Sorry for the long long silence, I'll try to keep this thing more updated in the future! J&Y 2012 highlights were: July: our first show ever in Paris, France, with our dear friends Disappears (Damon played some serious drone on the last track of the set):
September: a new Ep released by Plustapes on a black cassette tape, including two songs recorded in the spring on side A and three all electro tracks on side B, recorded a few months earlier when I got an ear infection and couldn't play my bass much. It was actually the first time ever I played synths, and I'm particularly proud of this one:
November: a second show in France, at Le Temps Machine (Tours), opening for Zombie Zombie and Beak>. We befriended guitarist-synth genius Matt Williams from Beak>, who ended up playing with us:
Just before that show, we recorded a lot of new tracks. They became our first album, woods, which includes this song:
So, basically, in 2011 we played two shows in the US and released a white tape, and in 2012 we played two shows in France and released a black tape. It was a great honor to support both Disappears and Beak>, who were responsible for our two favorite albums of 2012.
2013: We started the year with more recordings. Matt from Beak> came to Paris to play a Fairhorns show, one of his numerous and brilliant solo projects. He joined us in the studio for a day and we're happy to have two new tracks with him on our newest Ep tools.
We also made a video for the whole thing:
Now, we're very excited that Plustapes have decided to release our latest recordings on two new cassette tapes, one purple for woods and one red for tools. Both should be available in a few weeks, so keep your eyes open.
In the meantime, you can stream/download them here, together with all our older material.
We played our second show on Wednesday Sept. 14 at PJ’s Lager House in Detroit with E+ (Damon and Jonathan from Disappears’ other band with Luca on drums and Sara Jean on keyboard), and local band The Baptist Church.
Upon our arrival, we stored the gear at the venue, went to get some BBQ food at a nearby restaurant called Slows, then hung out with a friend of Disappears, an amazing character named Chris Koltay, a sound engineer who lives in Detroit, has worked with Deerhunter and Broadcast among other bands, and has an awesome studio packed with instruments, very well-organized gear, and nicely decorated.
Then we returned to PJ’s Lager house to set up the stage. This time Luca let us use his huge Gretsch drum kit, and we played on Damon’s big bass amp again.
Craiger the sound guy told us a scary story about when he was once robbed by two men with guns… Strange things do happen in Detroit. We got a bit worried when Craiger disappeared in the basement ten minutes before we were to start our show. Luckily he came back, we played LOUD, and were gifted with Damon's crazy guitar sounds on DOOMSDAY (watch video on top of this page).
After the show, we met Greg Baise, a man who used to promote concerts and now has a radio show on Ann Arbor University college station and another one for American Apparel. He apparently appreciated our set a lot, as well as other young people on the audience, which made us very happy.
We were also very happy to see E+ live for the first time, and their show was awesome! Check out this video from their Chicago show last Sunday at Empty Bottle:
We spent the night at Chris Koltay’s house, didn’t sleep for long as we all went to bed around 4am. Damon, Luca and Sara Jean had to take off two hours later, as Sara Jean had to meet her family in Chicago in order to prepare her upcoming wedding. Jonathan, Kate and us stayed in Detroit until noon, visited Michigan’s largest used bookstore, cruised along deserted avenues, abandoned houses and an enormous decrepit train station, then drove back to Chicago in the afternoon under a beautiful sky. More tacos awaited us.
We all met at Damon’s around noon, Brian picked us up in a big black Sprinter van and we went to Disappears’ practice space to load the gear in the back of the van. Disappears have been immensely nice to us, letting us ride the same van as them to Bloomington, Indiana for our first show. Brian drove the van with Tony the sound guy by his side, Damon, Jonathan and Steve sat behind him, and us French kids took the back seats.
It was a 5-hour drive from Chicago to Bloomington. The weather was beautiful, we made a stop at Fair Oaks Farms for sandwiches, went past Gary (home of the Jackson family), rode along fields of windmills, and by the time we arrived in Bloomington, it was raining and we had lost an hour because of time difference.
It was 7pm local time, and the evening was to start at 9pm, so we quickly got into The Bishop, Disappears set up the stage, did a couple of songs for soundcheck which already sounded awesome. We’d already seen Disappears in three different countries this year (Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam), and we were very much looking forward to seeing them perform in their own country. The fact that they booked us with them for this show was the most wonderful gift. And not only did they let us ride in their van, but Damon lent us his powerful bass amp and Steve his marvelous drum kit. Yes, Disappears are great musicians and great human beings!
So all we needed to do was to plug our bass and pedals, change the hi-hat and crash cymbal on Steve’s drums, add a pad linked to an iPad to launch a few effects, and we were ready to soundcheck too. We tried a couple of songs, helped by Tim at the console, and then we all went to a nearby restaurant called Farm (the sign said they had “real food” there), accompanied by Darius from local labels Jagjaguwar, Secretly Canadian and Dead Oceans. After dinner, it was time for us to return to The Bishop and start our show (watch video on top of this page).
After the show, many young people studying at the Indiana State University, and also third band Tammar’s very nice members came to us, saying our show was awesome, asking if that was really our first show EVER, and curious to know how we ended up playing our first show EVER in Bloomington.
Disappears' show was a loud addictive blast. They played lots of new songs that they are going to record for their new album in October at Echo Canyon studio in Hoboken, NJ. Including this one:
Disappears always leave you wanting for more, which is lucky because we were going to see them again three days later at The Onion A.V. Festival at the Hideout Inn in Chicago.
We also met Richard Bowser, a man who lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who drove 4 hours to see us play and meet us, and as Steve told us, who’s been in a band called Violent Apathy, once shared bills with Steve’s own band Crucifucks back in the 80’s, and that Thurston Moore liked very much… We were extremely happy to receive such a warm welcome. We even sold a few copies of our tape!
We took off at midnight Bloomington time, hit the road in the night and somewhere before Chicago, made a halt at a gas station for snacks and 5-hour energy drinks. SuperBrian sat behind the wheel for 10 hours round trip… SuperJonathan had his own trip playing with our iPad in the van, where Lenny Kravitz was mentioned for the third time that day, as well as Santana… We got back to the practice space to drop the gear around 5am Chicago time, SuperSteve and SuperDamon carried the heavy bass amp up to the 3rd floor in the staircase, and we all said goodnight. Still, we were hungry.
Stay tuned for our next show report: we're playing Detroit, MI next Wednesday!
Yesterday, we arrived early at the airport and were bummed to see that our flight from Paris to Chicago had a 2-hour delay.
Luckily, no one said we couldn’t bring our bass as cabin luggage, so it got to travel with us.
The captain’s name was McEntire, which we found very amusing, and our flight attendant kept calling King Q4 “John Lennon”. We were served bad food, bad coffee and bad movies, but all in all, it was a good flight.
And then:
Damon met us at the train station, also conveniently called Damen. Easy to remember! We’re staying with him in Ukrainian Village, an awesome neighborhood where we had our first tacos and burritos last night, and Jonathan stylishly served us drinks at Rainbo Club.
This morning, we were greeted by Pearl, Damon’s flatmate’s lovely dog.
Then we went out for an early 3-hour walk around the hood, had an enormous breakfast, stopped by Myopic Books and Reckless Records, and tried to sneak a peek into Tortoise’s Soma studio…
What's next? Rehearsing at Disappears' practice space for Wednesday's show in Bloomington... Stay tuned for our first show report!
Our first Ep has been released this week. We're very grateful to our friends Disappears who introduced us to Dustin Drase at Plustapes, and cannot wait to meet them all in Chicago in a few days. We'll be updating this blog with news from the road. Hope you will follow us!
.JPG)
