Perhaps I shouldn't sneak into bars to swill the remnants of unattended glasses.

How did I pick this up?

Trewin succumbs to el voco destructo for several weeks. Result: cancelled gigs aplenty, absence from practices, a physically more calming and sedate existence - despite the new intellectual and logistical challenges faced by a band without a singer.

Then we start gigging again, albeit with a precautionary reduced set and only songs that are gentle on Trewin's pipes.

So, as soon as we start having to spend hours on end in the back of the van, waiting around, and then (urgh, the absolute worst bit) getting onstage to play our music to hordes of screaming, adoring fans and obsessives - at this point I myself get struck down, yet again, with the dreaded lurgy. I'm old enough to know that complaining over and over about 'habing a kowd' is bad and perhaps betrays something of a lack of character, but I'm also old enough to know that I'm just about young enough to get away with it for another six months. Perhaps. I don't know. The main thing is that the more I complain, the more my girlfriend brings me big steaming glasses of green tea with a sympathetic smile on her face. More of that, please. And more bowls of Cookelyko Poppins with milk MAKE THE MILK ALL CHOCOLATEY

So, what I'm most looking forward to today is heading up to old Lonny-loo-loo (in the back of the van. It'll be too hot, I know it) to play Crack in the Road #002. Here's an interview that came out today. Should be a good concertium, provided I don't leak snot all over the audience while playing the end of Posture. Maybe I can pass it off as one of those Ibiza-style foam parties. Yeah.

See you there?

Tim

Voice: my concern.

We've taken to late practices, lately. Brighton Electric practice studios has a certain desert island quality about it between the hours of 22:00 and 00:00. Inside, people are making noise, be it us working on big loud new material - experimenting with eyelid flapping synth assaults - or the Smiths covers band in the room next to us solemnly knocking out the same song fifty times in a row. Outside, all is deathly quiet. The main road that sits beside the studio is deserted, and only the layabouts and drug dealers of Brighton are stalking the park opposite, wandering if perhaps those blatant waste-brains over there will pop over for some sub-standard crack and a quick mugging. Please, please don't hurt me. Just take Seryn and leave us alone. Please.

So we've been working super hard into the night on new material again. It's taking shape - turning into Phoria stuff. It's definitely a balancing act bringing these songs out of the writing room and into a band situation. Things have to be cut, new possibilities arise... It's tricky. It's fun.

Trewin is still suffering. Numerous trips to the doctor's, a clown's pocket worth of scarfs wrapped around his neck, nothing but tap water, I think. That's rough. We're trying so hard to come up with some workable contingency for live shows, something that will cover us in the future that still sounds like us. We tried one, but we're not sure it worked - Trewin's disembodied voice floating around The Blind Tiger club. It was weird for us, and it was weird for the audience. It was a bit like having God on vocals, but with a marginally greater allowance for anything resembling negative criticism.

We really don't want to let anyone down anymore. We're really sorry to those who have been disappointed by some of our cancellations, and just as sorry to those whom we may yet let down in the future. What am I saying? What's my problem? I get to stay at home and watch CYE for the hundredth time. What's the problem with that? What's the deal?

He giveth with one hand...

So, there we are. I can't comment on any forthcoming performances, as we're doused in the urine of uncertainty. We try and give everyone notice, but we're also so desperate to play all these gigs that we don't want to cancel until it gets to the stage that we definitely can't play it. Sometimes that's late. Nous regrettons. We should be about very very soon, though.

Today it's another interview. We've done about a million since we started exaggerating about our workload.  Trewin won't be there. Something about his voice. I dunno.

Who cares?

Tim

Thick grey test cape.

The sun is shining, and it's time for The Great Escape.

For those who don't know what it is, The Great Escape is a big music festival based around the city of Brighton. When I first moved to this city, the festival was pretty big. Now it's very big. I'm not saying there's any kind of causal relationship here, but watch the graph happen:

As you can clearly see, there is at least a medium-strong correlation between my arrival (and the subsequent formation of Phoria) and the current popularity of the The Great Escape festival as measured in the Scottish standard TB scale. Again I emphasise, there may not be any causal relationship. I think the very existence of the graph speaks volumes.

We'll be out there tonight at this event, slightly off the beaten track, checking out Wolf Alice and Mt Wolf in particular, both of whom I know I'm currently enjoying. We won't be playing this year, alas, due in part to Trewin's continuing struggle with Lord Hoarse.

On the subject of illness, the Red video has been put in the can, and is enjoying great popularity across the blogs, etc. Thanks to everyone who shares their views on it. It's lovely to have such a nice set of people commenting so positively. We really appreciate the support and all the sharing you guys are doing. Hurray! It's here!:

Lovely. Thank Jeb, Trewin, and Thom Novi at Novi films.

The band are getting together this afternoon, too, to work on more new material. We're going to try and get this new stuff out as soon as we can. I know Jeb's got some mighty fine visual treats for everyone aswell. He's had his sip of tea. Now it's back to work.
What an exciting and productive day we'll all have! Eh? Yeah! Give yourself a big hand. Start your day the right way!

