Been a while since my last post, which isn’t to say I’ve not been busy. In fact, I’ve tied up a lot of loose ends into a new collage album called Borderlands which came out today. There aren’t many tapes yet, so pick one up here if you haven’t already. I was mostly just looking through my vast folder of unreleased material, and realised that quite a lot of it would work together really well. It’s not a tracky album, I pieced it together in a similar way to Leaf Pass, Exteriors, etc., so lots of it merges together and there are some very abstract sections given their own title. Inside the sleeve I’ve included an old story about walking into a room and it basically stealing a day from me. I quite miss writing those first person stories and should probably do it again. It’s nice to create an imaginary world. The album samples a lot of old TV and film dialogue, I suppose there’s more than a touch of hauntology about the feel of it – a big ’70s sci-fi and horror influence on the mood, if not exactly radiophonic or folky in sound – which is something that should tie in with my next album, Bone Moor, which is due on Third Kind at some point over the winter. We might even do some CDs as well as tapes for that. Borderlands is so called because at one point I almost considered releasing it under that alias, so it’s closer to Melkur than anything I’ve done since. Huge thanks to Phil for his enthusiasm for the album and releasing it, and to Nick for mastering duties. The cover art is by Eidolon and is very different to my usual style, but they did a wonderful job with it, so many thanks there too! One review so far, and it contains this incredible line: “I truly don’t know what to make of it, but I think I like it.” It’s a stylistic mish-mash, so I think that’s fair!
In the background, I’ve been working on plenty of new music. All sorts of tracks have been finished, an album is taking shape, so I suppose that’s one for next spring or summer probably. I do seem to have lost a lot of my own self-doubt this year, and I think quite a bit of that has come down to the success of All Roads to Polesworth. After a few years of low sales and interest, to suddenly have thousands of people listening to a new album and it selling out so quickly was a real eye opener. Maybe I’m actually quite good at making music? It helps that I do think my production and mixing techniques have drastically improved over the past few years. I no longer feel like someone who’s just made their first track showing their mates. Anyway, that’s good, I’ve not felt this confident about my music in a very long time indeed. Still working on a couple of collaborative things behind the scenes, hope to be able to reveal stuff about them soon.
Quite a bit of spare time at the minute has been set aside for Fractional Difference, my FSOL blog. I’m going through their entire discography & transmission history and writing about every album, track and broadcast. There are a hundred odd posts already, and probably a couple of thousand to come. It’s probably a totally daft undertaking, but I have so many thoughts about their music that it’s nice to have an outlet for it, and writing all the factual stuff is working as a replacement for my old fansite that’s been offline for a few years now. Also been reading a lot, working my way through the entire series of Doctor Who novels. As I was on the final run of the Virgin New Adventures I was averaging about a book a day, which was pretty heavy going but a lot of fun. They’ve taken a bit of a stumble with the start of the Eighth Doctor series, but I’m hoping it picks up. On top of that, I’ve been rewatching the whole MCU, Farscape, as well as watching Star Trek: Voyager for the first time, and currently really enjoying ’90s women’s football drama Playing the Field. Almost overwhelmed by the amount of fiction going into my brain at the minute. What else? Ah yes, I visited Leeds a couple of weeks back, and had a day out in Birmingham for my birthday (37?! Where does the time go? I was 19 when I started this blog…), and it’s been really nice to be in other, more exciting places again. We’re still being pretty wary, wearing FFP3 masks and sitting outside where possible, but having at least a semblance of normality again is so nice. Will be visiting Sheffield and Manchester this autumn, and probably Leeds again, in the hope of finally working out exactly where to move. Be nice to move away from Hinckley again, and knowing that it’s only going to be a matter of months is really a relief.
Recent listening: Gas, BT, Sator Rotas, Wolf Alice, Desperate Journalist, Chvrches, Dry Cleaning, The Joy Formidable, 36, Off Land, Manic Street Preachers, Spraydog.
Hope everyone’s well! xxx
enofa 