неделя, 21 август 2016 г.

Mytrip & ate - Tour 2016 - Bydgoszcz & Warsawa

19/08 The garden of bass in MÓZG, Bydgoszcz
After a quick coffee, humus sandwiches and cat times in Veronica's place we head to the Katowice to catch our train. Six hours pass fairly slow but we get to Bydgoszcz with no trouble. The weather is ace, and after a quick train ride we arrive at MÓZG. Our host Jakub is already there so we get straight to soundcheck. We were supposed to do an open air show but the club crew has decided to do it inside so we can be as loud as we want. And damn we're loud. MÓZG has a massive PA and everything sounds awesome. It seems we're up for a good night! After the check we wander a bit inside the club, a cult place founded in 1994 by Jakub's father - Slawek Janicki quite an important figure in Poland's jazz (and underground) scene. Here's more on him here. First thing I sense in the otherwise dark club is a strong scent of flowers and Jakub tells us they have a garden on the rooftop and even plans to bring few plants and arrange the around the speakers.


After the check is done me and Petar go for a walk around the city. In an hour and a half we come back well-fed and ready to play. The room where we're playing looks awesome, plants are all over there are chairs and a small blanket so people can lay on the floor. In a bit Petar starts and the sound is great you can hear all layers of his loops, his bows are cutting through the mix like knife cuts fucking butter. It's great and people seem to love it. After that it's my turn and I blast the place with full volume. Bass is all around me and on several moments I'm almost losing myself in the sound and visuals. The rooms is pretty full, everybody's quiet during both our sets and when we finish I have no clue where I am.

We chill in the venue and luckily manage to listen to Jakub performing live a short but very interesting and thick techno set. We are staying the night in a cosy room in the venue so after hanging around a bit more it's time for shower and sleep.

20/08 Warsaw, let's do that!
We can't get tix for the early Polski Bus so we are to get on that at 1 pm, which means time for a breakfast and coffee in Bydgoszcz. We hit the zapjekanki spot again and head on a hunt for a small coffee shop in the tiny streets and we manage to find one called Cafe Kino. Loving the place in Bristol with the same name I immediately go for it and it's all good nice coffee and an hour passes chilling out. Around 12 we are back to the room, grab our stuff and we head to the bus station. Four hours later we are in Warsaw. Already a bit late for the event we get to Ada Pulawska around 8 but Martyna, who is our host but is also performing tonight is about to soundcheck with Darek and Piotr. 

A bit later they start the gig and are playing a noise/eai set before us and end it with massive feedback. I thought it was planned and had a blast, later they are telling me it's not exactly what they had in mind. What can you do, that's the beauty of noise music. Tonight I'm playing before Petar because I sense it will do the gig good if we don't go from mellow to heavy but vice versa and it really works out fine. I have just a tiny bit of noise from the charger so I skip the quiet parts of my set but blast only the meanest sounds. The room is crammed with people. I think it's our most attended show. Everybody looks deep in the sound, sitting on the floor and towards the end of my final piece I leave the stage and join the people sitting on the floor, enjoying my final chords on this tour.



After a short pause Petar is on. It's insane how I've been listening to his set for 6 days in a row and every night I find new details in it. All the time I feel both happy we managed to do these gigs but a bit sad that tomorrow we won't be playing again. Luckily, Amek is releasing his debut tape so my trip with ate is not over yet.

After the gig we hang out with Martyna, who shows us around Ada Pulawska. I haven't been to a proper squat in quite some time so it feels awesome. We grab a quick bite and head downstairs again where the next hour I chat with my homie Tekla from cetieu who has managed to come to the gig so we finally meet outside the Internet. Around 12 the squat is closing and its sleeping time.

Now I'm finishing this report in the plane. Petar is still one hour away from his bus to Gdansk and I'm one hour away from Sofia. Looking back at the past week it surely was a tough one, but despite all issues we managed to play each and every gig. Big ups to everybody who did a show for us, who hosted us in their homes and let us play with their cats, huge ups to Ola for saving our asses, when both shows in Lodz got cancelled. Thanks to Gosia for lending me her laptop charger (and designing Petar's tape artwork). Last but not least huge ups for Petar himself for being a top dude and touring mate, we are surely doing this again!

