rolo tomassi

Tumblr

2009-10-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

Hey,
So we've started using tumblr now. It looks better and more people seem to be following it...
Keep up with our shenanigans over at http://rolotomassi.tumblr.com

James

UPDATE/VAGUE NEWS

2009-09-25T04:14:00.000-07:00

HELLO.

Rolo Tomassi DJ sets this week!!

Saturday 26th September
Nation of Shopkeepers, Leeds

+++TUBELORD (LIVE)+++
+++ROLO TOMASSI (DJ SET)+++
+++DUTCH UNCLES (LIVE)+++

Doors 8pm
FREE entry before 10pm
£3/£2 afterwards

-------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday 30th September
Tiger Lounge, Manchester

CRACK YR SKULL - LAUNCH NIGHT

+++ ROLO TOMASSI GUEST DJ'S +++
+++ CRACK YR SKULL DJ'S +++
+++ EXPECT DELAYS ZINE LAUNCH +++
+++ THE STRIP COMIX STALL +++
+++ NIGHT OF THE LIVING THREAD STALL +++

9PM-LATE
£2 entry
-------------------------------------------------------------

Also, our very own Ed Tomassi has began a task that we've had in mind since the start of summer! We purchased one of those Flip Cameras with the intention of documenting our summer travels! Ed has put together the first in what will be a series of awesome video montages. This one starts at the beginning of course. Nova Rock in June. More of these to follow...

END HYSTERICS

2009-09-16T04:15:00.000-07:00

Alright so this is largely copied from the release that was sent out but its worded fairly well so here it is again...

"Saturday 3rd October
SEXBEAT presents End Hysterics, in association with Holy Roar and Fear & Records.
The Rest Is Noise
442 Brixton Road
London

Playing live:
Rolo Tomassi
SECRET SUPPORT
Pulled Apart By Horses
Decimals
Throats

With special guest DJs including Blood Red Shoes, Goldsmiths WI and more

From 8pm – 3am | £5 adv entry seetickets.com

Thursday 8th October
Iron Wagon presents End Hysterics, in association with Sexbeat, Holy Roar and Fear & Records
The Brudenell Social Club
The Club House
33 Queens Road
Leeds

Playing Live:
Rolo Tomassi
SECRET SUPPORT
Special Guests
Holy State

With special guest DJs including Grammatics and plenty more @ the aftershow party at the Nation of Shopkeepers

From 8pm – 2am | £8 adv entry seetickets.com

These special shows are last time the we will play London and Leeds until 2010 as part of two exclusive North / South UK shows before we go to the United States to record our second album. We've chosen support bands that made a huge contribution to our last few tours.

There will be exclusive merchandise at the event including a limited release and t-shirt that will not be available anywhere else."

Buy tickets from HERE

Summer of love

2009-09-02T09:13:00.001-07:00

More videos and photos to follow, but for now, we have a sweet feature in this months Front which documents what we did at Sonisphere and below is a mental video from Lowlands last weekend.

I love 'the kids'

2009-08-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

What a weekend! Infact, what a summer we've been having!

Seriously. Im not sure what we'd anticipated our summer to be like at the start of the year but so far its surpassed any kind of preconception I could have ever possibly had. Getting to travel to different places in different countries most weekends from the start of June has been absolutely incredible and for this, we thank every single person who has come to watch our band, bought our shirts, said hello and hung out. We all recognise how important the people who have come to our shows have been in making summer '09 a truly unforgettable experience thus far with more to come in the next few weeks!

We played our two biggest UK shows of the summer in the weekend just passed at Sonisphere and Underage Festivals. Sonisphere was such fun. Despite shitty weather we had a killer and chaotic day. We arrived on site, met up with our friends who'd travelled down and got food. We did an hour and a halfs worth of press, notably (and this went on all day) documenting our festival experience for Front Magazine. They gave us a bunch of disposable cameras and got us to take pictures of ourselves hanging out at the festival. Hopefully, it'll come out ok. I think the feature runs next month. Photographer extradinaire Tom Barnes came and took our pictures before we played, when we were playing and after and it looks AWESOME. But yeah, notable points of the day include;

* - Being interviewed by Adam 'Taking Back Sunday' Lazarra as soon as we stepped out of our van. A surreal and spontaneous moment. We kept bumping into him for the rest of the day.

* - Getting wristbands for a FREE BAR. Thats right, all the booze we could drink. It was sweet.

* - Ed meeting Corey Taylor from Slipknot. Pictoral evidence exists.

* - Playing; total carnage.

We stayed at our manager Petes house after (thanks Pete) and had a super early start for Underage the next day. We arrived at 10.30am and could see loads and loads of super excited kids waiting to get in. We got escorted to our stage, this huge outdoor beast and then just chilled out in the artist area for a bit. I managed to get my mum into the festival on the day which she was pleased about. Our set here was intense. So many people going ballistic. I swear the best thing about this festival is just how totally up for having the best possible time everyone is. We got a conga line going and I tried crowdsurfing a few times but just got totally ragged to the floor haha. My jeans and underwear got pulled down and I was exposd (!) but managed to do my best to not ruin any 14-18 year olds lives with a retina burning image of my naked behind. Props to the security at this festival for being totally sweet and not too involved as I've seen them at some shows. They let things happen, did their job properly and held me up when I stood on the barrier. Respect. After we played it was a weird one as we weren't allowed into the strictly 18 and under main arena so we just chilled out and did some minor celebrity spotting which we all enjoyed and made human bodies from the abundance of Maoam that had been left at the table we ate at.

Total props to everyone and everything. We play Poland this weekend. Im excited.
Here are some videos from this weekend I saw on Youtube. Thanks to whoever shot them.

Jamesxx

p.s writing is going well!

A couple of important thankyous!

2009-07-25T04:24:00.000-07:00

The last week has been such a busy one! We have played at 4 festivals in 3 different countries. Lots of traveling, either by van or plane.

First up, 2000 Trees was a lot of fun! We turned up to pouring rain and mud. And didn't feel like getting out of the van. However, we put our wellies on, took to the stage and played a rager! It was loads of fun. I (Ed) took part in a drumming study, organised by Simon de la Rue of the University of Gloucestershire. Basically, if i was to play an hour long Rolo Tomassi set, i would burn 900 calories! I may be taking part in further data collection for this, so will keep you posted.

Next! Dour! Dour was a nice little village. We ate some sweet pizza there one night. It was good to see some old guard Tomassi family members Ellen (Holy Roar), Mike Diver and Dean Robot Ham. It seemed we were on a bit of a roll and played another sweet show and had a lot of fun! After the show, myself and Eva went to free massages. Very nice.

The drive home the next day was fairly painless. We all slept in our own beds and flew Milan on Tuesday. Then we arrived to find we were in an awesome hotel! Joe T and I had the best room with a double balcony. Parklife festival was a blast! I must thank everyone there who made us feel welcome! None of us spoke good Italian at all. James was able to exchange a few pleasantries. I do regret not taking the advice of a gentleman who offered me some mosquito repellent. James, Eva, Finian and myself are bitten so badly that 3 days on i still have loads of red dots covering my body.

And finally, last night in Sheffield at Tramlines festival. Our previous show in Sheffield was, in all honesty, disappointing. So we were well up for stepping up our game at Corp. It was amazing to see so many people there and a nearly full big room! Thank you to everyone who attended. I must say, we didn't have the best of luck on stage. But it certainly made us eagerly anticipate our next home town show and make it even better!

Peace out for now, enjoy the sun?

Ed

On and On and On

2009-07-17T02:05:00.000-07:00

Hello.
Despite actually having a fair bit of stuff to say and having plenty of time to say it; recently this blog has been somewhat neglected. Apologies.

So we've been on the road a fair bit, around Europe mostly. We've had the pleasure of visiting France, Holland, Austria and this weekend we're off to Belgium. We've been filming loads of it on our new little camera. I think initially we'd planned to do little edits inbetween shows but that was pretty unrealistic considering we didnt have long inbetween shows/we've been practicing most waking hours/we're all a little bit lazy and not that savvy when it comes to making short films. So yeah, expect a mega montage of all the summer at the end of the summer and little bits, as and when its sorted.

