A funny few days, for the unfunny reason that precisely sod all has happened. Until recently, something has always been bubbling. My saucepan of activity has gone a little flat of late and I'm not sure whether to turn up the heat, or just ditch this metaphor and wait for a new year to tease itself into existence. What is actually happening, bar any solid life decisions, is self-assessment.

Firstly, my sound is still not completely there. After listening to Bohemian Rhapsody properly today, a r...
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It is 4.32pm on my laptop's clock and I can see it's very dark outside. There can be no better time to type to a blog.

Yesterday saw a rare occurrence. My partner and I threw caution, and money, to the wind and went out for a spot of clubbing. The night was FWD @ Matter, the reasonably new 'superclub' found around the back of the Millennium Dome or, as the sponsors would have us call it, the 'O2'. Firstly it's not quite a superclub. It only had two rooms and a pretty no-nonsense layout, a...
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I can guarantee that in the realm of art where we store our stories, melodies and tapestries, there are far more beginnings than endings. Ideas are furiously spun daily and so many fall by the wayside and are forgotten.

Going through my expanding catalogue of work, it is incredible how many beginnings I have, each calling out to be finished if I could find the time and the will to devote myself to them.

If one wants to ever shore up a story good and fast, the classic route is to surrender it to...
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No musical mouse work this weekend which made a refreshing change. Instead, a long Sunday jaunt to Comet to buy a kettle, a few phone calls, some hours on Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (a quite mad but addictive DS game) and a little musical trawling too.

Sampling is something I keep returning too, it niggles at me. I don't really do it - not properly - as I'm not a DJ and it never occurs to me spend hours in record stores, finding obscure records which hold 5 seconds of absolute musical ...
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The secret to great production? I can think of many tips and hints and philosophies. Unfortunately, the only factor that really matters is time. Hours and hours of application that just can't be side-stepped. And be sure that those people that do incredible things in incredible times only can because they have paid their dues. It's like an entrance exam that can go on indefinitely.
 
So that's what I've been doing: paying dues. Oh, and also playing DS while listening to The Mighty Boosh most n...
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A day and a half of gentler times. I've seen more of the outside world in these last 36 hours than I have in over 7 days and it's nice to feel part of the world again.

It has been good to go walking with my huge, wonderfully sounding headphones and see that no matter what I'm doing in front of my speakers, thousands of other little lives are playing out. In Greenwich park, these little lives usually seem a little happier than usual. It's a good place to feel like human life could be a positive...
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If you smelt the scent of my last post correctly, you'll know I'm quite in love with music again. So it is good timing to revisit some of my favourite tracks, especially those that I've not listened to in some time.

Neil Hannon is an unmistakably fine songwriter. He is what Cole Porter may well have been if he had grown up with a ZX Spectrum. His latest offering, an album devoted to cricket as part of The Duckworth-Lewis Method, is glorious fun and British to its very coccyx. The track on ...
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It's been an intense few days. Hours of music production, late nights, constantly rolling thoughts and reflection. Time for a summation of why I make music.

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Making music is a frivolous task at the best of times, even more so when you are mainly working with a mouse in a bedroom. Making a living from it is a dark art that I'd suggest to very few. So what is the appeal?

It's for those rare moments when, if only for a minute, you're inexplicably transported by vibrations. You shake your music...
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