Get in the Van

(Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend Intensifies/ RIP Wills)

Some live dates coming up fast (I’m on a flight to Quebec City in the morning)

Five shows doing electronics with Full of Hell

• April 30th Quebec City

• May 1st Montreal

• May 2nd Ottawa

• May 3rd London

• May 4th Toronto

Solo shows:

• June 6th Toronto w Drew McDowall

• June 13th Leeds

• June 14th Bristol

• June 15th Coventry (TBC)

• June 16th Glasgow

• June 17th Middlesbrough

• June 18th Sheffield (TBC)

• June 19th Liverpool

The UK dates are all with knifedoutofexistence, Steve from Industrial Coast put in a ton of work and is responsible for me being able to tour thanks to his work with Middlesbrough Arts Council, without that involvement I wouldn’t be coming over.

Expect a conversation with Steve about Industrial Coast and the A Monday Night in Middlesbrough series of events in a future post.

Industrial Coast will be releasing a lost album of mine recorded in 2009 that is a primitive precursor to the type of material i’ve been doing since Black Creek in 2020.

The two shows that are TBC might end up being me dossing about York for the day, eating chips and looking at Roman ruins and Viking exhibitions instead. Feel free to join me.

Get in the Van

I toured regularly throughout my 20s and then in my 30s did 2-3 tours per year every year until I hit 40. The last tour of that era of my life was with Full of Hell exactly 10 years from the one I’m joining them on tomorrow, the Toronto shows are ten years and one day apart. Since then I’ve done exactly one tour (five years ago). For some reason at age 50 I’ve decided to return to it.

Poster by Chelsea Watt

I feel like I’ve mentioned this before and won’t belabour it, but touring was something that really opened my eyes to possibilities of other ways of living and organizing. It was the thing that took me out of the quotidian violence of life in the north of England (and later central Scotland) and gave me some hope for the world.

Touring was also the thing that helped me to understand music as a vehicle for creating cultural space and how different cultural spaces looked different (and similar) across Europe/ Australia/ Japan/ USA¹.

Recently read:

The House of Souls - Arthur Machen

In the lawlessness of Public Domain there’s many editions of this book out there, if you want a cheap copy they’re easy to come across. If you value books for their physical form as well as their contents then I recommend the Tartarus Press hardcover edition.

It’s no secret Machen was much admired by Lovecraft, and both write extensively about forgotten ancient horrors continuing on in the present, the notable difference being between the two authors being that Lovecraft was an ardent believer in the good of the Age of Enlightenment, Machen, well, not so much.

Much of the horror in Machen comes from the horror of Epiphany and at this stage in my life I favour this approach to cosmic horror in the numinous over Lovecraft (who i still adore.²

The Tartarus Press edition of The House of Souls contains all the material in the 1906 original edition, including A Fragment of Life, which is a difficult story to read - it’s dismally boring, intentionally so - but contains the enlightenment and ecstasy that is key to understanding Machen’s work.

Recently listened to:

From Resignation to Revolt - Hiatus

I put this on after hearing of vocalist Wills recent death. Hiatus are inextricably linked to my early touring experiences and I will forever associate them with the possibilities of other ways of living that I mention above.

First gig in Europe trip I ever played (Ebola in Liege, Belgium) we played with Unhinged (Wills was on bass) and we stayed with Azil from Hiatus, the best host ever who plied 21 year old me with endless weed and strong Belgian beer while we watched documentaries on early Jamaican dub. Second European trip we played a warehouse in France with Hiatus that was like something out of Mad Max. Home brewed Absinthe was being pass around the crowd from an enormous jug by the Belgian contingent when Hiatus played. When I asked what it was Wills proudly told me it was “the drink that made Van Gogh lose his mind”. I’m surprised no one died drinking it in that warehouse.

From Resignation to Revolt is Haitus first album from 1993, I always had The Brain from 1996 as my go to Hiatus album, but listening again after so long From Resignation is excellent; it does all the standard things you’d expect a bunch of booze addled Euro crusties to do - anarchist politics, heavy Doom influences - but god damn they shred like none of their peers could. Tight as hell in a way that shows they were A) way more serious than most of their contemporaries and B) probably not actually as universally wasted as popular opinion would have you believe³. As mentioned, strong parallels with Doom musically, but as the album progresses it gets deeper in to No Security territory (speed, ferocity, precision), I won’t bury this in a footnote, No Security is the Swedish hardcore band in my book.

Anyway, listen to From Resignation to Revolt, follow it up with The Brain (which sounds like it could come out in 2024 and hold its own), raise a glass to the memory of Wills (in Shank we dubbed him the crust Jimbo Jones). RIP.

1. I also experienced 9/11 unfolding on tour with Shank. We had arranged to meet Catharsis at Bremen train station before we went in separate directions and the screens in the station had the live footage up. At every rest stop we’d get an update. The updates were increasingly ravenous calls for war.

2. Excluding stuff like The Horror at Red Hook, which is terrible, but at least it gave us Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom

3. Though Wills did have the story of the 1995 US tour where they left him stranded for literally hours at a gas stations because they didn’t notice he wasn’t back in the van and left without him.