Contrasts bedside selection - scrambled or smashed?

Haven’t posted for a hot minute due to moving house and a rather long engagement in Brest, France, where I played at the very enjoyable Astropolis festival last weekend. I never seem to take pictures of, you know, people I meet and regular human stuff, I always seem drawn to abstract images I randomly spot, so you get the tenuous egg pic and bad pun above in lieu of some lastnightsparty shit. But here’s what I learned in France anyway:

1. Don’t try and get into a conversation about nihilism at 6 in the morning in the back of a cab with a drunken Frenchman (who thought I had a bottle of vodka and then said ‘I zink you ARE a bottle of vodka!’)

2. French trains  - ils sont fantastiques! I thought I’d be clever and go for the train instead of flying to France, not realising to get to Brest would take 9 and a half hours each way. But thankfully, the trains in France are way better than in the UK (leg room, lack of odours, lack of headphone bleeds, no football chants, no abusive drunks) and the whole journey felt like something out of a Renoir movie with passerbys chipping in with some (I assume) witty remarks to what ever business was going on in the carriage.

3. House people are very nice. Met Erol Alkan (who dropped some Welsh on me, gwaan) and also The Proxy, who sang the bassline of Return of Forever to me. Awww. And there I was thinking Proxy was gonna be some dark, aggressive character, based on the facemelting electro smashers he makes. But actually he was a very pleasant and down to earth guy who revealed he got signed after sending out a cut&paste message on MySpace to Tiga without even knowing exactly who Tiga was. It’s that easy, kids. As long as your tunes bang.

4. French cops are packing some serious heat. Are machine gun patrols really necessary at Montparnasse station?!