S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

Jacko is on the TV. Mylene Klass is on the TV. La Roux is on the TV.

TV is off…

Sorry for the ridiculous delay in posting - nearly three months. I’m going to adopt the Leo Abrahams model and post once a month… hopefully in that amount of time I can scramble enough hit and miss nonsense to fill a couple of paragraphs, rather than let the blog languish in the appalling void it has become of late.

I love these summer evenings. There’s something really magical about sitting out in a suburban London garden at night after one of those super-warm days. A smell, a gentle drift of wind and sound, windows open in the neighbourhood. If you have a fine Scotch in hand, it only serves to accentuate the joy of this banal beauty. The rain will come back and it will return to what is more familiar, but I’ve enjoyed the heatwave. Plus it made Wimbledon all the more magical.

So what news? On the music front, its been cool. I’ve been getting quite excited about doing some more stuff recently - from getting guitars out and practicing, to working with Apple demonstrating MainStage, to producing and mixing some new stuff for myself and some others… and MONIO (more in a sec).

I was very inspired after working - albeit briefly - with Foy on his EPs. I just found a clarity in helping Foy complete the work himself… that’s all it took. He acknowledged it with the lovely gesture of giving me copies 1/1000 of both the EPs… which I found very moving.

I am delighted an idea of mine from years ago - MONIO :: Music Of Northern Irish Origin (yes, its a twist on MOBO :: Music Of Black Origin) - has taken shape and become a real living, breathing festival taking place in Belfast in August.

I got as far as doing a rather poor site, but came up with a logo that I thought worked quite well. But that’s as far as I got. You know how it goes - other stuff just takes over and before you know where you are, these cool ideas are under a pile. However, that rather compelling chap by the name of Foy Vance would just never let me forget it, would never lie down and let the concept die, and the engine in the operation has been provided by the mighty Paul Hamilton. Its pleasing that we were all in Foy’s band for a while, and are good mates… and Paul’s skills in just making things happen have been in force in no small measure.

David Holmes is headlining the first night, Iain Archer the second, and some other excellent acts are lined up - Wallis Bird, The 4 Of Us, Ed Zealous, And So I Watch You From Afar, Five Ants… the list goes on. There’s more on this over at the official MONIO website, so I shan’t go on too much. For me personally its been quite a journey listening to the music of all the bands taking part. I knew there was some serious talent spilling out of Belfast, but I really wasn’t aware of the extent - so many great bands with attitude, vibe and some great songs and playing. I want the MONIO site to become a real showcase for all that over the next 12 months or so.

Alan van Kleef and I have been back at the desk mixing a new record for Burning Codes which is to be released later this summer. I worked with Alan during the mixing of Sayonara Deadweight, and it was just great fun… so I was delighted when he came on board for “The Codes”. Jules Maxwell and I produced the record together on our Wednesday night rendezvous up at the studio - tremendously free sessions using Paul Archer’s original vocals but writing and recording completely new arrangements from scratch to explore the beauty of Paul’s work. The first mix was completed last night and I’m genuinely really happy with how it is sounding.

I did some backing vocals for what I think is a cracking new track by Leo Abrahams. His new album is going to be stunning - if the songs I’ve heard are anything to go by. I shan’t say any more, as I’m not sure he’s ready to talk about it yet.

I have also been working on some of my own stuff. The core of the material is what started life as the “cinematic playout” from Sayonara Deadweight that Jules (as producer) ultimately decided would not be a part of the album - a good decision, I think. But its making for a fun and groove-filled piece of work now. I’m releasing it for free, hopefully in August, as an application.

Web-wise, things have been busy at G-RAFF as we are preparing to deploy a nice little app for Hotels.com as well as finishing some other stuff that’s been in the pipeline for months. I’m hoping for a lull in the workload so I can brush up on some new skills and, like every other self-respecting developer, learn how to code iPhone apps. I insisted about 4 years ago that all albums would be released as apps eventually, and I still think I can see it coming. As someone who loves both music and coding, I am excited about trying to do some cool things in this sphere.

