tour report - copenhagen

i woke up when the bus stopped moving. it was still dark, but getting a little lighter. stumbled downstairs and we're stuck in some parking lot. turns out we're parked on a ferry going to copenhagen. well i went back upstairs and got back into the bunk, went back to sleep. i woke up again a few hours later, alone on the bus. we were parked outside the venue, and everyone was busy loading in. in retrospect, it was a good nights sleep all things considered. stumbled into the venue and scrounged about for some food. met brian the promoter at the door, he actually recognized me and knew who we were. turns out he's a big informatik fan, which was very cool! the uncool part was the fact that it was pouring rain and getting pretty dark.

one thing i like about venues in germany, they have good clean showers for the bands. so after loading in some of the gear, i grabbed a shower, checked mail and tried eating some more food. still pretty tired from the jet lag and everything, but at least we had time to wait while the stage got built out. hung out with martin, who was one of the other promoters for the show quite a bit. he was very cool, and a lot of fun. there was unfortunately no chance to get outside and see anything cool in the area around the venue. as it turned out, we were actually about 20min outside of copenhagen, in a place called albertslund. so we'll have to try and get to copenhagen proper the next time we tour here.

dinner was served while mesh was still soundchecking, so we went for it. another awesome thing about venues on this tour...they cook actual food with actual nutrients for the bands. so tonight there was a great spread of food, including a lot of vegan stuff, with hummus and an olive tapanade worth killing for. the venue staff went well above and beyond on the food, it was really awesome. as soon as we finished eating, it was time for soundcheck, so we loaded up the stage and went through the routine. things sounded really good, and the house engineer was very fast and efficient. so our soundcheck was very quick, about 20min total, not too bad.

i stayed busy getting familiar with some danish beer (tuborg) and watched the crowd start filling up the venue. i have to mention that the venue was really interesting, kind of a large concrete bunker, one of the walls actually doubled as a climbing gym. i avoided my usual impulses and managed to not drunkenly ascend the wall, which was probably the best thing. it's too early for any major injuries on this tour. there was a large platform above the main dancefloor which was reserved as a chillout space for the bands, which was great because the sightlines to the stage were perfect. i wish i'd been able to get more photos, but it was pretty dark, and my camera doesn't really do well in low light situations.

janosch went on and did a great job of warming up the crowd. as he puts it "the ladies like the slow ambient electro", and i think he was right! we did a fast changeover and hit the stage. i have to say, even though i was still pretty tired, the danish beers helped get me revved up with enough energy to almost be myself again. i think the show was considerably better than the hamburg show, and the crowd response was also much more enthusiastic! i even recognized sumez and uno, who i knew from the metropolis forums, out in the crowd and waved hello! by the time we got to 'a matter of time', the crowd was definitely moving a lot more, and we finished the set with no real technical issues. it felt like a very strong performance, and it seemed like the audience agreed. after we went off stage, someone approached me and said "wow, you had so much energy, it was like a ministry concert!", which was a great compliment!

after taking a minute to dry off, we headed over to the merch booth to meet people and try and sell some stuff. i've been pretty nervous about whether or not we'd be able to sell all of the merch that we brought on the tour. but we did pretty well, especially on cd's. it was awesome to meet people and hang out with sumez and uno during the mesh performance. everyone had a pretty great time, and after the mesh performance there was an afterparty with the usual industrial dj set type of thing. most people had left after mesh (really, no dj can follow their performance, it wasn't really fair to expect a dj to entertain at that level), but we stuck around drinking during the breakdown and loading out. finally, we made it back to the bus to try and leave and sleep. we were still pretty tired, so we went to bed pretty much immediately. however, da5id and i were woken up again by something that sounded like an einsturzende neubauten concert at a deafening level at some early hour. it turns out that we were once again on a ferry, but taking a slightly different route, so the ferry ride lasted about 4 hours or so. yep, all in a days work, i suppose.

we would like to thank: brian and martin for putting the show together, our excellent soundguy (i'm sorry i forgot your name, you did a great job), sumez and uno, the staff at forbraendingen for all the awesome food, jesper for the excellent live photos (these will be on our myspace soon!), everyone else that we met in copenhagen!!! if i forgot your name, blame it on the tuborg!! we'll be back to copenhagen for sure, thanks for showing us how you rock it!!!