Becoming a band in London (10/12): Dragon kings, dying queens
Those who’ve followed the series (thank you, brave souls!) will be familiar with the event detailed in the first installment of this series, dubbed ‘Shock 1’. If you thought that one was baffling, what happened in August 2016 will either flood your house with tears of laughter or be the cause of a massive headache that will lead to a rupture in the space-time continuum. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. May 2016 was actually one of the best months in Electric Tuxedo’s history.
Battle of the bands in the digital era
In the final days of the Spring of 2016, we got wind of a competition whose prize was performing at a massive alternative rock festival in Romania called Spellground. Huge acts such as The Editors and Biffy Clyro were on the bill, with tens of thousands of people expected on each of the 3 days of the festival, between 12 and 14 August. The contest, inventively called ‘Spellhunt’, involved sending in a song and having both industry people and general listeners vote on YouTube and Facebook on which band would perform at Spellground.
We just finished tracking the album, the mixes were done, so giving it a go was a no-brainer. The masters weren’t ready yet, but we decided to master a single track separately using a digital mastering service and worry about the EP after the Spellhunt deadline. We chose ‘Chess’, a song we still love, and sent it to the organizers. The competition was fierce, but after a couple of weeks, lo and behold, we found out that we’d won the competition (thanks to everyone who voted for us!), with two other bands completing the lineup of the ‘Newcomers’ section of the festival. We we’re over the moon, as you can imagine.
In the press
Initially, the festival was supposed to be held in a somewhat remote region of Romania, but for one reason or another it was moved to the most popular seaside town, Mamaia. Bizarrely, another festival was taking place on the same beach and on the same weekend, Summerwaves, which made us uneasy a bit. But, given that that that festival’s theme was electronic music, we figured it wouldn’t disrupt our show in any way, given the profile of the listener interested in Spellground. On the other hand, back in Bucharest, the immensely popular alternative festival Summer Well was also taking place at the same time, which would potentially be a real threat to the numbers Spellground could attract. But we weren’t phased. We’d performed in front of so few people before this show that the likelihood of the number of people in the audience being greater than at any of our other gigs was immense.
In the meantime, ‘Chess’ had been featured on Berlin ArtParasites, which further helped take our minds off the location and time-frame of the festival. Later on, the Romanian strand of Vice.com published an article that favorably reviewed the same track. It was fantastic to read about our band in ‘the press’ as it were, especially since we weren’t pushing anything. The song just reached them one way or another and they liked it enough to write about it. We were feeling the hype and, wanting to ride the waves, we decided to release the Circus EP on the day of the festival.
The Circus EP release
The masters were finalized by the time we started rehearsals for the gig. The artwork was done, dried, and digitized and we had a limited number of physical copies made to hand out at the show. Holding the CDs in our hands was a tremendous feeling. Cat designed the sleeve and CD covers, using Victor Fota’s painting for the front cover and sections of it for the back cover. Something happened during the printing process and everything had a Matrix-like green tint to it, but it didn’t matter. We had our album! We had arrived.
Rehearsals would be even more intense than before, as we decided to incorporate backing tracks into our setup. Dan the engineer provided us with the stems to the songs, so it was easy for us to trigger everything. Back then we used Reaper to play the tracks, synchronized to the click, and had it set up to change Andrei’s guitar effects, which made his life much easier, as he could now focus solely on performing and not have to worry about tap dancing onstage. We booked extensive studio time in Bucharest and had the intention to book another session in Mamaia the day before the concert. We wanted using the new setup to become second nature. Cat flew back to the UK for a few days, already having purchased flights to return for the festival. We were all ready for the gig, the equipment was running smoothly, and the songs sounded better than ever with the addition of backing tracks, along with intro/in-between soundscapes we’d designed especially for our Spellground set.
We went on air on Radio Guerilla to discuss the EP release, sent the tracks to distribution (we were using Ditto Music at the time), and everything was set up so that when we walked onstage, Circus would be out and our gig would be the official debut of the new tracks. We were on a roll. But we started hearing rumors that the festival was in big trouble, and we started to panic. Initially, we thought that since we didn’t hear anything from the organizers themselves, we were in the clear.
Oh, but how wrong that assumption was.
What’s with the title of the article?
Romania was a monarchy until 1947 when communism took over as the country’s political system. This lasted until 1989, when Romania became a democratic republic. Why do we tell you all of this? Well, because, some 60 years later, the Romanian monarchy became very important to Electric Tuxedo’s history. On August 1st, the wife of the pre-1947 king of Romania (so, technically, the queen of Romania, even though she married him in 1948 during his dreaded exile in Switzerland, visiting the country for the first time in 1992, and never learning the language) died at the respectable age of 92. Still confused about why all of this is relevant? Well, she was to be buried on August 13, and the government deiced to declare three days of national mourning, from, you guessed it, the 12th to the 14th. That meant that all cultural activities would be cancelled. Yes, including Spellground.
But, in true Romanian fashion, we didn’t find out from the organizers. No, by that time they stopped replying to our texts or answering our calls. We found out from the official blank statement that was sent out to everyone (including those who’d purchased tickets, with explanations on how to get a refund). A professional way of letting artists know what was happening, right? We were mad at the ‘royal house’ and the government for such an asinine decision, but, all of a sudden, our attention was drawn to the other festivals, which were still going to take place, despite the government’s stance. In the skirmish, we found out that, officially, only events that took place on state-owned land or were sponsored by the state were to be cancelled or postponed. Unluckily, Spellground, by moving to Mamaia, was partially sponsored by and took place on the grounds of a state university, Ovidius. However, as this article (in Romanian, sorry international folks!) shows, there was no legal ground to actually cancel an event of this scale. Regardless of the reasons, conspiracies, and our frustrations, the festival was indeed cancelled, and our EP release was no more.
Aftermath
As you can imagine, we were devastated. Andrei called Cat, who was supposed to board the flight to Romania the very next day, to share the wonderful news, but the conversation was made up of more moments of silence than actual words. We were in such a state of shock (hence the event acquiring the name ‘Shock 2’) that we didn’t do anything band-related for months. We had put so much time and effort into recording the music and creating a package that we wanted everyone to enjoy, that having everything shatter in such a way proved a bit too much for us to handle at the time. Thinking about it now, we could’ve revamped everything and just release Circus on our terms, by organizing a gig either on that weekend or a few days after, and everything would’ve probably turned out well (or at least considerably better than what ended up happening). But we didn’t have the mental strength to pull it off. The next time we would actually pick ourselves up off the ground and do something would be January 2017.
To be continued next Saturday. In the meantime, you can follow our journey on Instagram and Twitter @electrictuxedo. Thanks for reading!
