Out into those lovely dry streets today, looking for all kinds of bits and pieces before we hit the road for España. Music stand, 9V adaptors which led to the milliamps question, oh dear. Generally, no one asks you about milliamps if you are buying a 9V adaptor, but this is Portugal and the man was very concerned I didn’t buy something with the wrong milliamps. I was communicating with him in Spanish, but another man was there doing some translating, which might actually have been confusing the matter. So, this is just a warning that just when you think there can be no doubt, you can be bamboozled by milliamps.

It’s a little colder, but my hot blood doesn’t seem to notice as much as everybody else. I am obviously an alien who landed on this planet with a different physiology. Wasn’t the twist in The War Of The Worlds that the aliens were eventually stopped by the common cold? It makes sense, those aliens better check before they invade. It happened in South America with conquistadors, diseased with European viruses that they could fight off through generations of exposure, but the Incas were unable to fight off those same viruses. I was thinking today that violence might be a disease, a human condition, inherited, handed down, and untreatable as we continue with the pattern, still looking for a cure.

An unplanned sesh with NJ Brian as a new song appeared and needed attention, haha. Songs have needs, they have brains and ideas, they have ambitions, they are also elusive, they need your attention. So we talked to the song, found out what its issues were, and helped it achieve its goals. It left satisfied, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing from it again when we get to the studio and open the conversation about expectations and we’ll do our best to find its identity.

Sarah put together the acoustic pedal board for the three 12-strings – that is three tuners, one for the legendary Tape Guitar, one for the Seagull, and one for the drop D guitar doubling as a spare with three DI boxes all plugged into two plug boards, compact and easy to set up, unlike my dumb system on the English dates where everything was loose and a time-consuming hassle to set up and put away. OK, it wasn’t coal mining, but there are easier ways to do it.

I watched a lacklustre England draw with North Macedonia (1-1) with an own goal to help them and found myself cheering North Macedonia on for a historic win.

Music today has been The Groundhogs – Who Will Save The World? (1972), I suppose it needs posting regularly.

Music Of The Daze

Sunday is still doing that thing to me even if I don’t get out of the house, it’s like a weird invisible gas that floats down the streets and penetrates the walls, causing Sunday anxiety. It must come from it being bath night and the day before school trauma. Sunday also always feels like the day after a disaster, only remnants of the population remain. Mind you, Saturday night regularly causes many disastrous aftermaths.

Up early for the Arktik Lake Tony sesh, next week it will be even earlier, I’ll explain then. Tony was telling me about prunes and custard – I’ll leave that to your imagination. He even sent me a picture. I was up early enough to go back to bed when I was done. I got up to listen to Arktik Lake mixes, fixing little things, and re-analysing. Once we are satisfied, we will be sending it to mastering. The album will be released next year and as soon as we know when, we will post release dates and availability. Expect vinyl as well as CD, how many vinyl copies we will be making, we still have to decide. In the meantime, you can listen to the first single, Bright Sunny Days, here:

And here’s a little Making Of:

Olivia and I rehearsed for our Spanish gigs – Sarah was the audience. The first will be in the historical city of León on Wednesday and the second on Thursday in Lugo. “Lugo is the only city in the world to be surrounded by completely intact Roman walls”. It’s about three and a half hours to León from Porto, the Spanish border is only an hour away. We seemed to make it through the set without too many issues, apart from the pain in the thumbs, wrists and fingertips, otherwise, it was easy.

After a disco pummelling Saturday night and an early Sunday morning I got to sleep a little before 4 AM, this early time left me blog-less – here on Monday I find myself catching up, so I’ll leave it there.

Music today has been a recommendation for Estonian multi-instrumentalist Misha Panfilov, who actually lives in Portugal. Instrumental scenes from the inside of his mind. Lots of records, lots of streams, prolific, his latest is called Atlântico (2023). Thanks for the recommendation…

Music Of The Daze

A trip into town today, which actually means walking out of the front door, was an astounding confirmation of the popularity of Porto even in November – it was packed with people. The main street was a swarming mass, from the bottom of the street you couldn’t imagine how people could get past each other it was so busy. It was also a day without rain and traces of blue sky. I can’t imagine how busy it must have been by the river. We were venturing out to find some pieces for the acoustic pedal board, but it was too late, the shops were closed so we went to the record store which was also packed, but we did manage to pick up my copy of the new Gong album Unending Ascending (2023).