Today we're doing our first UK festival this summer(!) and rather predictably, its raining... Maybe if you're not coming to this festival you could go to the cinema but I warn you, Ed said the new Harry Potter film isn't that good. This may have been because he read the book the night before and was more aware of the glaring errors in all the HP book to film transitions. It should be pointed out that we watched all 5 films during 2 days of travelling a few weekends ago. It was awesome.

James.

Eurockeenes

2009-07-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

This festival was AMAZING. Beautiful location, amazing line-up and the weather was insane. Its in a region of France called Belfort. Its a pretty quiet place all year round until the festival Im told. Its pretty odd, me and Joe N did a French exchange there when we were 15. Bizarre to go back and play the festival! I managed to meet up with my exchange student which was really awesome and we caught up with the Dananananaykroyd dudes briefly and got to hang out with The Bronx too. Im hoping to put together a video montage from this weekend (as well as one from Nova Rock last weekend) but for now heres a video of us playing Jealous Bones. More words to come on this festival when I can articulate better...

James

p.s my 'editing skills' are limited. Windows Movie Maker FTW.

Album number two.

2009-06-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

Hello All.
I write this in a house that is being packed down in Nottingham. The lease is up and me and my housemates are moving on. I've lived here for the last 9 months and its been absolutely amazing. Im very fortunate to have found incredibly sympathetic employers who have been nothing but supportive of our hectic touring schedule which has meant me disappearing for weeks on end. All that said, in terms of us getting new material written, me living 50 miles from the others has been fairly counter productive so, for the summer, Im moving back to Sheffield so we can concentrate on writing our new record.

It hasn't been discussed outside of the band much but we're now ready and focused in terms of writing. We have a lot of ideas, some skeletons of songs, some killer new equipment and the desire and drive to make the best possible sophomore album we can make. I'd talk about what its going to sound like but until its actually written fully I couldn't properly put it into words without just using a load of bullshit expletives. So just prepare yourself.

/////

In other news we bought one of those flip video cameras so we'll hopefully be filming some 'hilarious' scenes and making 'totally pro edited' footage from our travels around the festivals we're doing this summer. Zing.

James xx

New 7" Details announced...

2009-06-25T03:11:00.001-07:00

Rolo Tomassi/Throats split 7” vinyl unleashed August 3rd on Holy Roar Records / Hassle

Holy Roar Records and Hassle are proud to present a unique collaboration between the two labels – a split 7” vinyl co-released between Hassle and Holy Roar Records featuring Rolo Tomassi and Throats. However, rather than simply present album tracks, b-sides or the like, both bands have recorded covers of the others work. Rolo Tomassi add synthscapes and haunting vocals to a medley of ‘Headclouds/Reign of Low’ whilst Throats turn ‘I Love Turbulence’ into a caustic blackmetalsludge nightmare.

Strictly limited to 500 copies, 250 copies will come in Hassle packaging (direct from Hassle only, natch) whilst the other 250 will be in Holy Roar packaging (available direct from, surprise surprise, Holy Roar). Buy both to have all versions of this release!

This release also forms the third part of the Rolo Tomassi Subs Club. All existing members will, of course, receive this as part of the subscription. The Subs club is still available from the Hassle webstore and already includes split vinyl releases with The Bronx/Fucked Up and Cancer Bats.

VOTE RT @ KERRANG AWARDS!

2009-06-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

Hello.

Its that time of year again when Kerrang! start the voting for their awards in August.
This year, we need all of you to help us win the Best British Newcomer.

Alls you have to do is go to: http://awards.kerrang.com/BestBritishNewcomer.aspx and type ROLO TOMASSI in as Best British Newcomer. Pretty easy right?!

Get your friends, family, grandparents ANYONE YOU CAN to vote for us. We're counting on your support to make this happen!

Thanks,
James Tomassi

PLAN B RIP

2009-06-01T03:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I might be a little late upon posting this as its been news for a while. The magazine Plan B will unfortunately not be pressed anymore. Whilst it will still continue to have online content (www.planbmag.com), physical copies of what was perhaps the most interesting and eclectic of all UK music magazines won't be available. We'd all like to say a huge thanks to everyone involved with the magazine in taking such a huge chance on our band and putting on the cover of their magazine prior to Hysterics being released. It was amazing for us and we sincerely appreciated it.

The final issue is out next Monday I think.
Plan B R.I.P

Shows with Gallows in Ireland...

2009-05-29T04:38:00.000-07:00

The day before the trip to Ireland, i visited Nottingham for Dot to Dot festival! It was a super sunny bank holiday weekend. I caught the train down on the Sunday. It was an awfully uncomfortable ride. But meeting this guy made up for it...

Dot to Dot was mint. Most notably, i saw 65 Days of Static, Pulled Apart by Horses (thanks for the free entry guys!) and Cursive who i had wanted to see for years and years but never had chance to. All three were mint, as was Petebox.

Right after Cursive, James reappeared with a load of glitter on his face?!? This must have been at about Midnight?

4 hours later, we're at James' place waiting for the taxi to take us to the airport. James still has a glittered face, and is also pretty wasted. The other 3 Tomassis (Eva, Joe and Joe) had arrived by car a few hours earlier. We decided not to sleep at all over night and managed to see the sun rise over beautiful Sneinton.

The taxi didn't turn up. So we had to book another one.

Did i mention that this was the first time in ages we had travelled without our tour manager Finian?

this is finian

So we were left to our own devices, rushing like hell to check too many items of luggage onto our wooden ryanair plane, panicking about weight limits etc. That was fine. What wasn't fine was James losing his boarding pass! Having had our bags checked, we legged it to the gate through loads of perfume shops with loads of mirrors! When we reached the gate, James realised what he was missing. So, fresh from the previous night, covered in glitter, James had to scour the floor of East Midlands airport for his boarding pass. Sure enough he found it on the floor somewhere! And we made it on to the plane.

Upon arrival in Belfast, after the worst landing of a plane since my Birthday a few years ago, the time was 7.30 am. And luckily for us, our taxi dropped us outside the evening's venue 'Limelight' just as the cleaners were opening up. Amazing. We slept on our tiny dressing room floor.

The show itself in Belfast was great! The crowd were more than enthusiastic. However, our nights were cut short due to being so tired and stupid enough to not sleep at all the previous night.

Dublin! I've never looked around Dublin properly and we've been there 3 times now. This time was not really an exception. Again the show was awesome! Our set went swimmingly and then Gallows played one of the most enjoyable sets i have ever seen a band play!

Again, we were all pathetic and tired and had to go to bed early.

MASSIVE THANKS to Wounds! for lending us all their gear! We actually would not have been able to go over and do the shows without them. Check them out, they have shows over here pretty soon. Deadly!

Other thank yous go to Meesh, Nat, Gem and Grace for putting up with us until 4.45 on Monday morning, the taxi driver that turned up for us last minute, Wounds again, Gallows and their crew for having us! and of course, Finian and Duncan 'disorderly' Ladkin.

Ed x

This is why being on tour with your friends is the best fun ever.

2009-05-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

The dream is over

2009-05-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, so after what was one of the best 3 weeks we've ever had as a band, the Northern Alliance tour came to an end in Oxford on Monday. A huge thanks to everyone who came down and gave the show a totally awesome party atmosphere. An even bigger thanks to Grammatics and Horses. It simply wouldn't have been the same without them. Pics and vids to appear as we have them

For the rest of the month we have a bunch of shows with Gallows, including another trip to Ireland!! Then, festival season starts. We're playing lots. Check our Myspace profile to see the constant stream of new dates appearing.

Finally, Ill be DJ'ing at 7 in Nottingham on May 21st. Brontide will be playing live and they're our bro's so come down yeah? If you want to book RT DJ's for your clubnight/house party/etc e-mail jamestomassi@gmail.com and we'll work something out. Good fucking times.

Take Care,
James

Touring, Festivals etc.

2009-04-29T10:22:00.001-07:00

Still on the road, still having fun.
Bristol last night was INSANE. Cheers if you came and danced, all the three bands had an absolute ball. This was then followed by a little aftershow hangout at Tom Horses bro's house. It was fun. We played Buzz It.

Watch the first of the tour videos by clicking here. Theres also some pictures of ourselves and Grammatics from the Sheffield show on there.

