Friday 28th

I forgot to say, once I finally saw this album as a finished piece in my mind's eye, I realised some of the tracks don't work and that, really, I'd known that all along. Here's the current track listing, in the order it sits now with three tracks yet to be added:

Mary
My Heart
Burn
The Wall
Power Cut 84
Not Up To It
Can't Be Won't Be
Blank Space
These Are My Catechisms
Suburban Paranoia

Long titles are heavier, so they sink to the bottom...

Friday 28th

Right now, I'm lying on the floor of my living room, glass of wine in one hand, surrounded by mythology books and copies of The Sandman (Gaiman), whilst my feet rest happily on back issues of The Sandman (fanzine). The air smells of opium incense and there are fairy lights and little candles blazing all across the room. The Koreans album has just finished. I'm trying to work out what to put on next. Tonight I plan to read and build a puppet. It was going to be an effigy but I didn't want to tempt fate.

Since I finished My Heart and the vocals for The Wall, I haven't done any recording. I sort of fell apart at the end of that day which I think was my body and brain's way of telling me I needed a break. I'd been putting in a lot of long hours and my creativity was starting to run on empty.

My brain likes to mull when it's had down time like this. So I had about a week of feeling guilty about not working, a week of sleeping a lot and then my mum arrived for Christmas. Coincidentally, my brain decided a fortnight off was enough and dropped a bit of a bomb. "Hello," it said. "Just wanted to let you know that the album's nearly done. Here's all those pieces you've been searching for this whole time and haven't been able to quite see. Here's what we've been telling you. You've got about three more tracks left to write, but that's it we think. Oh, and here's the concept for the artwork. OK? OK."

Since then we've both been in a kind of overdrive designing front covers and packaging layouts and trawling through ebay looking for a range of weird and wonderful items and being pleasantly surprised at what you buy if you don't mind importing. I haven't had a lot of real sleep, but we're getting somewhere, and I think it's somewhere good, even if I am spending half my life covered in paint. I'll give you a more detailed run through of it when the album's done. I finally have the title, and it feels right, which is how I know this project is coming to an end. I give it three more months, max. I know that's a long time, but I've been having fun and it feels too short.

I'm looking forward to you meeting these little songs though. We'll see you on the road.

Sunday 9th

I am living this double life right now. When I'm awake, there's barely any light (the joys of mid December) and everything feels very heavy. My whole body feel very full, like everything I've eaten in the last few days is filling every available space. Like I'm a bolus with fingers.* Very difficult making myself sleep. Body refuses. When I finally do sleep, which took about 2 hours last night, I'm living this amazing dream life full of warm places and fascinating people. We talk about art and philosophy and music and just things which are greater than we are. I wake up glowing, and totally unable to pull my body out of bed, and the weight comes back and off I go again into this bleak little world. Thank god for the job and the fairy lights.

Yesterday was a very long day. The vocals on The Wall are done but it left me feeling drained and on the verge of tears. It doesn't get to either of the other people who've heard it, but there's something there that kills me. The My heart vocals got redone and are now finished, as are the vocals for So Bold, though I think almost everything else needs rerecording. Possibly the instruments need to change - the guitar just isnt carrying it the way I wanted. Right now it's all yellow and mushy, and that works really great live, but I think the recorded version should be cleaner. Black and pink and spacious.

I also revisited Catechisms to see if I could write some arrangement for it which wouldn't make every reviewer everywhere label me an Imogen Heap wannabe (which, as a solo performer with a bunch of instruments creating layered live sounds, I'm expecting and am not offended by). Yes, it's a capella with a harmoniser, just like Hide and Seek. But not all acoustic guitar + voice songs sound the same, and I don't think Catechisms is really like it at all. It was written in one go (although it did have an extra verse which I've cut) on the piano one night when the depression was pretty bad. I still play it on piano late at night. But it felt like it should be more immediate. So I recorded it as just a vocal, but it lacked depth. I don't have a choir at my disposal, so first I tried dynamic delay effects to boost it, but eventually had to turn to the VoiceLive and say "show me what you've got". And it said "I've been waiting for you". Last night I recorded it in the original version and you know what? Sound better with the harmoniser. So i guess it's staying as is. Last track on the album, plus Suburban Paranoia. But to record it, I had to revist that place I was in that night where I was trying to decide whether to live, and where I knew that staying alive meant unexpected death at some point. It's not a fun place.

Like I said, long day.

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I've spent a lot of today buying up the classic 90s albums I'm still missing. So many of my favourite albums are from the early and mid nineties. I love how crap UK TV was then - I'd have loved to be interviewed by Zig and Zag, or in bed with Paula Yates, or having my hair done by Nicky Clarke (I still can't believe that one got funding). I want to make it as obvious as possibly that I'm miming on Top Of The Pops. I wish I'd been my age now in 1993. I wish I remembered the 90s. But I don't. I'm just that rock. Boyfriend is clearly a 70s kiddie born a generation too late. This proves two things: 1) people are internal anacronisms; 2) Boyfriend is a cradle snatcher.

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*Rereading the above, I'm reminded of how often the lyrics I write manifest themselves in my real, physical life. I've tried subverting that and forcing what i want into the music, but it just doesn't work. The lyrics to the most recent completed song are:

Give me your pennies: I will keep them right here in my heart...My chest is so heavy I am finding it harder to walk/From all of these people I am dragging around in my heart

That's pretty much how my body feels, but replace "heart" with "body" and it's more accurate. I'd feel better about this if I wrote the lyrics in response to this stuff, but I don't. It is the life, I am the art.

Friday 7th

Due to a whole bunch of various unexpected circumstances, I havent been able to put up my vocal booth until a few hours ago (the problem with it being that it takes up most of the space in the living room not currently occupied by the pianos so it makes my house very inhospitable). I didn't want to add to my to do list, so I've been forced to take most of the past week off. Damn. To be honest, I spent most of it sleeping. My body clock's been really off since the all night vocal session, and I think I'd been mostly running myself into the ground anyway. As soon as I stopped, I just shattered. Feeling better now.

Have had a chance to listen to a load of new music, see some old friends, do some painting, eat some vegetables. Been having some very strange dreams. Last night's was about a character who was a combination of David Bowie, Morpheus and a tutor I had at uni. He lived in a castle which disappeared when he didn't want you to see it. He owned a restaurant. It served tapas and sushi. He had a car which morphed itself into different shapes at will (its, not his). He caught a bus so we could talk privately. Of course I adored him.

Saturday 1st

I clearly did my November summary too early.

The instrumentals for both My Heart and So Bold are done, and Not Up To It had its problematic end fixed. Therefore, assuming I can get the vocals done within the next couple of days, I'll have done 5 tracks in 5 weeks, all of which have been written from scratch in that time. Phew. I might take a few days off after all the vocal retakes. See Boyfriend, read the books I got out at the end of October and haven't really touched. Mmm.

As the album progresses, I'm beginning to see a clearer pattern of what it's saying as a whole. I have a chart on my wall in the control room linking the tracks together the way I see them in my head. I'm trying to make sure every single one has at least two links on the album - some of them are incredibly antisocial, some of them are the life of the party. And there is life, I suppose.