Up early for a sesh with Rohan in Australia this morning and as it was A-day there I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. It was booked ages ago, just before Christmas and as I couldn’t find him on email and I needed to sleep I told him to send me a text at 9 AM if its on and I’ll get up. It’s all about sleep time, 9 AM might sound reasonable to you as a wake-up time but not if bedtime is between 4 AM and 5 AM. So he texted me, I got up, seshed on with his fantabulous musical progressive meanderings and whilst listening to his intriguing ten-minute epic another ocular migraine came on. I rode it through to the end with his vision doing better than mine. I decided to go back to bed, I feel like I’m spending half my time living, writing, creating and the other half recovering. But eternally optimistic I will make sure that my coffin vibrates with music. As an archivist, I always thought it wouldn’t be doing justice to die to the music of one idea but perhaps everyone could have headphones and a very long playlist so they are not interrupted by sorrow, only inspiration. Talk the day after, discuss the songs because the songs live on.

So feeling awful today, dull headache, constantly thirsty, slight tummy ache but a Chris sesh in New Jersey at 6 PM always a pleasure like ALL the sessioneers. Both Chris and Rohan have been buying a load of records. Rohan bought the King Hannah 6-Track EP while he still can. Chris bought two classics that the world forgot, Bee Gees’ Odessa (1969) and Steve Hillage‘s L (1976) – amongst others. What’s better than turning somebody on to something they are going to love. So in the modern world, what is this thing called an influencer? Directing young people (like themselves) in the ways of now and who are we to judge whether their influence is worthy? Influencer sounds so trendy and I wonder do influencers exist to turn young people on to Baudelaire or Scott Walker, Kandinsky or architecture – or is that just education? I’m influenced by all those worlds of art, film, music and books but it’s education too and appreciation. I suppose that Jean Paul Gaultier is education and appreciation, but I think I like Jean-Paul Belmondo more. I suppose there’s influencers out there that give you confidence, great, that’s good, getting fit, that’s good too, what about knowledge of history – that teaches you about mistakes to avoid.

I looked out of the window today and saw the mist again, it’s like James Herbert’s The Fog – eerie, atmospheric but actually without any macabre twist. It’s just weather and as it’s Portugal it’s going to have that southern European vibe very soon, what’s nice to know is that there are also proper seasons and we get to experience winter, albeit without snow and nothing like the cold I experienced living in Sweden. I spoke to Dare today about mastering and mixes and as I did I opened the window where the washing machine is and stared out into the mist. We tried to figure out what happened to Liverpool, lamented Frank Lampard’s sacking and wondered about the arrival of Tuchel recently sacked from Paris Saint-Germain (welcome Mauricio Pochettino). But as we mused about music and football I noticed the two seagulls that constantly wait on the roof for the lady to feed them. I’ve only seen her do it once but all they do is wait there. I wonder about a seagull’s or a pigeon’s life (haha). Two smart birds that are always around humans looking for food. Sparrows and blue tits and chaffinches might appreciate a bird feeder but they seem to manage without and the blackbirds listening for worms never seem short of food, crows too always fending for themselves, swallows, swifts and house martin’s at dusk taking the insects. And yet these birds that rely on human handouts are also careful not to be caught, just out of arm’s length always wary of the child that wants to chase them or that nasty human that wants to harm them, cruelly strike them (sick) – talking of strikers, really, what happened to Liverpool?

Last but not least a good person laid on me some free yoga lessons online. Thanks for all the comments and advice about stay stay stay stay staying alive, I do listen to sensible people.

Music today comes from Pram, that strange mixture of innovative, thoughtful, creative, intriguing and completely uninteresting to the masses. They now have a changed lineup but Dark Island released in 2003 was their sixth album. They hail from Birmingham, formed in 1988 and released their first EP Gash in 1992. Their first album The Stars Are So Big, The Earth Is So Small…Stay As You Are came in 1993. Singer Rosie Cuckston is the antithesis of commercial music, and wonderful for it. She sounds like she has been transported from a Victorian workhouse into a recording studio but on this album, the first song Track Of The Cat is an instrumental, weird and wonderful. Followed by Penny Arcade, they blend the organic trumpet of Alex Clare with the eerie electronics of other band members, Sam Owen, Matt Eaton Nick Sales and Max Simpson. Sam and Matt also sharing guitars and bass. Stephen Perkins and Laurence Hunt play the drums. String players too, seems like a lot of friends. Lyrically there’s not a cliche in sight:

The Pawnshop

As winter bleached the colour from the sun you left the in-laws
And went to buy the things that I’d put in the pawnshop window
And you took them home, locked them away
My heart and soul, like china in display

I realised my mistake and hurried to the pawnshop window
But where my things had been there was nothing but a shadow
And I became yours as you held the key
My heart and soul no longer belong to me