We're also VERY VERY excited to announce we'll be playing at Dour Festival and Pukklepop in Belgium. The line-ups for both of those are great so check it out and lets have a massive party. Or something to that effect.

Cardiff tonight and the touring circus continues for another week. Get on it.

James

Irish jaunt almost over

2009-04-27T04:28:00.001-07:00

I write this entry from a hotel room just outside of Dublin on a rare day off in the Tomassi tour schedule.

Last night we played our last Irish show as part of this tour in Dublin and we have to wait til tomorrow for our ferry back across to the UK to rejoin Grammatics and the Horses for the last week of the Northern Alliance tour. Whilst we've only played to modest crowds over here, the people that have been to the shows and that we've gotten to hang out with have been super sweet! The show in LImerick was incredibly fun. An all ages crowd with people as young as 12(!) getting involved with human pyramids and everyone in the audience being really forthcoming afterwards. A big shout out to Leah and Aoefi for taking out myself, Ed, Joe and Bean after the gig as well. We had a blast!

A running theme for this leg of the tour has been really early mornings and really late nights and having had to get up at stupid o'clock on several occasions, we had to play at 12.30am in Cork. Cancer Bats played a small venue across down and I would have made the effort to get across had I not been so exhausted. We scored some sweet food during the day at this cool restaurant. Food is expensive in Ireland though and my lack of Euros has hit my stomach hard on a few occasions. Props to Bean for lending me money. Yeah.

Last night we played Dublin and now, as aforementioned, Im in a hotel room pondering what to do with my day off. Any thoughts, please comment. I still have the majority of the day left to waste.

The first in a series of tour videos shot by Mr James Brown will appear on www.drownedinsound.com shortly. Watch that space.

James

There were a group of young kids from Sheffield...

2009-04-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

Hello All.
A huge thanks to those of you who have made it out to shows so far. We're having an amazing time with Grammatics and the Horses (James Brown returns!) but are currently alone in Ireland. Last night we played Belfast with the mighty Cancer Bats who were absolutely incredible and tonight we'll be playing our first ever Irish headline show in Limerick. We can't wait. We have two more Irish shows in Cork and Dublin then return to England to wrap things up on the Northern Alliance tour and tear up Brighton with Gallows.

If you've been to any shows, we'd love to hear what you thought, see photos etc.
If we haven't been to your town/city yet, expect serious good times. Tell us where we should go in the day, tell us where we can party at night etc. We're at the halfway point on our longest headline tour to date and we're still ready for more.

Here are some things which have happened already, starting with a sweet video of a new Rolo Tomassi offshoot; Bitch Waltz.

Me, Joe and Si outside some important building in Belfast.

RT, Grammatics & The Horses. Plus these two stoners. I have no idea where they came from.

Much Love,
James

Oh, Hello Video

2009-04-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Directed by Jonny Carter.

It continues...

2009-04-20T04:49:00.000-07:00

So we've almost been on the road for a week and we're holding up ok! The last few days in particular have been amazing fun. The Horses have joined us but alas, no James Brown. Sam Pryor is doing a great job as his stand in though and has some of the best facial hair you'll see this year.

Since the last entry we've torn up Nottingham, Manchester and Leeds. Living in Notts, I had a great time going back and getting to hang out in my house. I also got the broken key on my Synth fixed and I apologise if you were at one of the shows where it 'sounded a bit weird'. My mum told me it was really noticeable... But yeah, it was basically just dead dirty inside. Due to my intense naivety with electronics I literally paid a man £20 to just clean it. I need to learn about these kind of things so I can stop haemorrahging money.

We still have a good amount of time left on this tour and personally, Im well excited. Pictures will gradually appear and the entries on this blog may look a bit less dull.

Middlesborough tonight!

James

woundswoundwounds

2009-04-16T08:49:00.000-07:00

Day 3 brings us to Wrexham. Last night we played our hometown of Sheffield to family, friends and others alike. It was a nice enough. We played Fantasia for the first time in a long time and the only real issue was an out of tune synth (woops). Prior to that all eyes (in our and Grammatics dressing rooms had been on both Champions League matches. Suffice to say, I was dead chuffed with a 3-0 Arsenal win and with Owen Grammatics being a United fan, semi-final night when we play Cardiff could be interesting...

See you later Villareal.

On tour now!

2009-04-15T02:53:00.000-07:00

Our tour started yesterday in Leicester and we had a great first night. Thanks to everyone that came down, chatted and danced. Also a big shout out to Simon and Duncan, the new members of our touring party and to the Grammatics folk. They put on a killer show last night and I cant wait to watch them nightly for the next three weeks.

Unfortunately the Horses couldn't make last night due to James Brown's (yep, their guitarist is GENUINELY called that) infected knee but we hope they can rejoin us soon and wish James a speedy recovery.

We're in Sheffield tonight and are on the road for the next 3 weeks. Check the posts below for dates. We have our new 7" with Cancer Bats with us as well as a shit tonne of merch so help us free up some space in the van!

See you at the front.
James

Synth Scare

2009-04-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we set up to practice and my synth blew a fuse. It was assumed this would be an easy thing to fix, so we bought some more fuses and replaced it. That then blew too. One by one, several of the fuses we had bought had blown and it seemed that something was not right. We took it to a specialist synth man (me? electronix? NO WAY!) and he told us we'd blown the transformer. Again, this would be an easy thing to fix, had the synth not been made 30ish years ago. He couldnt get the part in time for our tour which started in less than a week.

Frantically, I searched for a replacement to no avail. Eventually, I decided I'd have to borrow something to use for this tour and hope I could get it repaired elsewhere whilst we were away. My excellent friend Sam Scott (of Youthmovies and Jonquil fame) agreed to lend me the Youthmovies Moog Rogue. This would have been fine although certain things weren't quite the same and it would take some getting used to. As it was total last resort and I had no other option, I went to Oxford on Good Friday and collected it. Took it home to practice and it just wasn't having any of it. Started to panic. Tried using a second MicroKorg and it sounded balls. Tried using a Yamaha Portasound keyboard. Terrible idea. All the while, my wonderful CS5 just stared at me in all its broken glory.

I started trying to hunt something down on the internet. Nothing on eBay. A few old listings on stuff like Gumtree. I had really started to worry earlier today when I thought I'd have one last check on Google. To my complete suprise, one turned up. It was in Bournemouth, a bit of a mission but do-able. I immediately contacted the seller and waited patiently. Within 2 hours or so he had replied and a pick up by our tour manager/soundman extrodinaire Finian had been arranged. Thank fuck.

So yeah, whilst it hadn't really been documented (other than updates off my Facebook) for a while I was really really worried that our tour, or at least my part in it, would have been ruined but thank god for the internet and its ability to let my shopping grasp reach across the country.

Thanks to Ian (seller, total dude by the sounds) and Finian for collecting it.

See you on the road.
Jamesx

TOUR/MERCH/FUN/BANDS/LOL

2009-04-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

Yo.

Now we're all back and have totally gathered ourselves after the sensationally good time in Austin, we have some business to attend to. I'm sure you all know we are about to head out on an amazing tour....."THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE TOUR" (no offence you lot from't south but we thought of it and it made us laugh. That's how we roll... Deal with it).

Pulled Apart by Horses and Grammatics (both from Leeds) will be joining us!

Also, Leeds (and sort of Norwich) based Holy State are to be playing the Leeds show at the Faversham. As usually goes for the bands we play with, they are swell. I played with them when I drummed for Throats in London back in January. Most impressive.

For the duration of "The Northern Alliance Tour", we will have our beautiful range of merch. Get inquisitive with it. We are almost sold out of BLUE 12" LP version of our self-titled EP. The totally wicked Danger! Laser! Phaser! Razor! records have sent us a few more copies. So if you want it, come and get it.

And of course, if you grab yo tickets in advance, you get a rad Rolo Tomassi live at Eurosonic EP. So come to a show.

Dates...

