Achi news desk-
Accustomed to traveling the continent for DIY gigs and building their following, progress was halted by first Covid, then the Brexit vote.
As a result of the vote, the group experienced the problems created by leaving the European Union, traveling to France in August 2022 for a 10-day trip.
Upon their return, they wrote a comprehensive 10-point guide called How to GTFO for bands touring the continent.
Chris Cusack from the group said: “We knew Brexit was going to be a problem because straight away they classified your instruments as cargo.
“They would say, ‘well you could go over and sell them’. Well… me he could but i’m not go to.
“When you’re forced to handle your equipment every day like this you have to list everything and that level of detail would drive you crazy.
“A lot of bands don’t have the talent for the administrative side of it, hopefully they get to a level where they get a manager who can do that for them and they go on and do well ok
“We’re fine with those things and we found it incredibly difficult.
“I think we were one of the first bands in Scotland to go and do a Euro tour after Brexit came in, there was one band that went before us and they were a story warning because they were fined £2,000 at the border and that wiped out the profit for the whole trip.
“So we documented all our experiences, including pictures of the actual forms, the places you had to go to sign things, where it went wrong and set up a guide to try and encourage people to follow our path.
“Many of the bands that would have tried to go to Europe just decided that it wasn’t going to be worth it and it was the same the other way around too, a lot of bands would skip the UK because there is too much risk the things will go wrong.
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“There were stories of bands turning up at the border, headliner and support, and the main band wouldn’t go through any trouble because they got a border guard A, then with exactly the same documentation the band another gets border guard B and is detained. for 10 hours and a fine and turn around.
“I think the guide helped a few bands, it certainly helped bands avoid the fines. If you get an unfriendly border guard, which we did, there’s not much you can do.
“If they want to stop you, they’ll stop you and if you tell them the wrong thing there’s no coming back, but at least it put bands in a position where they weren’t are hit with a fine of £2,000.
“When you operate on a small level that can be the future of the band. Some of these guys have families back home and they’ll say, ‘I’m going away for a week’ but if they come back £500 in the red it’s not something you can continue to do . Those penalties can endanger groups that would have done it, many groups that I don’t think would do it now face these kinds of obstacles.
“What we found when writing the guide was that you have to plan for different border guards, different crossings. Maybe someone got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.
“Our first crossing out of Britain was fine, the guy was quite helpful. The French were great, no problem either time in France.
“We tried to get back into Britain and the guard pulled us over, and obviously she wasn’t very happy about something but we didn’t know what because we had just turned up.
“One of the band members is Italian, he has thick, dark curly hair and looks like he could be Middle Eastern.
“She pulled him out of the van and basically humiliated him in front of a queue of cars, and there was no reason for it.
“We stood there and watched this unfold, we had done all the paperwork, we were cooperating brilliantly, nobody was acting up.
Although their music is electronic, Outblinker is a big part of the punk scene and that has opened the door to playing in some outside venues.
Cusack said: “It started as a concept project, let’s see if we could make an electronic band without any laptops.
“Nothing against people using laptops, they’re great and save you carting around big synthesizers, but we wanted to see if we could do that.
“That opened the doors for us to play in places that electronic bands wouldn’t normally play.
“I’ve always worked in punk and hardcore bands, it’s always been DIY and you try to avoid the majors.
“We looked like we were getting offers from venues where you’d go, ‘this is squat’.
“We played a huge one in Brussels with a skate ramp inside, it was a squat that had dozens of people waiting in it.
“We were sharing the stage with a lot of bands that were a lot more post-punk and goth and I think that also affected what we played.
“It would be cheaper to travel with a laptop but you’d be missing something, so that’s led us to be in these crazy situations. We played this town in Germany where there’s basically an old railway – and we don’t go where that railway used to go – and as part of trying to do something positive with that aspect of the town’s history they got these old railway cars. and turn them into restaurants and social centers where they give language courses to immigrants.
“One of them has been converted into a very small music venue, so we played in a railway car next to a river.
“The Basque Country is one of my favorite places, and you end up playing in some weird, weird places there.
“We played in a converted fire station which had its own chickens, we played in a converted abattoir which had become a vegan community centre.
“They’ve still kept the chains and hooks, it’s surreal. The acoustics were actually better than some purpose built venues in Glasgow…”
The group will release their highly anticipated debut album on May 31, with second single ‘Grimey’ being released on Friday.
Cusack said: “We had this song called Farrokh Bulsara, which was Freddie Mercury’s original name. By the end of his life, Farrokh Bulsara was a forgotten guy, he had been eclipsed by this fake man.
“The idea of your true self, your original self, being taken over by this construct you had made.
“With the album, what we’ve done is we’ve picked up six names to try and invite people to look at them, explore, dig a little bit.
“Each of those people tells a little bit of a story, a lot of it is about moral ambiguity. Some people are good in some ways and terrible in others, one thing I’m really interested in is people who live their life as something else.
“There’s a track on it called ‘DD-David’ which is the supposed name of a guy called Radovan Karadžić, who was a war criminal, a complete genocidal maniac.
“Basically, he created after the conflict in the Balkans, he became a holistic new age healer and he worked as a dentist. So you would go get your teeth done or advice on crystals and chakras from a man who had been wiping out entire villages.
“The guy would go and give talks at conferences and it was clear that he was the guy off the news. If we can use these songs to get people to use them as a way of discovery then maybe they can leave the album with a little more than a nice soundtrack.
“We have worked with three completely independent labels, Gold Mold in Scotland who work with completely DIY artists, a label in France called Cracki and one in Italy called Bloody Sound.
“I’m very confident about it, hopefully we’ve brought our A game.”
