Saturday 9th February 2008

Tonight saw Vessels perform at Junktion 7 in Nottingham. We ended up going on first because after sound-check we were too intimidated by the prospect of dismantling our gear. The other bands were fairly safe, I didn't see Mourning becomes Electra because we were loading the van, Exit Calm were pretty cool in an early nineties Verve stylee, and Her Name is Calla muddled through their first ever gig with their new drummer who joined them only days ago.... The sound was ace, there were a lot of people there, and despite it being the most cramped stage we've played on in a long time, we gave a decent performance..

The highlights of my night though were these two lads, Dom the promoter and Tim the doorman. Dom was a little worse for wear, and made me laugh until it hurt, although perhaps not intentionally, and Tim who wanted us to know that he had our backs, asserted his masculinity almost as soon as we met, and then spent the rest of the night dishing out heartfelt kisses to the cheeks of the faces of the various members of the band, and when I gave him signed CDs for his two daughters, tenderly licked my ear - priceless....

Its 4am, although only 10pm in Texas, and Congleton has just sent five more album mixes transferring across the web. As I type, hi-fidelity recordings of music that we played in a forest in Minneapolis months ago, are zooming at unfathomable speeds as binary code through cables on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, to be listened to tomorrow morning at breakfast with the band - that should seem even more ludicrous than it does....

Brief booner snooze coming right up...
 

Friday 8th February 2008

Friday nights are good for getting some time to myself. Tonight I stayed at home and cleaned up my room. I am awash with happiness, for the disorder had started to rule my psyche - I even managed to unpack my gifts from Christmas and deploy the new bedclothes that my ma and my sister bought me.... That's some fully comfy sheetage right there.

Pat is pictured in bed, as he has to go to bed much earlier than me because he works for Royal Mail.

Although tomorrow is Saturday...
 

Thursday 7th February 2008

Today, after some Footprinting and a hearty curry courtesy of Lee, we sat together in Lee's room whilst John sent us his first mixes of tracks for the Vessels album. It feels like so long ago that we recorded them, and it was a bizarre experience, to sit in Lee's room, whilst someone far far away sent our music back to us, coated in massiveness and beef...

The picture shows the waveform for 'Look at that Cloud' - if you like that wait till you hear what it sounds like......  

Fully transported back to to the Derm
 

Wed 6h February 2008

There is one slice left
 

Tues 5th February 2008

Let me put you in the picture...
 

Mon 4th February 2008

I have yet to ascertain his name
 

Sat 2nd February 2008

I'm developing a disturbing familiarity with the M1, and particularly its service stations, curious times.

After the long drive back from London I wrote a few poems, baked an apple lattice, tidied my room, payed off some debts, wrote to my MP, learned how to play the entire Ben Folds back catalogue on piano, and exchanged texts with Jessica Alba. Then once I had woken up form the dreamy snoozy boony nap that I was having I sat and watched two films back to back - Dear Wendy and Sin City . Very much a firearm and the shooting of said fire-arms themed double-bill. 

The problem of the still-missing camera cable was solved by Clegghorn, who sent me this shot of him and his family, including the new sproglet (centre, bottom row). The man is well in excess of six foot four, and I haven't seen him in the flesh for years.....

I wonder how tall the child will eventually grow?
 

  Fri 1st February 2008

Blink and you'll miss it
 

 
Thursday 31st January 2008

It has taken me six hours to fold and glue this box of hundreds and hundreds of cardboard CD sleeves - some of them 'The Renegades EP', some of them the 'takemeseriouslyshoes 2007 EP' and most of them covers for a customer at work, paying for the privelige of not having to assemble them themselves. It is fairly safe to earn a wage whilst sitting at your kitchen table, drinking tea, chatting with your friends and listening to ace tunes. Tonight I repeatedly listened to 'Prog' by the Bad Plus , 'Elegies to Lessons Learnt' by Leeds post-something-or-other combo iLiKETRAiNS, and 'the Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads' by Lift to Experience. Awesome. On the downside, after all of that repetetive folding, gluing, and pressing, my wrists are beginning to complain......

Wed 30th January 2008

Today:

Jeremy Beadle died

Vessels rehearsed

I got hold of a copy of 'Prog' by the The Bad Plus. It is immense, They sound like the virtuoso instrumental alter ego of early Ben Folds Five - a simple trio, piano, bass and drums. 'Prog' was recorded at Pachyderm in Minneapolis about a year before we were there, perhaps with the same piano that we've used all over the Vessels album. Magicians....

I watched 'March of the Penguins yet again - their tenacity is immense. Their behaviour is at times described by Morgan Freeman as love in the film. The penguins pair off, monogomously for one season, bond and mate with their partner, give birth to and take care of a child in its infancy against seemingly incredible odds and in an apparently tender and loving fashion, and then after a few months, when the infant is old enough to fend for itself, break up the family unit entirely and all go their separate ways... Their priority, manifest through actions that through human eyes appear to be acts of love, is for survival of their species collectively, and their ties with those they have become intimate with are broken when survival of all or most of the next generation is assured... I wonder if those that we have descended from used to behave like this (I will endeavour to find out more methinks) and at what point our relationships with each other, and our enactment of love, became more individualistic, and emotionally involved, and so enormously powerful.....

