Hello all, just thought we'd update you on what's going on in the world of Cherry Ghost.

If anyone is wondering why the cherryghost.co.uk website has not been updated for over a year, it's because it's controlled by EMI with whom we are no longer associated.

If anyone is wondering why they haven't recieved any updates from our emailing list, it's because that is also controlled by EMI and they won't let us have the list.

We will set up a new emailing list in the next few months once we are closer to finally finishing the second album. The album will be finished by the end of this year and will be released in 2010.

(Also, if the mysterious person who updates our wikipedia page reads this, we didn't record the new album in Berlin, we recorded it in a barn near Warrington instead. Thanks for doing the wikipedia thing though whoever you are.)

Thanks very much to everyone who came to our sold out shows in Manchester and London in September. The shows were just to dip our toes back into live waters, but we really enjoyed them. We feel we are a better band than we were when we last toured. We will tour properly again next year when are closer to releasing the album. In the current absence of an emailing list please keep an eye on our myspace for details of future gigs as and when we finalise them.

In the meantime, we have been posting up previews of some of the new tracks in an unmixed state ie they are not quite the final fully polished versions. We have been very busy working on this material for the last two years, in between playing wi tennis and jumpers for goalposts (google it).

In between that we've been contending with the collapse of the record industry as we know it. There is plenty of debate on this elsewhere on the web, but suffice to say that whilst the industry is belatedly beginning to reshape itself to an environment where music is freely and instantly available as digital data, it is - in this period of adjustment - a massive pain in the arse for those of us caught up in the middle of it. For the last 40 years record labels have been the gatekeepers through which musicians operate and engage with the wider world. That is no longer the case, and it's no more fun for the people who work at the labels than it is for the artists themselves.

As has been pointed out recently by the not normally reliable Lily Allen, this is making it very difficult for new artists to emerge and develop what they do without being subject to massive amounts of commercial and critical pressure - and being axed if they don't instantly meet it. Contrary to popular myth, most music does not emerge fully formed and graced with genius. Instead it's the result of hours of graft writing songs, hours of graft knocking said songs into shape in the rehearsal room, and hours of graft trying to make the recording sound as good as it sounds in your head. It also involves making mistakes along the way, and being prepared to learn from those mistakes to improve what you do.

Looking back on it we don't think our first album was perfect, but it's a debut, it did it's job, made it's mark and we've since learned from making that album and have been working on something considerably better. We are rather keen to finish this second album off and unveil it to people. We believe it will be worth the effort on our part and worth the wait on yours the audiences part. We believe it deserves to be heard.

All support has been and still is massively appreciated,

Thanks,

CG