Last night I watched 65daysofstatic under some railway arches in London. I'd been in the same venue 24 hours previously to watch a band who might one day be as good as 65, and one who won't. I'll leave you to judge who they are. 65 did what they always do - they reaffirmed, to me, what it is to really give yourself to music through the intimate care they put into performing.

I know this is something of a hard sell to many: an instrumental band from Sheffield who do things like name their albums 'The Destruction Of Small Ideas' and their songs 'Install A Beak In The Heart That Clucks Time In Arabic'. A band who make no secret of their desire to move instead of simply divert. What's most important is that every time I see them, and every single time I listen to a piece of music they wrote, the endeavour and heart shines through like a beacon. Dillinger Escape Plan once asked, 'Is the man half-machine or is the machine half man?' and 65 are that perfect balance between the two. It's like they're on a constant, unyielding quest to work out what makes great music so great.

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This tour is cursed. Don’t get me wrong now, this tour is tonnes of fun and we're very lucky to here yadadada... blah blah blah... seriously who the fuck cares about us saying every show is great? How bleedin dull... what you’re here for is the gossip and the mishaps, and fuck me haven't we been lucky with them. After the bus broke down again and we missed another show (sigh, good night Barcelona) we're just about limping on our way to Madrid in Neddy the Wonder Bus and a horrible metallic scraping noise fills our ears. Our tour manager Emre and myself clamber out onto the highway to see our driver scratching his bald head and standing in the space behind our bus where our trailer should be. And it ain’t. It ain’t fucking there. At all. Or even in sight. At all.

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You’d be hard pushed not to have noticed a pretty cool tour of International rock having its wicked way with the UK right now. Of course, I refer to Biffy Clyro’s current promotional live run to back up brand spanking new album ‘Only Revolutions’.

And they’ve been so kind as to take some very worthy bands on the road with them. Atlanta’s Manchester Orchestra and Leeds’ Pulled Apart By Horses. Awesome times gents.

The Manchester date happened to fall on my birthday. Which is cool enough, but hold up! It was also Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra fame's birthday. Apparently he can’t get enough of northern English towns in his life as he declared during their set “This is the best birthday ever!”

I tried to make it a touch better by taking a picture of his 'happy birthday' face but this plan failed. I imagine he was backstage wearing party hats and eating cake. So I bring you the next best thing; the wildly accurate portrayal of Andy’s beard courtesy of Tom Hudson, front man of Pulled Apart By Horses. Uncanny.

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This is a hard one for me to talk about too objectively, because there was a ton of emotion that went into the making of this record. Firstly, after finally getting some attention we got signed to Fat and people were telling us that we were destined for big things. We were excited and scared and we were confused, as this was a time when uh..emo, screamo, whatever you want to call it was getting big and we were being looked at by lots of bands (and lots of kids) as this kind of hilariously out of touch band.

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This has got some pretty formative moments for our band on it, and a bunch of my favorite songs. The songs on here that were originally released as a split with Shady View Terrace were the first songs we wrote that I think represent what we are able to do as a band, which is to say, those five songs were the first uh… modern TLA songs. To use a Darwinian analogy, those tunes are like the earliest humans. That said, they’ve got a special place in my heart.

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For the last seven Halloween weekends, the university town of Gainesville has been overtaken by punk rockers for what is possibly the best punk festival ever, known simply as Fest. Last week, Fest 8 (which included 330+ bands, most of which will probably never tour the UK) was no exception.

Right now, thousands of people are recovering from one killer weekend.

Just imagine Freshers’ Week, but replace all the Abercrombie and Fitch preppy doucheness with punk rockers who only have one thing in mind: they’re there to party and have the best time ever. Heck, no wonder Less Than Jake named their latest record after the place.

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