April
14th Leicester The Musician - Buy Tickets
15th Sheffield The Plug - Buy Tickets
16th Wrexham Central Station - Buy Tickets
17th Nottingham The Bodega - Buy Tickets
18th Manchester Satans Hollow - Buy Tickets
19th Leeds The Faversham - Buy Tickets
20th Middlesborough Uncle Alberts - Buy Tickets
21st Liverpool Barfly - Buy Tickets
22nd Glasgow Stereo - Buy Tickets
23rd Belfast Auntie Annies - Buy Tickets
24th Limerick Dolans (Upstairs) - Buy Tickets
25th Cork Cyprus Avenue - Buy Tickets
26th Dublin Academy 2- Buy Tickets
28th Bristol Croft - Buy Tickets
29th Cardiff Barfly - Buy Tickets
30th Exeter Cavern - Buy Tickets

May
1st Bournemouth Gander - Buy Tickets
2nd Brighton Concorde 2 (SUPPORTING GALLOWS) - Buy Tickets
3rd Southampton Joiners - Buy Tickets
4th Oxford Academy 3 - Buy Tickets

Ed Tomassi

x

Back from Texas

2009-03-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

Well, where to start?!

We had one of, if not the best week weeks we've ever had as a band at SXSW in Austin this week just gone. From meeting at the airport to driving back to Houston to fly home it was amazing.

Our initial fears of being under 21 and being trapped in our hotel rooms between shows were fortunately quashed by the amazing free parties put on by Todd P at Ms Bea's Yard. Literally every band I'd made a note to see played the carpark behind a bar that served us booze on the first night. The alcohol didn't flow freely all week but this didn't hamper our ability to have a good time.

Our shows ranged from industry showcases on 6th street to Lesbian bars outside of the main strip. All were experiences within themselves and gave us gratification on different levels. If you search on YouTube, all manner of videos from various shows have been uploaded. From the perspective of playing shows, it was a great introduction to the USA. Whilst I was a little apprehensive about crowd response due to the nature of the festival, a bunch of people completely kicking off for our official showcase in the biggest venue we did put my nerves to rest. If any of you folk who danced reads this, thanks.

I was lucky enough to catch no less than 26 different bands whilst we were there, some twice. My top 5 (in no specific order) would probably be something like this:

Cursive - who played The Ugly Organ almost from start to finish

Trash Talk - the most INTENSE hardcore band I've seen for a long long time

HEALTH - first time i've caught these live. The new material is mindblowing.

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - an intimate set in the aforementioned car park

Dirty Projectors - similarly to HEALTH their new stuff is great. so so technically proficient.

Only downers were the lack of vegetarian food (huge piles of meat anyone?) and having to leave. Fingers crossed we'll get the opportunity to come back and visit more places very soon.

Until then, our headline tour of the UK is on in 3 weeks and we, like everyone else, now have Twitter. http://www.twitter.com/rolotomassiband

Peace x

AWESOME PALS

2009-03-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

Check our Bloglist on the right and subscribe to the AWESOME PALS blog.

Its a collective effort from various members of Dananananaykroyd, Los Campesinos!, Foals, Sky Larkin, Johnny Foreigner and ourselves.

Super sweet times.

x

Northern Alliance Headline Dates!

2009-03-09T03:26:00.000-07:00

Yo!

We just finished one UK tour so heres another! We'll be touring these fair Isles with our buddies Grammatics and Pulled Apart By Horses. They join us for all dates except Ireland which we're doing with The Wounds and we have Holy State with us in Leeds instead of Grammatics.

Furthermore, if you buy an advance ticket for this tour through the blog posted on our myspace you can recieve an exclusive download of a digital only EP - Rolo Tomassi Live @ Eurosonic!

Tracklisting:

Oh, Hello Ghost

I Love Turbulence

Beatrotter

Cirque Du Funk

Fofteen

April

14th Leicester The Musician

15th Sheffield The Plug

16th Wrexham Central Station

17th Nottingham The Bodega

18th Manchester Satans Hollow

19th Leeds The Faversham

20th Middlesborough Uncle Alberts

21st Liverpool Barfly

22nd Glasgow Stereo

23rd Belfast Auntie Annies

24th Limerick Dolans (Upstairs)

25th Dublin Academy 2

26th Cork Cyprus Avenue

28th Bristol Croft

29th Cardiff Barfly

30th Exeter Cavern

May

1st Bournemouth Gander

2nd Brighton Concorde 2 (SUPPORTING GALLOWS)

3rd Southampton Joiners

4th Oxford Academy 3

shred update!

2009-03-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

Hey Hey,
So its already day 5 of the shred yr face tour. Shows have been played, friendships have been made and good times have been had. We did an instore yesterday that was real good fun at puregroove records in London then went and saw The Bronx play a sweet set at Roughtrade.

Today we're in Cardiff and the travelling circus will continue til Friday.

Thanks to all who have been out to shows so far!

Jamesx

SHRED YR FACE 2!

2009-02-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we go on tour with The Bronx and Fucked Up. If you were unaware of this, have you been living under a rock?!

But yeah, tour, sweet. We have shit tonnes of new merch, a new song to play every night and all the energy that having almost 6 weeks of playing shows has given us.

We're also pleased to announce that we'll be performing instore at Purgroove Records on March 1st. It starts at 3pm but dont fret, its a sunday!

Killer.

James

Keyboard For Sale!

2009-02-19T07:46:00.000-08:00

Due to a severe lack of money and the fact the I don't use it anymore, I'm parting ways with a Yamaha SHS-10 Keytar/Midi keyboard. It's listed on e-bay here and is currently going for an absolute steal! Its a fun little keyboard and looks like this...

we have a forum

2009-02-17T05:32:00.001-08:00

http://rolotomassi.ownforum.org

get involved if yr into that sort of thing.

jamesx

New Video!

2009-02-16T03:52:00.001-08:00

Below is a sweet little edit of some live footage and an interview at Underage Festival's Xmas Party at the Scala. Enjoy x

Tomassi week starting 9th february 2009:Inane Babbling

2009-02-13T06:26:00.000-08:00

We haven't done anything interesting so I'm going to write about my bizarre problem with coincidences. I've had several phases of this, the first one being that every time i looked at the time it was 11:11. The problem wasn't a broken clock, but the fact that every time i felt the need to know what the time was, it was the same time. Shortly after this it changed to the classic 'every-time-I-think-about-a-Simpsons-episode-that's-the-one-they're-showing-at-6pm-on-Channel 4', of which I know I am not the only sufferer.

Then last night I was reading about the actor Elliott Gould and today I walked in on my mum watching a film, who's face is on the screen? Elliott Gould's face.

This both concerns me and fascinates me at the same time. Like I said we're not doing anything interesting at all.

The only other piece of news is that tomorrow I'm getting up at 6am to go and buy a Peavey T-40 from somewhere below Exeter which I'm mega excited about.

Ro-boring-o Tomassi

JT

Something for the weekend...

2009-02-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

that wikipedia link doesn't work

2009-02-06T08:55:00.001-08:00

so just type talisman into wikipedia and go with the games work shop game

Joe T's First Blog: The Snow, A Bass, Talisman

2009-02-06T08:10:00.001-08:00

At the beginning of this week the UK experienced it's first proper snow since... a long time, much to the joy of everyone except people who don't like smiling. Having had no contact with 'the other Joe' since we got back from Europe (he had been in Scotland visiting his woman), it was nice that his first words to me were "are we playing in the snow then?" or something along those lines,
We collected our esteemed friend Thomas Saunders from his house and went to a steep hill that I went sledging on the last time it properly snowed, built a ramp and generally had a good time. The following day, this time with Ed, we built some forts on the basketball court by our primary school and a battle reminiscent of The Siege at Helm's Deep ensued, with no clear victors and everyone dead, we went to our respective houses in time for tea, which in mine and tom's case was the Food of The Gods (vegetable curry).

Needless to say the snow hinders Tomassi by providing masses of freezing cold enjoyment.

I'm going to stop writing like this now because I'd like to bring up my first a serious matter. I'd really like to own a Peavey T-40 Bass. They're discontinued so if anyone can help me find one by telling me they've seen one in a shop/have one for sale/know someone selling one it'd be massively appreciated. I've uploaded a picture of one but if it's not showing up just google image it.

The second serious matter is... very serious. As young men, myself, Joe N, Ed and Tom should be expanding our minds and horizons, at least 3 of us should be practicing instruments either together or alone, working to get some money together or trying to finally complete final fantasy 12.

