Berlin

Berlin - temporary home sweet home - last show of the 1st leg and a few days off. It was like a homecoming show for Nadja, at Scholodaken --- a small but warm and cozy bar mid-town. The soundcheck sounded pretty bassy on stage, but pretty trebly in the room... not sure what it sounded like at show time, but the place was pretty packed, which was nice to see.

For this show only, I used 2 projectors for my set, with different sets of projections which I think added to the ambiance and mood, however without screens. The ghostly abstract visuals had an even ghostlier presence on the red wallpaper. I was pretty satisfied with this set in general, I wish people snapped some pictures to capture the atmosphere of the moment, I haven't seen any online. Though I did snap one of Nadja during soundcheck.


The next day, Aidan, Helge & I went to see the Russian monuments:


Then took a walk around Treptowers Park:

We also jumped up the fence and broke into Spreepark, an abandoned amusement park, but we ran into security lurking so we quickly got out of here. That's too bad though. Leah & Jill attempted it again a few weeks later, successfully! Leah managed to take some great shots of it, check her entry and photos here.

Last day off in Berlin before leaving for Eastern Europe: the rest of the touristy stuff.

Hamburg

We entered the German soil once again, to play at the Markthalle, Hamburg. I gotta say that shows in Europe are quite punctual compared to back home. Show was promoted for 8pm and the place was filling up already by 7:30pm, on a Friday evening. The venue was a sitting one, opened, with nice benches. We crossed paths with our friends Troum once again, with the addition of Allseits. Troum opened up the show this time, followed by Nina, both of them played great sets.


I should also mention the particularity of the stage sound that night, as... there were none. No monitors. Instead, a quadraphonic-like installation, two speakers forward of the stage, two from the back end of the room. Probably amazing for the audience, but atrocious for performers needing every detail of their sound by their feet (me). The sound on stage basically coming from the back end, 300 ft. away. Everything was delayed. Everything sounded so distant. It was very unclear to me how it really sounded in the room.


A lot of mistakes were done because of the altered-sounding circumstances. However, I've had more praise at that show than I've gotten so far, from fans, from my peers. Go figure. The worse I feel about my set, the better it is? It's a very mind-boggling perspective. I wonder how it would turn out if I played a deaf set.

We ate chicken brochettes meal provided by the venue, and we stayed at this wicked yuppie hostel nearby --- by far the most luxurious accommodations we've had so far (ok, the apartment in Paris was hard to beat but that was more comfortable & home-ish than luxery).


No sightseeing in Hamburg.

Eindhoven

TAC (Temporary Arts Center) is a huge artist complex filled with studio workshops, café/restaurant, venue. They seem quite organized, staffed and helpful - which was nice to witness. All concerts are free.


This concert seemed to be the complete opposite of Utrecht's in terms of sound and visual technicalities, everything was professional and working properly - which helped me to play a much more satisfying set, on a personal level. The whole concert was streamed live online via TAC.tv and citytv.nl // Mine should be archived here at some point, but no sign of it at the moment.


We had vegan beef Stroganoff for dinner.
We were given an apartment next to the venue for the night.

Utrecht

We arrived in Utrecht, a lot of time to go for a long walk in the city, eat fries by the canal, get postcards and visit the Dom. The show was at DB's, a big music studio complex with practice spaces, bar, café, venue in the industrial area. Again, the sound was horrible --- it was hard to deal with a soundman that constantly tries to change your sound when the output only comes out of a on-stage mixer. There was also problems with the in-house projector, so we had to use mine (smaller projection). My power supplies and adapters were still very loose, with layers of duct tape. 78rpm, the local band opening for us, took the whole stage and we couldn't leave our equipment on stage, there was a lot of stress dealing with moving and replugging them. Nonetheless, there was a good crowd that night and the response was great.



A video recording of the whole performance can be found here.

We slept at the promoter's cosy apartment.
We ate pasta at the venue.

Leverkusen

Back into Germany for a day. Leverkusen is right on the outskirt of Köln, middle-of-nowhere industrial suburb where lies the kulturausbesserungswerk or KAW, a cultural center. Nothing much to see around, it was pretty much about the show. The atmosphere was cosy enough, but the sound was awful --- Aidan played a solo set again, only to find out that it was only coming out of the left PA speaker throughout. Clearly the sound man didn't know what he was doing and was embarrassed.

There were three scary-looking long-haired metal heads standing in front of the stage throughout the whole concert, and were difficult to miss. However during my set, I had trouble seeing the knobs in the dark and one of them took out his cell phone to give me some light, that was hilarious and cool! After my set, he said something along the lines of how much he felt my music and it was funny coming from him.


The last pop song blog reports, here.

We slept at the venue's somewhere upstairs, on mattresses.
We had soup for dinner.

Paris

We had another day off on the 7th of June, Paris is a good city for it. To our pleasant surprise, we were offered a nice apartment in Montreuil, at a 10-min walk from Les Instants Chavirés, where we are playing the next day.

I actually have a 1999 Godspeed You Black Emperor! (back when the exclamation was at the end...) bootleg from that venue, so I was really excited to play there. Although the venue was located outside of Paris, it is well-renowned for avant-garde, experimental music, free-jazz improv, with dedicated regulars that know what to expect. In fact, Peter Brötzmann, one of the most important European free jazz musician, was playing that night --- we attended the concert and it felt good to just relax and hang out, to be in the audience instead of on stage and to be "entertained". The neighborhood of Montreuil has this NY Bronx feeling, but around the venue it was quite the Montreal's Mile-End scene, circa late 90's:


We went for pizza afterwards; I've never seen eggs or cream on a pizza before, and we were later stopped by some guy taking pictures of us for his website "Vie Sociale Rue de Paris". Our pictures still aren't up at this time, but check for June 7th.

The next day, we went into the city for some sightseeing. Alas, it was monday and all the museums were closed! We were stucked with the clichés:


We headed back to the venue for soundcheck. The soundman was our best thus far, Gaylor Olivier of debruit&desilence and Jérome Olivier of Fugues did a great job promoting the show --- although it was nerve-wrecking as there was no one inside the venue until 5 minutes before Aidan Baker opened the night.

In the end, the place was packed with serious music fans, everyone played well and we all sold A LOT of merch that night. One of the best, if not the best show of the tour. Infinite thanks to the Olivier brothers for making Paris memorable, to Ziad & his girlfriend for their apartment.


You can read a review of the evening by Fabrice Allard @ EtherREAL here.

We did not have supper before the show, and everything was closed after. Helge & Gaylor went to the grocery stores to get some things to cook. However, I ate the meat pie that Ziad left for us in the fridge as we arrived home --- too hungry.