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.  

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. 

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. 

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.  

I was in Crete for two weeks. While I was there I did some writing. Yes, I couldn't think of a more inventive title.

So prior to this trip I had five stories/vocal performances written and recorded and I'd done a first couple of passes of mixing on each one. Total run time: 18min. All for the as-yet-unnamed collaboration with Augurio Drama. My idea is to have 45min of material. So I still needed to write at least another 5 or 6 stories/vocal things (depending on the lengths). 

I was hoping that during the trip in Crete inspiration would strike as I lay in the sun and roasted. And it did. 

Over the course of a few days, as I lay by the hotel pool pouring sweat, I wrote 6 new texts. I already had a whole bank of audio tracks to choose from that Augurio had provided. Having figured out what soundtracks would fit for each I've now got 46min of material. Whenever I get some time I can start doing this next phase of recordings. 

Provisional track titles are as follows:

Lose Control - a parody of a terrible Pop/House track that was puncturing my ears from the hotel stereo. Naturally I twisted the idea of the original song to make it disturbing. 

Over the Sides - a little story about being sucked into the void. 

A Number - kind of self explanatory, though probably not really. 

All in a Day's Work - came out of an idea I had from interviewing Eugene S. Robinson recently about his memoir. He mentioned a story about a guy giving up and dying out in the swamps of Florida. I took it and ran. 

The Optimist - various thoughts from a dismembered corpse. 

On This Day - at this point I figured I just needed one more and I was drained after “The Optimist” which took me several days to crack. I went back through various past writings and found a story I still thought was interesting about the sun not rising one day and how the world adapted. 

And voila, we have an album. Just have to record it (as I said) and complete the not insignificant task of mixing the fucking. Stay tuned. 

I am in the midst (when I can carve out the time) of making the follow up to Industrial State of Mind. As with that project it's a collaboration. I suppose I can say here (how many people will read this anyway?) that it's with Augurio Drama — owner of the Drama Recorder label that released my collaboration with existent/nonexistent. The shouting in the bathroom session I wrote about before? That's part of this project. 

Similarly to the last album AD is providing the sounds, while I'm writing the text and recording the vocals. 

A major difference this time though is that the sounds come first. With ex/nonex I created the stories myself, sent the vocals and they created sounds to accompany my parts. This time however, AD has sent me various recordings and I'm making stories/ vocal parts to fit with them. I don't think one approach is necessarily better than the other, but it's good to mix things up and try different approaches. Keeps the brain juicy and all that.

Another important change this time round is that I'll be the one doing the mixing. I have some minor experience of this in the past. I was in a band (a duo) called Midnight Boatman some years ago. The whole recording and mixing side of things actually proved to be something of an all-consuming nightmare in the end (you can read about that on my Substack — check the links page — if you search for my interviews with Neil McKeown).

But anyway, I assisted him with some mixing. That was mostly in Pro-Tools (now I'm using Ableton), but certain principles remain the same. So I've been beavering away with that. A lot of trial and error and some conversations with Mark McKellen (a friend, and former bandmate, from my years in Glasgow, who mastered my first album). 

At the moment I've got 5 tracks that I've been working on. Total run time is about 18min. I think the album should be about 40-45min long, so I need to do some more writing. I have plenty of recordings from AD to work with, so it's all down to me, really. With the 5 recorded tracks I've got listenable mixes, but there's still quite a bit of work to be done with the mixing. I guess that can wait now till I have all the recordings and I can assess it all together. 

Anyway, here's what I've got so far:

Your Body — Delivered like a guided meditation, but (surprise, surprise!) it gets weird.

My House — A very short, kind of existential nightmare, I guess you could call it.

Nothing — The “shouting in the bathroom” track. Inspired by latter Whitehouse. 

This is the Place —  Floaty and spaced out, sort of dreamy, I guess. I know what it's about, but I'll say no more.