But recently Tom uttered these fateful words to me: "do you want to play Talisman at Michael's?" Talisman is a board game, similar to monopoly but with the added attraction of becoming a massively powerful wizard/warrior/whatever... actually just read this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talisman_(board_game)

anyway, i think in the last week I've played this game for at least 12 hours in the company of Joe, Ed and Tom and although I enjoy it it stops me from sleeping as the games last until 2/3 am and Tom always wins.

so that's what we've been doing instead of productive stuff so if our next release is rubbish/fantasy themed you know where we went wrong.

Also Eva was on the cover of Rocksound magazine, backing up her role as '4th most inspirational female' and a Tomassi landmark as being probably our biggest UK press bits yet.

Ed Tomassi's Second Blog

2009-01-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

We've been home from our little stint in Germany and Holland for well over a week now. The shows we played there we pretty much are brilliant! We got treated so well, everyone was lovely with us. All food over there is so much better than it is here in England. The only exception is milk. The milk was bad.

I have just got home from a weekend in London. Last night i drummed for Throats at the Old Blue Last. The set with them was pretty insane. Very sweaty, very fast, very loud. The whole show was incredible! An act i can only describe as "the beatles" opened things up. Holy State followed. They were superb! Can't wait to see them again. Brontide were, again, pretty sweet themselves. They have just started a pretty long tour. You should check their myspace page for dates. Massive thanks to the Throats men for having me down and taking excellent care of me and Simon Moody for taking me back to the 1970s and then home!

Now that i am home, it's all systems Tomassi. Tomorrow the Joe's and I will be getting together to start working on some new tunes. James will be thrown into the equation at the weekend. Hopefully we'll be coming out with some total bangers within a week or two. Aside from that, we have some very exciting dates including the Shred Your Face Tour!!!! \m/ !!! and then South by Southwest !!! So far 2009 is looking pretty brilliant.

Enjoy the snow responsibly,

Ed x

Cornflaking

2009-01-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

so whilst we've been on the road we've been playing some funny games.

when people are asleep we have been challenging each other to get a cornflake (or other piece of cereal) in the sleeping persons mouth. this game is called 'cornflaking'. below are two video's of cornflaking. unfortunately, i didnt video it being done to bean, which is a shame because his was the best response.

Ed being Cornflaked:

Tom being Cornflaked:

enjoy,

James

home thoughts from abroad

2009-01-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

well not quite but a cheeky literary reference never hurt anyone, right?

i write this from a hostel in hamburg. today we drove through 5 countries and arrived in hamburg, where we begin our week in germany and holland tomorrow, about 2 hours ago. we had a good walk around the centre for an hour or so, saw a frozen river (ridiculous!) and conceded defeat that nothing would be open because it was 11pm and sunday night. everyone came back to the hostel and i bought some wireless time. i cant make much sense out of the dubbed versions of harry potter and family guy that ive seen but it was still fun.

shows start tomorrow. if we should visit anywhere in the places we're playing (hamburg, berlin, cologne, utrecht, gronigen and rotterdam), get in touch!

xx

2008 in Pictures: Part 2 (Ed's camera)

2009-01-04T12:48:00.001-08:00

back in the studio...

2009-01-04T07:37:00.000-08:00

...today we return to the studio with hysterics producer/all round hero jason sanderson. we're recording the tracks will will make up the bulk of our singles club for the year. its nice to be back here making more music and the prospect of hearing what we've put together is quite exciting. i think there'll be some updates/pictures over the next few days.

james

2008 in pictures pt.1

2008-12-24T09:47:00.001-08:00

Photos by Holly Erskine, Matt Spalding, Lucy Johnston, Lucy Bridger, Bart Pertman

RT guest review on ClashMusic

2008-12-23T10:03:00.000-08:00

Recently I was very fortunate to be given the chance to see one of my favorite bands M83 play at Nottingham Arena by internet words guru Mike Diver. In return for this I did a guest review ClashMusic. You can read it here

Tomassi year in pictures to come soon!

james

plans for 2009...

2008-12-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

we have some pretty exciting plans for next year.

firstly, we'll be embarking on our first trips to germany and the netherlands in january, playing at eurosonic festival on our way. we'll then join the bronx and fucked up for the shred yr face 2 tour in the UK. sweet bill, eh?

this is potentially the most exciting thing we have going on though; a singles club! in 2009 we'll be releasing 4 exclusive 7"s containing new and exclusive material. whilst i can't divulge too much right now, expect splits, covers and sweeeet remixes. you can pre-order this now from here for a reasonable £16. get involved.

james

4 days in

2008-12-14T11:32:00.000-08:00

to yet another tour!
we had a couple of days in LDN before we started to sort out various tomassi bits. this included a BBC session for huw stephens that included a xmas cover of east 17's stay another day. i don't know if its aired yet but if it has you can listen back here.

after we did that we went down to rak studios to do some backing vocals on the new gallows record. we got to record with gggarth who's done stuff for rage against the machine. not bad. unfortunately though i screamed myself hoarse and have consequently lost my voice. i can speak ok but the last few shows haven't been amazing. nevermind.

we joined foals in oxford on thursday as support at the first of their oxford homecoming shows. this was really fun. everyone was in a really cool mood, the show was great and the aftershow stuff was a blast. cough medicine DOES work as a mixer with vodka.

we're now 2 days into our tour with the ghost of a thousand. today is exeter. good food, ok weather, pleasant times.

james

NYE

2008-12-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

for those of you without x-ray eyes, tickets available fom here:

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/40281

do you dub(lin)?

2008-11-29T16:18:00.001-08:00

so we made it back from ireland in one piece, although pieces of us were left behind...
a few of us got a bit too excited and maybe drank too much. this resulted in one case with vomit on the side of our van. it was pretty funny i think.

but yeah, more to the point, we would like to say a huge thankyou to foals for taking us over to ireland with them. it was personally my first time even visiting dublin and belfast so to go play shows there was an awesome experience.

we will definitly look to return next year and hopefully do some headline shows.

thanks to alex, fin and tom for completing the tomassi road experience yet again and to all the lovely people we met, hung out with, talked music with and danced with.

pictures to follow soon.

james

Sup, Ed Tomassi's First Blog

2008-11-18T08:20:00.000-08:00

I'm breaking a trend. James has done a great job so far in being the only Tomassi blogger. From now on, i will join him in letting everyone know what we have been up to.

This month has seen up play shows almost every weekend, with two more weekends of show to come! This leaves us all with a lot of free time during the week. James knocks about in Nottingham now, and this week the Joes have gone to Oxford and Edinburgh to visit relevant girlfriends, while Eva has been sewing at home in her room. I have done several things.

Firstly, I was bored a few weeks ago and bought an xbox 360 with pro-evolution soccer 2009. It's brilliant. I am getting quite good at it and will be taking challenges on xbox live early next year. If anyone wants to get beaten, let me know.

Also, last night was gig crazy in Sheffield! Youthmovies, Dananananaykroyd and Fucked Up were all in town. I had to apologise to the Youthmovies men and go to the Danan... show in order to see Calf by Calf and Pulled Apart by Horses support. It was sweet! Youthmovies DJ'd after the show, and a lot of really good dancing happened. Best dancers of the night were Nat and Graham. Hugh was a close third.

So yeah, bring on this weekend. I am well excited for GenghisTron, Behold the Arctopus and The Network on Saturday. It could possibly be the best show ever.

Bye for now.

Ed

x

DJ Set on Monday

2008-11-14T03:29:00.000-08:00

I'll be playing songs between 10.30pm-11pm and then 11.30pm til close.
Three Trapped Tigers are well worth checking out too!

b-b-b-b-breakdown

2008-11-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

in 3 and a half years of touring we have been incredibly fortunate to have never had a problem with a van whilst we've been on the road. that was until last night. after finishing up at hokaben festival in london, we loaded up and headed north. all was fine. we needed fuel so we stopped at northampton, pretty much exactly halfway between london and sheffield. everyone got out, used the services and got back in the van as normal. then it wouldn't start. bearing in mind none of us have much experience with vehicles ourselves, we had little to no idea what to do.

fortunately, a guy in a breakdown recovery sort of van was parked near us. we tried a push start to no avail. he did all he could and left (it was 1.30am). we rang bean's dad, whose van it is, and asked his advice. we waited and tried again and it got to about 2.30am. we then pushed the van from the service area into the petrol station to fill up and see if that helped. it didn't. we called martyn again and he got out of bed and drove down in another van to try help.

whilst waiting, to entertain ourselves, we played a few games which i'd recommend if you ever get stuck. one person went into the petrol station, hid an item and everyone then had to go in and try and find it. the attendant looked a little freaked out but indulged our primitive form of entertainment.

i eventually went to sleep (probably the most sensible thing to do at whatever time past 3am it was. martyn eventually appeared and with his superior knowledge of automobiles, sorted it out. this was at 5am. we got home at 7am. brutal.

oh, what up internet?

