tom osman

Well, I feel like no one reads these entries. Maybe, maybe one or two do. And if you're here then, well, you're going to get a little bonus insight. There's a certain odd little catharsis in revealing something quite intimate, but then not knowing if anyone's going to actually see it or not. 

Last weekend I had a meltdown. That might be a little overly dramatic. One person's meltdown may not be another's, but I reached a breaking point and some pressure, which I suppose had been building for a long time, came out in an explosion. It wasn't good. It really wasn't good. I wish no one had been there to witness it, but that's not how things played out. 

One of the consequences of this event is that I've faced up to the fact that I was driving myself into a wall. Stress, consistent lack of sleep, too much caffeine, self-medicating to smother the stress, taking on more and more responsibilities and tasks and jobs to smother the stress etc etc. 

So now at least I've started to look for help and support and make small changes to my life: removing things that aren't serving me and actually seeking help where I recognise I need it. 

And a positive from all this is that I've actually started to carve out a little free time for me and that in turn means that I've started to work on material again for the forthcoming Devil Girl album (although I have to admit I'm having moments where I think “can we just make it an EP and get this behind me?"). 

Today, well just about an hour ago, I went to Studio B (that's my bathroom) to record guitar and vocals for Devil Girl the title track. I've sent the files to existent/nonexistent. That's now three tracks I've sent his way. I've got one more song left to record and then I'm gonna have to figure out what comes next. 

I have an idea for a spoken word piece around what happened last weekend. It's one of those things where it's very autobiographical and I like the idea of that, but a part of me wonders if that's something I might regret putting out there. It does feel in the spirit of Coil and Throbbing Gristle to bare myself without artifice, but we'll see. 

But anyway, hurrah, one more song out of my hands. Something productive done. 

Somehow in the mind I hadn't realised that it was quite so recently that I finally started playing guitar again. 

I don't remember exactly when I finally took it out of its case, for the first time in many months, but I guess it wasn't long after I wrote that last post.

Unfortunately the plan to go record with Neil didn't pan out. Nevertheless we are underway. E/Ne has already put together a rough mix of the track I sent him. As I think I wrote already, Mick is providing the vocals for the track. On top of the lo-fi phone recording of his, which I sent to E/Ne, he recorded some alternate takes, at E/Ne's suggestion. 

Next up is another track that has no name as yet. I came up with guitar piece the day I found out my dad had died. I started working on this again and had an idea to use part of a recorded conversation I had with my dad about music to go with this instrumental.

I uploaded a clip of me playing around with this guitar piece and Mick once again wrote some lyrics. I hadn't suggested it, but I'm not against it. The slightly spooky part was that he chose to write lyrics about his own deceased father. I hadn't told him about about the context of my original creation of the music. 

With me being back in Glasgow and meeting up with Neil not possible at the moment. I decided to embrace the DIY direction of this record and recorded my guitar part in my walk in cupboard here in Glasgow. I've since come up with an extra guitar part. Mick will soon record his vocals—he told me he planned to today, but he shouted himself hoarse at the football yesterda. 

There's no particular rush just now anyway. 

What will be next after this track I don't yet know. Maybe I'll put my efforts into one of the songs I had ready. I've been playing it a bit recently and after so long away from it, I'm not sure if I'm totally happy with the arrangement. If it needs some tweaking, that's ok. I'm not going to rush these tracks. 

I just thought that title was funny. I don't even know if anyone reads this. Are you reading this? Let me know. 

Having contacted E/Ne to tell them that I'm going to have material to send them for the next album (and thereby forcing myself to do it), I took the next important step in any music-making project of mine — namely getting in touch with Neil. 

We've agreed that I'll visit his home studio on the 21st or 22nd of this month and do some recording. I still haven't taken my guitar out of its case in I don't know how long. I don't expect to record a whole album of material in one day (just as well seeing as I haven't written a whole album of material!), but if I can have three or four songs (or whatever they may be) ready to be recorded, that'll at least give E/Ne something to work on while I work on more material. 

I've got two songs. I suppose three — the third a guitar sketch that a friend created vocals to on his phone. I was thinking that one needs to be rerecorded, now I'm not sure though. I interviewed Kevin Rutmanis, Gina Skwoz and Trevor Dunn the other day. They told me that some of their latest record ‘Last Days at Hot Slit’ used material recorded on a phone. If that's good enough for them, I think it's good enough for me! 

So I guess I already have one track ready to send to E/Ne. Woo hoo! This album-making business is easy, it turns out. 

As to the rest of the album, I don't intend everything to be so musical, but I do want to keep working in the direction of doing more interesting things with my vocal approach. One or two tracks in the droning, hypnotic style of “Your Body” would be fine, but I don't want to run this into the ground. 

The only limits are the limits of my imagination. I better get imagining then.  

So what do you do when you finally finish the process of making an album, when it's out in the world, you sit back and say “ok, this really is finished”? You start making another one I suppose, right? 

