Vessels

Today saw us roll through the hills and mountains of Austria in the van – the views and the scenery as we motored on through were nothing short of stunning huge snowcapped mountains and skinny precarious trees densely packed together straining for the sun at the most unlikely angles on the hillsides. It could have been Austria, or it times it could have been the approach to Twin Peaks.

We were late for the soundcheck, but still managed to fit in a fairly comprehensive line-check, leaving the support band, Hella Comet to do their sound-check in front of the gathering crowd – for which I still feel guilty…

The venue was, predictably by now, immense. The entire room was covered in copper panels, geometrically pinpricked to let the light from the halogen bulbs behind them bleed into the room, creating a soothing and aesthetically pleasing space for an evening’s music.

Hella Comet, from Graz, were brilliant, creating some fairly bonkers sounds and textures to kick off the evening. And then, despite my reverb shutting down during the solo from Ornafives (Channel M déjà vu) I really enjoyed tonight’s show. We played for about an hour, which is always a lot more satisfying than half an hour after the effort we’ve made to set up, and the 60 or so people that we played to gave us a warm, extensive and humbling reception..

Then afterwards we went to ‘The Music Haus’ with our hosts Martin, Lukas and Gunther, and listened to atrociously loud music in the seedy underground surroundings of one of Graz’s, indeed Europe’s, many late late late night bars…..