So now I wash the blood out of the uniforms you wear
And stitch and mend your life up wherever there’s a tear
I repay the debt, so one day you’ll owe me
And on a night you’ll regret, you will hand over the key

Then there’s the slightly bizarre Paper Hats:

When the strangest fictions turn out to be the truth
It’s the so-called storyteller has the burden of the proof
Every year she throws a party for the man she says had
Took her mind away
They both wear paper hats and there’s a jelly shaped like a rabbit
On a plate

I would not risk killing love
My words would leave a trail of blood
(x2)

She looks for one reason for why she’s acting strange
And she blames the seasons for her behaviour change
Tell the one you love the things they want to hear though you might betray yourself
And keep faith with the family, the scientists, the chemicals
On your bathroom shelf

I would not risk killing love
My words would leave a trail of blood

It’s this personal inward vision, ideas, moods and by the second instrumental track Peepshow you realise they are as adept and conjuring up pictures with instruments as they are with words. Sirocco, also instrumental, takes us on a magical journey to Egypt in 1920, you can see the fez-bearing waiters in the cafe from the black and white movie. This is followed by The Archivist and its appreciation of preservation on this mortal coil and how life is fleeting and like the In Deep Music Archive there will be a time when I can no longer potter, alphabetise and immerse myself in the beautiful collection. The song wanders off into the labyrinth of sound exploration for another 3 minutes, again evocative in lyric and in sound as we dive down deep into the section in the tight tunnel between Ad-As.

As the clocks so solemnly declare it
Strike each single hour down without malice
Nothing lasts long, nothing stays in place
You find you can’t recall things as you wanted
And no photographs can hold the image
Nothing lasts long, nothing stays in place

Imperfect archivist, you’re only human
Although you wish to savour all that you can
You won’t live as long as you think you will
You’ll find yourself betrayed by your own body
As what you know to be yourself is murdered
By times progress through each single cell

Hold on to the chances you took
You can only make it if you
Don’t let minutes and seconds past you
Don’t let times perspective throw you
Nail each moment down so that it matches your heartbeat

Goodbye follows with another intriguing lyric that seems to suggest that the falling into the night is troubled by wishing for the day and vice versa. I can relate to this, I love the night but whenever I see the morning I love it too, I just can’t seem to have both. The worst thing I can think of is going to bed at 10 PM but missing the morning seems like the compromise I have to make.

Only the night can touch me and I’ll feel it anymore
Only the night can kiss me and I’ll feel it anymore
When the night whispers to me, I long for the day
When daylight bleaches my dreams, I long for the night

No one teaches you how to say goodbye
You could react to it as calmly as you would
Watch an aeroplane crossing the blue summer sky
No one teaches you how to say goodbye
No one teaches you how to say goodbye

In my dreams the grave robbers fill their pockets up with goods
Credit cards, the dead men’s numbers, and their watches, their lost time
When the night whispers to me, I long for the day
When daylight bleaches my dreams, I long for the night

No one teaches you how to say goodbye
You could react to it as calmly as you would
Watch an aeroplane crossing the blue summer sky
No one teaches you how to say goodbye
No one teaches you how to say goodbye

Another instrumental, Leeward, which if you are unsure of its meaning…: On or toward the side sheltered from the wind or toward which the wind is blowing; downwind.

The last track, Distant Islands, is again perceptive, lyrical, thoughtful. This is a record you must listen to with the lyrics at hand. Go on their musical journey with them too because it’s also like being taken by the hand into a place you’re not sure you want to go, through a beaded curtain into the unknown. But go there, stay a while, come back feeling like you’ve been somewhere you haven’t been before and even if you don’t go back, breaking your normal world for an hour will only make you understand some things better or hopefully become more intrigued about what’s outside the box.

I hesitate to say what I mean as my mind is full of doubt
I hesitate to say what I mean as I might leave something out

Words make remote objects of us
Distant islands in an ocean of sound
Words can make strangers of lovers
Disconnected by meanings they’ve found
One word can turn your world upside down

Silences can act like a wall
Keep the space round me empty
But silence can sometimes say more
About what things mean for me

Words make remote objects of us
Distant islands in an ocean of sound
Words can make strangers of lovers
Disconnected by meanings they’ve found
One word can turn your world upside down

The album that started lyrically with Penny Arcade seems to suit best at the end of the album rather than the beginning:

There’s a place that we all know
It’s the world where dreamers go
And whether it’s filled with colours
Or it’s black and white
People go to visit if it’s day or night

A private life the dreamer leads
No guidebook to the world of dreams
And whether it’s filled with horrors
Or it’s warm and bright
People go to visit if it’s day or night

There’s a place that we all know
It’s the world where dreamers go
And whether it’s filled with colours
Or it’s black and white
People go to visit if it’s day or night

Song Of The Daze