2008-11-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

holy shit.

long time no update. basically, ive not had regular internet access recently. despite not being on tour a few cool things have happened. firstly, our music video was finished! you can watch it below. i would suggest viewing it in high quality.

whilst i usually don't really care about peoples comments on our band online, there were a few things posted about the video that i wanted to clear up. firstly, we made the video because we thought it would be fun. it was done as a favour by a friend of a friend. we had no preconceptions as to how it would come out afterwards and are all really happy with the end result. it wasn't all posed and none of it was rehearsed. we simply put on a free all ages show locally (something we haven't done for SOOO long), invited our friends and made a night of it. its a pretty foreign thing for a band like ourselves to do a video so we wanted it to be as much of a normal show as possible. we all think the guys who filmed it did a sweet job in capturing that. so yeah, watch it and tell us what you think.

in other news, eva is 'officially' cool now. said the NME. read their blog here.

more shows and hopefully new jams on their way soon.

james

TOUR UPDATE!!

2008-10-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

yeah the last few days have been pretty sweet.

we played our best manchester show pretty much ever at the academy! killer sound (thanks fin), awesome lights and i had a lot of fun. was really cool to see some crowd movement during our set too! i think we've all been a little suprised with the good reaction with had from some of the blood red shoes crowd.

friday we played brainwash festival in leeds, headlining at royal park cellars. it was forward russia's last show for a while next door at the brudenell (same festival, alternating venues) so loads of people were about. it was great to catch up with some bands and folk and i had a good time playing. some pretty interesting events prior to the show:

1) on the way to the show we had a scrape in the van. alex got a bit upset (totally justified) but fortunately the van still works fine. the damage was purely superficial.

2) on the way to our friend robyns flat prior to the gig, some wasted guy was lighting fireworks in the street and having a wicked time. it was pretty funny until he put one next to an electrics box and it shot across the road and missed me an eva by millimetres. potentially catostrophic!

following the show we drove to joe n's girlfriends flat in edinburgh and slept, got up and drove to aberdeen. brutal.

DAY2 - LEEDS

2008-10-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

after a pretty hideous day off, we played the cockpit in leeds.

having only played the small room a few weeks ago i was pretty up for returning, knowing we'd play to an almost entirely different crowd. the show was an early start/finish because of a club night and change overs had to be pretty prompt so we were on at 8.15. to be honest, it was possibly the most of enjoyed playing for months. there was just something about how everything came together. the lights, how it sounded, how busy it was, the response we got from the crowd. i can remember just looking up mid-headbanging and catching glimpses of the other tomassi's and seeing how much they were getting into it and it really made me enjoy myself all the more.

after the set we got the opportunity to catch up with our friends who are studying in leeds which is always an absolute treat. we did an interview for leeds student radio with our buddy graham which went really well. we got asked some really interesting questions rather than the mundane 'how did you form?', 'what are yr influences?' etc. so look out for that if yr in leeds!

we return to leeds on friday to play brainwash festival. i think we're headlining at royal park cellars. scary! i was disappointed to find out that dananananaykroyd had pulled out but its for recording so totally fair do's. im so pumped to hear their album. awesome.

blood red shoes tour

2008-10-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

DAY1 - portsmouth
got picked up from nottingham by the other tomassi's at midday. they were late but at the last organised pick-up i kept the others waiting for 2 hours so probably justified. portsmouth isn't as far away as id initially thought so we got there in reasonable time, did 1st day of tour things - introduced ourselves properly to the other bands and their crew etc.

it was cool to revisit a place we've only played once (at the pyramid centre with gallows earlier this year) and to know we'd be playing to pretty much an entirely different crowd. wedgewood rooms is a nice venue and fin and their inhouse monitor guy made it sound fucking massive. this was pleasing. im usually apprehensive about seperate monitor people because it usually sounds empty onstage making it much harder to enjoy but this guy totally knew what he was doing.

1984 seem like thoroughly nice chaps. its pleasant to be touring with a french band and their accents and the way they word certain english things are really cool. they described us postponing education to do the band as 'making an adventure' which i thought sounded very romantic. as romantic as fish and chips and becks can be...

blood red shoes were real nice to us and it was cool to see them properly for the first time having only seen them at leeds fest before. i dont really think you can judge a band properly on a festival set. but yeah, they rocked it. was also really cool to find out that reuben from johnny truant was teching for them. hes a nice chap.

we drove home after the show as today is a day off. this is my first time back since moving to nottingham last week and it feel foreign. had a pretty dry time as all my stuff is in another city!

roll on leeds tomorrow...

blood red shoes tour...

2008-10-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

after having a few days off, we go on tour again tomorrow!

dates are up here so check it out and get involved. we are of course very excited to playing again and to hit up some places we didnt make it to on the hysterics tour.

thats all for now...

last day of tour!

2008-10-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

ok, so essentially the notion of keeping a tour diary totally went to shit. it wasn't because none of us could be bothered but more that we were actually busy being on tour and enjoying all the amazing moments that the last week has thrown at us. i think sometimes its easier just to let things happen rather than chronicle them so desperately.

even so, here are a few concise highlights of the last few days:

returning to a venue we played in leicester last year to 4 people and playing to over a hundred.
fuzz club - in general an amazing show. both us and throats had a wicked time and destroyed the club night. some more than others (namely me....).
being suprised by the turnout in cheltenham and meeting alex holy roars family!
the company of throats and their crew.
sams house and how excellent the food was.

and the lowlights:

technical problems in hereford completely spoling the gig for us. i apologise to everyone who was there!
getting thrown out of fuzz club. it was funny sort of but i was a total dick. apologies to the promoter simon who treated us brilliantly all night. sorry!
the idiot who broke the microphone during throats set and then did a runner.
tour having to end today.

we have white heat tonight then return home for a few days off before heading out again with blood red shoes. id like to say a huge thanks to everyone who has been involved with this tour on any level. all the people who came to the shows, bought our merch or just spoke to us after the show. we've had a fantastic first album tour and are itching for the second one.

cheers,

james

hysterics days 7&8

2008-10-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

DAY7 - YORK
today we returned to the junction. a venue we'd have a lot of fun at earlier in the year.
unfortunately, the day started on a pretty bad note. i recieved a phone call from stephen m!m! to be told that on their way back to where they were crashing after nottingham. they'd had an altercation in the street with some other folk and a fight had ensued. this resulted in their bassist luke breaking his hand/damaging some tendons in his hand meaning they couldnt make the show. shit times. we wish him a speedy recovery!

after the initial disappointment of them not making the show, we were again disappointed on the food front. i'd worked myself up to get wagamama. i was totally in the mood for noodles. having convinced the others it was a wicked idea, i asked the promoter if there was one in york. he said he'd never heard of it. burn. half of us ended up settling for one of the work chinese take-outs ive ever eaten. oh well...

onto the show itself, we were pleased upon returning to the venue that it'd filled up nicely. a couple of friends id not seen over summer had come so it was cool to catch up. we played and despite the chap doing lights not really managing to match what we were doing onstage, it was a lot of fun. during the last song we managed to get a human pyramid that touched the ceiling! amazing scenes. return to sheffield.

