Fosca have confirmed a rare concert on Saturday 7th July. It’s in Saffle, deep in Northern Sweden. Two hours by train from Gothenburg, fairly close to the Norweigan border. Suits me.
The event is a little indie festival called Rip It Up, and we’re playing alongside veteran Sarah Records act St Christopher. Whose album ‘Bacharach’ is rather glorious; airy and graceful and really rather lovely, like The Walker Brothers on an indiepop budget. I think the last time I saw them play was in 1990 at the Kentish Town Bull & Gate, when I was just starting to realise there was a whole underground scene of bands that strove for a certain gentle pop beauty rather than joining in with the usual drug-loving noise merchants. At that gig, the opening synth line of ‘The Thrill Of The New’ went straight through me in just the right way. It hit the spot. In fact, it remains one of my favourite gig moments in all my years of concert-going.
More details on the Rip It Up festival here:
http://www.facetterad.net/ripitup/english.html
Line-up will be myself, Rachel Stevenson, Kate Dornan and Tom Edwards. It will be rather fantastic. We have our most devoted fans in Sweden, with their home-made videos of Fosca songs on YouTube and the like. Can’t wait to unveil our latest giddy work to them.
An email from Taiwan:
I don’t suppose there is *ANY* possibility of you making a recording of this concert available to fans….? Even just a standard, un-mixed soundboard recording made available on CD-R to people from this list would be awesome… and certainly wouldn’t lose you any money! Consider it! Some of us will most likely NEVER get to see you live.
I think any live recordings should be organized and circulated among the fans. All I can suggest is to contact the Swedish Fosca fans and see if they’ll help. They’re out there somewhere. Or better still, perhaps someone will film our set and put it on YouTube, as seems to be the fashion these days.
In the meantime, we still have an album to finish. Since we started work on it in 1867 or whenever it was, I’ve dithered and hit a slough of despond. I’ve acted just like a heroin addict, but without the actual drug. It’s cheaper. Heroin addicts let time drift by because they’re busy enjoying the comfort of the drug. I let time drift by because I was enjoying the comfort of either the sadness, or the nothingness itself.
In the hiatus, the other band members have moved house, worked with other bands, changed lovers, got married, got back with lovers, changed careers, changed genders, changed species, changed trains in 1930s Berlin… Well, maybe not all of the above.
This new Diary Angels discipline has shaken me up, however, and I’ve enlisted a third-party producer, the extremely clever Alex Mayor, to help finish the Fosca album in his Hackney studio. First session on Monday week.
I think self-production is all very well, but Tom and I were tending to tweak and twiddle each track forever, until we couldn’t hear anything anymore. The best thing about DIY recording is there’s no pricy by-the-hour studio fees to worry about. It’s also the worst thing about DIY recording, as you have no deadline to work to. And now Tom’s busy pursuing a career as a session guitarist in tandem with his day job, so he just can’t don his producer hat at present. A fresh element is required. Enter Mr Mayor.
(to be continued in a second entry, later today)
