So yes, we have some VERY IMPORTANT BUSINESS TO TELL YOU.

Newsworthiness 1: The album launch takes place on Thursday 15th of January @ TwoStep at the Limelight. Support comes from the fantastic Cutaways and Three Tales. We may even invite some of them up to hit things and blow into things during our set - UNBELIEVABLE FUNTIMES!

Newsworthiness 2: This Hope Will Kill Us will be available to be purchased from January 19th at www.furioustradesmen.com - CASHBACK!

Newsworthiness 3: Panda Kopanda took over Across The Line on BBC Radio Ulster on Monday 12th January. The show can be listened to from http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00gng65 I think. Fast-forward to about 1hr 34 mins…. And once you get to my massive bit of dead air fast-forward about five minutes and it should be over!

And also there’s a downloadable podcast of the show at http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/atl/podcast.shtml

Tracklisting for our section:

Panda Kopanda - A Humble God
Arcade Fire - Intervention
Panda Kopanda - Ocean of Fire
Subplots - Poltis (Jesus! How great are they? Unfortunately we didn’t have their new EP)
Three Tales - Variation
Freak Paeans - Your Fingers - They Should be Alight
AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Blonde Redhead - The Dress
Panda Kopanda - I Know You Are Hurting

Newsworthiness 4: The new website is up… at www.pandakopanda.co.uk. SHUT UP, it’s the best we can do! Our Sega Megadrive wasn’t set up for web design! Unfortunately we lost out on www.pandakopanda.com, it now seems to be your one-stop-shop for puppies, horses, goldfish and, of course, virgins - WWW.ONDERF.UL!

Newsworthiness 5: More album tunes are streamable at our last.fm page. And every time you listen to one of our songs we get approximately 0.017 of a pfennig in royalties. So that’s good. We have also set up a facebook fan page (maybe it’s the fans who are meant to do this but frig it), so please join it. It went live yesterday and we have 30 fans but I think I personally know 27 of them - so JOIN US!

Oh, and by the way, I recently did an interview with a magazine called TITS. So if anybody sees Take In The Scene, lift it up, flick through the pages until you find something about us and then begin moving your eyes from left to right, moving them down and to the far left again with the end of each line, much as you’ve become accustomed to over the years. You might learn something.

Right folks, I hope to see some familiar faeces at our album launch.

… I mean faces.

BYE,
-Davey

Bonjovi, as the French would say, how are you all?

I have finally got round to writing another blog! So much has happened in the years since my last one. Back then nobody had even heard of the ‘Credit Crunch’, and President-elect Bobamba was just some skinny, black guy. Our only concern back then was for the impending catastrophe to be caused by the dreaded Y2K. What a damp squib that turned out to be, eh? My GameBoy still works, so UP YOURS MILLENNIUM BUG! We shall meet again in 992 years but I’ll be ready.

OK, so I suppose I should tell you what we’ve been up to.

We are all currently living together in peace and harmony (a word not normally associated with Panda Kopanda, fnar!). Our house is about the size of a small zoo, or large, upturned boat, and the amount of out of tune pianos in this house has increased to two. The recent craze to hit the PandaHaus has been table tennis. Our kitchen has been converted to a medium-sized sports arena and we regularly play each other for upwards of eight hours per day on a converted dining table. Each of us has our own inimitable style of play, with John favouring the Ma Lin school, Jonny going for the Wang Liqin technique, while I personally prefer the Jan-Ove Waldner backhanded style. Gavin seems to have adopted the technique normally used by pre-pubescent girls. There’s only one thing on all our minds at the moment, London 2012…. In all seriousness I have two teeth missing so that qualifies me for the T-32 classification for the Paralympics.

PandaHaus Round-Robin Ping-Pong Comp Match 1: David versus John…

In our spare time between table tennis matches we have also been recording an album. And I have news for you, WE’VE ONLY JUST GONE AND BLOODY FINISHED THE FLIPPIN’ THING! We will let you know a release date as soon as we do. So, in the meantime, turn your thermostat down a degree and even in these times of frugality you’ll be able to afford it when it hits the shelves. We’re still working on the artwork but this is pretty much what it will look like:

By the way, if there are any new fans out there (ECHOOO… Echoo… echo) we have hidden two downloadable tracks from the album somewhere in the murky depths of the interweb. Just send us a nice, friendly email and we’ll let you know the co-ordinates of where to find these instant classics… B-10… YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!

Well, that’s pretty much it for now. I’ll try and write a more detailed blog about the things involved in putting out this album etc. But don’t worry, it won’t be that dull… I intend to use the word “cocksucker” and the phrase “Inspector Gadget” in the next one.

Stay tuned!

Davey.

Filmed at a recent gig in Auntie Annie’s in Belfast… it’s called “Don’t Say It Out Loud”. This was the first time we ever played this song in front of the paying public!!