We went to the ‘so unhip it’s hip’ café in the supermarket for a coffee and a cake. We met Joel from the vintage store there and shared chatter about the universe before food shopping and heading back to Archive land. We listened to mysterious mixes for hours before listening to Brooklyn John P’s track again in its final preparation, a Nick B track that I’d played on years ago, and then New Orleans Mike and Paul’s tracks, ten organised demos. It was late by then, but the disco boom from the club was banging through the walls. I might have been able to bear it if it was I Will Survive (1978) or I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Loves to Dance) (1976) or maybe Rock Your Baby (1974), Dancing Queen (1976) or I Feel Love (1977) – but discos don’t play that kind of thing anymore, it’s more of a sonic attack – Hawkwind knew.

Despite having to get up early for an Arktik Lake Tony sesh, at 5.14 AM I’m still up waiting for the drilling bass reverberation to stop. I know if I put my head on the pillow it will be worse, it rises up from the floor and enters your ears quicker and more easily than if you are just sitting or standing. But you can’t really stand by your bed till it stops, haha, just waiting for the last beat.

My guitars are strung, the days before the Spanish shows approach and I’m trying to get my fingers into some kind of condition so they can deal with the bar chords on the 12-string as well as the cutting arpeggios and the A major slashes. By the time I’ve thought about the shows, they will be over and we will be onto the next stage of musical bliss – coming at me from somewhere as yet unknown.

Music today has been Gong – Unending Ascending (2023). Kavus Torabi, Fabio Golfetti, and the lads do it again, and they keep on doing it, thank you for keeping this music alive after Daevid Allen had ascended.

Music Of The Daze

Up today to get to Jorge the luthier in Gaia to have him sort out the buzz on my third fret high E. It’s an important spot on the guitar for me because it’s the place where the Dsus4 happens. Jorge gets his tools out and slightly adjusts the truss rod – et voilà, it’s fixed. The biggest problem was getting the strap back on. It has been held together with gaffa tape and string for years, but now I have a spanking brand-new piece of flex, very posh. Jorge’s skills extend to straps too. He also fixed my lamp, haha. I love my red mushroom lamp that you touch to increase the light. I left him my Shergold 12-string, which needs some TLC after being humiliated in the storage – the spare strings in the case had rusted.

Before taking a Bolt over to Gaia, Sarah and I walked down to see Margarida in the electrical shop. Olivia went to yoga and we went to make sense of the possible bulbs we need for the lamp, I bought three different types and only one was the right one and at last, it’s working again. It seems that a lot of the bulbs that you need for these older lamps are getting harder to find and will eventually stop being manufactured, so we try and stock up for the sake of them and the lava lamps and their future lives.

Sesh with Minneapolis Fred, Chicago Mike, and Surrey Noel, broken up with a lack-lustre England vs Malta as we head into more mix listening into the night. Mixing is so subjective, there are so many ways to take a record and make it sound different. The people involved, their tastes, technology, the era, are all contributing factors. In the end, we only have ourselves to decide what’s the best way to do it – take Seance, for example.

Music today has been Fig by Four and the album Capture Reveal (2023). Thanks, Barbara Crane, for turning me on to this great new artist.

Music Of The Daze

Although I haven’t made much progress, that is to say, none, on the Rough Trade top 100 albums of the year, I did continue on the Lankum exploration and discovered what can only be called doom folk. But I like it a lot, it’s rife with atmosphere, fear of the unknown, darkness, and melancholy. It makes Nick Cave sound like Karen Carpenter, not really, but it sounded good in a sentence.

The post office called for the whiteboard magnet pick up and we ventured through the windy (as in winding) streets after 5 PM to a mostly empty building, one fellow being served and two servers, wow, how rare is that? One of the ladies behind the counter collects foreign words for a stamp, not stamps but words for the word ‘stamp’. I suppose she just keeps the words in her head.

Two seshes today with NJ Brian and working on new songs for album two as album one approaches its mixing conclusion. There have been a lot of great artists that released two or more albums in a year, and regularly, check this link out.

After Brian was Ohio Jeff, another prolific writer who will have music to share very soon. But after that, we went into listening to mixes for the mystery project. Then we discussed it and the future of music until we hit 4 AM. The night before, I got to bed at 6.30 AM. Everything works better in the quiet of the night.

Music today has been Lankum – False Lankum (2023). Mesmerising doom folk that lures you into a poetic darkness.

Music Of The Daze