Europe Venture - Part 7

So for the last Europe tour update, a bit late, but the last couple of shows and places we got to sleep there was no access to WIFI, so had to wait until we got home with updating here.

And getting home from those 14 days, was kind of a knockdown. Pretty tired after 2 weeks of approximately 2-5 hours sleep every night.

So to round up the tour (which is really not over until tomorrow evening where we play Prague) heres some notes on the last couple of shows, and off course also some live music.

04.06.2008 - d:qliq - Luxembourg

After our show in Reims the night before, we chose upon driving the approx 200km to Luxembourg where we had an apartment available, supplied by the d:qliq venue. After a pretty obvious quiet drive with most of us sleeping we did arrive in Luxembourg in the middle of the night and after being confused that the supplied address of the apartment was in fact the address of the Luxembourg ministry of finance, we finally stumbled upon the real address which turned out to be exactly the venue to play the day after : d:qliq and how nice it was, basically a big room on top of the venue. Manu, one of the nice arrangers made sure we got what we need and showed us around, before everyone went to bed.

The day after we obviously had some time off before sound check, so a stroll through the city, some breakfast/lunch and then a couple of beers later, we were ready for soundcheck. d:qliq is one of the very nice venues where everything is about making the mood good for both musicians and people coming to the place, and I might guess the only of its kind in Luxembourg. The fact is that arrangers and people at d:qliq generally made a good effort of making us feel at home, even by kick-starting us with some absinth.

Soundcheck, great vegan dinner at the side restaurant, time to kill in Luxembourg (there was a cycling event.. not that i could care less :-) ), and just hanging about around in our apartment until showtime.
The place wasnt exactly overcrowded, but the people that were there really seemed to enjoy every bit of the show, and for us it was indeed a good show, we enjoyed it a lot and just below here you can listen to two songs from the show, and you can read a review here.


After the show everything just ended up in a party, ultimately ending with us and the arranger Manu and the DJ drinking Absinth till we were dead.. such a 72% absinth kind of hits.

Late Night Venture - Ready For The Knife - Live From d:qliq, Luxembourg



Late Night Venture - Love/Respect Call - Live d:qliq, Luxembourg




Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Trapped In Glass
- Love/Respect Call

Tourbus playlist:
Only the silent and calm sounds of people snoring all the way from Reims to Luxembourg

05.06.2006 - Cafe Yeti - Lille

Pretty wasted from the Luxembourg show, we went to Lille to play at Cafe Yeti, a very small place in downtown Lille. However, misunderstandings at the cafe, made it pretty clear that they didnt expect us to come :-) .. told us nicely that we could play if we wanted, but after an hour of discussing, we chose upon heading for Paris straight away instead, taking the night off. And we do apologize if any stopped by. It's first time in the Late Night Venture history ever, that we have cancelled a gig, and looking back i think we kind of regret.

Well the place was extremely small and with only access to a toilet through the stage.. could have been quite different.. "Oh you have to go now, well we just stop playing for how long ?. ok 5 minutes pea break" .-) ..

What we didnt regret, was the fact that we were in Paris later, and had the opportunity to get out in the paris nightlife, getting food, naively try to find the eiffel without a map, and just relax. Once again it was a late night.

Tourbus playlist:
Indietronica mostly.. Album Leaf, Fennesz, Manual, DNTEL, Postal Service, People Press Play, Future 3, Opiate and then when we got near Paris we fired up the metal again and had a bowl of Slayer, Sepultura, Isis, Neurosis and Cult Of Luna.

06.06.2008 - La Scene Bastille - Paris

Last show of the tour. This night in quite a big club in the bastille district of Paris. a very cool venue, which was very nice, friendly and open when we arrived. Everything going pretty smooth with soundcheck and all that. Even gave us some time to go out and have some nice food.

Paris is really the mecca of food, i mean to watch how the culture is build up around having decent products available for everyone, it was a joy to see this and experience this. My Confit de Canard that night were sublime .-)

Playing the show at La Scene was just a nice way to end everything up, big stage, large sound, good fun, and a nice after party with a lot of french people.. We enjoyed a lot. This was just a fine way to end up the tour this far..


just below you can listen to Lazy Star from the show.

Late Night Venture - Lazy Star - Live From La Scene, Paris




Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- Ready For The Knife
- Lazy Star
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Love/Respect Call

----

So now its almost over, but not yet, I'm heading for Prague tomorrow to not only have one spectacular show at the Planet Festival , but also to just have some excellent quality time in Prague.

I will post stuff from that as well .. and then we're having a small break until 2nd of july where we play roskilde warm up with Baby Woodrose.

And remember to stop by our Flickr for the last couple of pictures.

Europe Ventures - Part 6

It's early morning and I woke up just a short while ago, I'm pretty much always the first one up from sleep in Late Night Venture. When touring, I consider 5 hours sleep like a good long sleep, everythings working on the pumps.

I don't feel tired at all, just a way of living for a while. I'm sitting here at d:qliq's office in luxembourg after sleeping in their apartment. We got a show here tonight and I'm looking real forward to it. d:qliq is a cool place.

Remember to go check the new pictures at : FLICKR

Sunday - 01.06.2008
This was just our day off in the Amsterdam area, so we didnt do anything than just go to Amsterdam and relax, having some good food and just inhaling the moods of the canals. Amsterdam is such a nice city, I will definately come back another time, when I'm not touring.
My Cellphone broke this day, its very annoying, cause it works, but the microphone is broken, which means people can call me and talk to me, but they shouldnt expect an answer.
It's frustrating, the cellphone is good when we're apart to get things going and all that and then pretty annoying to not be able to speak

Monday - 02.06.2008 - Tübingen
Amsterdam -> Tübingen : 684 km . Thats just a very long drive, so we had to get up pretty early and drive the bus at 6AM towards Tübingen. When we left Amsterdam the GPS kindly said : Arrival: 12:15 , but wiser from knowledge of the european traffic infrastructure, we knew that this was a pure lie.

