Today was the day of Raul the piano tuner and although it might not be as dangerous a job as Marco the electrician, one must consider the universal comedy sketch of a piano falling from a great height and squashing the unsuspecting passer-by. Luckily we are on the ground floor, and we don’t have a grand piano, just a humble German upright from Leipzig which is probably 100 years old, I’m catching it up.

Having expert tradesmen in the room is satisfying, and it doesn’t matter what kind of expert they are, an expert baker like the one around the corner, an expert plumber, electrician or piano tuner, and watching Raul pull the piano apart and start working on it, you immediately knew that this was his planet. He pulled all the front panels off (I didn’t even know you could do that) and exposed the keys and the strings, and you realise that a piano is, in fact, a string instrument, you just don’t hit them directly, there’s a stage in between.

Inside there were issues, the piano was flat by 10 Hertz, but he didn’t just want to tune it all the way up because the strings might not be able to take it, they didn’t, and he broke eight strings on the way. This piano has not been loved for a really long time. At one point, he said, “No rats,” meaning that the rats hadn’t got in under the keys. But he found dead woodworms in the front. It was good because they were dead, he hoovered them away and brushed inside before starting the process that broke the strings. The higher strings mainly behaved, it was the lower ones, the more expensive ones, that didn’t like the attention – and the tension.

He tuned it up to a certain point and will come back on Friday, letting it settle might help the strings’ shock awakening. But then he went around the back and cut off the old cloth that hid the inside. There he found dead woodworms and live woodworms. Not good, but Olivia went with him to the shop to find a special agent that kills them. They came back not with a brooding dark assassin but a small tin with a long plastic nozzle to penetrate the woodworms’ holes. We’ll see progress on their death when he returns at the end of the week.

Raul arrived at 3 PM, but he was here for hours, extremely dedicated to the job at hand. In the meantime, our sessioneer friends Abby and Nick had arrived from Santa Fe. On their hols visiting Portugal and us, they came for dinner and to check out The Archive. Also, Kallie (and her partner Thadeu) who has been helping Olivia with the editing, the presentation, and the release of her poetry book Sleep for Dessert – available imminently. Lively chatter between the poets, the philosophers, the dentist, and the musicians. Olivia cooked a scrumptious dinner.

Music today was Elvis Costello’s Hey Clockface (2020), his 31st studio album. He’s nothing if not prolific and frankly I find it hard to keep up with him, but that he is an immense talent as a singer and a songwriter is beyond doubt. One might tire of his warbling controlled vibrato, but if you can get over that he’s a great lyricist and knows how to frame it all within tricky moving melodies. I like this album, but you have to like his shtick and I do and have since (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes (1977) and since the days of playing Oliver’s Army (1979) in a Twickenham wine bar in the late seventies. Still, like chocolate, however much you like it, there’s a limit and although his dad is from Birkenhead, my part of the world, I’m not sure he’s in my blood. Although I always loved I Want You (1986)

Music Of The Daze

Oh no, the alarm went off at ten minutes to nine, and then nine, and then ten past nine, and then I finally managed to get up. Marco the electrician was coming at nine-thirty and he arrived at nine-thirty, result. I thought maybe he could run some electricity through my veins to keep me going, but alas, no. I am in awe of electricians, skilled tradesmen and women are really something, but an electrician makes one wrong move, and boom, Hollywood hair frizzle, skeleton X-ray visual and you’re pushing up the daisies. I suppose a roofer can fall off the roof, a glazier can slice himself, a stonemason or a carpenter saw himself in half, but with an electrician, one insignificant live wire missed and the jolt sends you to graveyard duty.

He did a lot of fixing, but it’s Phase 1, we’re going to have to spread the work out because it’s not cheap when you have to renovate premises. The kitchen will be next and then when the records arrive the placing of plug sockets everywhere for the lights that hang over the shelves. We don’t know where these sockets will be until everything arrives, so we have to wait. Getting started on another aspect of the renovation inspired us to sort out the rooms where The Archive will be, throw away boxes we didn’t need, stack the ones we did, and generally get this creative space into the best possible version of itself. It’s good to have a light switch in the kitchen and one in the front room now. We’ve finally dispensed of all the extension cords and have the roof panels back in place. Now it’s time to start thinking about when and how to start Phase 3, the mega-move, probably around Christmas for a spring execution. (Excuse the choice of words there – Christmas and execution, it gets pretty deep at In Deep.)

I had to rip up all the boxes we didn’t want and get the tape off them, Luke’s boxes from Ireland that he sent the music mags in were heavily gaffa taped and it took ten men to destroy the box (you could build a tank out of gaffa tape). We decided to wait till the early hours to take it all to the recycling. It’s rainy and wet everywhere and we don’t want to be running into people on the street – remember what happened with the legendary red chair.

Sesh today with Artoush in Austin, just getting started, lots of potential there. I also had a conversation with Anekdoten Nicklas who is putting real Mellotron on one of sessioneer Minneapolis Fred’s tracks. I was meant to be listening through to sessioneer NJ Brian’s Valley of Salt mix tweaks, but Marco put an end to that with wires everywhere and I was unsure whether the electricity might go off as he tried to trace wires and figure out why plug sockets weren’t working. Dinner and Andor and now it’s late already.

