Fanfarlo On How To Wait A Very Long Time

Oh, Fanfarlo, how we love thee… Let us count the ways… One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four… ahem.

The band’s stirring epic-indie-anthems are sure to flick the switches and push the buttons of fans of the likes of The Decemberists, Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens – it’s affecting, emotions pure and simple, but lavishly arranged. In short: mmm.

Debut album ‘Reservoir’ is released on May 25 and is reviewed HERE; we also previously featured the London-based band in an interview context, HERE. But today we’ve something a little different.

Taking the band’s single-before-last, ‘Harold T. Wilkins, Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time’, as inspiration, we’ve got three of the band on how they like to Wait For A Very Long Time… simple, eh? Nice, nice.

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Simon…

“Borges offers two interesting takes on this: firstly, the stairwell in his infinite library which provides an endless fall - this is where they chuck their dead, so it becomes a falling grave where they decompose over the years of falling past endless floors of identical book shelves... Secondly, the Polish writer about to get executed during the war, who gets his last wish to finish his play granted, and so time stops and he gets to finish the play - in his head – watching the bullets frozen mid air, still coming towards him, stopped mid-trajectory in front of him.

“I like to imagine an entire city made out of tiny wax pellets, the size of grains of sand. These grains are stacked and piled in perfect balance, each resting on each other in mathematical, fragile harmony. They form churches, skyscrapers, railway stations, sundials and canals. But of course the city is just one immense building, supporting itself by a complex web of distributed forces. If kept in a vacuum this city will last forever, but of course it is waiting... like the remains under Rome just waiting to instantly crumble from the sunlight let in by tunnel builders, a mosquito will land on one of the grains, or a stray thought will upset the balance...

“Apparently we (humans) can now make certain science fiction creations like black holes, anti-matter and whatnot, appear on command by using huge particle accelerators and vast amounts of energy. However they will only appear for an infinitely short amount of time, then they collapse on themselves. It's not entirely far off creating a city made out of tiny wax pellets, even if it just exists for a tiny fraction of a second. Wouldn't that be nice?”

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Amos…

“How to spend a long time... crossing time zones without even travelling.

“Avoid eating for at least eight hours and instead go to sleep. When you awake, have breakfast. You'll now be synched up to a time zone somewhere – someone else will be eating breakfast at the same time as you, but it doesn't matter where they are. Now, when the time comes for dinner, skip that, and instead go to sleep for eight hours. When you awake, have breakfast. Since your internal food clock is saying you're hungry and you're eating breakfast at the wrong time, this will now be your new start time to the day. If you manage keep this routine up, adding hours until breakfast, skipping regular meal times, staying up late, going to sleep later, the experience of time will soon pass you by. Its value will be next to worthless. You'll be crossing time zones without even leaving the country. Attempts to match the hours your friends live by will be impossible on a schedule of no fixed routine. You'll be caught between thought and memory. I wouldn't try it myself, but the concept certainly interests me.”

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Leon…

“I couldn’t take such a bizarre question too seriously, therefore... I’d like to spend a very long time scuttling across the sea floor, picking algae off rocks, and lurking in coral crevices. Or stuffing newspaper into old socks while sporadically glancing at a photograph of a rocking horse.”

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Fanfarlo played a delicious version of ‘Harold T. Wilkins…’ for Clash, to go with this here piece – find it HERE and pick up ‘Reservoir’ when it's released on Monday May 25. Fanfarlo an be found online HERE.

See them live, too!

May
26 Oxford O2 Academy 2
27 Birmingham Flapper
28 Bath Moles
29 Southampton Hamptons

June
1 Norwich Arts Centre
2 London ICA