"Who is Conan O'Brien & Why Is She So Sad?"

In the wake of deciding hardcore isn't our thang anymore I've been tapdancing on my pedalboard and gradually the new songs are coming through. I've previewed sections for Rich & James and I think we're in agreement that we're heading towards playing shows that degenerate into epic dance parties and not people trying to hurt each other in the name of scene points.*

Vocally i've been working ideas with Sean's voice in mind and there's gonna be a lot more for myself, Rich & J-Bizzle to do in terms of back ups. Overall the new tunes are stylistically pitched somewhere between Phoenix and Foals. That's purely my current opinion though, once they're played by people who aren't solely myself and a drum machine they could end up somewhere else entirely. I can't see a drummer as creative as James being content robotically laying down the basic disco beats i've been demoing so who knows?

The two main new songs are called Berlin and Living Ancestors. The latter's probably closer to completion and having literally just listened back to the demo again i'm going to have a total modesty failure and say that it sounds fucking amazing. Because it does.




* Not that this ever happened while we were playing the heavy set. There was never enough of an audience for any noteworthy pit action which is both a pity and a relief.

Listen to:
Future Of The Left - Travels With Myself & Another
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Pixies - Surfer Rosa

This Honkey Grandma Be Trippin'

So to get it out of the way: Yes. The battered mars bar was actually pretty tasty. The gig was not tasty. The gig was awful for everyone...except for James who was cheered like some kind of prodigal son returning to Windsor.
Anyway that gig/show/concert/disaster marked the end of this current phase/era/chapter/nightmare of Abandoner. We sat down, had a long chat and decided that hardcore is often (not always but often) a fairly limiting genre that is hard to stand out in. I personally am sick of playing with bands who sound the same at every gig we play and I'd happily never play another chug chug breakdown riff if at all possible, Sean understandably doesn't want to scream anymore and there seems little point in continuing down that road.
To that end we're writing a new set from scratch, one that'll hopefully open new doors for us in terms of what promoters will put us on, what venues we can play at and most importantly, what bands we can play with. If we get any offers we'll still thrash through the old set while we work on the new one, but once what we're preparing is complete we'll be well and truly leaving the past where it belongs.
I have no idea how long this is going to take. There's literally no point at all in us rushing this and coming back with a set of half finished ideas so we're gonna take our time and hopefully return with something that's uniquely ours, as we want to have our own sound from the beginning.
I don't know if we'll write these too often in the meantime, we're aiming to put home demos up as they're finished to give people an idea of where we're going with this. If it sucks then our friends will tell us so and we'll keep working until we know we're on to a winner.
V

Intertherapy

Thanks to myspaceTV I can pinpoint the Saved By The Bell theme song as the moment from my youth that put me off guitar solos forever.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=28609380&searchid=1bf4f2aa-a3a7-407f-82e3-b50600302de5
Sick bass fill on 00:32 though, seriously it's like the session guy forgot what he was meant to be doing and just bared his soul on those high notes.
Ultimate companion site: http://sbtbqotd.blogspot.com/
We're playing in Windsor tomorrow, last gig for a while. We're on first at around 8 i'm guessing. This is great news as i'm informed that the fish & chip shop opposite the venue sells battered mars bars, something i've always found revolting/wanted to try.

Vince

Time For A Change

The heat has brought about a major change in the world of Abandoner.


Tea is out.


Milkshakes are in.

We still exist

Seriously, we do. I have no idea if anyone besides us read this (it might just even be me) but I'm gonna do it anyway.
Musically I think we're about to go in about fifty different directions, I have two songs more or less ready that are fully weird but fully great at the same time. Much more in the vein of Mastermind...than the other songs, except even less heavy/hardcore. I want to expand on the disco beats and glitchy drum patterns we touched on in that song and try to come up with something fairly unique that people will come to think of as the Abandoner "sound".
We've done some new photos but we're getting some fancier newer ones soon at which point we'll be getting a new myspace up, our merch should finally get sorted, we'll take ourselves seriously enough to start booking regular shows and what I'd really like to do is get the two aforementioned songs recorded and put them out as some kind of self released single. Part of me wants to do it on vinyl with maybe a CD included with each or some kind of download code. Is that silly? Super limited vinyl is pretty fucking cool, as is hand numbering stuff.
Anyway, this is probably all news to the rest of the band let alone anyone who's stumbled across this blog, so i'll call it a day there.
PLAYLIST:
Phoenix - 1901
Eels - Lilac Breeze
Sonic Youth - literally anything on Eternal, it's like being wrapped up in a warm fuzzy sheet
Enter Shikari - Same with Common Dreads, I can't get over how good it is.

tvbegoodtome

If you don't watch/love 30 Rock then there's a good chance you're an idiot.

Anyong

Yeah so we played at The Rising Sun in Slough at the weekend...I still wish we hadn't.

Me: "That was the worst gig we've ever played by some considerable distance".
Johnny: "That was the worst gig ANYONE has ever played by some considerable distance!"

Despite the fact it was a 21st birthday party, the drunkest person in the venue was still Sean which was pretty impressive. I'd decided I'd reached my limits earlier in the day when i'd somehow managed to flail my own hand into a goalpost. My thumb is still abnormal.

Anyway, if you were there then i'm sorry. If you weren't then you missed a dizzying low which I hope will never be repeated.
V