I haven’t been particularly efficient at blogging on here recently, as most of my time has been split between recording and producing my album, and ranting about the appalling reaction from the Conservative Party to the recent rioting in England. I’ve lived in Ealing, which was badly affected by the riots, for four of the last five years, and only moved back there a week or so before parts of it were smashed up and set alight. Thankfully, I missed it all as I’ve been spending August back in my home county of Norfolk, working on a new album of songs, which should be ready by October.


For the musos and geeks, I’m using a very simple home studio set up – Logic Pro on an old 17″ MacBook Pro, 2-input M-Box 2 audio interface, Joe Meek ThreeQ preamp/compressor/EQ, guitars, uke and vocals recorded with a sE4400a condenser mic, and using a MIDI keyboard for everything else. I don’t have any pics at the time of writing, but I’ll post some next week. I haven’t really been recording much, to be honest – most of the time has been spent building up backing tracks by cutting up drum loops and using software instruments. It’s sounding different to my previous stuff – less folky, more polished and, hopefully, more interesting. I’ve got eight backing tracks started so far – I won’t bore you with the titles, but most of them are songs I’ve been gigging recently, and there are a couple that have never been played live.


As much as I’m enjoying the project, I am becoming somewhat obsessed with it – I keep having dreams about the songs, and can’t really turn off at any point. The only reason I’m writing this blog is because I’ve decided that I have mental fatigue from the many hours of staring at the Logic ‘Arrange’ screen with a pair of headphones on, trawling through thousands of drum loops to fit a four-bar fill before the chorus. Anyway, I’m now off to forget all about it by going to watch Jukebox Jonah & The Random Rummies at O’Grady’s in Gt Yarmouth…