my garden by katharine eastman

.
Gentle quiet album - the first track has distant rhythms, the second is a sort of lofi ambience - both tracks contain gentle distortion, which of course is entirely deliberate - it's the kind of distortion that makes you wonder if your speakers can't cope with the bassy-ness - but don't worry, the problem is at my end - but you knew that already. And of course it's not a problem at all.
.
.........................
.
I am aware that the fascination-ness of my photos/covers is going downhill lately - that's simply because I have a cheap bottom-of-the-range camera which only takes good photos if the sun is shining - which it hasn't been doing much of lately. So desperate am I for a cover pic that I've just this minute (hour) taken a photo of my garden, rain and all.

I've been to lots of wonderful places lately - mainly forgotten, because I don't like to dwell on the past over-much. On Saturday evening, while everyone was watching the football, I was upstairs at the Cosy Club in Salisbury, which I always love. Yesterday in the morning I went to a free screening of The Truffle Hunters at Harbour LIghts here in Southampton. I'm in two minds about this admittedly wonderful documentary.

It is always brilliant to see eccentric people doing things that haven't been destroyed by our modern world yet, and of course I loved the drunk bloke banging away at his Olivetti ...... well, no, I didn't really, but this is the point - I didn't feel the love that I knew was due.

No matter, it was free, and it was the first time I've been to the cinema since before the pandemic. I have very few pleasures in life - but don't worry, they are very intensely-felt pleasures. And going to the cinema on my own is one of them - along with drinking alone, eating out with friends, having hilarious adventures with my adventurous girlfriend, whole days of reading, sleeping when I am tired .....

As the pandemic has worn on I have become more and more of what is known as a "lockdown sceptic" - more and more I find myself agreeing with Julia Hartley Brewer in the morning, and I tend to live my life as normally as, well, normal - and i have never actually scanned a QR code in my life - the joy of not having one of those modern phones - though even my friends who do have a proper phone never actually turn it on when they wave it over the code thingy.

But it was good to be back in the cinema. Because it was a free screening it was full of cheapskates such as myself. But I am looking forward to the future weeks and lifetime when I shall be turning up on random weekday afternoons to watch films I know nothing about, just me in the cinema, me and my flask of wine.

Rather alarmingly I see that I have now released over a hundred albums. In the days before Bandcamp a musical imposter such as myself would never have been allowed to release one album, let alone a hundred. But this is one reason why, in spite of being a luddite, I do secretly love the modern world.

If you discount my first album - a harsh noise thing which strangely attracted lots of plays, not all of them short, and no downloads and which is a total outlier in the world of my music - then I have probably made about one album per day. Weirdly I feel compelled to write down what I have learnt from these months of music-making.

And it's not a lot. I am always amused in the nicest possible way that the albums I like most are the ones that are least-downloaded and vice versa. But I think that's a good thing. When I started these albums only a few months ago I just had a Lidl battery-powered toy keyboard and acoustic gtr, and halfway thru my musical career I picked up a big clunky old keyboard, which I have never come to love as much as I wanted to. But it does sound better. I am just an old Olivetti-lover at heart.

I'd like to thank anyone who ever visits this site - I now have ten followers !!!!! - double figures !!!!! - and thanks to anyone who has ever come back for more, and big thanks to Maddydog and Ciderlord who actually parted with cash to download my music - and a big thank you to the genius Wings Of An Angel whose kind words have directed most of my recent traffic this way.

Doing these albums has been one of the best things I've ever done in my life - they've given me a purpose, and I can get quite tearful at other people's kindness. All in all I'm happy, and once in a while along the way ... well, you know the rest.
.
...............................
.
(recorded this afternoon, photo my garden this evening)
.