DAY8 - CAMBRIDGE
having seen them once earlier in the year, i was seriously excited to get throats on tour. cambridge was their first show and in the intimate portland arms i knew they'd totally kill it. i managed to get a sneaky preview of their tracks from the forthcoming split with the network (buy this from holy roar!) so was looking forward to hearing the new jams which, of course, did not disappoint.

following the show, we tried sorting out some party plans but to no avail. we returned to chateau spalding in derby and went to sleep. dry.

tour days 5 & 6

2008-09-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

DAY5 - GLASGOW
epic drive. i think i slept the majority of the way there or it just went really quickly. we've played upstairs in the bar of glasgow barfly so it was refreshing to find on arrival that we were playing the real venue downstairs. we set up and, as usual when in glasgow, went to monorail records. picked up the first los campesinos album (finally!) for a bargain £5.99. also bought endless summer by fennesz. definitly worth a listen. we had a bunch of press to do and one particularly nice gentleman had made us som 'aztec cookies'. amazing scenes. we love food so having them after eating some wicked veggie food at 13th note totally made my night.

personally, ive had mixed experiences of our times in scotland so to play to a really full room of people who seemed genuinely into what we were doing was really pleasant. its made me look forward to our scottish dates in october a lot more. driving master matt spalding decided he was up for the drive back home after so we went full speed ahead to sheffield. what a machine.

DAY6 - NOTTINGHAM
i was particularly looking forward to this show all week. i love the social as a venue and im moving to nottingham really soon so any time spent there gets me totally pumped up. we met up with friends and watched a dismal arsena performance against a hull team that fully deserved their victory. bad start to a good night...

our good buddies brontide opened up and played a wicked set they wear their influences proudly on their sleeves and if yr into bands like battles and russian circles, you should definitly check them out. what would be mirror!mirror!'s unintentionally last set of tour (more to follow...) was of the brilliant standard they'd set themselves all week. this band are rapidly on the rise and its been an absolutel pleasure to spend a week in their company.

as it was our last opportunity to fully extend our party arms with m!m! we all hit stealth vs rescue rooms after, accompanied by brontide and a whole host of friends. it was nice to have a few drinks, do a bit of disco dancing and generally have good times. we all stayed at different places and on the way back to where myself, ed and joe n stayed, party cohort tom warner decided it would be a good call to play a little joke on bean. recently, joe n has dscovered he's slightly intolerant to gluten so tom called bean up and said joe had bean rushed to hospital, we were all in a waiting room and that he would need to make his way to the square and await further instructions. this was followed by a series of texts between ed and bean, shown below:

bean:
ive just got called by tom warner. is mate alright? whats going on? x

ed:
basically the doc says his face is swollen like a bag of tsatsumas. hes in surgery. we're all in a&e. meet eva in the square. steve will get you a taxi from there x

bean:
jesus. what meet in the square tonight? i dont know where i am!

ed:
hes out now. doc says hes ok now. his face is only a golf bal per cheek. fins deliberating canceling york. what do you think? x

bean:
i dont mind. its up to mate see how he feels. i dont know how fast i could get to where you said to meet x

was this out of order? yes. what is funny? yes. was eds use of a letter t at the start of satsuma a stroke of genius? i thought so... but yeah. we're total dicks. in a bit nottingham x

hysterics tour - days 3 & 4

2008-09-27T03:48:00.000-07:00

DAY3
after staying at matts on tuesday night, we headed to ikea. yes, ikea.
matt had been raving about their 75p veggie hot dogs and we had to check it out. it was definitly worth the detour. everyone filled up on super cheap food and we made our way to the barfly.

initially we had all thought we were in the smaller room upstairs so i was a little apprehensive about being told we were in the big room, especially considering there was literally no advertisement for our show. even so, we still got a good amount of folk down with a lot of help from the opening support your biggest fanclub. mirror!mirror! also totally killed it tonight. not sure if it was because it was a home-town(ish) show for the but they were on particularly fine form.

we drove home after as ed needed to be at home on the thursday morning. i believe this is when the 3 player DS tetris battle began. myself, joe n and our merchboy tom have since been at loggerheads playing. tom is easily the most accomplished at the moment but this will hopefully slide. almost certainly not in my favour though. updates to follow.

DAY4
leeds. we were all pretty excited about this show because we have a bunch of friends who are all studying/living in leeds. also, we've done a few supports slots at the cockpit but never actually headlined there ourselves. even so it was supposed to be at the brudenell (which is one of my favourite venues) i was still excited to be headlining the cockpit.

the gig was promoted by james brown (yes, james brown) of pulled apart by horses. this was an excellent start because we know him and like his band. he was very accomodating, brought us our vodka and we got on with things. various friends arrived and we caught up and then before we knew it, due to the new 'nailgun' (ouch), clubnight, we were on. we played a different set and it worked much much better. a lot more energetic. we were all really suprised/flattered with the amount of people who turned up and are grateful that so many folk wanted to come.

after the gig we seriously got on it. there was a slight altercation with a band that played the other room and were in the other dressing room. basically, dont steal other bands booze, yeah?
cocks. it was ok though because ed had hidden the litre of vodka and seeing as though we ran out of mixer i was drinking it straight. mistake number one. this mistake was pre-empted with the other mistake of eating at 'wokon'. totally gross, flavourless noodles because pitza cano wouldnt deliver to the cockpit. so i started dancing and having a pretty good time. then i took a phone call outside and must've been totally all over the place because the bouncers wouldnt let me back in. so i ran in anyway and then got thrown out. then i was sick. everywhere. fucking noodles. tom got a wicked photo of it which will no doubt appear online soon.

that concludes day 3 & 4.
james

hysterics tour - days 1 & 2

2008-09-24T05:03:00.001-07:00

we're on tour again!

this time its a little different as we're touring in support of a release. its strange but thats something we've never done before.

our album came out on monday and we started with a free show at the old blue last in london. we had been told to expect it to be busy-ish due to 'online reaction' to the fact we were doing a free launch show and other factors but i dont think anything could have prepared us for the amount of people that turned up. totally sardines. we had mirror! mirror! and the ghost frequency come down and play and they both put on excellent shows. we went on a little later than initially anticipated but fortunately, everyone stuck around...

we started playing and people were nodding. we hit a heavy bit and everything went a bit mad. alex 'holy roar' fitzpatrick began what became a running theme through the set - stage diving. im not sure we've ever had anyone stage dive to us before and it probably wont happen again but at this show, probably everyone that was anywhere near the front had a go. it was fun (although in places a little frustrating because of equipment getting unplugged/wet with booze) but we cant really complain. it all added to what was an amazingly fun night for us all. my personal highlight was having to tackle someone at the front, off the stage because he literally wouldnt get off and kept falling into joes guitar stuff. if there is any pictoral evidence of this particular move, i would be grateful to see it. also, it was pretty awesome to have a room full of people sing happy birthday to me. thanks a lot!

so yeah, we finished at the old blue, all sweat and smiles, and headed down to the macbeth where tiger (this is music london) had kindly arranged an afterparty. we hung out for a bit and caught up with various friends and i had a go at DJ'ing, controversially playing 'all the things she said' by tatu. i thought it went down pretty well (more DJ sets please!). it finished there at 2 and we tried our best to find more fun but ended up getting stuck waiting for buses. i got back to where i was staying in new cross at about 4.30am. nevermind.

we all convened the next day and made our way to bristol. in boring news, we were late because of traffic but all was ok when we got there. me and ed were particularly stoked that the promoter tim had provided us with a litre of vodka. this is the first time we have recieved vodka as part of our rider. good times. the show ran a little late and with an 11pm curfew, it wasnt looking so good when we started at 10.35pm BUT all was well and we managed to play a full set in the end. we made our way across to derby after the show to get matts van fixed and we're at his house now. his mum was really sweet and made us tea and coffee and loads of toast. exactly what was needed!

we have birmingham today and there will be updates every couple of days from different people.

keep fucking the idiots.

james

the start...

