Tonight the sky was the ‘ice sky from the north’, so clear and perfect, a cold wind had unveiled the stars by blowing the clouds away and replacing that low dull ceiling of grey with this epic giant star-studded roof of the universe. The Earth felt like it had been scrubbed clean, that all pollution was gone, the air so fresh it invigorated your lungs, your body rising and stretched as it filled with oxygen. You could see the constellations clearly, Orion, Taurus, the Pleiades, there is magic in the air when the cold hits – you can see millions of miles into infinity, like you could reach the distant planets by simply breathing in the purity of the night. It was beautiful.

In the day, we finished Arctic Lake with invisible tweaks and moved onto Atlanta sessioneer Craig’s song that we will work on in this last period before we leave for Portugal, presuming the lockdown ends and we can travel. I was looking at the travel advice and so far there are no restrictions on arriving in Portugal but we still need to get there. When we do get there we will be visiting the Livraria Lello bookstore which is one of the most famous bookstores in the world, allegedly part inspiration for J.K. Rowling. They sell books in many languages but apparently have a good selection of English books, which answers my question about do I need to take books with me? Always a hassle if you’re flying, they’re heavy. Volumes have secrets.

Support our MOAT campaign here

Olivia was excitingly sending out Mystery Boxes today and she will be doing that till the end of the week. We only have 17 days left before the campaign ends. A new song, The Roadmap To My Soul, has already been sent to the first 50% of donators and if you donate now we will update and send the first three tracks from the album to you every Friday. That will include Gone By Noon and Acid Rain, these two songs you can already hear by clicking on them. You can also get signed prints of the cover art through the campaign if a postcard from Penzance doesn’t do it for you. The first MOAT album is running out, get it while you can. Anyone that wanted a T-shirt might have found there was a glitch on the site the first 12 hours they were available, that is now fixed. The one-hour Skype concert was up at $300, it’s back to $200 as it should have been from the start, like the last time we did a campaign. Thanks for the support, the original campaign video is here:

Jerome Froese called me from Berlin today and sessioneer Ahad and I skyped to New York. How incredible is that? The humans take it all for granted, this unbelievable technology that allows us to communicate across the world. Every week I speak to Arctic Lake sessioneer Tony in Sydney by Skype. We have clear and interruption-free conversations every time. Amazing. This is why the Songwriting & Guitar Guidance sessions work so well, you just need a solid internet link and you’re in. Try it, the first preliminary conversation is free and it doesn’t matter what level you are at. At some point you will be hearing the results of the four sessioneers, Jed in Minneapolis (Space Summit), Ahad in Istanbul, Tony in Sydney (Arctic Lake), and Craig in Atlanta. This will show you the potential, all you need is some ideas and some will. Get in touch.

The Songwriting & Guitar Guidance Sessions

Jerome and I had a good talk today about saving the universe, the unreleased Tangerine Dream back catalogue hitting Bandcamp and making our record. He’ll be working on it in Berlin up till Christmas and we will be communicating back and forth as it reveals itself to us. It’s exciting, I’ve never made a record like this before. Dare will be mixing Ahad’s record after I have gone but I will be getting mixes and updates all the time as we strive to finish that record, too. Long may all this continue.

Music today is Rory Gallagher’s RSD release this year, Cleveland Calling, an acoustic set at a radio show where he plays bluesy songs and talks to the host. It just makes you love him even more. I saw him live twice in the seventies, once at Liverpool Stadium in December 1974 and once at Reading Festival in August 1976 (I also remember Camel and Van Der Graaf Generator being on the bill). Rory played electric mostly but always had an acoustic section in the show.

The Reading Festival 27 – 29 August 1976