Waking from a long dream

As I roll over this blog to wake it from the deep cyber sleep, I must turn my head in disgust and comfort myself in the fact that digital pressure ulcers do not smell. Foouah, this blog needs a shower and some clean underwear!

I apologise to you, dear reader, for the absence, and to you, dear blog, as you must now prepare for getting your lazy ass back to fitness.

It was the release of Tony Blair's memoirs which reminded me that we had released something of our own too, only a few months ago.

The 14th of June we finally released 'Must We Find a Winner' and quickly followed up with a wonderful album launch party at a sold out Hoxton Hall, where we played the most exciting gig of our short band life. A night to remember for us, and hopefully the people that were there too!
The reviews for the album have been good, if a little eclectic. A link to one of the better ones, if you like sunshine!

We rode on that wave for weeks, while playing a few more shows in London and our first one abroad, with Chimes & Bells in Christiania, Denmark. This was incidentally my first gig at home since last century (dramatic!). My parents were there and looked reasonably happy. Particularly as my younger brother guest appeared on the organ. Great stuff.

More recently we have been preparing for a busy autumn where we will once again concentrate on London shows and I have been writing more intensely for the new album, which we will start recording really soon. It took me several weeks after releasing 'Must We Find a Winner' before I could even dream of starting over again, but now I am back in gear and dead exited about the next album. For you, of course, we will be performing songs from the current album for the foreseeable future, so if you have not heard the new stuff yet, try and make it down to one of the next shows.

Love

Soren

15 steps

Right. 12 days to release. 15 to launch. That sounds dirty. It isn't. It's true.



The band is working so hard to get ready for album launch. We have got two brand new players. Alex Mountain on violin and Fred Feeney on trumpet. They are both brilliant but it is a bit of a challenge (for all of us) to learn and master all the tracks we want to play on the 17th June in Hoxton Hall. It will be wicked to play a proper gig with our own sound engineer and 8 people in a stunning venue, I just can't wait.

Jack Cheshire has kindly accepted our invitation and is going to do a set before us on the night, which I am super happy about. His music is just brilliant.

Incidentally (not at all) we are also playing with Jack tonight at the Luminaire which should be cool.

John has taken several cases of albums up to the distributors warehouse today. We are hoping they will never come back. We are receiving album launch posters from Natalie's mum's company Grundfos (bless). Wondering where to put them up. With all the CCTV in this wicked world fly postering has become trickier, to say the least.



Oh yeah, we are playing our first ever gig abroad on the 7th of July. At Byens Lys in Copenhagen (my home). It's being organised by my dear friend Caecilie Trier from the brilliant Chimes & Bells. The venue is an old barn, converted into a cinema, in the middle of Christiania . Absolutely stunning place. Can't wait to see my mum and dad folking out to our stuff.

Wow, some good news just rolled in. My little brother Adam Bonke (26yrs) was just nominated for Young Director's award in Cannes. Woohoo! Amazing.
Congratulations, you little shit. I trained you well, haha.

Bryter Later,
Sorenious

Bang bang bang bang bang....... bang bang bang....... bang

The soundtrack to my week thus far has been performed by burly men hammering bricks off the wall outside my room. Rather distracting and not a relaxing sound to be hearing at 8am every morning. As a result I've been a bit tense, but all this negative feeling was left behind in Clapton when I went to record some bass for the Polly Tones.

A great pleasure to play on some really wonderful songs and read Viktor's beautifully penned scores. I hope he doesn't go all Lars Ulrich on me for posting one up. The album is going to be great, looking forward to it.

I'm genuinely quite saddened to hear about the passing of rapper Guru, in a genre of music that is not necessarily known for a positive message I always thought he seemed like a intelligent kindhearted person with good things to say.

http://allhiphop.com/stories/news/archive/2010/04/20/22177912.aspx

Klak Tik show at New Empowering Church, London Fields tomorrow night. Although it sounds like a cult I can assure you it'll be a good night.

http://www.themagpiesnest.co.uk/gigs/pbs6-klak-tik

Peace out

John

Long time no election

It's been a while since I wrote. Since last time much has happened for Klak Tik. Most importantly we've finished the album and have now commenced the three months of PR which seem to be flying by already. To help us with that we have teamed up with Hermana PR, which is one of the coolest PR companies in town. 'Must We Find a Winner' is to be released on the 14th of June. We can't bloody wait. And on the 17th of June we will hold an album launch party at Hoxton Hall in Shoreditch, London, a beautiful old listed music hall which we expect will be the perfect setting for a hopefully epic night of music. We are still searching for the perfect support band and have some great ones in mind, but we are also very open to suggestions if you can think of any?
Oh yeah, we won a grant for a nice chunk of cash from Grundfos, which is now one of my favourite companies. That money will help us put the show on on the 17th. Great stuff!

In other news, the Klak Tik home studio has changed address. I have moved up the road to Stoke Newington from where we have already started working on new tracks and have got ourselves a great new practice space. Padangle house will always be remembered fondly, but we are happy to move on and hopefully we will achieve an even better DIY sound on recordings to come.

As always, you can see our gig diary on Myspace or Facebook (are we friends yet?). We've got a few shows coming up before the launch still.

Keep your head up and the 17th of June free! oh and don't vote for David Cameron...

Love
Sorenious

Danelaw

I am back in London, after a much needed week out of the big smoke. We went on an exciting road trip which took us through Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall. We saw Britain from it's very best sides. The wild rugged yet green and inviting Tors of Dartmoor, from which you can see the sea by Plymouth 30 miles away. Lands End, the end, or the beginning as the locals might have it, of Britain. The stunning coast line of Cornwall, surprisingly well suited for surfing.
But now I am back in my home planted forest of music instruments, my battle field, my sanctuary.
I am a bit more than half way through recording the album (I think), but there's still a lot of work to do. I really had not imagined that it would be so much work to make it. But it is. I think it will be good though and there is nothing else I aspire to do more in my life right now than this. Though sometimes struggling with adolescent impatience and "too much homework" feeling, I will keep working hard till it is done. Maybe another month before mixing starts.

I have got to go. Matt is coming over to record for the rest of the afternoon and night. Just a quick game of tennis before. Last weeks score: Matt vs Soren 6-3 3-6 3-6. Yes.

Sorenious

Playstation

This week I am working in Soho (Klak Tik is not quite providing enough income to live off yet, haha), and what better place to be working than for Sony Playstation! It's a wicked modern office in the heart of Soho so jammed full of action figures and random toys, digital as well as physical, and swarming with kids with beards or stubble. Everyone seems to love what they do here (no wonder, there's a soft drink vending machine where you just press vend without putting money in, and a next level hot drink dispenser which knocks out a killer hot chocolate in 16 seconds. There's a timer).

Anyway, I suspect by the end of the week I will be gagging to get back to my creaky floorboards and dusty green teas, back to the recording of the album. 

A small injection of normal life isn't too bad though, I think I was going a bit stir crazy after a full month at the flat, or should I say, IN MY HEAD...

Gigs in July: 

15th at the Brittannia in Victoria park village

25th at the Spice of Life. Matt's as well as my parent attending that one, so expect a clean family orientated performance without the usual onstage debauchery.

gigs

oh yeah, only two gigs booked at the moment.

20th of June at the Spice of Life in London. Just a small acoustic performance where Matt, John and myself will be playing a bunch of new songs from the upcoming album.

21st of June at the Big Session Festival in Leicester. I think about mid day on the Orange tree stage.

s