European Tour Diary 01.06.11

Kiev

- 10 hour flight on this extremely old plane, still has ash trays!! smells like bananas and burnt stuff
- call my mom to say hi/bye like i always do
- sat next to this real chauvinist cab driver who married a girl from Moldova and wouldn’t shut up about it
- meet Valta and Polina, lovely people
- beautiful and warm weather in Kiev
- chestnut trees blooming
- hella naps
- georgian food for dinner with Kseniya, a nice evening
- pass out so hard
- $1 cigarettes

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London

- Even more beautiful amazing weather in London (!!!)
- Tiny the reggae singer picks me up, amazing guy from South London, he went to school with Jumping Jack Frost and Clayton Hardware. Doesn’t really know much about dubstep but heard Anti War Dub on the radio and loves it. His accent reminds me so much of Pokes and Mala. Really cool guy.
- cool little hotel in south london near elephant&castle
- more hella naps
- meet up with Sander Eprom yay! off to soundcheck
- Tony Addison Groove is there and is buzzing off having had no food or sleep yikes
- meet Mark Ernestus from Rhythm & Sound - i’m too nervous and awe-struck to say anything to him other than hello and it’s really nice to meet you. he’s exactly how i thought he would be.
- indian for dinner, really good meal. run into Rob Pinch and Lizzy
- my set goes fairly well, i wasn’t that thrilled with it but others seemed to like it
- played at the same time as mark ernestus so i didn’t get to catch his set
- saw some of Shackleton and he was amazing
- Pinch playing house, surreal, really good
- Tony killed it, was the first time i got to see his live set
- Eprom killed it with a laptop and an iPad and nothing else - cyber!
- Skrillex was at the club - wutttt
- late night drinking and spliff sessions with Pinch, Tony, Eprom, Miro
- we found a painting of Bassnectar in our hotel - wutttt
- Andrew and his wife Charlotte’s house for the night, lovely people, lovely hospitality
- drinks with Tom McCarthy and Alex for some laughs, industry chit chat and gossip
- kebabz

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Manchester

- sat next to what sounds like some rather famous manc boxer on the train, try not to let them notice i was listening to him tell his friend all kinds of funny stories about famous people he’d met
- manchester is a beautiful city, feels so different from south england
- the promoter Rich Reason, lovely chap
- my hotel room was like an apartment with a kitchen
- still haven’t adjusted to the time difference, exhausted, more damn naps
- gig was cool, very lively crowd for a monday night, uni kids just finished their finals, raved harder than any monday night ravers i’d ever seen
- wil prophecy, mc chunkie, all cool guys

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Bristol

- back in bristol, feels so good
- last time i was here it was november and horrible weather, feels like a very different town in the warm sunlight
- major chill-out/do-nothing time with my pal tony
- went and saw some really cool parts of the city i’d never seen before
- out to Batman the cat and Rozz
- i love bristol, can’t wait to come back here in a few weeks for my birthday and Dubloaded

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Poznan

- i’ve determined you don’t know anything about air travel until you’ve flown on Ryanair - that said, it wasn’t nearly as bad as i’d always heard… though there was some crazy pressure change and some dude fell over and passed out. that was weird.
- first time to Poland. very unique feel to the city of Poznan
- picked up by the greatest guy in the world Filip aka Feelaz
- felt really good in Poznan, feeling happy
- exploring the city, Old Town
- recording the sound of the intersection lights changing
- pirogies are delicious
- lots of good conversations with Filip, speaks very fluent english with a London accent
- prazinky chips as recommended by star eyes, delish
- felt really inspired in Poznan for some reason, made lots of lists for new ideas, lots of deep and good thinking
- went out for beers at the club on Thursday night, sat outside all night long, got drunk with the lads, ate a kebab
- Friday had a nice bbq with Aleks, Ali, Maggie and the crew
- had the worst allergies the night of the gig, thankfully Ali saved the day with some magical mystery Polish pills (which turned out to be Zyrtec). Pretty much felt like a nerd though.
- gig went well, had a nice time. hard to see the crowd cos it was so smokey. cool venue
- got drunk on cherry flavored vodka. oops!

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Gdansk

- by saturday i was starting to talk to myself in my head in broken english and a polish accent
- me and aleks head to Gdansk on the train, 5 hours, but at least we got a train car to ourselves and got some sleep
- Polish countryside is beautiful and green
- met by Jakob aka Rezza in Gdansk, super cool guy!
- gdansk has so much visual history it’s crazy, it’s where WWII started and basically where communism started to end
- more pirogies! and then watched barcelona take the piss out of manchester united (sorry Rich!)
- my hotel is a former soviet style hospital, super haunted feeling, watched some polish pop music videos
- get to the venue out in this former ship yard, really cool place, old buildings with bullet holes from the war still
- played my favorite set of the tour so far, felt really good about it, despite not being able to hear much out of the monitors - it’s funny how sometimes nothing gets in the way and sometimes everything gets in the way
- meet Hatti Vatti! what a cool guy. great producer, great dude
- club started to wind down around 5am so we put on some mixes from my laptop, first a dj Pete wax treatment mix, then Comma’s last mixtape
- club owner started feeding us shot after shot of vodka; got completely shit-faced
- hatti vatti found the wifi password for the club and we decided to get on a youtube soundclash!!
- me, hatti vatti, the club owner and just random people youtube soundclashed in the club until 8am
- hatti vatti playing air guitar on top of the speaker stack over sweet child o mine - epic
- completely cross-eyed walk back to the hotel in the morning with the sun out and people going to work
- blackout
- some hours later waking up, headed for breakfast and a very slow walk around town
- me and alex back on the train, only this time it’s fucking packed, no space for naps
- dinner with filip in the evening back in poznan, chilled out evening in his flat near city center
- a beautiful sunny monday. off to Berlin today. Bye Poland! I hope to come back.

more soon.