December is upon us and we wish everyone in the outside world a merry christmas ...

We are a fair bit into recording the album now and came to the conclusion that sometimes things take as long as they need to take - no matter how hard you work. Somethings are just not in your control. Like incontinence. Or an involuntary erection. It's not my fault. karma has spoken.

Last time i saw John he was knitting a monkey out of old socks and listening to Hall and Oats. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing but it's a new development. I will give him a copy of Oracular Spectacular & a fruit basket for xmas & see if that does anything for him.

While we haven't been playing to the world much, locked in studio, we've enjoyed listening to quite a few of the years records . Foals, friendly fires, Vampire weekend, Beck's modern Guilt, & mystery jets particularly for having a released a song that bares resemblance in the chorus to 'All Night Long' by Lionel Ritchie -has anyone else noticed that?

Current level of neurosis = stable

Love to all

SN

Last two months has been about us trying new material in the studio and live.

There's a bit of a new sense of direction upon the band and I think we're a bit more excited at the moment with what we're creating in our windowless, increasingly diseased room. However the unending strict diet of omelettes is beginning to take it's toll. Sam has vowed to give up on all egg based nourishment completely from now on and John has become addicted to those twenty pence tubes of tomato puree. Meantime the intonation on all our guitars seems to be up the spout which is adding even more spice to the usual red light (recording) confusion & nightmares. 

Speaking of spice I had some chana from the take away on cavel street the other day (what's the name of that place in the square?) which was great but i now seem to have rubbed the greasy oil into my bass strings. Smells good though.

People vs. Machines

We decided to experiment with backing tracks filling the roll of real monkeys (i.e., a drummer & keyboard player). Not a new idea in the world but very new to us since we are a band with a bit of an ethic towards maintaining the human/real and spontaneous spark to things. Luckily we don't seem to have a problem creating human errors, mistakes etc. We wanted to see how we could reproduce live, what we've been creating 4 the record.

We were planning to gig with our real drummer (aka Wez) when promoting material - but using backing tracks, drum machines has given us the option to test out new tracks live without rehearsing obsessively as a 4 piece. It's nice to keep a bit of spontaneity for live.

We played two gigs in London - notably the Purple Turtle where many of the faithful throng attended. It went pretty well -reaction was good and the promoters offered more gigs. It was good to air a lot of new tunes. I can't help feel that backing tracks are going to be a temporary thing though.

The answer for us may not be more musicians but more instruments on stage for the three of us to rotate with. The songs will sound a bit different but given the abilities in the group I think it'll be a shame to let the machines take over . . . .