I had my interview with Mick. It was fun. I will put it out on my podcast, Whatever Comes Next. I was thinking that I might turn the episode into something more conceptual — maybe I'll add some music, or spoken word, some collages. I don't know what exactly, but it could be interesting. 

If Sara has any of the videos ready by the time I want to release the episode, it would make sense to have them there too. 

And now onto the next endeavour. 

The next album will be collaboration number two with Existent / Nonexistent. We've agreed we're going to do it. In the past days and weeks I've been warming my brain up to doing creative writing again. In parallel I've been making a conscious effort to escape from my phone. It's a scourge and a drain of ideas and inspiration. 

Tentatively, I think I can say I'm starting to feel some positive result as I live a little bit more in the world around me and not this insidious little void. No offence Ms Mobile Phone. 

So partly to push myself into action I messaged E/Ne yesterday to say I'd have some material ready to send them by the end of the year. 

I'm not going to fuss myself with trying to plan the whole thing out conceptually track by track (as I previously had planned). I'm going to take it one track at a time and see how it evolves. 

I have a couple of actual “songs”, but now I'm not sure if I want them to be part of this project, or save them. No, actually I remember now, I've decided I will include them. Why? They're connected to the past, so I want to have everything that ties to my time in Germany and Czechia completed — if for nothing more than the psychological peace of being able to draw a line and say my life is moving on. 

So with all that being the case the album will be Devil Girl and Her Latin Mushrooms. That'll be one of the songs. And what else? TBD. 

And then just like that the album was released out into the world. 

With the help of Sara (well she did most of the work) I had a few teaser clips for the album and I posted them on Instagram. Not exactly the most comprehensive of marketing programmes for the album, but I have a few more promotional ideas for the coming weeks. 

So anyway, Real Silence came out on Drama Recorder on the 11th of October. If you're somehow choosing to read this, but you haven't given it a listen yet, check it out. It's sitting quietly on bandcamp, waiting for you. Yes you, just you. 

I'm happy that the album is out there and I'm happy with how it turned out. Another document of a point in my life. That's how I take all my albums anyway — a partially abstracted oral journal. When I listen to these tracks I can remember where the texts were all written. The album was all made during my year living in Berlin. Some of the words came together in Berlin, a chunk during a two-week holiday in Crete spent baking and sweating in the sun. One of them ("Over The Sides") references some journal writing I did while I was living in Prague, but that text was also written in Crete.

Most of the mixing was done in London after I'd come back to the UK at the end of last year, but when I listen to the album I can say that it is a document of my life in Berlin in 2023. For Augurio Drama it would surely be something else. I don't know how far back some of their instrumental pieces go, but for me, that's what this album represents. 

Going back to promoting the album, I was surprised and delighted that my close friend Mick said he liked the album a lot. He suggested interviewing me about it, which I think is a fun idea. I suggested that we can post the interview on my podcast Whatever Comes Next. Me being interviewed on my podcast about my album. A little self-indulgent perhaps, but it's my podcast after all. I can do as I please and it should be fun to have something a bit unusual to get released around Christmas/ New Year. So that's the plan. Hopefully we'll record the interview this weekend. I have no idea what any of his questions will be.

Following that, I've commissioned Sara to make three music videos for the album. I have no firm date for those, but they're in the pipeline. We've already recorded various clips for them. 

Neil has finished the mastering. Sounds are complete.

While I was in Thailand last month, I found out that a friend of mine on that trip, Sara, is a semi-professional graphic designer. So of course it made sense to ask her if she wanted to design the album cover. She agreed. 

So once I was back here in the UK I sent her the picture from Ex/NoEx and guidelines for all the text that should be included — credits, song titles, links etc. 

Obviously the album title too. 

She's sent me a couple of draft versions back already. We are very close to being finished. Then all that's left is to pass everything on to Augurio Drama. He's already told me what the catalogue number will be. 

It'll also be on cassette. That's what Sara's been designing: the cover, specifically fitting the cassette dimensions. Not the most scintillating fact right there, but a fact nonetheless. 

The album came in finally just under 37 minutes, if I remember rightly. Augurio Drama told me it'll be on a 40 minute cassette. It would have still been possible to keep the planned track order, but it would have meant one side being a couple of minutes longer than the other. So I decided to swap two of the tracks around. 

I think this new order might even be a better flow. The only negative is that we've now inadvertently put two tracks together that have a similar effect at the end. Maybe no one will notice.  

Well, I did stumble my way through some mixing at home. I returned to Neil's place for the final session and we did indeed manage to finish everything… well 99%. 

What I think worked out quite well for us is we arranged to go out and meet a friend of mine in the evening. It forced us to be pretty ruthless with ourselves about how much time we had to agonise over little details. 

In the end we agreed that we'd give ourselves a day to reset our ears, listen to all the mixes and see if there were any final tweaks needed. Ultimately, all that was left was that my vocal track was a little loud ("proud" as Neil calls it) on two of the tracks. 

We also tried having the first two tracks blend together, so that the last word of track 1 falls as track 2 starts. Nice idea, it didn't work in practice. 

