Okay. Here's what happened on Tuesday aka Editors Day aka the best day!
Our Eurostar was nicely on time and at the station we were picked up by Mark from PIAS along with 2 winners from France. We took a taxi to Paddington to catch our next train to Bristol…and then found out it was cancelled. Oops. Luckily the next one did run so with about a 40 minute delay we arrived in Bristol. In the hotel we met the Dutch winners, who were actually runner-ups because the first winner wanted to give the prize away to someone else but 3FM was like 'no ❤️ we’re the ones who decide who gets this' lol.
We had time to go for a short walk in the city, chill for a bit at the hotel and do our covid tests which were 100% negative fortunately!
Then we took another taxi (never taken so many taxis in one day in my life) to the studio. Yep it was actually happening. We dropped our stuff in a small room where they had put a bunch of drinks and some snacks for us which we definitely didn’t drink and eat all, but it was a really nice gesture!
So then we went to the rehearsal room, said hi to the band, and were given in-ear monitors. If the footage of me struggling to put those things in my ears correctly somehow makes the final cut of the promo video and you see that then no you didn’t! While I was in the middle of struggling with that, there was this moment where I suddenly realised wait, I’m standing right next to Tom’s mic stand. And that’s the piano. What.
Anyway, a couple of minutes later the Italians, who were running a bit late also thanks to the mess the trains were in, also arrived and the party was complete. I did my best to avoid looking at the setlist to keep it a surprise which half worked, I saw the beginning (Karma Climb and Picturesque) and the end (Bones, Munich, All Sparks) but I had no idea what was gonna happen in the middle.
The crew recommended us to also wear headphones for the best possible sound quality. And oh my god, that actually was the best possible sound quality. Holy shit. Perfect mix, perfect volume (we could control it ourselves) and nothing gets lost in the room or anything as it’s fed directly into your ears. And soul. It sounded amazing, we could hear every tiny little detail. Meanwhile I was trying very hard to look calm on the outside and keep leaning against the couch I was leaning against because hey as we all know Karma Climb is an absolute bop but no one was dancing and the whole thing was being filmed, and I absolutely cannot dance so no one would want to see that.
So Karma Climb we knew, but Picturesque and Strawberry Lemonade were completely new and…all I can say right now is they are both absolute bangers. Picturesque sounded very guitary so to those people who are wondering wHeRe ThE gUiTarS ArE, well they’re right here okay. Vibe was another challenge to stay restrained goddamn what a tune, I can’t wait to hear this one live again and again and hmm also again. okay and again.
Kiss had some new Blanck Mass sounds in the intro which was nice. Strange Intimacy started off a bit, yeah, strange and un-Editors, but that’s cool and after like a minute or two I was already into it and thought it sounded pretty great.
Then they kicked off a round of oldies consisting of Bones, Munich and All Sparks. I was very curious about how different they would sound, and turns out they don’t sound too different from how we know them, but Ben sprinkled some Blanck Massification over them which I personally love!
So this was announced as being a rehearsal, but honestly it was an actual gig. They only restarted Picturesque after like 20 seconds but everything else sounded absolutely perfect to me. And I just cannot put into words how cool it was to be in that room. I’ll add some pictures and videos to this post, but the sound on the videos is obviously not what we heard in the monitors. You’ll basically just hear drums and guitars and a tiny bit of vocals because Tom sings that loudly apparently (okay and because I was standing only 2 metres from him).
So then we went back to the room where we dropped our stuff earlier, after Sanne swiped a setlist and I politely asked Tom if I could have the one that was lying on the piano (of course I would have taken it anyway but I mean, he was standing on the other side of the piano, I wasn’t just going to take it and say nothing lol). It even has the date and venue written on it at the bottom! Someone from the crew or the label mentioned the music we were hearing in the distance was actually Idles rehearsing, and Massive Attack also rehearse there sometimes but they weren’t there.
