Dear heart stringers,

Its has indeed been a mammoth amount of time since last I blogged, but here I am to let you know what’s been going on with album number two . . .  

Well, when first we began album 2 writing, a few years ago now I guess (?!), there was a semi classical, grand adventure type vision brewing. ‘Pedalo’ type stuff with chunkier beats and more ghusto. Some songs were recorded, but that phase didn’t have time to expand into an album, because at some point I began listening to more simple, happy upbeat stuff, and became more enamored with the feeling songs like the Beach Boys’ ‘California Girls’ were giving me. At that point I was interested in conjuring a sense of naive excitement, happiness, warm retro pop scrummyness, maybe a smidgen of summertime drunkenness. A bit more ‘Paperback Writer’ compared to the first albums ‘Eleanor Rigby’. The start of this year, we mixed three songs with Dave Pemberton (a friend of a friend who randomly mixed Groove Armada and Prodigy stuff ?!). Those three tracks kicked off the more upbeat heart string vibe, and through them I wrestled with the parts of me that were squirming that it was all too simple and pop-tastic. ‘But that’s how you’re feeling’, came the wisdom from within, ‘so be true to that’. They’re now looking destined to be b sides, but they paved the way for Max and I jamming a load more stuff, which turned into 5 songs we recorded a few months ago with album 1 producer, Julian Simmons. That went well, and probably all 5 will be on this album.

After that, a personal happiness/semi spiritual revolution led me into a 60’s free love, semi psychedelic, technicolour tastic vibe, nurtured by me spending hours every day walking around the woods, and searching for my path to ‘joy’ (as opposed to the habitual treadmill esq, low grade but accumulatively stressful life I’d become accustomed to). The 6 songs that came out of that, I’m very happy with. With more depth than some of the previous 5, which are at times MGMT versus the Monkees (nowt wrong with that !), there’s a lovely celebration going on here, with some downbeat tender nurturing moments, and some soaring beat-tastic harp swirling keyboard mungous highs. 

So, in but a few days, we’re back in the studio, and by the end of November, it’ll be all mixed. But then our label has to assemble its team of pr, pluggers etc, plus with a 3 month lead time for press etc to do reviews bla bla, you wont be able to get your hands on it till april/may next year, although I suppose we’ll be releasing singles before then.

Anyhow, bit of a beefy update that, but its 2 years or so condensed, so I guess it was gonna be. In conclusion, all is good here in camp heart strings, and for those of you interested in hearing the second album, it’s in the oven, on the rise. I reckon it’s gonna taste yummy !

Hope all is with you.

Bye for now.

Todd x

p.s Max sends his love !