The carnival is over, all the fireworks have gone… home. We managed to record 11 songs in 10 days which was a great effort. We also have a tentative album title of ‘One Winter, One Spring’. It’s a song title that we thought was well suited as album title because, coincidentally, we wrote the album together in the winter and recorded it together in the spring. It will be a while before this sparkling album is mixed and ready for your ears but it will be worth the wait.

It has been an exciting, rewarding and tiring 10 days. Some things we have learnt in that time:

- a teeny tiny glass fuse inside a Fender DeVille can be a huge crippling problem when it blows out.

- the sea is still bloody cold in April.

- Tim is good at making cakes.

- Nick is the official master of shred.

- Auto shops are great places to find teeny tiny glass fuses that save lives.

- Rhiannon likes to make secret videos, not quite Carla Bruni but close.

- Arrested Development is a mighty fine show.

- a viola can hold more beer than a violin.  

- Tim is good at eating cakes.

- James needs to run faster.

Keep an eye, and ear, out for the new songs on the player in the next couple of months, you can track the mixing process here if you so wish.

Neil

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I crave wit... I really do. It seems that communicating the excitement of playing music through words is an elusive art and well beyond me. Consequently I shall keep the report on our musical activities over the last two days brief... We have recorded the basic tracks for a lot of songs. They all sound good. This is good.

Other things we have learned since we last typed...

Tim, when he was a tender eight years old, played a boy from another school at chess. Tim made a particularly devilish move and his opponent proceeded to leave the table. Tim was shortly informed that his challenger would not be returning because he had wet himself. Tim won the match by default. None of us intend to play Tim at chess.

Neil had a strange dream involving a sexual encounter with Jamie Theakston.

We have discovered Total Wipeout. It reduces us all.

Jean Claude Van Damme can not act, even when he's given two chances to do so in the space of one film.

He can twirl around impressively...

He can twirl doubly impressively if he plays two characters that have to fight in said film.

Nicht.  

Hello again. It is 11 p.m, an episode of Family Guy is blaring in the background and we are all tired and sated after a busy day and a large dinner. Today we began proper recording, yesterday having been spent setting up. I left bed at 9 a.m and found the rest of the band up and already at work, well ahead of our 9:30 start time. Maxims aside, this early start certainly helped as we finished today ahead of schedule. We have recorded rhythm tracks for 'Here the Roses', 'Only the Night', 'Broken Bottles' and also one we hope will stick for the song under the current working title of 'Settle Down'.

So, good work done. Apologies for the slightly dry tone of this blog. I am tired. Much more to do tomorrow. You can find videos of our recording, silly and serious, at www.youtube.com/user/organgrinderrecords and Nick will doubtless be maintaining his technical blog at www.nickfuckinggill.com.

Now we are going to watch a film called Replicant which stars Jean-Claude Van Damme playing two roles, a serial killer and his clone. We expect greatness. 

In a little under two weeks time we’ll be recording a new album and rest assured there won't be any dinosaurs on it, so no re-re-re recording of Echo’s Swing just brand new songs.

This is exciting for many reasons; for one it’ll just be great recording a new album, it also means a week off work which is a week away from soul destroying number punching and mouse clicking for me. We’re also recording this album ourselves mainly due to the fact that studios are hellishly expensive and this way it’ll be immensely cheaper. Now, this would have been a terrible idea if I had the task of recording it because I probably would have recorded it onto my phone in one take. Luckily we have a Geek Lord amongst our ranks who has been fervently planning and reading everything that could help make the album sound as good as possible. That lovely Geek Lord is Mr Nick Gill and he’s just begun writing about this recording malarkey in great detail on his blog, you can read about it here - a word of warning though, when I said ‘great detail’ I meant it, it’s a little like reading an article in Tape Op, which is magazine shaped heaven for people who like recording stuff. Unsurprisingly, Nick refers to this magazine in his blog.

So keep an eye on the MySpazz, and Nick’s blog, for photos and stories about our forthcoming recording endeavours. 

Neil

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Hello,

Our latest recordings (three of which are on the our music player) are now available to buy from our label www.organgrinderrecords.com, Rough Trade shops or by appoaching us cautiously with cudgel at live shows. The first two locations will involve payment, the latter may not.

We have put six songs together on an E.P called 'A Mirror, A Ghost'. They go as follows:

1. You, Holding

2. The Shiver in Your Bones

3. The Fire

4. Down to the Lake

5. A Mirror, A Ghost

6. Echo' Swing

This blog's historical anecdote comes from post-revolutionary France, 1793. It seems that the National Convention decided that a new France required a new calendar and promptly decreed its introduction. It was based on a ten-hour day, a ten-day week (with a rest day occurring only on the tenth day -jeez!) and also saw the names of the months changed to correspond with natural phenomena. So, for example, Autumn came to be made up of Vendemiaire, Brumaire and Frimaire (Harvest, Mist and Cold respectively according to my book). This calendar lasted until 1806. A more lasting change occurred in 1795 when they introduced the metric system which Napolean then spread in his inimitable way and is still used today.

THE END

P.S In more recent historical news, I saw Leonard Cohen last night. (melts)

The photo below is apparently what most desks at radio stations look like, caked in cds and promo sleeves. I nicked the picture from Tom Robinson's site.

Now, you might be thinking, "why are you showing me that?" well, I came across that picture after faffing around on the interweb and it reminded me of one thing Colin Murray said before he kindly played 'You, Holding' on his show the first time; about listening to hundreds of CDs and then having that lovely 'oooh, that's a bit special' feeling when he listened to our CD. I guess that photo gave his words a little perspective. I imagine Rob Da Bank and Bob Harris shared a similar feeling as they've both played us too, which was very nice of them!

Anyway, Tom Robinson has a new show on BBC6 Music and it sounds pretty good, he's one of those wonderful guys that really does love and support new music.

Details about the show:

"The idea of the show is that instead of playing CDs supplied by record
companies and pluggers, we ask the general public to suggest their favourite new music from MySpace, Facebook and Last.fm pages."

If you'd like to suggest us or anyone else for his show, please contact him here 

Right, I'm off to tell him how great Left With Pictures are.

Neil

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Hi, just a quick reminder about our EP launch tonight @ Catch in Shoreditch and to let you know that we're featured on the Guardian music site; they're giving a free download, which is here!

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