Journal
The journal: what the band announced, and when
Fourteen dated notices between June 2009 and January 2010 — the busiest eight months the band had.
Between the first announcement of the Parrot single and the release of Bored In Belgium, the band posted a notice every week or two. Read in order, those notices are the clearest record of how a small band ran its own campaign in 2009: no press office, no scheduling, just somebody typing when something happened.
What a band's news page was for in 2009
This was the last moment before social platforms swallowed the job. A band had a site, and the site had a news column, a gig list, a photo page and a link to a MySpace profile that was already looking dated. Announcements went on the site first and everywhere else afterwards. If you wanted to know whether a record had a date yet, you checked the site.
What that produces, years later, is something a press release never produces: a dated, first-hand sequence of small decisions. The video goes up two weeks before the single. The pre-order opens six days before the release. The support band for two Scottish dates gets announced three weeks out. None of it is history, and all of it is the actual texture of being a band at that level.
The eight months that are documented
The run begins on 4 June 2009 with Parrot named as the first single from a forthcoming album called Love On An Oil Rig, free to download from 6 July. A fortnight later the yellow vinyl is confirmed, the colour spelled out a letter at a time. Two days after that the video directed by Casey Raymond and Ewan Jones Morris appears on NME's site. By the end of June the pre-order is open.
July and August are tour announcements. Eleven dates, then We Are The Physics added to the Edinburgh and Glasgow shows, then a thank-you when the run finishes. On 31 August comes the only genuinely national moment in the sequence: a live session for Marc Riley on BBC 6 Music, announced the same day it went out. Six European dates follow in October, and in September the band play the Norwegian church in Cardiff Bay to mark the album's release and flag it as their last Cardiff show for a while.
The last entry, on 19 January 2010, announces the Bored In Belgium seven-inch — and then explains that it has slipped a week because the pressing is stuck on a lorry in the snow outside Sheffield. It is the most memorable notice of the lot, and it has a page of its own.
How these entries are written
Each item below gives the date the notice carried and a short third-person summary of what it announced. The original posts were written in the band's own voice and are not reprinted here; what is kept is the information (dates, formats, venues, names) because that is the part that is useful now and the part that is checkable.
The entries, newest first
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Bored In Belgium gets a date, then loses a week
The 7" was announced for 25 January and pushed to 1 February after the pressing was held up by snow near Sheffield. The B-side carried two tracks from a slowed, blackened rework of the second album that the band had been calling Death On An Oil Rig.
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A show in the Norwegian Church
The band marked the release of Love On An Oil Rig with a show in the white wooden church built in Cardiff Bay for Norwegian sailors, and flagged it as their last Cardiff date for some time.
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A session for Marc Riley on 6 Music
A live session went out on BBC 6 Music, as guests on Marc Riley’s evening show. National radio sessions were rare enough for a band this size that the notice went up the same afternoon.
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Six European dates announced for October
Frankfurt, Münster, Hannover, Gent, Berlin and Tilburg were announced as a short October run: the first sign of the touring pattern that would take over the next two years.
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The August tour ends
A short thank-you notice closed out the eleven-date August run that had started at The Ruby Lounge in Manchester and finished at Concorde 2 in Brighton.
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Pre-orders open for the second album
Love On An Oil Rig went up for pre-order a week before the tour that would trail it.
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We Are The Physics join the Scottish dates
The Glasgow band were added to the Edinburgh and Glasgow shows on 4 and 5 August, at Cabaret Voltaire and King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.
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New tour dates, new single
The August itinerary was published in full alongside confirmation that Parrot would lead the album.
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The vinyl goes up for pre-order
Pre-orders for the Parrot 7" opened through the band’s own site, which had been rebuilt a few weeks earlier.
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The Parrot video appears on NME
The clip directed by Casey Raymond and Ewan Jones Morris went up on NME’s site — the first time most listeners saw the song.
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Heavy yellow vinyl confirmed
Parrot was confirmed as a limited heavyweight yellow 7", catalogue number TIFD0030 on This Is Fake DIY Records.
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A page in that week’s NME
The band flagged a feature running in the print edition of NME that week.
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Filming for the Parrot video
A short notice went up while the video was being shot, describing Parrot as the first single from the second album and reporting an unfriendly encounter with a blue parrot.
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Parrot named as the first single
The band announced that Parrot would be the first single from the forthcoming Love On An Oil Rig, and that the title track would be free to download from 6 July.
Questions people actually ask about the journal
What is on this page?
Dated entries from the band’s own journal: release announcements, tour dates, a radio session and the occasional aside. Each one carries the date the notice was posted.
Why do the entries stop in January 2010?
Because that is where the dated run ends. The band kept touring for another two years, but no later posts carry a date that can be checked, so nothing later is listed.
Are these the band’s own words?
No. These are summaries of what each notice announced. The original posts were written by the band in the first person and are not reproduced here.
Which entry has a page of its own?
The announcement of the Bored In Belgium seven-inch, from 19 January 2010, which set out the tracklisting, the delayed release date and the four launch shows.