testmeat photoblog

a few weeks ago i was listening to one of my favourite albums, hospice by the antlers, and googled them to see if they had any new music in the works. whilst there wasn't any news on that front, i did discover that they were doing a super short uk tour in april to celebrate the tenth anniversary of hospice, where they would play the album in full. my intense excitement was followed swiftly by disappointment when i discovered that the london date was completely sold out. of the other two uk dates the only show which had tickets left was on a sunday in glasgow. i spent the next couple of hours working out costs, travel times and permutations of how i could make it to the concert. my spirits were briefly lifted when i worked out it was actually easter sunday, which meant i didn't need to return to work the next morning, however the costs started to become extortionate and too difficult to justify when i knew they would be playing walking distance from my flat. it all seemed hopeless, but the following week i got an alert from scarlet mist, a fan to fan ticket exchange, with the possibility of a spare ticket. the photo accompanying this text obviously reveals the punchline to this story, but it can't come close to capturing how it felt to be there. you could tell that the audience was full of devoted fans, so moved and respectful that there were almost no applause breaks between the songs. it was as though there was a collective agreement that noise which came from anywhere other than the stage was unwanted pollution. i've heard the same ten songs on that album hundreds of times, so to see them stripped down, reworked and performed a few metres away from me was overwhelming in the most exquisite of ways.

here's the original