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.  

Following on from my last post, I went back to my May Hauptbahnhof recording and created another experimental piece. 

This time I tried combining the train station ambience with some acoustic guitar playing. I really haven't played much guitar at all since I've been in Berlin. I was encouraged to try doing something with open tunings by the boyfriend of one of my girlfriend's colleagues. He's a much better guitarist than me, that's for sure. On a night out (and over some beers) we got into a music theory chat (really him explaining some theory to me). It actually helped my understanding of the instrument (a little bit). 

So anyway it reinvigorated my interest in the instrument. I actually have no idea what tuning I had my guitar in for this recording. As you might hear if you listen to the Soundcloud recording (Berlin HBF May#3) there was some music playing at the station. I was in part trying to get a sequence of notes that would work on top of that. So the tuning was all just by ear. 

Let's see. I can figure out right now what the tuning is. I broke my high E string the other week (and haven't replaced the strings yet), hence there only being 5 notes:

1. G (down tuned from E - Godflesh eat your heart out!)
2. G (1 step down)
3. A# (2 steps down - I think. I'm not very good at this)
4. D (2 ½ steps down?)
5. A (1 step down)

Well, that does look like quite a strange tuning to me. It gave me some nice sounds though. Also I just realised that I was extremely sharp. So if anyone ever wants to play along, it'll be a right pain in the bottom. 

I didn't touch a guitar for almost three months. 

Actually it might have been more than three months. For the whole time we've been in Berlin they just sat there forlornly in the corner of the room.

I finally took my acoustic guitar out a few days ago and had a tinker about on it. After a few minutes I was feeling totally uninspired. My fingers and brain were falling back into the same old habits and patterns. Boring. This is why my guitar break occurred in the first place — and more often than not why it's happened in the past — I get bored of the same old sounds. 

Nevertheless I feel the sense that I should be working on my guitar playing. I saw a solution: get back into practicing Oxbow guitar parts that have unusual guitar tunings. During COVID lockdown, when I was still living in Prague, I discovered a helpful facebook post where guitarist Niko Wenner helpfully listed all the Oxbow guitar tunings he uses. It's quite a list. Most of their songs are in alternate tunings. I figured out (more or less) quite a few of the parts back then. 

Time to get back on it. I picked the: C G C D# G C tuning Niko uses on the following tracks:

The Snake &..., SbarX, Stallkicker, Sorry, Shine (Glimmer) (An Evil Heat)

Time, Gentlemen, Time, A Winner Every Time (The Narcotic Story)

I'd already worked out parts of Time, Gentlemen, Time—it helps that there's a video of the band performing it on YouTube. I went over that a bit and then decided to tackle A Winner Every Time. Several hours later I've got a rudimentary version I can play. The timing (as with many Oxbow tracks) is one of the harder features. This isn't like playing Pantera. It's not physically gruelling; it's unusual, it's avant-garde, it's mighty cool. It's fun to play. Maybe I'll get inspired to write something myself in this tuning. Whether I'm able to do that without sounding like I'm copying Niko remains to be seen.