Roadburn 2007 - Tilburg, Holland

Happy St George's Day to everyone, even you none English types. After all St George himself is said to have been from Turkey (or the area that we now call Turkey anyway), so it's no problem for people who aren't English remembering him on his saint's day. Did you know that, as well as the English, St George is also the patron saint of the Palestinian people? Well, now you do.

Another adventure in the continuing chronicles of Thee Claw On Tour:
We got back from Holland this morning after an interesting 24 hours in Amsterdam and Tilburg. The concert that we went there to see was great, very loud and pretty psychedelic is probably the best way of describing it. I've seen SunnO))) a few times now and they always seem to be adding things to their live sound and making then performances a bit longer, more theatrical and forever unpredictable. Attila Csihar was performing vocals for them once again (like in Norway last month) and he came on stage alone for about 10 minutes, whispering and groaning into the microphone while he crouched on the spot. Then Greg Anderson, Stephen O'Malley and Tos came onto the stage and the drone began... and, as ever, they were all dressed in robes. After about 20 minutes Attila decided to lay on the floor and fall asleep for about an hour before getting back up and carrying on doing the vocals. They whole set was about 90 minutes long, one long droning piece as always. And even better, a few times during the set they all stopped for a moment, threw their hands up in the shape of claws, then carried on playing the sonic doom. Clawsome.

After the show we hung out with Attila for about half an hour after the gig, Patchie shared a spliff with him and I gave him the shirt off my back. True story. Last night we went around the red light district and took in the sights of late night Amsterdam before going back to the airport to sleep on the floor until our early hours flight this morning.

Tilburg, by the way, is a great place. I noticed that everyone there was really chilled and because it was a really sunny day while we were there (pun intended) the streets were lined with hundreds of people outside bars having a beer and soaking up the rays. A great place to visit. We will be back to Holland for the 2008 Roadburn festival, no doubt.

Next up on the claw tour, a big group outing to go and see Trouble in Leeds.