TV is back on. My wife is watching a replay of the tennis final from today - awesome stuff. Congratulations to Mr Federer, the physical poet of the grass court. It was a very enjoyable match, during which my father, missus and I consumed nearly a whole bottle of Pimms (the cucumber and fresh mint mix - the best in my opinion). Game, set & match…

I had a mad couple of nights last week. One of them involved heading up to Foy Vance’s house at 11:30pm to help out on mixing and recording a bit on his new EPs. He had been buried deep in his studio for a couple of weeks, ambitiously trying to record two EPs for release on his forthcoming tour. In fact, when I heard what he was trying to do, I thought there would be no chance at all. Yet he has gloriously proved me wrong. He worked with the amazing Leo Abrahams to create some astonishing music, the recordings of which capture moments and a place in time with a heartbreaking beauty.

A couple of years ago, Foy recorded a version of one of his songs called “Stoke My Fire”, on his own with limited equipment, and it was just stunning. Our friend Big Ken Haddock (whose photography is something you should see before you die - love the latest series from his trip to the USA) used to talk of how he would be driving over the back road from Belfast listening to it in tears. And it was awesome… an edgy sound which, although technically not great, was layered with vibe and feel. Anyway - this recording is not available to the public so I shall stop going on about it and get to the point.

He has recaptured that feel on every track of these new EPs. It will surprise some people, but the man is so mercurial and talented - able to change his sound like a chameleon - that this is no bad thing.

I liked his album “Hope”, but somehow I felt it was missing the essence of Foy in a lot of places, and was never able to put my finger on why that was. Maybe it was just the fact that he wasn’t fully “let loose” to do what he does… but no such accusations can be levelled at these new recordings. He has thrown so many elements in - beautiful guitar playing, wonderful layered harmonies, left-field arrangements and just an overall sense of purpose that it left me speechless.

Leo brought a fantastic touch to some of the songs that have been around for a long while - particularly “Itchy Feet” which is jawdroppingly spacious and beautiful thanks to a phenomenally tasteful piece of slide guitar playing (of Foy’s original part). There is one piece called “Time Lays Low” which evolves into something truly beautiful. Its the musical equivalent of watching a magnificent sunrise… and offset by “Portraits of Ailsa Craig” which feels like standing on the Scottish shore by night, gazing at the silhouette of the track’s namesake out on the ocean with twinkling ships’ lights on the horizon. Mystical and mysterious, a ballad to the soul of the artist.

I could go on. But this feels like I’m trying to tell you how brilliant people you don’t know are… it just doesn’t work until you meet them. The only problem is that these EPs are only available for now at the gigs on his tour, and there are only 1000 of each. I don’t think they’ll last. If you do get a chance to see him on this tour, go and do it. He’s in an interesting space, and I think the tour will provide magic for those open to it. And whatever you do, if you DO go, do not leave the building without these records.

I’ve decided to celebrate my 13,000th birthday on 15th August. I’ll be on tour, as I’ve made the decision to go on the road with the mighty Brendan Perry, almost 10 years since I went on tour with him last time. It has been a hard decision to reach… when you have a family, and a wife suffering from arthritis, the decision to leave home, even for a short time, seems selfish and unwise. But for a number of reasons, I think it is the right thing to do, and will be awesome - not least because my friends Jules Maxwell and Jez Wiles are lined up to be in the band too. Both wonderful musicians, they are exactly the sort of people with whom sharing a tour bus will be a pleasure rather than a pain. I hope.

I ordered some wine through Sainsburys online shopping. A decent enough Chianti - half price - total steal at £4.99. Ordered 24 bottles. When the delivery didn’t arrive I called customer services only to be told that (a) any order of more than 10 of the same thing had to be ordered a week in advance and (b) it was at the local store’s discretion whether they would fulfil the delivery. Nice of you to say so before I checked out, guys.

So I spoke to a nice girl on the ring road outside Bangor (where Sainsbury’s customer service is now located) who kindly reorganised the delivery for a week from that day.

It arrived tonight. This would have been good, as I was ready for a nice glass of red, but Sainsburys managed to mangle my sanity.