But that's it. Neil will hopefully have time to make those little adjustments and then that'll be it. He'll send me the final tracks, I'll forward them to Augurio Drama and he'll line it up for release. 

There is of course one other matter: album art. I really had no idea what I wanted to do about this. Finally I had an idea. My collaborator Existent/NonExistent (who I made Industrial State of Mind with) also does photography. This was in fact my introduction to him: I saw his artwork on Instagram. 

That introduction led to me contacing him about collaborating, which ultimately led to me contacting Augurio Drama about collaborating with him (and releasing Industrial State of Mind). 

So even though Ex/NonEx isn't wasn't involved in making this album, I thought it would be nice to be able to have his name listed on the project (plus I like his photography). Now I just need to write the liner credits and then when Neil sends me the files we are done and dusted and I can move on to the next project. 

Well I had planned to make these posts a weekly affair, but this is at least within a month, so that's some kind of improvement. 

So, Real Silence. I went to London to record and mix with Neil. In fact a had two successive weekends over there. We managed to get all the recording needed in one day (including one track that for reasons perfectly logical at the time where I recorded the vocals lying in Neil's bath — dressed and empty of water, I might add). 

That was due to be vocals for six tracks. In the end I binned one of them. I had this idea to use a near-ten-minute track from Augurio Drama. It was going to be a very ambitious conceptual piece narrated by a disembodied head of a person who's been chopped up, found and wakes up in a forensics lab. 

I still like the premise, but in the cold light of day when I re-read what I'd written months ago, I decided it was… well… shite. 

Irredeemable in fact. So I made an executive decision and now the album's going to be nine tracks in total. 

So recording's all done and we've had a few days since then for mixing. It's great to be working with Neil. He's so much more skilled at this side of things than I am. 

Nevertheless, I'm going to try to get three of the previous tracks I'd recorded and started mixing myself up to a decent standard. At the moment, the plan is that I'll visit him again in the last week of May and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to finish everything. 

Don't know if the video is going to happen anymore. That's up in the air. 

Ok, so it turns out that without reminders I'll just find three months have passed without any updates here. Time to bring Google Calendar into the mix! 

…

Alright, it's in there. Let's see if I'll start posting here more regularly with a reminder. 

Needless to say, I haven't been idle in this time. My music interview podcast Whatever Comes Next is now on Spotify as well as Substack, with some cool, new artwork (courtesy of Jack Rogers - @Get a Real Job Kid) and I've been consistently banging out episodes every Tuesday. 

I'm also now apparently “Reviews Editor” at Ghost Cult Magazine. I say “apparently”. I know what I'm doing there, it's just that now it seems that's officially my title. In practice, I'm now the guy deciding who reviews what (oh the power!!) and liaising with publicists. 

But anyway, that's all by the by. This journal is to talk about the music I'm making (or whatever exactly this is I'm doing there days). 

A few updates then. Firstly, “Your Body” the opening track of the forthcoming album is basically done (just bar the final mastering). Currently I have a creator of erotic horror videos making a video for me. No idea what it's going to come out like, but hopefully that'll materialise soon and when it does, I'll post it here on the website. 

The next signification news is that I've recruited my friend, former bandmate and collaborator on my first album Neil McKeown to help me record and mix this album. In fact tomorrow I'm off to London to do some recording with him. I'm really glad to have him on board. He's got far more skills than me as a producer and now that we've timetabled when we're going to do things I believe it'll get this project finished more quickly. 

So it's off to the pub I go a little later today, printed texts in hand, to read again through the various texts to do any necessary editing before the weekend's recording. 

Oh, and I've also been talking with existent/nonexistent. We're both keen to do another album together. As soon as Real Silence is in the can, I'll get in touch with him to start the next project.  

I am an inherently lazy man. I'll cop to that. No issue. This time around though I can give myself some leeway. Life came in and took an axe to any semblance of peace and order.

Whatever, it's not important for here. But I feel like making my excuses anyway. So it's been nearly since the last time I wrote here that I've done anything at all connected to this project. I recorded scratch vocals for all of the new pieces I wrote. I wanted to be able to listen to everything in sequence and hear how it all hangs together. 

Unsurprisingly, I want to make some amendments, but nothing too drastic. I think. But now it feels like this project's been dragging about me for too long. Finally I'm back at it. It's of no particular interest, but I needed to do some cleaning up of files for these various sessions. Well I've done that. Right now in fact. All nice and cleaned up and ready to be worked on. 

I figured out a new plan of action. I don't know why (it seems wrong-headed now), but before, I wanted to gradually build up the new pieces to the level the first five are at. Now I've decided instead that I want to go through them one by one and get each track almost finished in turn. If for nothing else I need the satisfaction of (almost) finishing something. 

I'm also itching to reveal some of these recordings. Next week I'll be having a Zoom call with a sound engineer friend. He's given me a couple of tutorials to help me with this mixing process that I'm pretty green around the gills with. 

So that's all for now. I'm back on the horse. Here we go.