PS. Keep your fingers crossed that the good boys at Apple can save the remains of my HDD because all music I've ever done is on this computer with no backup whatsoever.

петък, 19 август 2016 г.

Mytrip & ate - Tour 2016 - Lodz & Bytom

08/16 Shit going down in Lodz
So after arriving to Lodz with the news both our shows got cancelled we managed to replace the second one thanks to Ola and the good dudes at Williamsburg and we thought ok that's better. However, that was yesterday. With a second day off more shit was about to go down. We spent most of the day playing music catching up on messages and went for a walk around the city, which after the Monday desolation (Christian holiday) was now way more lively, even looked nice. So after quite a wandering we got back to the flat and ordered the hugest pizza in the universe. All pizzas had sweet satanic titles so we went for Lucifer's Diet and the Cheese Ghost and man it was massive. Thankfully Agnieszka (the mother of cats) was home so she gave us a hand defeating the pizza. After we finished with it, barely alive I took the MacBook and it showed the first signs of what was about to happen. Well, it died, it spent the night trying to repair itself but it seems the hdd was fucked so I was supposed to forget about using it.

Now what? 

1708 More shit going down in Lodz
It's show day today so I sit on Petar's laptop, whose charger is barely alive, luckily Gosia is using a similar one so one problem less we think. I manage to put together a very basic Ableton Lite setup for tonight and hope for the best. Loaded up with tha remains of the pizza and coffee we jump on a Uber and head to the venue. This time the driver doesn't hate the fucking French. 

In the venue my fears of when using a Windows pc come true and there's a lot of noise in the PA from the charger. The computer also can't handle my controllers so I give up on them too. After the longest hour in my life experimenting with interfaces, cables, USB ports and resets we manage to find a socket that is grounded and no electricity noise in the sound. It seems we're good to go.


We play for a few people, the sound is okay having in mind all the pressure so we manage to pull this one somehow. I can't wait to be back home. We get there, spend some time talking with Agniezska, but she has a train to catch in the morning so shortly we all go to sleep. 

Oh did I mention one of the knobs of the Beatstep also got fucked up. Fun times for my gear.

18/08 Cats and no subs from Lodz to Bytom
In the morning we finally meet the cats living next door and they are awesome and huge. We feed them and hit the road to the train station. Four hours and two trains later we arrive in Bytom. Victoria and her friends are already waiting for us on the station. Been wanting to see Wolne Tory since last April when our gig got cancelled last minute so here we are finally. There is a very nice sunset scenery with 4 punk kids walking towards it, but caring all the gear we don't bother to shoot it with Petar's Zenith. Good thing we'll probably remember it for quite a long time.

The place is awesome, sensing food being cooked we start setting up and boom more issues. First it seems one of my cables has died. Then we can't seem to find a way to get sound from the subs which cripples our music a lot and having to play with a limited amount of samples I can't come up with a quieter set. So we put some pressure on the tops, kill the low cut filters and squeeze all the bass they have and it works. We eat awesome local vegan stuff and we're good to go. 

Petar starts and despite all issues his set grows great, however, shortly after his second piece the power of his looper gets detached and he's forced to call it a night. He's now officially in the club of 'shit getting fucked up on tour'. It's my turn, I play a bit more ambient stuff and skip the
most aggressive tracks and it's fine. After the show we get to Victoria's place where we meet her two cats which are super lovely and we'll be carrying remains of their fur long after the tour is finished that's for sure. Shutting down time now.

Tomorrow a six hour train ride to Bysgoszcz is upon us.


вторник, 16 август 2016 г.