Arrival: 15:52 . This was the actual arrival time, due to loads of traffic queues different places in Germany, but definately worst around Stuttgart. Sitting in the bus with 30 degrees outside and just boiling, we had to once again put Faithless - We Come 1 on for FULL blast. Theres nothing like queues to stress you.

After arrival we split up and the rest of the band went to the arranger and after that to the place of concert, a small club with stone floor called Carisma. Tonights job was a backline job, meaning that we only needed a pretty short soundcheck and then a decission upon setlist.

We were the only band playing that night, so we chose upon a 2 set approach with more songs, which showed out to be a very good disposition.



Tübingen is a university town, but seems kind of small even though it isnt that small, its one of the southern germany cities with lots of old houses. Expectations were that not that may would arrive, but at the point of showtime, the place was pretty good booked and what a good night. Audience were very focused, listening enjoying, having a small in the middle and then even after playing set 2, we needed extra songs.

The setlist of the night :
Set 1:
- Silent Carriers
- Ready For The Knife
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- End Of I

Set 2:
- Skylights
- Lazy Star
- Trapped in glass
- Drift in a slipstream
- Love/Respect Call
- After

Extra:
- Condition Lost

Tourbus playlist:
Tired of the metal, we went for the more electronica like stuff, so it was : The Album Leaf, Air, Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Björk, DNTEL, The Postal Service, People Press Play and some Camera Obscura to round things up.

Tuesday - 03.06.2008 - Reims
After one excellent night in Tübingen, we got up and ready to drive for France and what a joy, only 1 queue on that distance, so it was a peaceful drive, that mostly consisted of a passionate driver and sleeping passangers.





Destination in Reims were the Pop Art Cafe, a small club with volume restrictions. We're getting used to conform ourselves change set and even playstyle to this, so we ended up playing a nice low-key set, with not very much noise in it. It's quite a contrast actually, because when we play the full live sound out, it get's really really noisy and infernal, but then when we change for low-key it just gets more dreamy and spacey its actually quite fun to do.

Setlist of the night:
- Lazy Star
- Carousel
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- After
- Love/Respect Call

Tourbus playlist :
Silence, only a bit of Camera Obscura towards the end.

Europe Ventures - Part 5

Friday - 30.05.2008 - Eindhoven



Friday was in many ways a very stressful day, we had to leave Duisburg a bit early to drive to Amsterdam and record a live session at Amsterdam FM radio and then after that drive to Eindhoven to play at TAC.

We always calculate for some amount of queues, but not quite this much, so after an immensely and unfair long drive from Amsterdam to Eindhoven we arrived unacceptably late at the venue, like at 7.30PM .

This always leaves us in a stressful situation because we then have in sight that the soundcheck will be non-existent and time to just get ready for the show would be too short for us to relax.

But nothing like that happened and this is very much thanks to the crew at TAC, a bunch of well organized and very kind people, that in every way were extremely helpful making sure we had what we needed, could answer questions, had planned the evening good.

Really a place of generosity and good moods.

This meant we could do a very good soundcheck in just a very short time, with everything sounding great. I really liked this stage and this place in general.

The show itself went very well, there was really good feedback and we got to sell cd's and just talk with people before the place closed and the nice people at TAC took us out in the city to a rock club in the "party" district.. Nice and late evening before heading back to the place to sleep. Pretty tired..


The setlist of the night :
- Silent Carriers
- Carousel
- Skylights
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Acorns Fall ( listen to the live recording below )
- Love/Respect Call

Tourbus Playlist :
Well its still post-hardcore, metal and post-rock mostly but then also some nice quiet electronica vibes going through the stereo. But still 2 songs seem to come back all the time. Which is Sepultura - Roots and Cult Of Luna - Finland.

Late Night Venture -Acorns Fall ( Live From TAC in Eindhoven )


Late Night Venture - Acorns Fall - Live From TAC, Eindhoven




Saturday - 31.05.2008 - Amsterdam

Amsterdam.. such a nice city .. uptil now we've only had 2 parking tickets . Both in amsterdam . Had a long chat with the parking officers though about music and football (not that I even remotely care about football, but the others do :-) ).

Amsterdam is a very nice city with lots things going on and on this night we played Club Meander just in the heart of Amsterdam.

To be honest I didn't this club very much, it was kind of careless, I mean it seamed like noone really cared about playing a show at this place, the staff was pretty indifferent and hospitality was a city far away in the outskirts of nowhere.

These things affect everything and the fact that we had to play really early wasnt helping, so all in all i would consider this job the worst on the tour so far.

Fairly speaking I will say that the sound people there were very kind and helpful, but this place doesnt get a karma star in my book.

Did have the pleasure to make an interview with a magazine though. That was very nice and the girl interviewing were quite professional, had good questions and had made some good research up front. I like that ..

Setlist of the night :

- Silent Carriers

- Carousel

- Skylights

- Trapped in Glass

- Ready For The Knife

- Sidekick Trip To Mars

- Acorns Fall

- Love/Respect Call

Tourbus Playlist :

Sepultura - Roots .-) , Cult Of Luna - Finland .. getting a bit tired of it now.. will soon have to change to Slayer and some Neurosis .. again garnished this with Cypress Hill and some Mercury Rev.

Today its offtime .-) we have a day off music here in Amsterdam, looking forward to that.. relax eat some good food, before the long drive tomorrow.

Remember to visit our flickr space.. link below .. its getting updated all the time with loads of pictures.