I discovered a neat little trick on their part - a lovely little condition buried under bad web design and ambiguous copy even when you find it - that you actually pay the price of the item on your delivery date. This is laughably insane. The offer had expired since I checked out, and the price I paid at checkout was absolutely meaningless. I was charged the full price for the wine - £10 a bottle, so an extra £120!!

Even when you read the terms on their site it says :

Add to your trolley the stated combination of products from the list below and you’ll only be charged the offer price at checkout.

Is it just me, or does that imply that when I check out, I get the offer?

As far as I am concerned, this is in line with all other websites, and is what the user expects. If I buy something at Amazon that is on offer, I check out and I get the offer price. I don’t wait a week for delivery to discover that in the intervening period, the special offer has expired and therefore I have to pay full price. That’s how things work, right? Not at Sainsbury’s. Its ridiculous. And combined with their rule about bulk orders taking an extra week, it seems particularly unfair. Never once in any email or conversation with customer services was this fact mentioned.

Sainsbury’s web designers also seem to have an issue with usability. They use the same elements in their pages - sometimes as ‘information’ graphics, sometimes as buttons that link to crucial information. As far as I know, pathfinding should be made clear. On one page (I will not put a link, as that would work in their favour), there is a little graphic:

It is not clickable. Yet on another page, there is exactly the same image - but this time it IS clickable, and in fact is the very thing the girl at customer services I spoke to tonight told me was the essential link to find out the terms of the offer. Appalling design… and misleading.

I am aware that what I describe above is a bit of a “grumpy old man” whinge about something that is not very important in the grand scheme of things. But I just felt the urge to make sure this information was on the web… along with a strong advisory note to stay away from Sainburys Online Shopping bollocks, and use Ocado instead, who are much more efficient and present their offers without ambiguity.

I’ve succumbed to Twitter (alarmingly, for both G-RAFF and personal). I actually find it quite lightweight and fun, in the same way I find Facebook utterly invasive. I’ve actually started writing a Flash API wrapper for it, just for a bit of fun on the side. Hopefully, FlashTwitter will make it easier for people to use Twitter in Flash apps, with features like being able to add TwitPic (listen to me!!! What have I become?) images right into the posts.

In days gone by, I used to write letters. It took most of an evening, often accompanied by a scotch and music… but I enjoyed it so much. The person to whom I was writing would become my evening. The ritual of sealing the letter in an envelope (I was a bit of a geek with stationery) and heading off to post it was always something to look forward to - particularly when I was living in Japan, and the postbox took me on a night walk by paddy fields filled with that most romantic sound of the cicadas chirping, some fireflies in the sky.

Then email came along, and it was much easier to “drop someone a line” - much shorter, quicker. Now we have updates that are a couple of lines long, in Facebook and Twitter etc. Your day mapped out in chunks of 140 characters, filled with shorthand and crunched links that are meaningless until you click them. This post’s URL is http://bit.ly/BzsS for example. Clever but ugly. People laud it as a business tool, but I don’t buy it.

Actually, I am beginning to think that my approach to web design is so far away from the current trend as to be laughable. Call me old fashioned, but I actually think that striking designs and memorable ideas are where we get our inspiration, not tactically thought-out sites where the information is presented in a clear, easy-to-follow fashion which has been rigourously tested in Google Analytics to make sure it gets the most clicks. To put it bluntly, fuck that… I have no interest. If everything in our lifetimes had been designed like people approach websites, the world would be a pretty dull place.

One of the sites we did that still gets us a lot of referrals is the site we did for Rhubarb Food Design a few years ago. Its completely OTT - even we knew that as we were doing it (a gold-leafed theatre - in Flash - made of rhubarb leaves with curtains made of rhubarb and all kinds of mayhem). But at least it was a memorable homepage. No trace of “We are a food design company based in London. We really do wonderful canapés” in large text. There’s too much of that around right now.

Music has been great. Jules Maxwell and I have been working on a new record for Burning Codes and its been inspirational. Leo Abrahams came down the other night and did what Leo does best - bamboozle you with a heady combination of outrageous wizardry and earthbound humility. Jules’s brief to encapsulate “the spirit of a provincial firework display” was handled with grace, elegance and yielded a marvellous result. Jules’s description reminded me of a time when a singer (now excellent artist) Louise Wallace asked me to create a sound on my SH-101… “You know if a comet was approaching the earth and you were out in the desert. And just as it was approaching the edge of the atmosphere you began to hear something, but as the sound formed in your head, it turned and flew away… can you get that sound?” She was incredible.

