Better late than never huh? It’s been a little over a month now, that i have been back from touring with The Ocean Collective. We shared the stage with Mono and Sólstafir and for a whole month, playing 27 shows in 17 different countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Greece and Turkey.
After having toured for the whole month of September with Like Lovers already, the next one started only about a week later with intense rehearsals in Berlin. For this run we had invited cellist Dalai Theofilopoulou from Greece and pianist Irakli Mamrikishvili from Georgia (both living in Berlin) to join us on stage for a special live set.
We rearranged some very old tracks for our 45 minutes set, but also incuded the new track “The Quite Observer”, which we had just released on a split EP with Mono on Pelagic Records. You can check out the track here:
The response on this tour was more than overwhelming. We had expected it to be hard for us, as we were the opening band and had to start playing early every night. To my surprise the venues were mostly packed from the very beginning and we had the chance to play to a full house. This usually doesn’t happen to the opening acts, but surely is a good sign for us as band and it was much appreciated from every one of us.
As we had agreed on sharing a nightliner bus with Sólstafir, it was quite a luxurious experience on the road. I had already experienced touring in busses with sleeping bunks with my old band War From A Harlots Mouth, so i was very much looking forward to having a safe place to sleep every night. I usually don’t mind sleeping in private places, hostels or even in the van at all, but sleeping in a nightliner is definitely an unsusial experience worth paying for (if you can).
The biggest advantage is skipping the driving! Once you’re done with the show, you pack your gear, get your stuff ready for the bus, have a drink and then go to bed, only to wake up close to the next venue early in the morning and not having to worry about 8 hour drives and lack of sleep, which can drive you insane!
We had insanely good shows, packed venues pretty much every night with London topping it all off with a 1200+ crowd and fly in shows to Athens in Greece and Istanbul in Turkey. The visit in Istanbul made we want to go back, so i even planned a holiday trip early next year to have kumpir and see some beautiful buildings and culture.
Now i’m enjoying my time back in Berlin, working on my solo release, the Nightmarer release (click here for more info) and other exciting projects, which i can’t yet reveal!
I’ll probably post a 2015 retrospect as well, so stay tuned and enjoy the Christmas holidays with your families and friends!
Yours,
Paul
