BATTLE CIRCUS

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been invited to perform at Filter Magazine’s annual Culture Collide Festival in Los Angeles in early October. This will be the first of a string of US shows, and failing any catastrophic global disasters, we can’t wait to get back to the States.

Looking forward to seeing all our US fans in October – more dates will be announced soon!

Our good friend and long-time collaborator Anya Whitlock is hosting an exhibiton of her new works in Auckland at the end of the month. Anya is an incredibly creative and talented artist who has contributed to Battle Circus music videos in the past, and will be showcasing art from her collection entitled ‘In Hot Pursuit of a Tale’ at the Pierre Peeters Gallery in Parnell on August 31st. If you like art that is both visually stunning and thought-provoking, you should pay a visit.

In the meantime, you can take a look through more of Anya’s work at arnoldini.com

To make way for new merch and t-shirt designs, we’re having a sale on remaining t-shirts from previous tours (a limited number of sizes and colours are left).

So if you haven’t been able to get to a show to buy a t-shirt in the past, now’s your chance – you can now order online and pay via PayPal.

Take a look at our new Merchandise page.

While we’re putting together more shows and tours in the coming months, we’ll be posting a few videos sent in by fans, taken at our last few shows.

Here’s the Fourth Movement (Mossman’s Epoch) from our show with Jakob earlier this year.

For those that may not be aware of this bands’ singular passion when it comes to eating: we are big on chilies. So big in fact, that soon after doing the numbers on the recording costs for the recently-recorded album, our accountant, in disbelief, called to inform us that we’d spent almost as much money on tabasco sauce as we had on our entire food budget. You see, we like it hot. Like 10-chillies-in-a-salad-hot. Like 10-chillies-in-a-salad-and-then-you-eat-the-leftovers-again-for-breakfast-the-next-morning-hot.

On a previous trip to Melbourne, our first stop enroute from the airport was a fairly kitsch local Mexican joint (don’t worry- we’ve since redeemed ourselves after discovering Yellow Bird), where a shelf on the far wall boasted a cache of magnificent super-hot-sauces, sporting labels like “Ass Burner 5000″ and “Dave’s Psycho Juice”. Disregarding the warnings from the guy behind the counter (“please! only take one! they are very hot!”), we eagerly dragged armloads of the various concoctions back to our table, and proceeded to napalm our food with them. The general consensus: Average. Our taste buds (the few survivors of the thousands massacred throughout the years) threw up their arms in disgust. You call that hot?!

Since then it’s been an ongoing quest to find that one elusive chili sauce that truly satisfies. Admittedly, New Zealand’s own Kaitaia Fire comes pretty damn close to being the perfect synergy of amazing taste and explosive hotness, but we knew there had to be more to be discovered beyond the shores of Aotearoa.

Now, admittedly we haven’t made it as far as South America yet (surely, the true Mecca of chili sauce), but this weekend, the most serious contender so far was discovered. High atop Mount Dandenong- just outside of Melbourne- in a little town called Olinda (inconspicuously nestled behind Olinda’s world-famous Pie In The Sky) lies a wondrous haven for chili lovers. Wall-to-wall spices, sauces, bottles, jars, seeds, powders, paralysis-inducing blowing darts, you name it.

And it was here that the Devil’s Delirium was discovered- Behold…

Sure, it has a ridiculous-looking label that makes you think of nasty BZP party-pills circa-2003, but Joseph-And-His-Technicolor-Dreamcoat – what a kick! As the fine print on the label reads, this sucker claims to be 14 out of 10 on the hotness scale, and if a taste-test doesn’t do the trick (careful now, even the oil on the end of a fingertip will make quite an impression here), the $16.66 price tag is a crafty reminder of the iniquities that lie within.

So with three jars purchased, the next Battle Circus Burrito Night is sure to be unforgettable. If anyone knows of anything that might top this bad boy, do let us know. In the meantime, the search continues…