'Vultures Become Eagles' Days 3&4

06/09/12 Sibiu, Romania
@ Bohemian Flow

After a decent sleep in the van we hit the road to Sibiu. It was a short ride which we pretty much didn't feel. Needless to say we got there on time, we also had a plenty of time to get lost and also hang around. We pissed of a granny by stopping by her window, we gave her an apple she promised to come to the show (using body language). However after a decent struggle we found the venue which was placed on a really awesome square in the heart of Sibiu. After loading in we still had some time to kill and we spent all of them online like total nerds, don't know what I was doing as I obviously am posting this a day later. What else we did was eat the awesome food Andrei, Alek and their crew made. And that vegan cake whooooo. However the show started, it was only us playing so it would be a fast one. A bunch of people were already at the venue, Eaglehaslanded started and the people responded great. During our set it was the same. People went insane. Last year we gotta blast in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca (some of the people who came there were at Sibiu too) so I can pretty much say Romania is one of the best places on Earth. After the show we talked with pretty much everybody in the venue, who were possibly the kindest people ever. Then we went to Andrei's place and we slept for few hours before we started our 12-hours-drive to Budapest.

07/09/12 Budapest, Hungary

w/ Wasted Struggle, The New Dead Project@ Trafik Club

Won't be telling stories about spending 12 hours in the van. For me it wasn't even boring cus I'm a cool dude used to doing whatever I gotta do. After some cool and some boring hours we got to Budapest. No border issues, not a single crappy situation, just the opposite. Few miles before entering the city, at a gas station we met Last Hope with whom we played our first gig and who had also started their tour that very same day. When we entered Budapest our GPS issues got pretty serious and while looking for a tattoo studio we got into a pretty messed up suburbs full of sluts and some old people touching kids' cocks, gays fucking around. It was rad to watch and a nice start in our time in Hungary. Few minutes after we parked we were also mugged by a local dickhead pretending to be working on a parking, however some of the guys chased him and took our money back and waving middle fingers we went to look for another cool spot to park our ship. The venue here was also placed on a beautiful square. We loaded in and had an awesome meal that Bence and his girlfriend made for us. They were so cool they even prepared stuff that we'll take and have for breakfast. The venue was nice, the local bands were really intense and interesting. Especially Wasted Struggle which I'll be really interested in witnessing with a better sound or maybe on a recording. I remember hearing their music before but it felt like changed and evolved in a different way which I think is cool. What I didn't like about the show in Budapest is that there were people selectively watching the whole show. All the time going up and down the stares, out and in of the club as it is not a hardcore punk show but an exhibition where you drink wine and wear your classy clothes. However a lot of people showed up, bought merch, talked to us. I guess this is their way of responding rather than drowning in sweat like in Eastern Europe so I'm appreciating that a lot. During our set the audience was great so I guess I can put this in the list with the cool Expectations shows. Now as I'm writing this we're on our way to Warsaw. A drive that we started right after the show but we stopped and slept in the van. Not sure if we'll make it on time, but hopefully we will. Cutting the crap now. Vultures out.

'Vultures Become Eagles Tour' Days 1&2

Sofia, Bulgaria 04/09/12

w/ Last Hope @ Club Studio

photo by Valeri Vesselinski

Rarely would I be such a ego freak to review a show I played in Sofia. However unlike the last 5 years I've spent in this city this particular show was the start of something new. On September 4^th we were about to start our first real European tour. And it was hell of a start. The day started early and we pretty much spent it all in a bunch of cars, cabs and finally the van that was supposed to be our home for the next almost two weeks. Won't brag about how awesome it was to play for all our friends who suprisingly seemed to have missed us those few months which we abstained from playing in order to make the beginning of the tour somehow special not only for us. And it was a blast. We finally were able to check out live Eaglehaslanded, our Serbian mates that are the other half of the 'Vultures Become Eagles Tour'. And they are insane. This was their second show and I remember my second shows... Nothing like that. I hope those guys stick around long enough so we're able to get more of their music in the future. Such a band was really missing on the Balkans and I'm pretty certain it won't be too much if I say they are actually the first screamo band in our region. No matter how absurd this may sound to the people from Western Europe, but I guess it's high time they learn more about the depths of our continent. However won't go further into details. It was a rad show, our people seemed to enjoy our new CD. Actually one of the coolest things was that peope were actually disappointed we couldn't make the vinyl we promissed. This is surely a blast of optimism that our scene is really growing in the right direction. So the night ended at around 3 o'clock after a mindless switch of cabs, cars and our van. The next morning was supposed to start in only 2 hours and a half.

Brasov, Romania 05/09/12

w/ I Started Into The Forest/Coins As Portraits

Brassov was the best

It is only three hours after we called it a day. It's still pretty dark outside and having in mind I haven't been awake before 10 o'clock for the last few months it was a huge torture. However thirty minutes later with my backpack and a terribly hurting neck from last night I go to the meeting. An hour and something later we're packed in the van that's pretty much supposed to be our new home for the next two weeks and off to Romania we go. And boy it was hell of travel that took us nearly 12 hours, half of which in Bulgaria, the other in Romania and a significant part of going in circles in Brasov to find the venue. Few hours before we got there our main mate Marius Costache (who was not only patient enough to record us for a second time, but even came for the show in Sofia) got a message saying the club owners didn't pay their rent so the show should be moved. 