I’ve been asked to go on tour with the mighty Brendan Perry later this year, which should be amazing, if I can just figure out a way to do it. The old “where there’s a will there’s a way” adage will hopefully come to my rescue. I’d love to do it. At least it would give me something to Twitter about.

I heard the news on Radio 4 that John Martyn died today, aged 60.

I’m sure tributes will be flying around all over the place… well-deserved for the most part. What an incredible musician and songwriter…

I was lucky enough to get to play on stage with him one night. Juliet Turner had been supporting him for three nights in the Temple Bar Music Centre in Dublin, and I was in her band. On the last night, John decided to wander back up on to the stage and do a few tunes, and I was asked to play bass - for some amazing old-school JM tunes - Solid Air, Over the Hill. I will never forget the intense gaze - whether deeply alcohol-fuelled or not, it reached for a thousand miles in pure darkness - as I played music with the man.

During the USA Fleadh season of 1999, I was touring the USA with Eleanor McEvoy, a wonderfully lovely Irish singer-songwriter from Dublin. Every week, our dressing room tent was sandwiched between Beth Orton and John Martyn. Niall Toner (the guitarist on that tour) and myself used to wander up and watch John’s gigs in sheer amazement - one man with his Les Paul gold top, swaying in the evening breeze, cool as anything, playing this phenomenal music. In San Francisco, he helped us out by opening bottles of beer with his teeth when we found there was no opener… a well-known party trick of his, I’m sure, but a novelty for the likes of me.

As I was picking Luka up from nursery tonight, just after I heard the news, I got out of the car, to see the most beautiful crescent moon and one bright star in the sky. It just seemed to sum up everything I was feeling… this guy is dead and once more, the beauty of life and all its transience, its fragility, seems more than I can bear.

As John sings at the end of a song called “Father Time” on the Cooltide album, “I won’t go ’til I’m ready and you won’t catch me I won’t go ’til I’m ready…” Guess he was ready.

Foy Vance was on iChat today… up popped a little blue speech bubble “by the way, post will ya? its been too long”. To which I replied, “I have nothing to say… with so much happening in the world that makes me want to cry or jump for joy, I don’t know where I am anymore.” And he just said “Perfect. Now expand”.

So here goes.

I’m sitting in the kitchen, semi-comatose after a monstrous feast in Chinatown with my in-laws. The extractor fan is humming away, as Di’s mum is brewing “hung-dao tong-sui” - a bizarre sweet soup that my son just adores. He was so excited on hearing that it was being made that he could hardly sleep. Chinatown was beautiful - thousands of red lanterns hanging over Gerrard Street and a great buzz about the place made the winter air come alive. Upstairs in the Golden Dragon it was absolutely manic and wonderful. I always love the trek home afterwards - down through Leciester Square to Charing Cross station, over the Thames with that magnificent view of the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, St Pauls on the other side. It feels like London, and I’m just that wide-eyed tourist kid from Northern Ireland all over again.

Like I said to Foy, there has so much beauty and horror in the media recently its just hard to keep breathing. From the Belgian creche where, in an unthinkable act of inhuman behaviour a crazed 20-year-old killed toddlers, to the Californian hospital where eight new lives began at once, from the chimpanzee leaving the White House to the man entering it, there seems no end to the chaos that makes up this thing we call “life”. Deep in forests elsewhere, cermonies happen and hunted food gets eaten, and none of this means anything. I am back in the dream, waking, walking.

I have no idea if my resolutions for this year mean anything either - in a nutshell… less wine, more music. Its kicked off well - Jules Maxwell and I have just commenced our production work for a new Burning Codes record, which is very exciting. I am hoping to finish two albums this year, although one is a one-off piece for a friend and is unlikely to see the light of day unless he chooses to release the bootleg.

