We head out of Berlin pretty early. The drive to Switzerland is really long, but i pass out for most of it.
I finally wake up and find us traveling through darkness, stressing about how epically long the drive has turned out to be and how ridiculously late we are for soundcheck as a result.
As we start approaching the location we'll be playing I begin to grasp the magnitude of the festival we're playing. It's not just some music festival with a few bands and stages, it's a full blown traditional festival with thousands of people flooding the streets, dozens of little tents and stalls and flashing lights scattered between them. Some people from the stage we're playing show up and start clearing people out of the way to get our us to the venue. Our little van swims through the flood of people. It feels a little like we're in The Beatles or something, as people (with no idea who we are) swarm around us, blow tubas into the windows, bang on the van and generally act like drunken festival folk in animal suits. After fighting our way through the crowds we eventually make it to the venue. They're super accommodating to us late ghosts and while the kids quickly soundcheck I get my visuals running into the projector and huge screen they've got waiting for me.
Fast forward to us backstage. I discover we're supporting US noise fanatics Parts and Labour tonight! Fuck yeah.
Fast forward to us on stage, having the best time and Nestor taking some pretty neat photos of us doing our thing.
Fast forward back to us backstage, being fed some insanely good mustard coconut chicken thing.
Fast forward to watching Parts and Labour and seeing them doing something quite unlike anything I've ever seen before.
Fast forward to chatting to one of the Laborers about his visit to South Africa, our BLK JKS and how they're kinda labelmates with Parts and Labour through the Jagjaguwar/ Secretly Canadian connection.
Fast forward to us dragging our bags down the beautiful night streets of Lausanne, seeing weird statues on creepy buildings and photographing posters for Brian Jonestown Massacre gigs. We land up in the flat of the promoter, who turns out to have put together gigs for Eyes Like Mirrors favorite Maserati in the past and her next show will be headlined by Foreigner favorite Algernon Cadwaller. Turns out that in conjunction with doing shows for bands we love she's also into pretty much all the bands that make our hearts melt and brains want to explode.
We stay up till crazy late, freaking out over Owls, Knapsack, Rooftops, missing the sound of Dischord records, the news that there's a new Sea and Cake and we can get the Mock Orange album that tragically, mysteriously disappeared of Jun's iPhone.
Sometime after 4 I find myself falling asleep, the beautiful sound of The Van Pelt bleeding through the walls and into my sleepy Benhead.
