Hey, thanks everyone for all the nice words and here’s the latest update. Well Olivia is feeling better than she did and I’m allegedly still negative, that is until I take another test. So when I do I’ll let you know if I have escaped or whether it got me. Olivia had mild aches, a slight cold and a small cough – she still has the small cough. I’m not sure where I am at with it all, a night on the couch is never the same as a night in bed so when I woke up today it took me ages to get going. I was weary, but not ill. Obviously, I wasn’t able to go for Wednesday’s swim and the thing is that if I am ever weary, it’s the mega swim that gives me the energy, flooding my brain with endorphins and blood that rushes through my veins like torrents of uncontrollable floods from a broken damn, ok perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration but it’s interesting that exercise takes energy but gives you more than you had before you took it – it’s so weird being human.

We made another end of year best-of list with Torched Magazine putting both MOAT and Space Summit in their top picks. We also made an ‘end of year’ list for Space Summit with Jammerzine. Throughout the year we’ve been getting lots of good reviews with MOAT – Poison Stream released in February, Space Summit – Life This Way released in September, Arktik Lake – Shimmer released in October and the recently released Brix Smith et moi – Lost Angeles in December. Vinyl copies of Space Summit are due in the middle of next year, CD and vinyl of Lost Angeles in January. You can find all those 2021 reviews in one place here. We also had a Record Store Day (RSD Drops) release in June for Noctorum’s Sparks Lane, its first appearance on vinyl (buy here). Thank you for all the support for these projects and thank you for all the Buy Me A Coffee and the GoFundMe In Deep Music Archive campaign contributions, the latter a work in progress that will stretch into next year as we figure out how to make it happen and have the vision realised not just for the archive but for everyone involved in the Songwriting & Guitar Guidance project that sees people fulfil their own dreams of making music.

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Today is day three of Olivia’s positive Covid test/symptoms, other countries are making self-isolating shorter, US five days asymptomatic and UK seven days but as far as I understand it, it’s still ten days here. So, we wait and hope we can use the time indoors to get more things done. Although it didn’t happen today, there are still seven days left and with seshes and staring at screens to learn some extra things I could be suffering from computer overkill very quickly. That walk outside, just for the sake of it is so important. I don’t just go to the psychedelic psupermarket to buy the things we need, I go for the walk too. It’s hard to suddenly get your exercise from walking to the kitchen from the front room (avoiding Olivia) when you’re used to sprightly walks to the pool and swimming 70 lengths (that includes the walks there and back). Maybe I should listen to metal and headbang for a week.

Music today has been Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain (1971), the greatest example of black psychedelia. Bandleader George Clinton tripping on acid told guitarist Eddie Hazel (whose hero was Jimi Hendrix) to play like he’d just been told his mother had died. You should read the Wikipedia page, it’s fascinating. The album sounds like a bunch of dudes tripping off their heads in 1971, which is exactly what it is, but mix it with Clinton’s vision and the skills of the musicians involved and you have a drug-induced classic. The question is how many of the world’s greatest albums were drug-induced? How long have you got?

Music Of The Daze