton's house near Stroud, Gloucestershire. The day after 284 we headed out to the west country and set up for a couple of days of recording. It's good to have somewhere away from the distractions of city life and it's a luxury we didn't have while we were making the second record. The studio has been there for about 3 months now and we've managed to get a lot of work done there in that time.
Tracks demoed at Matt's so far include Hey, Hey It's a Beautiful Day, Crush On You, Don't Take Me To Space(Man), Eternal Return, Consumer Producer Chicken or Egg, Cigarettes Go Down, Leaving England and Do You Feel the Same?
After 3 days out there we got back in the car and drove down to Devon for the Beautiful Days Festival. The M5 was jammed so we went off road down some country lanes through several amusingly titled Somerset villages such as Curry Rivel. It was a nice, festive scene when we finally got there, plenty of trees and hills surrounding a picturesque stately home. The Levellers had already kicked off proceedings in the big top with an acoustic performance and the place was heaving with fans all singing along, even their kids were singing along. I suddenly felt like I was an outsider in the realm of The Levellers, waiting to be found.
We had quite lot of time to kill before our 11p.m show so we drank black rat cider and did crosswords. It rained a bit and we ate some catering food. Day lapsed into night and before long it was our time to get up there. We'd tried to convince juvenile chart lass Gabriella Cilmi to sing Jackson with us but she was too busy meeting and greeting some competition-winning minors. There was some slight confusion with the supplied backline. My heart sank when I asked a man where the bass amp was and he pointed at a Marshall stack. Luckily I found an Ampeg stack on the grass and dragged it up on stage. I didn't know if it was the one I was supposed to be using or not but I took my chances. We were up against Squeeze on the main stage, a band I grew up listening too. I was gutted not to see them but also gutted because understandably they took away a god chunk of our crowd. We had an alright show, it had been a long day and a long week but we gave it some and I think those who were there enjoyed it. It was nice to have Mr Mark Chadwick of The Levellers himself down the front egging us on.
We retreated to the backstage bar post gig and chatted with folk who were by now a good deal more inebriated than they had been during the day. We'd heard that the famous Bimble Inn was somewhere on site. Knowing that this would be where the party was at we went searching; in fact Eamon had already gone searching so really I was looking for him too. The Inn was way over behind the dance tent in a little valley. As we came down the hill the lights being projected on the opposite hill made the trees look like they were breathing which almost made me fall over. Miraculously we found Eamon and decided that the safe confines of the backstage area were much more suited to our current states. Although we did stop momentarily to suck a couple of balloons of nitrous oxide on the way back. Conversations and meanings blurred into nothingness and the last thing I remember is Tom shouting nonsense in my face as I was dozing off.
Luckily we'd secured the use of a caravan for the night so we all had somewhere dry and warm to sleep. This was especially fortunate as the next morning the weather had turned and it was raining something silly. I woke early as usual and scrambled out of the caravan into the wet. People were already boozing in the bar and eating Mexican food that looked kind of appetising to me. I went to the production office and picked up our fee and then I bought a burrito and ate it in the bar by the main stage whilst the poor band who had to play first on this god forsaken day were sound-checking. The burrito wasn't as nice as I'd hoped but it still filled a hole. Once everyone had risen we decided to get on our way. Unfortunately because we'd parked in the wrong place we had to lug our gear up a muddy road in the driving rain and wade through the quagmire of a car park. Soon the car was packed and we were on our way despite being soaked to the bone and almost getting stuck in the mud on the way out. It felt like we'd experienced all the ups and down that the British Festival season can throw at you in just 24 hours.
Next up we've got Beachdown on Saturday and then a bit of a gap with more demo work before End of the Road in September. Then straight after that it's into the studio for album sessions but i'll be in touch before then.
Photos from recent recording session below-
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