GLB5 tour: diary

The GLB5 tour finished on Saturday. Here is a short diary of it.

The vehicle was a 2011 Transit from a man in Leyton, already on 190,000 miles, hired for five weeks because it looked cheaper than flights once you added Frieda Lux's records and Nachtfähre's flight case. In the end it was about the same.

Week one: London, Saturday 5 October

"Heizkraftwerk" came out the day before. Anselm Reuter played five and a half hours and Frieda played four in Room 2 at fabric, where The Long Count came back in 2021. Sold out.

Anselm played "Kühlturm" around 3am. It goes audibly flat over its length, and a man at the front got his phone out and opened a tuner app. Mark Neilson's verdict on the night: "Well, nobody died."

Week two: Berlin, Saturday 12 October

The van went via Harwich and got as far as a lay-by outside Osnabrück on the Thursday, when the alternator failed. A patient German mechanic explained it twice and fitted a reconditioned one. We reached Berlin at about 9pm on Friday, and Lena Vogt had already moved the soundcheck.

Kater Blau, Anselm and Ilse Morgen, thirteen hours in total. Ilse played a breakbeat at some point after sunrise on the Sunday, which went down very well with the people still there. I left at 11am and they were still going.

Week three: Paris, Saturday 19 October

ADE fell in the same week, and half the label was in Amsterdam for meetings, including me. That clash was the label's mistake and should have been spotted in the spring. Camille Aubert covered Rex Club alone, and sent this as a voice note:

"Rex, with Margaux and Sacha. Four years after the night that did not happen, and one year and a bit after the night that did, we are in the basement again. Margaux sings over her own record at 2am and the room goes quiet to hear it. Sacha plays until seven, mostly records nobody there could name. I carried the merch box up the stairs on my own. Please put that in the diary."

Week four: Hamburg, Saturday 26 October

The strongest of the five. Uebel & Gefährlich is on the fourth floor of a wartime flak bunker, Nachtfähre's flight case is very heavy and the goods lift had a queue. I spent part of the afternoon stuck on a stair. The walls are thick enough that there is no phone signal either.

Nachtfähre's live set is ninety minutes with no pauses, which sits awkwardly with the three-hour rule. Mark and Ben Okafor settled this in 2020 in one phone call: they play ninety minutes live, then Jule Harms and Ben stay on and play records until it reaches three hours. There is a change of gear around 2.30, when the hardware goes off and the room breathes, and then Tobias Wendt was due to take over.

This was also the night the clocks went back, which nobody had put in the running order. At 3am it became 2am, and Tobias, who rarely plays more than twice a month, was told at the booth that he had an extra hour to fill.

"I had brought records for three hours. The last hour I played from the ones I had set aside and did not expect to use." Tobias Wendt

He finished at what was either 6.40 or 7.40. The log does not settle it.

Week five: Lyon, Saturday 2 November

The van came down from Hamburg over two days, with a wet stop in Strasbourg. Le Sucre is on the roof of an old sugar warehouse on the Saône and is Sacha Vidal's home room, with Les Quais and Noé Castaing joining them. It finishes at five sharp. Yanis Belkacem had a cold and played the sax anyway. Sacha played their last record at 4.56, four minutes long, and it fitted exactly.

Mark drove the last leg and the van went back to Leyton this morning. Round 5 is out on 6 December.