Day 3  - an adventure at night

In the morning we went to Neufchatel – en Bray, but all the shops are closed on Monday so we bought some meat at the butcher and bread at the bakery, then headed home.
Up for today are two songs again; She Pulls her Gun and Howling Wolf. Both of them are quite loud and rough songs. The cows are panicking as soon as they hear the roaring guitar. Not that much of an audience today that is. We’re really satisfied with how today went. The tracks sound really loud, thick and filthy...just as we like it! 

Besides recording we’ve been on an adventure twice later tonight. First, we went exploring the cornfields and the forest. As we walked deeper into the forest we climbed uphill and discovered an old house with chopped wood and machines in the backyard. A perfect setting for a horror movie.  And of course we didn’t take the easy way back. It happened to be that we basically got stuck in the forest on a dead and between bushes and trees, had to slip under some fence and make it all the way up to the top of the cornfields again, where we couldn’t be more tempted to push one of the hayrolls down.  Later at night when it was really dark, we went out with torches to the other side of the cornfields, watching the farmers work late at night and watching the sky full of stars above our heads.  

Recording in France - PART 2

Day two – first day of recording

Waking up to a beautiful sight of hills, trees and cows; that’s what we get here by looking out the window at nine in the morning. We get ready to mic up the drumkit and plug in the amplifiers. Then a quick ride to the supermarket, where we buy everything we like...especially TOETJES!
When we return to the house, there’s a dead sparrow laying in the grass. You’d think; what are the odds? As the album we’re recording is called ‘Battle the Sparrows’!

After breakfast we have a quick look around in the village. A hill brings us up to a nice view over the big cornfields. On our way down we decide to explore around the house a little bit more. We just slip under some fences and find ourselves another ruin wall and six cows. We decide to get the rusty old guitar from the house and play a song to go on film. An amazing audience those cows… they really seem to listen. I think the cows are an important part in this story, since there’s not much more livelihood around. 

Recording is going pretty good and most of all quickly. A couple of drumtakes and we have it all settled for Scream Louder. We decide, since we’re in the recording flow, to record the second one straight after that.
We plug in the amps, guitar pedals and get ready for guitar recordings. Really awesome, as we use two amps on deafening volume, nice and handmade effect pedals and three different guitars. Guitars growling all over the peaceful hills of northern France. 

check out the video part 2:

 

Recording in France - PART 1

"the journey and the arrival"

First of all we’d like to say that we’re very proud to finally be recording our tracks in this amazing house and with our good friend and recording engineer Chris Hamilton.

Also we dedicate this blog and our record to ‘Spreeuwtje’ the Sparrow †… that lived and died in our backyard.

A six hour drive from Leeuwarden, through Belgium and Northern France brought us to the beautiful country side of Bival; a small and almost deserted place in France. It’s nice out here. Hills and cows pass your sight as we're cruising along the small roads of the village. The road gets quite rough as we progress and get closer to our main goal. Just one more rough road downhill - we’re quietly praying the car won’t break down – and there it appears … the massive house. We are here!

The house looks a million years old – actually we’re quite convinced it is – and it’s got a big yard around it, surrounded by pieces of the original town wall. If you look past the walls you see a forest going uphill and on the other side you find yourself staring at cows.

We’re getting a warm welcome from Chris, whom we will be recording with for the week.
First; a nice cold beer and then the grand tour of the house. We can say “Grand” now actually, since we’re in France and because the house really IS massive.

We enter the first room, with a big fireplace, and pass through a door that brings us to a hall. Chris tells us he recorded drums there last time. The stairway down brings us into a really old wine cellar…it looks amazing. Up the stairs we go to the attic where two beautiful white and brown owls fly around...; in other words, this house is massive and amazing.

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO OF THE DAY:

 

EP recordings in France / Wickerman film / Krach am Bach Festival Germany

As you can see in the title, there's loads going on for us this week!

First of all: Tomorrow morning we're heading to France for a week to record our new record! Why in France? Because it's beautiful. And because Chris Hamilton from EEK! Recordings has set up his studio in this massive and awesome landhouse in the countryside of a little French village. Surrounded and inspired by nature, wild animals and sea-air we'll write and record our new EP that will be released September this year!
We're dead excited to go. We'll show you all that has happened as soon as we're back home!

Second of all: on August 5th we're driving from our lovely big landhouse in France to the nice festival KRACH AM BACH in Germany! We're really excited to play this festival and to check out other bands! Hopefully we'll see some of you lovely Germans over there!

And as promised...The video blog of our adventure in England and Scotland!! CLICK

Thank you for reading and see you soon!

x BlackboxRed

Wickerman Festival

We just came back on the Dutch grounds again yesterday. Wickerman Festival has been most amazing, a big thank you to the crowd and the organisation.

Manchester has been most lovely to us, the weather was great, food was good and we had a great time!

pictures and movies will be up very soon! 

wickerman festival panorama

In the UK next week

Just one week away from going to the UK! We're happy and excited and busy with making all the arrangements.

For all facts:
July 22nd at DUCIE BRIDGE, Manchester (showtime around 21;30 but be early, since there's four bands this evening!) everyone that clicked attend AND likes us on facebook can count on a hug-overload after the gig.

July 23rd at WICKERMAN FESTIVAL, Scotland.
We'll be on at 16:30 at the GoNORTH stage. Hopefully the weather is sunny, so we can do a right hot rock out for all of you.

We hope to meet you either in Manchester, Scotland or whilst hanging around in one of Leeds art galleries on Sundays.

We will keep you updated whilst touring and make an awesome movie to share on this blog later on!

xx BlackboxRed

We Need Your Help

                                                         We Need Your Help!!

We are planning the UK Tour, 20th till 27th of July, but we still need your help getting gigs or a place to sleep near the Manchester/Leeds/Birmingham area, If you can help us out, or you know promotors/pub owners please contact us at Brievenbus@blackboxred.nl 

The 23th We'll be playing at the Wickerman Festival http://www.thewickermanfestival.co.uk/ near Kirkcudbright, we are dead excited!!