And this was totally the best possible way things could have gone. We played a pretty much abandoned old medical supplies factory that became a home for a hardcore punk show for the first time. The atmosphere even before the show was sooo awesome. Dim lights, cool local people gathering, new and old friends travelling to see us and say hi. AND the RAD food Iulia cooked for us. From the first minute at the venue it was a blast and it became even bigger. The show started with I Stared Into The Forest and their wicked and complex hardcore, surely a band you want to dig deeper in their music. The next act were Coins As Portraits, who share a guitarist with the previous band. And those guys were so intense, their music is so complex and they play it like kings. All the time I was listening to them I was thinking, boy if those guys were jazz musicians they would be making all the money in the world and they deserve it so much. As to our sets I will be short. The night before I couldn't feel Eaglehaslanded so perfectly because I was stuck at the merch table, but that night I watched their set thoroughly and I can just repeat what I wrote, I hope these guys stick long enough so we enjoy more of their intense and powerful music. As to our show I'm still too excited and I'm definitely writing the best one we ever had. We had technical issues with one of the guitars but everything was solved on the go and it surely didn't spoil the fun, on the contrary it made it way more real. I hope the tour keeps being so awesome. I hope we meet as friendly people as the guys from Brasov everywhere we go. Big ups for Adrian, Bogdan and all involved for setting this up for us and everyone that showed up. A thought is stuck in my mind all evening long – we have so many friends everywhere, all it takes is to travel and meet them.

But in the end this is the place this band belongs :D

'I carry love, I carry darkness'

This is our new record, download it for free donation, learn it, share it, comment it, feel it... whatever.

Expectations - Vultures Become Eagles Tour

Vultures Become Eagleas Tour '12 @ facebook

It's high time we announced this. And finally it is happening. I don't know what are your plans for September but mine are pretty clear. I'm starting this month with twenty shows in 7 European countries. We've been waiting for this since April. Back then we couldn't promote our debut album as much as we wanted, but we recorded a new EP so now we'll promote them both in Europe. I hope you are interested and if you are it will be a pleasure to meet you somewhere on the road. I'll do my best to maintain my own tour diary here so if you care just keep an eye on me, Expectations or our Serbian pals from Eaglehaslanded with whom we'll be sharing those two weeks. The full schedule is below, we'll be having a day-off in Prague but I may be able to fill it with a Mytrip show, who knows.

Sept. 4 - Sofia, Bulgaria @ Studio Club
http://www.facebook.com/events/496370650392636/

Sept. 5 - Brasov, Romania @ Ground Zero
http://www.facebook.com/events/470041503013863/

Sept. 6 - Sibiu, Romania @ Bohemian Flow
http://www.facebook.com/events/144254402382130

Sept. 7 - Budapest, Hungary @ Trafik Club
http://www.facebook.com/events/301596493261072/

Sept. 8 - Warsaw, Poland @ klub ZNOŚNA LEKKOŚĆ BYTU
http://www.facebook.com/events/483670834977338/

Sept. 9 - Krakow, Poland @ Kawiarnia Naukowa
http://www.facebook.com/events/227548950700568/

Sept. 10 - Poznan, Poland @ Rozbrat Squat
http://www.facebook.com/events/449212288457538/

Sept. 11 - Prague, Czech @ Cafe Na Pul Cesty
http://www.facebook.com/events/369866626416942/

Sept. 13 - Wiener Neustadt, Austria @ Bandhouse
http://www.facebook.com/events/412488772148997/

Sept. 14 - Pecs, Hungary @ Matus rehearsal room
http://www.facebook.com/events/251913641586596/

Sept. 15 - Subotica, Serbia @ Mladost Club
http://www.facebook.com/events/376579609080055/

Sept. 16 - Novi Sad, Serbia @ CK13
http://www.facebook.com/events/409957215689292/

A home for a bunch of friends

You are a new kid who lives to go to shows and listen to tons of rad music. First you are a guest, then you become a part. Finally you are the one building a home for new kids, for other kids who give a damn. You have a home where once you were a guest. You have a home which former hosts don't know about because they don't give a damn any longer. But you still do. It's because of that idea to build, leave, giveaway and always remember. Those days you'll never regret, those days you'll never forget.

photo by V. Vesselinski

// currently blasting Agoraphobic Nosebleed and Converge like hell's coming to Earth right now

The right stuff at the right time

A little over an year ago I was able to start a job which was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me. After a great internship at the events department of the oldest daily business newspaper in Bulgaria I started writing for it. I knew nothing about journalism, I knew something about economy/business due to my education in International Economic Relations and I obviously had a feeling for writing. That job lead me to people who I'll always value in my life and it taught me a lot. However that didn't last longer. The newspaper got closed and was united with its main competitor. I spent few months in the newborn media and I quit as I had better things to take care of. Yeah, I mean, as my twitter bio says, playing in bands, drinking coffee and finally studying music in an academy.