I have to press “publish” on this now or it will languish again in the “drafts” folder…

I’m doing a gig this Friday night at St. Olave’s church near Tower Hill in London. Five Ants and Jules Maxwell will be there and we’ll all be doing a few tracks each… and for sure it will be a fine evening.

It starts at 8pm. Its on a donation basis, and any money raised will be going to help the church get some new lights… but you will get a free glass of wine, so the suggested amount is £10.

bushism_hostile1Its coming down, folks. FTSE100 bombing again this-morning, trading suspended in Russia… Hard to know where this is going to end…

Things are as they ever were under this roof. I’m sipping a cup of tea, sitting scanning through an iTunes selection of some stuff I’m going to put on my new record - possibly even tonight when Foy Vance and I gather to finally drink the Nuits Saint-Georges I’ve been hoarding, and do some recording. We will laugh and have a good time, as always… but yet it seems the underlying system of Western capitalism really is crashing to the ground.

I find this tremdously exciting. Please don’t think for one second I’m sitting some immune position… I have no idea what to expect, but I’m just reacting viscerally to the news, and that’s how it feels. I probably won’t be saying that if my company goes under or we lose the house.

My favourite quote today, from the BBC:

But the president has been wholly ineffectual in the crisis so far and it is difficult to see how that might change, says the BBC’s North America correspondent Justin Webb.

No shit, Sherlock. Its embarrassing listening to that chimpanzee trying to commentate on anything, never mind take part in discussions to save the American economy.

This is the title of the new album by Brian Eno and David Byrne. It made me relatively pleased to actually check in and see my name in the credits - guitars on on four tracks - link here. It sounds great, actually. Leo Abrahams did a lot of production work on it, so I’m not bloody surprised.

I had a nice time doing a couple of events for Apple last week, demonstrating Logic Studio - which, and I must promise this is not a partisan or promotion-led comment - is an amazing piece of software for the money. I had to rebuild one of my tracks (Happytown) using only Logic’s software instruments and effects. I feared the worst, thinking I would be left with a “preset” sounding track - but it came out sounding really cool, and digging deep into some of the features was extremely rewarding. Its got me fired up and ready to get on with the next record, which will be a refinement of tracks and ideas we were going to put into the “audacious playout” for Sayonara Deadweight before Jules decided it was not appropriate for the album, despite the fact that it was his idea in the first place. Which is why I love Jules… he is led by the spirit of work as it is created, always willing to change.

Reactions to Sayonara Deadweight have continued to come in - and are very favourable. Stars and Satellites has been a consistent favourite, but other than that, people have been picking different tracks as their top tunes, which for me is the key. I’ve just enjoyed the process so much I can’t tell you.

Continue reading ‘And still we breathe’

I’m sitting here in as close to silence as you can get in London, sipping a Knockando Scotch whisky, courtesy of my great friend and business partner Neil in New Zealand. I can’t even remember now why he deemed it necessary to dispatch the bottle my way, but there you go. I don’t drink on Mondays or Tuesdays, so Wednesday is the first chance to have any alcohol - a good enough reason to have something nice.

Its been brilliant over the past few days - people downloading the record, giving me their thoughts… and many donations, which has quite literally astonished me beyond belief. I am going to make a point of replying personally to everyone who donates - without cutting and pasting.

I have to say, as I have in many of my emails to the contributors, that the feeling of getting a donation is much better than that induced by a sale. You just know that the person at the other end has seen that the record is free, yet decided to pay something. I’ve had everything from £1 to £15 but to be honest, the amount is not important - it will go straight into making more work or pushing “Sayonara” - I just get a warm feeling brought on by the knowledge that they have chosen to pay.

I’m working away on the site, thinking of new ideas and trying to engineer some proper hardcore stuff - like a map-based review system, remixing tools, stem downloads, the thanks page and a few other bits and bobs besides. I just can’t find the time I need to do everything.

I submitted a new mix of my track “Happytown” to Apple today (to a rousing reception), as they’re going to use it in a big Logic Studio demo programme that’s rolling out in the UK in September. I have to go along and take part in the demos, playing some guitar and talking a little about Guitar Rig for Native Instruments. Should be fun.