Mytrip & ate - Tour 2016 - Gdansk, Torun & a bit of Lodz

After a great show at Varna's Radar Festival, where we play the Mytrip & RosettaStone A/V collab it's high time I get this tour in Poland with ate, that has been in the works since last December I guess. What happened on Aug 12 I described very well on twitter so I'll just leave it below and tell the rest.
13/08 Gdansk, solidarity and burgers 
After sleeping almost until noon I go for a walk with Petar and Ola (we don't know yet she's our brand new tour manager). We hit Avocado, a nice vegan place just round the corner and I feast on a massive burger. I drink coffee for the first time in about a week and it's awesome to be back in the game. Touring season has officially started. After a quick chat and meal Ola runs to do some errands and me and Petar go to explore the old city of Gdansk which's crammed with tourists but still looks nice. We get to Gdansk Stocznia - a key place for the history of Poland (and the world I guess), now a museum located in a giant rust worshipping building. We check it out, then go for a bit more sight seeing and we head home to chill a bit before the show. 


Around 5:30 Michael, who's in charge of the In Progress experimental concert series and 1/2  of Zoharum, comes to pick us up. We shortly arrive at CSW Laznia and the place is great, right next to the room where we're playing there's a great exhibition, which I secretly take photos of. A quick soundcheck, a bit of fight with the visuals and we're good to go. People show up, including homies from Bulgaria, outside it starts raining so we're good to go. Petar plays a nice set, which kind of brings me back in my drone garden in Sofia. So somewhere in between nostalgia, melancholy and satisfaction I'm in fucking Gdansk starting a tour I start. I'm playing this set for the first time and even there are some issues with the screen behind me I'm totally brain dead in the end, people seem to enjoy it so I guess it was ok. We pack and head home, where Petar's friends bring me another veggie burger and I'm officially in heaven now. Shut down. 

Dropping them mean drones in Laznia, Gdansk. Photo by Petar.
14/08 Torun, planeta Kebab, apple juice shots and flying spoons
Today it totally feels like we're on tour because we almost miss our bus. A Uber driver fucks us up, but hopefully another one comes just on time, drives like a king, while sharing he 'hates the fucking French' and drops us 2 minutes before the bus leaves. It's a chill travel and we're in Torun in no time. The hostel where we're staying is 5 minutes from the station so we leave our stuff and go on a falafel hunt. No Kebabistan, but Planeta Kebab does the job pretty well, falafel season is officially open on the tour now. It's coffee time now and a cute lady from Bike Coffee provides! We spend the next few hours chilling at the river and besides the fact it's sunny as in hell it's awesome.

Torun
It's almost time to head to Kulturhauz so we stop by the hostel, grab our gear and head to the place. And it's awesome. I've been seeing a lot of friends and people I know playing Kulturhauz so it's great to be finally there. Everything with the check goes smoothly, the people from the crew bring a bigass beamer so our visuals are all over the place and soon it's pretty packed and Petar starts the night. He plays an even better set than yesterday, I really get into it and it seems the crowd enjoys it too. My set also goes smoother and it's party time. People at the venue, led by our awesome host Kasia on the bar are already quite far in the drinking game, so Petar has no choice but to join for a few beers. I'm provided with lemonade and later on with apple juice shots so I can join the toasts. Everybody's super nice, we go in the garden where we spent an hour chatting about music and whatnot with some cool folks who haven't yet left the place (as it's Sunday today). I'll spare you the details, but let's say the night ended with flying spoons, forks and straws. Polish people know how to party, on Sundays as well. We get our stuff, happily sold a bit of records and we head to the hostel. Sleeping is the best.

Petar bowing the guitar as if there's no tomorrow
The next morning starts with a great breakfast at the hostel, loaded to the top with coffee we head to the train station and after a two-hour long ride in a crammed train, sitting on the floor we're in Lodz for our only day off. We get to Gosia, who designed Petar's tape artwork and was kind enough to let us stay in her flat, to be greeted by the news both our shows in Muzeum Książki Artystycznej are cancelled. 

Yes, it's been only two days, but we're really on tour.