And I saw the little booners in the picture making a break for it on my way to work this morning - their efforts were like a shout of solidarity from across the biological divide, 'Come on Pete, you can do it, winter's almost over, spring is encroaching, it'll warm up soon ma boy......'

Could I love the Bad Plus if I were a penguin?
 

Tues 29th January 2008

Today I listened to The Bad Plus. Charlie Cusden dedicated Quasimoto's 'Rap Cats' to me on his radio show and said 'Megaboony snoozy queefer scoop', twice. And the boys came round and we listened to the entire Vessels Minneapolis sessions together in advance of mixing next week.....

Message me - I have enormous knees
 

Mon 28th January 2008

Message me - I'll get it just after this snoozy booner naptime scoop
 

Sun 27th January 2008

What an odd day. I got to bed at about 4am, after attending to the various pressing post-London missions, and at 5am, the 'Tim's birthday' crew (a 20 strong rabble of post-French-techno joy), returned to the yard to party it up. I could have probably slept through their arrival, had one particularly mischevious soul not  been insistent on coming to wake me up to see if I wanted to party, but in truth I was only half asleep anyway. I slept as best I could, I wasn't offended by the loud music, or the shouting, or the people who kept trying to get into my room - I was just aware in the back of my mind that in any other circumstance I would have been partying it up with them, and thus I found that it distracted me from sleep. I gave up at about 8am, and climbed out of my bed to greet the crowd. Me there in my pyjamas with my cup of tea and toast, and those dudes all still partying from the night before - it was an odd juxtaposition, but again, in truth, it was nice to be able to share an hour or so with them and their party, even if we were in two completely different head-spaces....

Then once the yard was clear, by about 9.30am (on four hours sleep again), I re-recorded the bass to the Armoured Whale, this took all morning, and I was very pleased with the results. Then Garside and I missioned it over to Lee's to mix it - spent three hours just trying to open the files on his troubled PC, and then spent twenty minutes mixing before he had to go to work. Garside and I finished the job back at they yard and had it away to the Glasto folk by about 9pm - 2 hours before the deadline

Then, when all I wanted to do was sleep, I instead went out to the bizarre and reclusive left-ventricle of the Leeds University Students Union that is the Mine bar to join the indie crowd in their Espadrilles and thick-rimmed specs to watch Sunderland indie-punk-harmonisers the Futureheads. My brother Dave had bought me the ticket for Christmas, and it was a bizarre spectacle, watching these four lads, whom previously we had seen play to thousands in larger venues, playing in the much smaller 300 capcity Mine Bar. Although it was plain to see why. Despite having lost none of their energy or talent, the new material just doesn't stand up next to the intricate, emotive stylings of their first album - a fact much evidenced by the crowd's repeated calls for tracks from their debut, and for the enormous response given whenever they did. Their cover of 'the Hounds of Love' by Kate Bush made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and I was in bed asleep within half an hour of their set finishing.

That was a really long blog, but today was a really long day..... 

Message me - I'll reply on Thursday when I wake up.
 

This morning, on four hours sleep, Szymon, Jacinta, Anita and I drove to London to show our solidarity with the people of Palestine, especially those in Gaza City, outside the gates of Downing Street. Thanks to some hefty traffic both on the M1 and in London it took us seven hours to get there - we arrived half way through the two-hour demonstration, gave our support, and then went straight back to the car and drove straight back to Leeds, which mercifully only took four hours on the return leg.

It's been an immense day, for so many reasons, but it's pushing 4am again, and I need to be up by about 10am at the latest if I am to lay down the bass for the Armoured Whale and get it mixed by teatime...

I am going to sleep so deeply on Sunday night......

Complicated on the one hand - yet on the other excrutiatingly simple....

Fri 25th January 2008 

Today I awoke ridiculously early (thanks to both the persuasion and good coffee of Rachel and Tom) to go and view a house (which we got to but weren't able to go inside), then I trotted to work which I arrived at and left almost immediately, then I sat with Graham all afternoon in the kitchen editing the new Transpangaean demo of the Armoured Whale (mixing on Sunday), then we bunced straight to the studio to load the van to take to the Brud to unload to setup and soundcheck Vessels, then I sprinted back to the yard to get my acoustic guitar and then I sprinted back to the Brud with my guitar and went straight on stage out of breath and played a half hour acoustic set, then after watching Cavil and Cowtown we Vesseled it up to a wonderfully bulbous and appreciative crowd, then the Klezma trip rocked the yard ridiculously hard, then we loaded the van and took it to the studio, unloaded the van, and then went to Simon and James' house for a short while to relax, before getting to bed at 4:30am - four hours before being due to get up and go to London.

That blog was just one long continuous sentence, just as today was one long continuous day....

Message my waking form