There was some time to get stuff signed, but Tom and Ben had to do an interview with Virgin Radio Italy so we were like ok no problem we can ask them later in the pub …which is a pretty crazy thought to think but yeah it was true.
So then we went to the pub (The Ostrich, it was very nice go visit if you’re ever in Bristol). The band joined us a bit later so we chatted to the other fans for a bit until they arrived. We had the whole upper floor reserved for us, we had to climb a very narrow and steep flight of stairs to get there which must be a bit of a challenge when you’re drunk and going home. Anyway yeah. It was all just… very normal and very special at the same time. Normal because well, obviously they’re just people and we just talked about all kinds of stuff, but at the same time their music changed my life, and suddenly I was hanging out with them in a pub. Huh.
Oh and the album played on a Bluetooth speaker (the main speakers were broken RIP) twice but I couldn’t really listen as there was too much noise etc.
Now this is the part where I could go on and on forever about the most random details (Elliott complimenting Russell on his signature on a vinyl, Justin almost tripping over me because he’s at least 35cm taller than me, Russell saying “she’s my friend” when he was showing us pictures of his cat ♥, Elliott very randomly asking me “what’s the fan gossip?” (I still don’t know what he wanted to know exactly, I don’t really know any gossip I think lol?), Ed saying “this is a good one” when…I think it was Educate was playing and then leaving the room to go to the toilet) …buuuut yeah…
In general we talked with Tom and Elliott about other bands we’d seen this summer (The National, Coldplay and Liam Gallagher wearing a parka in a 33°C tent in my case) and fan gossip (ok no), Ed convinced me to come to the London show (maaaaybe I didn’t need much convincing), Ben confirmed god is in fact a car dead in a field but he doesn’t really know what that means either, Justin talked about how the whole rockstar attitude is a bunch of bullshit which is very true and I’m very glad Editors don’t have any of that at all. He also said he thinks EBM is better than Violence, that Silence is No Harm 2.0 and “peak Tom” in terms of vocals. And also ! that most of the main vocals for the album were recorded in one take (which is pretty impressive), that ITLAOTE will be on the setlist again (Russell said Ocean Of Night won’t be which is </3) and… oh god I’m afraid I forgot so much already. Also I kinda forgot to eat more than like half a plate and the food tasted pretty great actually.
Officially the event was supposed to end at 9pm, and at about 20 past 10 the pub staff was like “normally we close at 10 on Tuesdays” so then we all left.
Sanne and I walked back to the hotel together with the Dutchies (Frank if you’re reading this I hope the hangover wasn’t too bad) and we briefly ran into the UK winners on the way back (we were in 3 different hotels because the PIAS heroes had to push the whole thing back a day because of the Queen).
We crashed into our beds and wondered what the fuck had happened the past 5.5 hours, and eventually fell asleep.
The next morning we had to leave again almost straight after breakfast (thank you Mark for double checking if breakfast was booked and paid for, we made the most out of it and stole some things for lunch it was lovely). We took the train back to London together with the Italians and the Frenchies, said bye to them and Mark and Stephen there and walked from Paddington Station to St. Pancras via Regent’s Park (squirrel count: 2! Or 1 if it was the same one twice) to catch the Eurostar back to Brussels.
Was everything perfect? No, the
dinosaur biscuits I took with me when I left home turned out to be the inferior new version instead of the OG dino biscuits- yeah no, everything was actually perfect. One of the best days ever.
Here are some pics and videos (disclaimer as mentioned above you'll only hear guitars and drums):
imgur.com/a/nGXVZ8F5 million thanks to: Mark and Stephen from PIAS for organising all of this and dealing with having to move everything to a day later,
sanniebeer my crazy companion, the band for being so nice to us and really taking the time to talk to everyone, Rob, Marloes, Frank, Simon, Olivier, Christian, Gavin and Flavia. And of course Michèle from stubru for picking out my letter.
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