Oh, and click here to purchase the EP, if you decide you want to...

iTunes UK
Amazon UK

iTunes Worldwide
Amazon Worldwide

As always, there's so much on the way. We've locked Seryn in a basement with no chairs and only bid-up.tv on the television until the t-shirts have all been finished. I've also seen what look like a bunch of Phoria warfare frisbees - little silver discs of one sort or another. Next we just need the Ed Sanderson action figure (following our market research, it was found that 73.9% of both genders aged 14-98 found his appearance 'fascinating, compelling and/or worth £15.99') and then we'll have an action figure, some frisbees, and some t-shirts. That's just all of the previously listed items put more concisely. You shouldn't need that. It kind of takes the rhythm out of the end of that sentence.

Have a lovely day, whomever you do.

Tim

...aaaaaaaaand the darkness closes in.

We're driving home from practice.

We've been working on new material. No vocals, mind, but phatty-el-dorado nonetheless.

Trewin and Ed have gone into a service station to buy food for themselves.

I am here, alone but for the company of a yellow synthesiser.

'Hello, Synthesiser.'

But synthesisers cannot talk, nor jump.

Gutted.

Shoot.

We had our first magazine photo session yesterday.

Train to Lundun @ 09:49 lol

I sprinted into Brighton station at 09:51:39, according to the wide, disciplinarian departures board. Not, however, according to my wristwatch, which still chipped away gleefully at a large brown stone taking on the appearance of a happy man on a train.
My technology now corrected, I called Ed again. I'd already phoned him from aboard the bus, which ran late, telling him 'I have five minutes...I reckon I'll be there in three', as he relayed his plan to leave the tickets in a hidden place. It was all very Bourne Identity. Not that I've seen that film. Or read that book. But I have seen a trailer and this was a bit like that only with a greater testosteronic desire to kill. Also: somewhat more immediate

So, I missed the train.

Luckily, I suppose, Jeb missed it too - though his story reads more like a children's picture book called The Snoozy Adventures of Captain Horizontal, than any Hollywood thriller.

Still, after stomping moodily around the station concourse doing the 'I have missed my train' act for the good of the general public and frantically calling everyone I knew for advice, I got Jeb's voice in my ear.
'Nnngh. Sorry mate /yawn/...I'll be there in ten.'

And so we got the next train up together, hoping to be no more than a half-an-hour late to our very important date.

Train, a morning wee, coffee and a baguette, navigating simultaneously sensible yet baffling menus on automated ticket purchasing systems that resemble impeccably dressed, handsome, fantastic smelling, intelligent and funny yet not overbearing tour guides who insist on holding the map upside down and screaming incorrect directions at you (you, who are to blame for all that has so far gone wrong) all led us by hook and crook to our destination of Lambeth North tube station. We were running very late, but those punctual persons who arrived ahead of us had successfully wangled an extension to our time, and a later start. All was not lost then - we would have our photos taken, be a part of this very exciting feature, and not be exiled by the popular press; labelled as layabouts.

Then, with one toenail poked from the station exit, it started hammering it down with rain.

So we tied jumpers to our heads and sprinted to the studio, where, on the moment of our arrival, in a turn of events I had anticipated, it stopped raining as quickly as it had started and the burning hot sun leapt out at us again.

Nothing much more typical.

Still, there we were.

Quick, then! Make up! Better clothes! Cover yourselves in some acceptable something! People want their musicians to be foolhardy with their money (Trewin was eased into a plain blue jacket. Apparent value: £600) and covered in slap, it seems. No instruments in sight. Here is a picture of musicians. OK. We'll do it for now. It didn't last long. It was a fun and new experience. We got free crisps.

And they didn't touch my hair.

It was all done. Crisis confronted and averted. Band photographed. Expensive borrowed cotton sullied by the bodily fluids of the unkempt now handed back, hanging on their rails like automatic weapons, waiting to pass on a dimishing feeling of poverty and one of somehow being the lesser, like some scared straight programme for the normal, perhaps aimed at people even more unwitting than we. I don't see what other emotion those things can spike but an unhealthy materialistic awareness: their intended purpose of course, both for wearer and observer. Cigarettes smoked. Chats hadded. Train caught. Five words to Ed as we left the train, back in Brighton.

'I need a f*cking drink.'

Spectacular day.

Tim

P.S. Giggly-goo tonight at the Blind Tiger in Brighton for Soundcrash. Trewin's still got no throat, so we're doing something a little different. Whether it will work we are yet to know, but know we will.

Bean can salad.

Everything's been cancelled. We were supposed to have a gig tonight. That's been cancelled because Trewin has no voice to speak of/with. We were going to be interviewed this evening by a very nice person from some very nice magazine. That's been cancelled. Or at least rearranged. I was going to go out for a drinky to celebrate my life, but we've got a photoshoot tomorrow morning, for which we have to look 'pretty', so...that's been cancelled. I was going to smile, but my facial muscles have gone hunting, so that's been cancelled. I was planning on living, but that's been cancelled...

Everything's been cancelled.

I was going to apologise for another missed gig, and let you know that we're currently formulating a contigency plan so this kind of run doesn't happen ever again, but that's been...

T(can)i(celled)m