2008-09-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

our year starts here.

hysterics is released tomorrow and we begin our 2 week headline tour tomorrow. it feels strangely juvenile to still associate september as being the start of the year but for us, it is.
everyone is totally pumped to get back to playing shows and to bust out the new jams live. having essentially had the summer off in terms of touring, its been a long wait to this set of shows and we're going to do our upmost to make sure they're as special and memorable as possible so please come down and get involved!

we have a few birthdays to celebrate whilst we're away so be prepared. i turn 20 tomorrow and our merch boy (bitch) tom is 19 on the 29th. good times guarenteed.

so yeah, buy the record, come to a show, have a drink.
see you somewhere along the road...

james

p.s new lovvers, throats and data.select.party will all be amongst yr favourite releases of the year. incredible stuff.

vive la france

2008-09-13T03:37:00.000-07:00

last weekend we went to france. it was our second time out of the UK with this band and the second occasion that we've had the opportunity to play in paris. needless to say we were all pretty excited about it.

we headed down to london the day before with our driver 'magic' matt spalding. on the way to collect eva from work i realised i didnt have my passport and she probably didn't either. good start. so setting off an hour after we intended we eventually got to holy roar HQ at 11ish. we were up at 6.45am the following day to head off to folkestone. the eurotunnel is a weird experience. we've used the ferry in the past and it ALWAYS make me want to throw up but with eurotunnel we were underground for about 20 minutes, then in france. easy!

we made it from calais to paris pretty easily but couldn't initially find the venue. i used my pigeon french and we got by. it was hidden behind a big hedge. we were fortunate that everyone at the venue spoke pretty good english. i feel incredibly rude expecting everyone to speak english but my french really isn't good enough! so yeah, after soundcheck we headed into the area of paris we were in (bagnolet) and had a mooch around. we saw loads of vans with amazing graffiti on the side and tried to hire bikes but couldnt work out how to use the machine. we tried walking to the eiffel tower but were disappointingly too far away. maybe next time...

from our brief experiences of gigs in europe, its a huge contrast to the UK. the way bands are treated is incredibly different. before the show, all the bands sat down together and were fed hot meals. we were brought out bread and red wine and everytime it ran it, it was replenished. amazing! needless to say we got a little tipsy and then had drinks tokens on top of that. we checked out the other bands and waited for our slot. we were fortunate to play to a good sized crowd who were very receptive. having not played so much recently, it was refreshing to kick it live again and to enjoy ourselves. i accidently punched an amp behind me and cut my thumb pretty bad and had to keep wiping the blood on my shirt to not dirty a borrowed keyboard. nice.

after the set we hung around at the club night for a while, used the drinks tokens and talked to various nice people. everyone was exhausted by the travelling pretty early on so we headed back to our hotel, slept, found food the next day and then made it back to the UK. all in all, a sweet weekend!

james

leeds festival

2008-09-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

whilst we're a little late on this and it may not be totally relevant now, here is our (my) review of what i saw at leeds. despite the initially crap weather and slipknot pulling out, we had a pretty sweet weekend.

arriving on the wednesday to get the spot we get every year we were greeted with rain. rain so hard that evas tent flooded so badly that she had to go home and come back again! thursday was no different with mud being consistently churned up and wellingtons becoming an absolute neccessity. i went to see grammatics play the dance to the radio stage on the thursday night. they, of course, totally rocked it but had to cut their set short quite considerably due to the pidgeon detectives (eurrggh) secret set running over. booze ensued and thursday night quickly became friday morning.

friday saw the remaining members of the tomassi party contigent arrive. having sorted out a guest ticket at the last minute, joe n found himself in the haven of guestcamping; a flat, grassy paradise compared to the battle of the somme-esque vibes of blue valley. jealous in the very least! a huge oversight in the colour of wristbands meant that you could simply turn yr brown weekend wristband inside out and it would be black: the same colour as the guestbands. upon realising this i took advantage of it all weekend, only being stopped on a few occasions. this meant we got to see more of the youthmovies boys and spend some time with lovvers. festivals are really fun for catching up with other bands.

in terms of blagging into 'restricted' areas i totally won. i managed to also get into the arena crew campsite, which you needed a photo laminate for, using the above trick and the distraction of my partner in crime whilst i climbed over a fence. if anyone from festival republic reads this, please dont let it put you off booking us next year! i was drunk and it seemed like an amazing idea at the time.

onto music, which is what this post should probably be about...
highlights of the weekend for me:
friendly fires
late of the pier
youthmovies
digitalism
simian mobile disco
yeasayer
these new puritans
wild beasts
los campesinos!

all the above bands totally killed it. i would go into detail but alcohol consumed there and the time which has passed has impaired my memory of what exactly happened. i just remember all of them being especially good fun.

i managed to get a guestpass for the sunday and thinking that the traditional sunday night trouble would kick off, i moved my tent to the guest area where i thought it would be safer. in a massive stroke of irony, after being out, i returned to find my tent and all my stuff had completely disappeared. after searching for half an hour, i found my tent on its side with the contents of my bag emptied inside. fortunately, only my sleeping bag had been stolen which i settled for but found really trivial. bastards!

so yeah, good weekend!
props to the penistone set, youthmovies, lovvers, tom warner, alice thomas, matt and katie, everyone that wore our shirts (we saw you!), thomas sadler, jack, william bowerman and moody of course.

see you there next year hopefully.
james

london times

2008-08-20T04:02:00.000-07:00

we spent the last 2 days in london.

monday night we played a kerrang awards show with you me at six. they were an absolute pleasure to be in the company of, as always, and put on a good show. it was a bit of a strange one (again) for us, as we were playing to their fans who were totally dedicated. some had been there since 10am apparently! the set went down better than anticipated. i thought id be all punx and try pull off a stage dive, no one caught me and a landed on my back in the middle of the crowd. rock'n'roll or something... was very very funny in hindsight and id had just enough carlsberg to not really feel the fall.

tuesday, we hung out at alex holy roars flat til the early afternoon, got a parking ticket and played lots of multi-player DS tetris. i got loads of new music to listen to off al's mac which i was particularly pleased about. we headed to camden to meet up with the throats boys before their show at the underworld with gallows. throats seem to have the worst luck ever! weeks after having to cancel a tour due to van issues, their van broke down again on the way to london leaving their guitarist mark stranded. after several phone calls he eventually made his way down on the train and got a taxi to the venue. we lent them some gear and they went on and played one of the best live sets ive seen all year. i dont know if it was because of how pissed off they all were or what but the passion and intensity of the performance was something ive not seen for a long time. i had a lot of respect for them for doing everything to get down to play the show. we'd have probably given up at the broken down van but they persisted and it was all worth it. i literally cant wait to share a stage with them for a week in september/october.

so yeah, london=fundon. we're all off to leeds festival this weekend and no doubt will have some words to write down when we get home.

easy now,
james

a week in the world of...

2008-08-10T04:01:00.000-07:00

so this week we went down to london to do some press for the release of our album.

it was a pretty gruelling two days but we got to speak to a lot of interesting people and hopefully answer all the questions that people might have to ask us. theres some really cool features planned so keep yr eyes peeled over the next few weeks if you want to see what we have to say about our record and ourselves.

hassle will be hosting a track by track explanation about hysterics which was a lot of fun. take the majority of whats said with a pinch of salt and try and ignore how haggered we probably look!

on thursday night we got to go see some pretty cool bands at the macbeth in hoxton. white williams and zombie zombie notably stood out for me. it was also great to see some friends; tom throats, steph gallows, steve lovvers, the no pain in pop crew and plenty of others.

yesterday we played summerslam in wolverhampton. a bit of a weird one and we didnt fit the bill too well BUT it was a good day, we got treated really well and got to hang out with some bands we've met before. big shout outs to furthest drive home and we are the ocean for being dead nice. our set was perhaps a little rusty so apologies for anyone that came to see us. we'll be back later in the year in much more razor sharp form i would hope. thanks to the kids who dance, the kids who threw things at us and the kid RIGHT at the front who called me a wanker. much appreciated!

final bit of news. we have a mailing list now and you will be rewarded for signing up to it by getting access to a free download of scabs from hysterics. visit www.myspace.com/rolotomassi and add yr address to our list to get scabs and get excited. buzzing.

james

in the summer time...

2008-07-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

...we sit around and wait for our record to come out so we can tour again. eva is on holiday and the rest of us are at home, enjoying the heat and trying to be as productive as possible.

in recent news, we came second in the second annual BSM 5-a-side football tournament. we entered a team comprising of half tomassi and half mirror!mirror! and did pretty well considering how good some of the competition was.

first hysterics review appeared online here. still another 6 or so weeks til it comes out and we're literally counting down the days.

shows this month:
9th - wolverhampton, civic hall (onstage at 8pm!)
12th - nottingham, the maze
18th - london, camden barfly

our summer in pictures will appear soon.
easy now.