Real Silence — Another floaty one, my typical thing of being soothing, but actually creepy underneath. 

The task I've set myself now is to create text for a 9min+ piece. The soundtrack is pretty noisy. Quite interesting for fitting voice and text to. I have a thematic idea that I've been working on. I'm hoping in the coming days I can get the words mapped out. 

This damned “my house” story/ recording is going to be the end of me. 

I had some kind of existential moment yesterday. I'd been working on this piece of writing. Refining it (so I thought). I decided the text was ready. So I tried recording it, experimenting with my delivery. 

First I tried a sort or hysterical, theatrical style. That didn't come out right. Frustration didn't work either. 

Then the whole thing felt like it wasn't any good. Like the writing itself sucks and that's why no amount of vocal experimentation will get anywhere. 

It made me aware that I haven't been doing enough creative writing recently. My time is taken up with too many other things. Plenty of articles, interviews, reviews — all great to be doing. Apparently quite a different muscle to my stories though. 

So I gave myself the task of spending a little time each day (again — I had this routine in the past) to do some creative writing. 

This morning I spent a little time in the park, sitting alone with a shitty cappuccino and a slice of cake, working on this infernal “my house” thing. I'm pretty sick of it now. I feel like I maybe did something useful with it though.

Later today, if I'm in the right mood, I want to try recording it again. Third time lucky? (Maybe the fourth actually).

I'm not making excuses in advance for myself by saying “if I'm in the right mood”. It's quite emotionally draining I discovered to work myself up into a panic, or rage, or despair for a recording. In a way I take that as a positive. It seems to be that I'm brining real emotion to the surface. It hangs on my afterwards though. It isn't easy to shake off. 

That'll teach me for deciding the next album should be significantly more harrowing than the last. 

I'm working on a new song. “Song” is the wrong word. I'm working on a spoken word track for the next collaboration. This will be the fourth track in fact. After Industrial State of Mind got finished I jumped enthusiastically into the next project.

But you know how it goes, other things come up. Work. Life. It's definitely not a bad thing that I'm busy. It's like with my Substack writing, if I'm not doing that, then it means I'm getting “real” writing assignments. 

The creative outlet is important though.

So I bought this piece of kit. I'm never quite sure what to call it. It's a dinky little keyboard and sampler and now I can't even remember what it's called. It's in the other room and I'm too lazy to check. Anyway, I've played around with it a bit, but it's really just the surface of figuring it out. I'll be able to use it to create electronic music/ sounds. The possibilities are almost endless. 

That's dangerous. I remember years ago in Glasgow when I was in my first band: RedSun. I wanted effects pedals for my guitar. What I bought was kind of excessive, this effects unit. There were too many options and I never got the hand of it. 

Still, this time round it's not quite the same. There's now the option for me to write and record keyboard parts. That in itself is a great option I didn't have before. Yes, I can go down a rabbit hole for eternity looking for sounds, but that's on me.

So that happened (buying that thing), and I've been working on this new track. Now I remember I already wrote about this next collaboration. The last track was the shouting-in-the-shower one. 

What I'm working on started out with a particular idea that's evolved into quite a different thing. I actually started it in Italy, visiting my girlfriend's parents over the Easter weekend. It's become something quite creepy. Well hopefully, creepy is absolutely the aim. 

Anyway, I should get that one finished soon and ticked off. After that, I guess I'll need another three or four. Getting a bit ahead of myself I've already started conceptualising my next solo album (for some reason I feel like a wanker writing “my next solo album” but there it is), ‘Devil Girl and Her Latin Mushrooms’. 

Two songs are sitting waiting for me and I have an idea for the structure of the album with reference tracks (songs by other bands) corresponding with each track of the album. We'll see how that pans out. 

By my own particular self-imposed measure I'm ahead anyway. I want to get out an album a year. That would mean this latest project needs to be out by the end of 2024 and ‘Devil Girl’ in 2025. Plenty of time.