Breaking Rabbits.


No such thing as a break for a band, believe you me. If it's not rehearsing or songwriting, it's marketing. If it's not marketing, it's gig planning. If it's not gig planning, it's strategizing. If it's not strategizing, it's rearranging the rehearsal space. If it's not that, it's administrative operations or equipment tweaking. Or something else. Nobody tells you this when you pick up guitar or drumsticks as a teenager. Please come forward if you've figured how to tip the scales to focusing on the music 80% of the time, instead of the other way around.

When discussing equipment there's two purchases that it seems we will need to make. One is our in-ear monitoring upgrade. Finding radio frequencies, especially reliable ones, and especially at busy areas or large gigs is a challenge. We're researching options for a digital system that would solve this for us. Currently we just know of small systems with 4 channels, or a large 60-channel high-end solution by Sennheiser. Once we've found a meaningful middle-ground solution we'll let you know. But it does seem like a must more than a nice-to-have. The other purchase would be for stage lighting. For a while we've had an idea of putting up tubes on the stage. Not sure where the fixation came from, but we've probably seen it somewhere and it got tattooed into the subconscious. Anyway, there's a wireless DMX solution we're planning to test in the lab and if it works also at our next gig. You'll be the first to know, of course.

Roko is the infrastructure backbone of our stage show. It holds our IEMs, XLR splitters for quick on-stage setup, a compressor and pre-amp for the vocals, a wi-fi router, too many cables and the main component which is the Behringer X32 rack. Relatively standard really. It's been around for a while. Pretty much all artists and sound folks for sure have its app installed on the phone allowing remote control of the mix, routing and what not. When we bought ours we thought we'd be set, but every month at the very least the question is raised if we could/should switch to something newer/better/bigger/etc. For now, we're holding off the impulses. The technical debt accumulates nevertheless. Small, but deeply mysterious problems here and there, a missing option or two (latest example: a second expansion slot may be needed). These are bottomless rabbit holes, I'm telling you. Beware. Going digital solves problems, no doubt. But it just gives you too many options... I guess the solution is to set realistic expectations and be mindful which rabbit holes to indulge.

Apart from Roko, we got Buddha the Bus. A shout out is necessary because we don't want him offended and/or vengeful.

Since we're on the equipment topic, it's probably worthwhile mentioning that digital is taking over our guitar pedal boards. Tony's all-in for Neural and H9 (with three expression pedals), Ali gave up all effects and even the amp for his Tonex, our new bass player (still TBA) just got an Anagram. The only real man remains on rhythm guitar with a heavy pedalboard, amp and cabinet. The pedals on that heavy pedalboard - 60% or so digital. That's just between us.

We've had our first creative jam with the new bass player. Why we haven't announced anything yet is a bit of a mystery to us as well. Now that I've realized this, it may very well happen next week or so. Codename for the new songs are Life 2.0 and Running Man. One an atmospheric, NIN-ny epic, the other a poppy-rocky-poppy draft that could develop into any direction. We made a list of all the songs in our WIP repertoire. It's looking good. Diversified in style, feel and energy. Should be interesting to work on and, at some point, listen through.

We also had a "strategy" call. Basically, we're focusing on finding ways to get some meaningful gigs beyond Bulgaria. We're looking for a booking agent to help us in any and all of three directions: club tour, warm-up mini-tour with a larger act and festival appearance. Any combination of these will work, because what we're after is accumulating experience playing in front of an international crowd. We got our short list of contacts in place and we start sending e-mails soon. Keep your fingers crossed. Plans for Bulgaria for 2026 are still up in the air, but hopefully 1-2 festival gigs, and a visit to the standard hotspots are a safe bet for now. One lesson we learned in 2025 is to plan these early, so keep us honest on that.

The merch shop is there, but not there. Technically we're good, but logistically and administratively it's not easy. Meanwhile, feel free to hit us up with a DM on any of the channels and we'll hook you up with some Xmas gifts, if you want some.


 

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