Up with the late lark again because today was the day of the water people. Just as we were about to walk out of the door, we got a message telling us that it was not going to happen until Saturday. I suspected as much but as we still don’t have any taps maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. We had a plumber coming today to assess the issue, except he didn’t show up and didn’t respond to messages. Perhaps Easter has everyone fleeing. Easter is a strange one because Saturday seems unaffected whilst the other days, Friday, Sunday, and Monday, have the city go silent. So we can get a delivery from IKEA, and get the water on but on either side of Saturday, the pool is closed. You’d think that something important must have happened on Saturday too.

So we went down to In Deep/Studio/Archive land anyway because there is loads to do. We open up all the windows and the blinds, let the light in, and do as much as possible till darkness comes and creates rooms full of shadows that has us straining our eyes and squeezing every last drop of light time out of the day. Today as we were up unexpectedly early we found ourselves with time to get to the secondhand furniture shop around the corner to look for more furniture to put things on in the studio part, plus we need a table for the front part, oh yeah and we need the records to fill the middle part.

We didn’t find what we needed in furniture but we did find exactly what I needed in the wake of not having electricity…battery-operated music. There’s another shop around the corner from the new place that exclusively sells vintage radios and turntables. It’s quite an amazing shop and I went in to ask if they had any transistor radios, they did but they were pricey (vintage knowledge prices). In the secondhand furniture store, I found a CD/cassette/radio for 20€. I still had to buy batteries, those big chunky ones and a shop close by had them. It worked, so we’ll have music, it seems a music archive might demand such a thing.

I got a message from Tubitek, the record store, that my records had arrived, three Curve EPs (Blindfold, Cherry, and Frozen), the new Daughter album, the new Fever Ray and The Pretty Reckless acoustic and covers record. I just realised that all six records have female singers. But despite my classic find of a CD/cassette and radio player, we still have no electricity so all these great records have to wait.

The earlyish day had us finding time to get out to IKEA in the suburbs and buy a sofa bed, a desk, and a carpet. From there to Leroy Merlin (that I suppose might be the equivalent of Home Depot) where we bought plaster, tools to plaster, and primer paint. We also bought some lids for my ace amp booth. What’s that? Well, I have four baffle-like screens that make a square. I have a small pallet and I place my Fender Hot Rod Deville on it and I’m able to use the amp in the same room I’m recording in at a decent volume – hopefully. But there’s no lid for this created room/amp booth, so we bought wooden lids to put on the top of the four square baffles. Perfect, the man cut the wood in half so we had two that would fit on top. Then we called a Bolt, but the lids wouldn’t fit in the two we tried, they have vans but none were available, oh Ariel, where are you now? After going through the options we were able to take the lids back in and have them delivered next Saturday, the 15th. Result, but for a moment there we were in a car park with two blocks of wood and no way to move them.

Music today was again inspired by the traffic. Someone was blasting out Talk Talk’s The Colour of Spring (1986). I don’t need much pushing to listen to that album.

Music Of The Daze