BORING WINE BIT FOLLOWS… I had a wave of madness a couple of weeks ago and started to clear the cellar, drinking all the wine I have amassed over the past couple of years. Nothing was safe, and its been a wonderful time! Chateau Phelan Ségur ‘04 was good, Chateau Beau-Séjour Becot ‘01 even better, but a 2003 Chateau Kirwan on Saturday night was the highlight - absolutely marvellous - left us reeling with every sip. I have only a couple of bottles left (apart from some I have in a cellar in Devon somewhere) and then I start all over again… there’s a nice Grant Burge “Meschach” from the Barossa Valley and a 2004 Faiveley Nuits-Saint-Georges which is reserved for Foy Vance when the two of us finally get to sit down for an evening.

Right - off to enjoy the last drops of this golden nectar…

Sayonara Deadweight artwork by Gerry Murphy

Behind me in the kitchen I can hear the BBC voiceovers in China as the Olympics begin… trumpets and fanfares, a sea of applause and excitement.

In a much less grandiose way, I have released my new album Sayonara Deadweight into the ether… and yes, the Chinese numerology of “all the 8s” did come into play with my decision. The luckiest day for 100 years… official launch time was 08:08 this morning.

Anyway - this is just a short post to let one and all know that you can get the album now. I’ll be posting again shortly with much more, but as the album has begun… small and organic, expecting nothing, letting its journey unfold step by step.

There’s a faint scratching on the ceiling of our kitchen, and I think it must be mice.

I am up late, trying to gather a few moments of peace and quiet. We had our second baby (Poppy) on 14th June, and ever since, I’ve been up every morning looking after Luka… the days are much longer now, and its quite tough to keep going at this pace, but we’re stepping on through day by day. I just find that by the time the pups are in bed, its late, and I’m wrecked. I just have to wait until that precious time after the shipping forecast when it becomes truly quiet round here… though right now its swelteringly warm and I want to jump in a pool of cool water. If I lived near the sea, that’s what I would do.

So, not long until the release of Sayonara Deadweight now.

Foy Vance came round last week and laid down some funkier than funky backing vocals. The man is just an outrageous talent - what a voice. He must have sculpted 5 or more different tones to just add a lovely layer of richness to the second half of the track and the playout… I can’t wait to do something more with him. We’re planning to record an acoustic version of “Angels In Drag” as a strange duet - my low voice with his high one - to celebrate his discovery of the true spirit of the song.

Another coup - Gerry Murphy has agreed to let me use a beautiful series of photographs of the old Thompson Dock at Harland & Wolff as cover art (well, there is no cover as such, but you know what I mean)… they are amongst my favourite photographs ever, and perfectly personify the spirit of this record… beauty and rust, the lost souls of long-ago-launched ships, the broken magic of Belfast, the deadweight, the fond farewells to hulks of steel and the men that built those ships.

Its just been mastered by Denis Blackham, and I’m building the website… should be ready on time, though some features for the site might have to evolve, as we’re a bit busy over at G-RAFF just now, trying to finish a multitude of projects. Still, as long as folk can download the album and tell me what they think, I’ll be happy enough. I can’t tell you how good it is to know that this album is going out for free - it takes all pressure off, all worry. I’m getting a similar feeling to when I know I’m going to be handing out Christmas presents. I gave my hairdresser a copy today, on CD.

There are definitely mice up there.

If only I wasn’t allergic to cats.

(Strange one, that. We had pedigree Birmans all through my upbringing, and the house was basically a habitable rug of long silky hairs. Then I went to Japan, and came back after a year hideously allergic to cats and kiwi fruit (which up to that point had been my favourite fruit). Must have been the diet, but whatever it was, my first gobbling of 2 whole kiwi fruit left me in a grim condition close to anaphilactic shock. Even a drop of the juice makes my mouth swell up now. Oh well, at least it wasn’t an allergy to wine.)

Right… bed.

Quoth Foy Vance - “…if anything is playing in heaven, this is it. In fact, if its not this, I’m not going…”

What a nice phone call to get last night!! Foy called up on hearing a mix of “Stars And Satellites”, the final track on the record, which we’ve just finished recording and are mixing this week. (He called back 20 minutes later to say “Wait a minute - I’m not on this record anywhere, am I?” which ended up with us agreeing on an evening next week where we will drink a 2004 Faiveley Nuits-Saint-Georges and record Foy ripping up some guest vocals on “Time Once a Friend”.)

