Moriarty on tour: Paloma, Nîmes 14.01.2015
As we drive away from Marseille along the rocky coast, a squadron of canadair water bombers fly low overhead and drop their tons of water in the sea. We approach Nîmes, the Paloma is a brand new venue positioned in the suburban zones, a kind of spaceship-alien-cyber-architecture clad with metal facetting, marooned in the middle of parking lots and highways. Luckily the inside of the building is welcoming and well-thought, around a central patio and wide dressing-rooms. Makes it quite easy to feel at home. The venue itself is huge, cave-like, walls covered with weird cellular purple patterns. All afternoon we work on the mixes of our new album, listening and cutting and trying last-minute ideas. At 7pm the audience floods the patio – some people coming in from Montpellier, Arles, Matseille – and The Skeleton Band opens the show in front of over a thousand people. The show goes smooth. Later in the night we gather in the red club for the aftershow party with the staff, Eric and Arthur hitting the stage with the local band for an improvised sessions of sweaty soul and blues. Then it’s time to retreat into the apartments on the top floor of the venue, but we end up working on the Epitaph mixes until exhaustion makes us sleep an hour or two. At 8:30am we’re back on the road.
