Hello Everyone,

Myself and Sara Jaffe (formerly of Erase Errata) have co-edited a book called The Art of Touring. The book features artwork, photography and writing reflecting life on the road, plus a DVD of live footage. Contributors include Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Devendra Banhart, Electrelane, the Ex, Le Tigre, Explosions in the Sky, Jem Cohen, Tara Jane ONeil and many more.

The book is published by the wonderful Portland-based imprint, Yeti.

More information can be found here:

http://yetipublishing.com/Art-of-Touring.html

and here:

http://pitchfork.com/news/35797-devendra-thurston-contribute-to-bookdvd-about-touring

We are going to have a couple of events to celebrate the release of the book. The first will be in NYC on August 4th 2009. We will have a reading at Bluestockings bookstore in Manhattan from 7pm, featuring Sara Jaffe, Jem Cohen, Sara Marcus, myself and others. Then, from 10pm-2am, I will be DJing as one half of DARK HABITS at Bruar Falls in Brooklyn.

Any NYC-based people, it would be lovely to see you there!

Mia

late last year we did a remix of Ordinary Song by The Little Ones. It comes out on Heavenly on 21st January. If you are interested, here is a link to where you can buy the single:

www.myspace.com/wearethelittleones

we're blogging while we're on tour at...http://www.electrelane.com/tourblog

We are coming to the end of making our album - in the final days of mixing now. It has been a very intense time, but that is probably a good thing... you have to put your heart into a record. We are really happy with the way the songs are sounding, and now we just have to try to think of a name for the album. Since we arrived here the seasons have changed, and as we are probably more of a winter than a summer band, if that makes sense, this has been good for the record. But all in all, this album is brighter than the last in its mood and sound. It will probably come out sometime in the spring next year, and we can't wait for that because we will be playing gigs again then.

There is a photo on our pictures page taken on the beach in St Joseph, the town next to Benton Harbour, where we went the other afternoon between mixes. Sometimes it is really great to be out of the studio, especially when there is a pirate ship, a lighthouse and a big lake!

we've been at Key Club Recording Co. for just over a week now, recording our new album. The studio is in Benton Harbour - a small town in Michigan - with a good Salvation Army thrift store around the corner...and that might be the best thing about here, aside from the studio, which is great. oh, and the lake is close by - we went for a walk on the pier there the other night, to get a break cabin fever, and the studio dog, Fern, found a dying duck on the beach, which we took back to the studio (Mia is a bird-lover, and wrapped it in her coat, which is now at the dry cleaners, because we had a temproary worry about bird-flu, although it turned out that the bird was just a bit sick with something else, and had some water in its lungs). Anyway, the parents of the studio engineers here (Bill and Jessica - two lovely people) took the duck the next day to a woman who runs a bird rehabilitation home, and now we're just waiting to hear if it is still alive, and how it's doing.

recording is going well. we are finished now with the basic tracks, and are starting to add overdubs and singing. we are working on 15 songs, of which 12 or 13 will probably be on the album. there isn't an album title yet, or many song names...but one of them is called "No Shouts, No Calls" and has a ukelele on it. The Farfisa is back - we bought one from a guy in Boston who had owned it since the late 60s. It sounds the way we always loved it. And Mia has a new guitar - a Hagstrom.

we wrote the album over the summer in Berlin - at Planet Roc studios, which is in the former GDR radio station studios. Apart from a few gigs, including ATP, this was the first time we had played together for about 6 months, and it felt like starting out again, being excited about being in a band and writing music together.