Its more or less an instrumental piece, but there are some vocals singing a repeating line. I had the good fortune to avail the lovely voice of Joanne Vance, which added a layer of beauty to the whole thing. Alan van Kleef came downstairs in his dressing gown yesterday bearing a rough mix on CD - he’d been up late after we’d enjoyed a glass of Armagnac on Sunday, putting it together.

So there you go - nearly finished now… on target for the 08.08.08 release.

I’m doing some stuff for Apple later this year - they want to use my track “Happytown” for some Logic Studio demo content in a programme they are rolling out across the UK… so I have to re-record it using only Logic Studio and a guitar - no amp, no vintage synths… the irony is that so far it all sounds better than the original, and I’m really enjoying the process of having to dig into the plug-ins to try and recreate certain elements. I do have to say that interface design is a long way from where it should be for music plug-ins… they are so cluttered and uninviting its hard to believe. In particular, there is a great little synth in Logic called “Sculpture”, but its so crammed with stuff, its almost impossible to see what you’re doing. Shame, as its fantastic and quite easy to create random and morphing sounds, which I always like.

OK - more tea.

If you’re after some cool pop music, then check out Sadpaw which has been on my car stereo for weeks now. You should check it out for no other reason than the explanation Phil Wilkinson (aka Sadpaw) gives for making the album… “I wanted to make an unashamed pop record that was also a bit wrong. Like someone giving you grapes at a disco.” I always knew Phil as a drummer, but I think I got it a bit wrong… he’s an awesome force, along with his brother Paul, who right this very moment is producing Duke Special’s new record up in our studio. Man, all these talented folk with beautiful songs just hiding under rocks when there’s so much unmitigated shite floating around.

I am sitting here listening to a record by Burning Codes aka. Paul Archer and its just blowing me away… like its been around for a thousand years and is honed by years of sea crashing on its rocks. I can’t explain the beauty of it. Its reminding me of my favourite bits of Vangelis one moment, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground the next… its simply amazing.

Well, the excellent news from south-east London is that Alan Van Kleef and I finished the mixes for the first 6 tracks of the new album today, and I have to say I’m delighted with the way it sounds. Jules Maxwell’s production has really shaped it into something pretty special - an amazing journey of the spirit to get to where we are now. I think a lot of people will feel differently about the album, as it has been sculpted to stay slightly away from the obvious pop vein it could have gone into.

The vocals sit high above the backing tracks for most of the record… Jules made this decision, and I went with him… the result? Well, I’m keen to see what you think.

So I can reveal the title - which will be Sayonara Deadweight. Sayonara is Japanese for “goodbye” - my connection with Japan means this word has both beauty and pain wrapped up in it. The “Deadweight” is everything musically that has been hanging around me all these years… and thanks to Jules, I will be letting it go in the final piece of the album, a long collage of work.

There is no messing about with these tracks - no long intros, no middle eight sections, no bridges - no bluffing. In the writing of them, I was listening to a lot of Beatles, and especially the extraordinary “Revolver”… which, although it is probably their best album, is only 34 minutes long. They seemed to have the gift of letting a song have its life without having to get in the way or stretch it out - which I think has ruined more than a few songs over the years. The concept of the “three and a half minute pop song” - where did that come from? One of the new tracks on the album is under three minutes long… well, no-one can say they aren’t getting their money’s-worth as it will be released completely free. But I really enjoyed being economical, almost frugal with the ideas… if I didn’t have a verse 3, well, I just didn’t try to write one, letting the song be.

So there you go. Not long to the big “free download” button.

I recall a comment on a previous blog post (about what I believed to be the misplaced attempts by UK television journalists to shock us with their reports) by Dr. Andrew Scott, where he finished by saying “let’s not be stone hermits”… a cunning little phrase that said much… a plea not to switch off and ignore the plight of humanity.

