We experienced two of the most unexpected technical problems that I have ever faced!

1. We came on stage, all neatly soundchecked, only to discover that the pad on the CD backing track was a whole semitone out with all the guitars! Now, I had just tuned the guitars (4 of 'em!), so I knew it wasn't that. What it was was that the house CD player was one of those DJ jobs with varispeed. Some prannet had obviously leaned on the varispeed button at some point, thrusting Wilson into the Omniverse. A quick appeal from the stage brought the house soundman hurtling across the dancefloor to "reset devices" and we carried on happily.

2. Having broken a string on my telecaster, I was delighted to see it reappear, fully strung-up, on my guitar stand. I picked it up for the start of "Secret Government" only to discover that it was in regular EADGBE tuning...which was odd, as it was supposed to be in an open D tuning. I had to spend the first verse of the sing dragging the tuning back. Thank God for silent tuners! Anyway, it all went smoothly enough and we carried on without incident. It was only about 3 songs later that I became aware that it wasn't my telecaster at all, but a look-alike kindly loaned by the other group! Doh!

I tell ya - we thought we were SO well prepared!

Still, for all those little irritations the set went down well. The audience was a fairly imposing bunch, about 100 strong, with pretty much every pro musician in town, along with various representatives from the Spacemen/Spiritualized axis, so it was quite a relief to hear people saying nice things about us.

(It was even more fun to overhear bona-fide punters shouting "brilliant" at each other at the bar.)

After the show we retired to Shakespeare Villas for a knees-up. Imagine our surprise when the entire staff of the club, promoter, manager, soundman and even a couple of barmaids showed up toting a crate of beer! I think we might be "in there".

We all enjoyed ourselves (in a scary kinda way) and will definitely be doing more shows wherever we can. I think we're going to play The Packhorse in Leeds on 14th April, and we could well be back at the Soundhaus on 19th April, but neither date is rock solid yet.

Music? Wot's it like? A sort of small and moody Sumosonic, but with more emphasis on dub and general phatness (phatitude?)

We've started recording a demo with Ian the Sumo vocalist/producer.

Credit: ;;