But it seems that wasn't just a job I'll get over and change for something else. It seems I have an urge to write almost as powerful as the urge to play music. And lately, that urge has been striking me with full force. So I may have to edit my twitter bio after I post this but hell yeah, I'm back to writing. I hope I'll be able to cover as much stuff as possible because one of the coolest things of working as journalist and learning to be one is that you have to read and dig a lot. For now I'm back to business stuff but I'll be also contributing to a really cool Bulgarian e-zine called Rawk'n'Roll. I'll be reviewing releases in weirder and heavier genres such as ambient / drone / drone doom / black metal. I highly recommend you to follow this site as it has almost 10 years of presence in the Bulgarian underground and here this means a lot. All of my writings can be found via the search engine filter or by a simple click here. I may be posting some translations here as I'll be writing in Bulgarian. I'm also looking out for a place to contribute reviews of electronic music, maybe a foreign zine so if you have any ideas/recommendations/suggestions please shoot.

Watched a great movie today, it said the coolest stuff happens when you are not looking for it. Totally true, but this great stuff I gotta keep no matter my twitter info.

// currently into: some unreleased Bolest Evropa pieces

The first of I hope many

So it is Saturday, the morning after Frenchbulldog's debut. The alarm rings once and few minutes later I miss the first train, it's set again, it rings and some half an hour later I miss one more train. However it is already day two of the Artmospheric Festival 2012. It is 11 o'clock and at 19:00 I gotta start playing the small stage as Mytrip. So I had to take the train at 14:20 which means at the hottest time of the day - awesomeness. 

All hail that machine and its driver

After an hour of tram waiting/catching I'm at the station and then in the train. I won't go into any details of how hot it was because I could write a shorty story and a bunch of poems about that, I'll just go on instead. After an hour and a half I reach the station from where a bus is supposed to take us to the Festival place. It comes shortly after my arrival there and it is ANCIENT. The temperature inside is 10 degrees hotter than outside, which is radical. However we pack in and it leaves. The next 50 minutes pass slowly as the road is pretty fucked up and there's pretty much nothing you can do but drive slow as hell. In fact the bus almost broke down during the next other courses. But it succeeded in taking us up, then in taking us down the next day. And I guess it survived even few more courses.

When the bus reached the bio farm we had 15 minutes more to walk and then we reached the place that for the last six years successfully succeeded in making few people feel like home (as overheard in the bus). And all the heat, travelling and shaking is nothing compared to what an awesome place it really is. I don't wanna post photos, I haven't made any just because you have to go there and experience it personally any other words/visuals are only a major spoiler.

What I can say is that the festival surely deserves its name. The atmosphere is amazing and everywhere you reach all kinds of art forms. From the great vegan food to every single artist performing during the festival. Artmospheric 2012 was the first one for me in many aspects. First of all I am not a huge open air person. I like nature but I'm not dedicated to spending all my free time in woods and mountains with my ass itching from insect bites. So having in mind that, I can tell I had great time though I'm definitely not a neo hippie. It was also the first Artmospheric event I am visiting and I can't say there were artists I was really eager to see/hear live. But I really enjoyed some. I really enjoyed Auditory Oscicles, Soulslept, Genda and few acts on the main stage but I have no idea who they were. It was really interesting for me that people still listen/play/mix trance music. My experience with that genre ended early in my childhood and since around year 2000 I have no idea what's going on with that type of music. Anyway I heard some stuff that wasn't bad still not my cup of tea. What else I thought about is that IDM is one of the over exploited genres of our times and it has reached a state of development where you can pretty much do nothing original. I guess it applies to many genres but especially when they are that specific you have to watch just three different artists and you get to that conclusion. However I still dig it more than trance.

And as a final aspect, Artmospheric 2012 was the first time I am playing an open air with any of my projects. And it was awesome. I have no idea if people actually watched/heard my set because when I play ambient I tend to become over focused and barely have the need to look at the world or the humyns around me. It was a totally different feel about how the sounds were communicating with ambience that wasn't walls of a closed artificially built space. I played during the day so I couldn't go as deep and dark as I usually do and my set became a quite weird mixture of unpublished and even improvised rhythmic and melodic stuff. The usual ambient structures and textures I use were reaching really weird forms and contexts. The organised chaos that was accompanying the festival was also one awesome thing that really, really influenced my playing. There was a schedule and two well-equipped stages. Everything else was in the hands of the artists. You go, wait for your slot, then plug-in and play. When you're done you leave and do whatever you want. That total freedom makes it more than pleasure to be involved.

I guess that's pretty much all I wanted to say. I could talk about the sky and the smell of timber and a bunch of other stuff for hours but just go there and experience it. No words can describe falling asleep while someone is playing live, then waking up at 6 the next day when someone else is starting something else. That mixture of total freedom, comfort plus the sense not a second is wasted and the event is so saturated with happenings - that's just insane! 

The day after I played was also full of rad music but I had to go so I can chill out at a bit at home before I hit the road today again. And in a vortex of radical heat (for me), slow transportation and tons of recollections I reach civilization that... well it is also worth experiencing. However I hope I'll be able to play more open air festivals as soon as possible!