Music today was Julien Baker’s second album Turn Out The Lights (2017). Lovely stuff, the sound, the songs, the voice, the words, highly recommended. She is also a member of boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus.

Music Of The Daze

Up in time for the Liverpool game after a 5 AM bedtime. Olivia and I stayed up listening to Soft Machine and Faust (as you do). I’m trying to get away from the studio computer screen to the laptop screen, so I can be in the front listening to music on the stereo as I write. Having said that, I have new Valley of Salt mixes with tweaks, getting ever closer to mastering this album and trying to figure out how to release it to the world. That means listening in studio land, although it’s great to get a different perspective on the stereo speakers, after all, that’s where it has to sound its best. The record-making process is so detailed and there are so many aspects to consider from the day you wrote your first riff to seeing the record in the shops or hearing it on the radio, if you are in Sydney you may hear the new Arktik Lake single on 2 SER but generally getting on the radio isn’t the game we play in most of the world. It seems that the most popular radio is the radio you don’t want to listen to – Forget The Radio.

Sarah who has been putting lots of input into the future projects rang from Florence today where she’s on holiday, telling us of magnificent buildings and psychedelic Renaissance paintings. It reminded me of the trip we made to Coimbra last week, or even walking through the streets of Porto and suddenly being faced with a blue-tiled magnificent church – that’s Europe. We are constantly surrounded by the past as we stumble into the future, standing outside an 800-year-old cathedral talking on your mobile phone is a rather absurd image. If only the past could see the future. I wonder how the future humans will look back on us from the 22nd century, “Can you imagine what they believed in the 21st century?” I can hear them talking.

One wonders if The Archive will make it to the 22nd century. Will it even make it to Porto? As we contemplate the expensive electrician coming tomorrow to start fixing the electricity issues in the premises, we realise that the expense of the renovation is not over yet. We will have to employ him in different stages so as not to be hit with a big bill for everything that needs to be done all at once. I think we should think about starting Phase 3 around Christmas, hopefully, more projects, another GoFundMe campaign, and the attempt to bring the records and everything else over in the spring – transport, customs, storage, the three big ones. I sit in the front room here, close my eyes, and dream about opening them and seeing the shelves and the collection through The Archive door.

Liverpool won convincingly, the Arsenal/Man U second half was exciting, and the Arsenal crowd went nuts with their late winners. Coco won, Jimmy Buffett died, he was a billionaire, I always think it might be best to use up all your money whilst you are still alive, but if you have that much I guess it’s not so easy. What do footballers do with all their money after the first year of buying everything they would ever want?

Music today has been the reissue of The Faust Tapes (1973). Originally released for the price of a single (49p), apparently 60,000 people in England bought it (including me, the original is in The Archive). It’s so weird and so great and so nuts and so unique and German, a sonic collage. If you liked Revolution 9, then this is for you.

Music Of The Daze

Ah, Saturday, day off, or should I say afternoon and evening off as the morning wasn’t available. So there was a small record fair, a couple of blocks away from us which we managed to get to by 3 PM, it seemed late but when we got there it hadn’t opened till 2 PM. It was right in the centre of town, but there was no sign outside to attract passers-by, how is that even possible? (I happened to have noticed a poster the other day.) Well, up on the fourth floor in the live room where we watched Don Letts stand behind a turntable were a few stalls and not the best selection of records. Mainly things I have mixed with things I don’t want, but I did pick up The National’s I Am Easy To Find (2019) which I got from a lovely couple, stallholders Tiago and his partner Sofia. He told me it’s too mellow for him, I told him that’s what I’m after. It’s a triple vinyl record in a triple gatefold with three different coloured vinyl records, these days if you don’t like the music you can always marvel at the packaging.

From there, Olivia wanted to show me a new record store she’d found close by in the centre. Nice folks in there in an arty place with a venue downstairs that they showed us and books upstairs with records new and second-hand in the middle. I bought a German compilation of Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell (1970), a nice reissue of Shocking Blue’s At Home (1969) and the bargained-priced Sandie Shaw covers album Reviewing the Situations (1969). I have the original album, but this has an extra disc of unreleased songs including Heaven Knows I’m Missing Him Now, which was the inspiration for Morrissey to write the Smiths classic Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now (1984). On the original disc, groove to the Led Zep song Your Time is Gonna Come (1968) and The Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil (1968). Where next on my day off? Tubitek of course where I picked up an album I had ordered, the Steven Wilson remix of Gentle Giant’s Interview (1976).

Music today has been Soft Machine’s Other Doors (2023) starring John Etheridge on guitar and Theo Travis on instruments you blow into and keys. John Marshall plays the drums and Fred Thelonious Baker is on bass, although ex-bassist Roy Babbington guests on two tracks (he’s 83). Anekdoten played a gig in Italy with Soft Machine and we had breakfast together, haha, we also jammed with Theo Travis. Classic.

Follow this link for the new Arktik Lake single Bright Sunny Days, I sing and play guitar, co-write and co-produce. Check it out, lots more information on the Bandcamp page.

Music Of The Daze