The past couple of weeks have seen me become an incorrigible stone hermit, for one reason and one reason only - I can’t deal with the images of China and Burma that are reaching my eyes. I simply cannot cope with them. Maybe its back to having a child again, but seeing parents looking for lost children, all that destruction and death and confusion, just breaks my heart. If I so much as lend it a second’s thought, I disappear into a downward spiral of grinding to a halt, seeing my work and the album I’m trying to mix as lightweight unimportant bullshit that doesn’t deserve my time.

The other night there was a 10 minute sequence on ITV of the immediate aftermath of the quake… I was just about getting through it when a scene came on where a mother was just standing completely still with her boy on her back, unable to do anything, completely broken and stunned to the point of a daze. I had to go away from the TV.

Then the feelings of helplessness kick in and I’m left reeling. Even now, 2am on a perfectly calm spring night here, I’m blasting my head with the Foo Fighter’s track “New Way Home”, and iTunes random play just seems insane, a crazy thing to have at my disposal when somewhere else on this strange planet, people are waking to the loss of everything they had, wondering if they can get water, and will the rain stop today?

Life goes on here. Things are good. It seems all wrong…

Typical… you spend the first four months of the year waiting for some sun, and when it comes, you are stuck in the windowless environment that is a recording studio - well, under normal circumstances, that would have been the case, but Jules (Maxwell - producing the album) and I took to the streets of London to record the final “main track” for the new album, doing it over a period of about 12 hours on Saturday…

We started in Wapping in the afternoon, heading up to Brick Lane, Liverpool Street Station, Spitalfields market… taking in a gig (The Shortwave Set at 93 Feet East) before coming back to the studio at some ludicrous hour. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what we were doing, but it all stemmed from the idea Jules had about forgetting the previous version of the track which was a simple acoustic guitar and vocal arrangement. He just wasn’t interested in that at all, and his alternative, an “a cappella” version with me walking through Soho singing into a mic, although more interesting, just didn’t seem entirely right either. Eventually we found the answer and it sounds great.

And so we’re nearly there with the album - Jules has been a total driving force behind it, and its been a phenomenal experience to have someone else at the helm. I feel like someone going to see a therapist, and can understand a lot more clearly how people come to rely heavily on professionals or friends who show them some form of guidance.

The final piece involves the magnificent catharsis that is getting absolutely EVERYTHING off my hard drives going right back to 2004. Jules is going to take some 100-odd pieces and create a cinematic collage as the final track. He’s a brave man… and the format of the album will certainly be something a little different once that is completed. I found it almost impossible to even make a start on this piece of work, knowing what it entailed, but somehow, knowing Jules was going to take all these elements and work his magic on them to create something I had no input into has made it much easier to just bounce down tracks that have hovered around me like black flies for years. Bounce them down and kiss them goodbye.

On a very sad note, my beautiful old Lowden, which had a crack in the sides, has split open very badly. Its all from a numptyhead who failed to drill out a hole when putting in a strap-bolt in 1991. I had it repaired in 1992, so I suppose getting 16 years out of it without the problem coming back is OK. Its with the amazing Jon Dickinson right now - and if anyone can fix it, he can. Thanks be to God for Jon Dickinson I say.

Its been quite a trip digging through the musical archives putting the stuff together for Jules - lots of stuff I’d forgotten about. Old friends, sometimes just passing by. But my teapot will be busy as I catch up with them all, waving them off into the folder marked “For Jules”, last stop before they leave me forever.

My lemon of a MacBook Pro is no more - Apple are finally replacing it with a new improved one - 2.4MHz, 4GB RAM, big video card, 200MB hard drive, a reasonable upgrade from the one I bought over a year ago. Its a happy end to a sad saga, finalised in Regent Street Apple Store upon production of a lot of paperwork relating to my problems with the MacBook Pro. I can but hope that the new one is built better than the first one.

The “fault” with the MacBook turned out to be the user-modification applied by my young son Luka, who decided that putting a 1p piece in the slot-loading combo drive would enhance performance. It did not, achieving only horrific grinding noises as my burning of “Songs for the Deaf” failed at the first attempt. However, the lovely guys at the Apple Store didn’t charge me for this episode, and I am very grateful for that.

This post is getting way too geeky so I’m off.