What a wild week! Now that the party is over we can give you all the juicy details of our brief trip to England.
It's a story involving Synths , Drugs, and Rock'n'Roll.
Let's go!
Part 1 -Trouble Brewing (Wednesday)
We arrived into Bradford in the small hours of the morning both feeling a little under the weather due to the hideous long-haul flight, which wasn't really helped by the 4 hour stop-over in Kuala Lumpar.
So we find our rather posh hotel (The Great Victorian) located across the road from the Bradford Interchange, which at the time was absolutely fantastic. We must thank Mark from Infest for accomodating us in such a wonderful hotel.
We then spent the next three days doing drugs in our rooms. Yes, we are really living the rock'n'roll lifestyle!
But it's not what you think.
Amii has been having more difficulty breathing, and is coughing more frequently, while my throat infection is slowly getting worse.
The drugs we party on are not as fancy as you'd expect, rather a mixture of Vitamin C, Vitamin B, Multivitamins, Magnesium and a few other basic supplements to aid in our road to recovery.
Then we start to notice a rather heavy police presence outside the Hotel, and we remember the email that the promoter sent us a few days ago, mentioning the fact that there was some protest happening on the Saturday of our performance. We hadn't really thought too much about it.
Part 2 - Panic in the Streets of Bradford (Saturday)
So on the Saturday, Amii is looking quite ill, although I was feeling slightly better. We arrive at the venue and Amii is barely able to walk and looking quite grey. Now I am starting to worry.
In my alter-ago I am a Registered Nurse, so I know all signs are pointing to a respiratory infection for Amii, and I am in denial, thinking that a few vitamins would fix everything.
So we have a few hours to go before we are due to perform, and Amii is barely able to stand and having difficulty breathing. It's at this stage that we realise that her health is now the priority and not the performance. So we have a meeting with the promoter, and Amii is rushed immediately to Bradord Royal Hospital.
She is seen at the Emergency Department and X-rayed and commenced on Anti-biotics.
We have had to cancel our performance @ Infest for Saturday, and re-schedule for Sunday again. All this on the assumption that Amii will have recovered enough to be able to perform.So after a few hours at the Hospital we make our way back into Bradford Central to our Hotel. Not so easy...
Why not you ask?
The city is now full of protesters (EDL) and we are in the middle of a race riot about to break out. We see 17 (!!) Riot vans rushing into the city.
We are now starting to get worried about our own personal safety, and our drivers have no idea how to get us back to our hotel as the entire city centre has been locked down. The Police would not allow us to go to our own hotel, and we didn't want to try to be honest.
You could see people gathering everywhere, from different groups and organisations and some of them were just itching to fight.
There was a sense of imminent disaster and we all agreed that we needed to get out of the city as fast as possible.
The situation was now getting desperate, you really had to be there to feel the anxiety we were all feeling.
Unable to return to our hotel we went to the hotel our driver was staying at.
So, the Parralox entourage (Amii, John, Nic Toupee (Tour Manager) and Mike Cooper (Stage Manager)) finally arrive at a new hotel and spend the night eating Tesco's salad and Rolo desserts.Meanwhile Amii is nearly comatose in her room, slowly recouperating.
Not exactly the Hilton, but we've seen the Bradford Hilton so we realise that glamour isn't essential to Bradford.We leave Amii to recover, while the rest of us go back to Infest to meet the people and do interviews etc. We were upset that we missed out on seeing Northern Kind performing, but we still got the chance to hang around with them backstage and have a panel interview with them, along with Chi Ming (The Electricity Club) , Steve Gray, Rob Grillo (Is That The 12 Inch?) and Jer White (Afront / Pansentient League). We end the evening seeing Rotersand perform live, which was awesome.
We heard the juciest of gossip too, which will make all electro fans wet their pants - but alas...we are sworn to secrecy.
Part 3 - A New Dawn (Sunday)
It's a new day and I wake to find Amii feeling slightly better. We cautiously wait until late morning to confirm with the promoter that Parralox will indeed be able to perform today at Infest.
We sadly leave behind our little rats nest of a Hotel and make our way back to Infest, ready to conquer the world (or at least a small portion of Bradford University to begin with).
We arrive at the venue to find a crowd slowly gathering, that's always a good sign. Our equipment is loaded in and we begin soundcheck. I plug in my laptop and hear a "snap" noise coming from inside and suddenly the screen goes blank.
The smell of fried electronics confirms to me what I already know - my laptop has died a sudden death (an hour before showtime!).
I happen to be the King Of Multiple Backups and so I have a choice of USB, CD, DVD and online archives from which to recover our show.
I transfer the backups to the FOH Engineers laptop and we are good to go.
Roll back the curtains and Parralox finally takes to the stage....(Stay tuned for photos.)
Special thanks to Mark Guy (INFEST) for simply being the most patient, kind and super-cool promoter we have met. Nic Toupee for making sure the event went smoothly for us, Mike Cooper for assistance backstage, Tails for his wonderful job as MC, and all the crew at Infest for their professionalism. Hello to all the other bands we met as well - Rotersand, Patenbrigade Wolff, X-RX & De/Vision.
Finally - Thank You to all the fans who came along. We may not know all of you, but we did see you singing along during the show.
xxx Amii + John
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