Oh lordy am I going to spend my next ten million albums making Hallogallo-alikes ? Don't put it past me. I am still the opposite of experimental. Between the ages of ten and thirty-five all I ever cooked were rock cakes. School cookery classes have a lot to answer for - mainly me being banned from any domestic kitchen. But it was all I knew, and I kept on doing it.
But really, my musical career here hasn't gone the way I expected or wanted. I thought I was going to be all ambient, or maybe a bit doomy, and I really wanted to stumble into how to make punk rock - truly. But there are punks out there who wish they could sound like NEU!
I am surprised to notice on my stats that most of my traffic comes from a radio station. It's some radio station in Brighton. Probably one of those internet stations or whatever they are. Nowadays it really is flattering if anyone ever takes any notice of anything at all. So I'm delighted.
I usually have my head in the sand. But I am reading David Eggars old-ish novel The Circle. I don't know. I took against him instantly all those years ago - when he suddenly emerged, and then out came that Staggering book, which I think I tried to read once, but couldn't. But I can report that The Circle is excellent. It's gripping. Not in an oh-so-exciting way. It's just gripping in the way that he concentrates on one person and tells a story unpretentiously - and the heroine is working for a huge internet company where everyone is too perfect and too brainy and too nice and the pressure to be all those things, and happy, and positive and etc etc.
She's living in the mirror-world that Winston Smith inhabits - the opposite, but just as bad. Fiction doesn't prove anything, but David Eggars has shown me (I think) what I'm missing, and I'm afraid my two fans in Brighton would be appalled if they knew how square and uncool I really am.
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Recorded today. This is an extended and I hope improved version of today's thing over on the Sonja site. Actually, I like Sonja's very much - and it's braver than this - it doesn't try at all. But this is very good too. I'm sure of it. Photo Hampshire last month.