As the evening comes to a close after a long, long day, the Friday nightclub night bangs on till the early hours. For some reason, it’s only Friday – Saturday it’s quiet, you’d think it would be both weekend nights – I’m not complaining. We’d been out for dinner earlier with Sarah from Texas and Olivia’s dad from Bonn/Cologne – we have visitors from other worlds, and it’s become apparent that this is the kind of place that people like to come to visit, which is good for The Archive. In Penzance, it was just too far off the beaten track, Cornwall’s beauty didn’t matter, if you made it to London, you still had another six hours of travelling to go. Also, Penzance isn’t a city, Porto is, there are just more people out there and more to do, city life, plus beauty all around.

A sesh with Fred in Minneapolis had to finish a little early because he had to go and get an injection in his thumb, as you do. He’d been helping with trying to figure out why my computer wouldn’t let me buy some more iCloud storage, but he had to go to be tortured. Sarah took over and put in some serious time trying to work it out and finally did after some hours of pulling her hair out. Qapla’, now I can work properly. It’s a long story, but despite having external hard drives, not being able to save anything on my desktop was driving me nuts. Fixed! Thank you, now I can uncurl myself from the ball and take the thumb out of my mouth.

Raúl the piano tuner was here again today for the semi-finals and he seemed saddened when we broke the news to him that we don’t play the piano! Well, Olivia keeps on working on a piece that gets better each time and now it’s in tune for simple stuff and will be in tune for someone who can really play and we will be able to get some real piano on a future track. Raúl will be back for the final in two weeks.

I had to go back to Tubitek earlier in the day because I hadn’t picked up the record I originally went to pick up – I was distracted by the bargains and forgot to get the one I’d ordered, James Blake’s Friends That Break Your Heart (2021). Since the day before, another ordered record had arrived, Rain Parade’s Last Rays of a Dying Sun (2023). I’m very much looking forward to hearing that.

We spoke to sessioneer Mike in Chicago, who is helping us with the mystery album cover. It’s looking good, there will be more information soon. The day had started with a sesh with Alain in Cyprus at midday and I was up earlyish preparing for a busy day that started here and finished with my head falling to the pillow like a stone, and then I was asleep.

Music today has been PJ Harvey’s new, semi-weird record with the semi-weird title I Inside the Old Year Dying (2023). I like it a lot – more than White Chalk (2007), Let England Shake (2011), and The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016).

Music Of The Daze