Slow-forward.

The cold bit me hard on my way to the studio.

There was plenty of work to do, but what needed doing was known, so it was very easy to put it off. It needed to be put off, in fact. We’d been slapping our foreheads against a government authorised plastic wall for months. The coffee was already brewing as I entered. The kitchen was thick with steam and bandmates.

We moved into the recording room and Ed and Trewin drank their coffee and chatted about bikes, I think. Maybe engines or something. I don’t entirely remember. I don’t altogether care about engines. I’m not one of the engine people. I can’t stand over an engine and enjoy it. I mean, not really enjoy it, like engine people do. Sometimes I think I’d like to, but then I remember that I don’t care at all. Is that clear? I don’t like engines. Am I getting through? Hello?

Seryn and I sat in silence until I put forward the idea, for no reason other than fun, of watching something I’d found the night before. I could feel the conversation winding down (like an engine), and felt very much that this slow (like an engine (which I don’t like)) start (like an engine) to the day should be maintained (like a loving relationship). 

"Do you want to see something awesome?" I said.

"Sure," they said

So, with the chilling wind howling outside, we sipped on steaming coffee in our grey, unlit recording room, and watched this video together in a singular, comfortable silence: 

That’s the voice of HAL, there. And a clear influence on many of our favourite things. It’s a cool little nugget, no? Very few engines—that’s what I like best about it.

So then we were ready to drop back into work. Sit, listen. Suggest. Maybe this here, maybe this there. Entire songs needed reworking, but nobody was rushing. There was rushing that had been done, and rushing that were yet do, but for some reason on this particular day nothing was urgent, nothing needed to be done in a panic, and the time in which to get everything worked out was plenty. Our transport was casual—unmotorised. This suited me, you could guess. Oh yes. Everything was soft. We rode the waves between projects. One beat didn’t work. We took a note. Some harmonies were too complex; too much for a person to do. Retract. Redact. Unwind the twisted thing. Slow it all down. No need to grind uphill, dear friends. No need for horsepower. Surf gravity. Make your mode of transport a stolen ASDA trolley.

This splendid day inspired a small offering, which I hope tells a story:

Nothing there was crisis,

and nothing there was war.

A deadline is a noble aim,

but ever nothing more.

Tim

No.

He still didn’t look right.

When I got in, Ed and Trewin were bickering over the implementation of our new inter-band messaging system. The system came along with a whole bunch of news email addresses, apps, and all the elements of integration that make the modern world such a great place to hang out.

To recount that actual conversation would be nothing more than the kind of tennis match you’ve heard a thousand times. Was it a tennis match, or was it an endless relay race? More like getting drunk and lost at a party. There we have it—the goings on in this band either scale the heights of an ornate skill set or devolve into the most granite-brained stupidity. And it is never possible to know which one it is at any given point in time. All we know is we breath, and we’re ugly, and there’s always something to do for somebody, somewhere. Our crunched-up and stepped-on shells have pierced our soft insides.

So Trewin was crumbling under the pressure of a new app. He was lost in the wilderness of words on a screen. I couldn’t blame him—he had been staring at the same computer screen, sat in the same chair, sleepless, dreamless, and with only a limited depth of tenderness for about seven weeks straight. What I thought was dust on the piano keyboard was actually dirt from unwashed fingers.

Ed, Seryn, and I showed him how you can share music instantly on the new system; how quick, easy, and beneficial it was once you looked at the screen and took in the words rather than tried to make them bend to your will. I wouldn’t put it past the man to call up the particular multi-national company that makes this system and—after much talking, holding, and department hopping—convince them what to change and what to scrap. I’m sure I once caught him on the phone to Heinz whining about the inevitable regression of society when the logo of a basic foodstuff impresses a childish nostalgia on an entire public. Or maybe it was him catching me.

I want to forget what I know and learn to hate what I love.

Beans.

So we settled the issue of the system. He would...basically do what he always did, and not talk to anybody anyway. Meanwhile, the file sharing system was good. He could work it. We rearranged things better to his liking while he showed us why it was pointless, terrible, and an interruption to his day.

He rolled and lit a cigarette, grimacing and hissing as he inhaled, but brightening immediately.

His eyes were bulbous, his skin grey, and his voice was that of a sad dog.

We listened to a track that needed work. We thought it was finished months ago, but on this listen something seemed a little off. Could it be that as the other tracks have been polished and buffed and improved, this one had fallen a little behind the curve? But we thought we’d finished it! This was the one about which there were no doubts! We all loved it before! What’s it doing now, tormenting us like this!?

All of our phones beeped with a new incoming message. New James had sent a message concerning Trewin’s problems with the system.

Stop being an idiot. It’s easy freaky lemon squeaky.

The track continued to play, and the meandering structure caused a loss of interest.

Trewin folded his arms on the table, smacked his head on them, and moaned.

“Oh God,” he said, “kill me now.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “just work on it and send it over.”

Tim

Yes.

When I walked in the door, he span around and eyed me gleefully.

‘I’ve had no sleep,’ he said.

‘I bought biscuits.’

‘Nice.’

I laid them on the desk among the cigarette butts stuffed straight into the table and coffee cups with whole gardens growing out of them. I sat on the piano stool, removing from it a pair of suspicious underwear.

Ed pointed at the chandeliers. He’d replaced a couple of the two-hundred light bulbs that had nearly all blown.

‘Nice one,’ I said. ‘The place looks better.’

Ed smiled as he reclined on the antique sofa. He’d hired the Rug Doctor a week before and was riding the crest of a foaming wave.

‘I’ve had no sleep. I need a cup of tea,’ said Trewin as he span around in his terrifically engineered chair. It was the kind of chair that an Italian technology-fantastist might baulk at for being too gaudy. Visibly, it was a locomotive.

Seryn walked in, handing Ed and Trewin two dirty pint glasses in which puddles of creamish liquid sloshed about.

Trewin took a glug.

‘Cold,’ he said, looking blankly at Seryn.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, ‘That's because I left them on the side for about fifteen minutes.’

‘The biscuits are nice,’ said Ed.

Seryn and Ed went to Seryn’s room to set up a new synthesiser while Trewin and I sat and chatted about very little of note. When is the album coming out? How are we? That sort of thing. Predictable. Unimaginative. Of little or no note. Trewin played the same fourteen seconds of music over and over again for the longest time, tinkering with a graphic equaliser which sat in a little box inside a little window inside a project in another window which filled a screen packed with squares and other oblongs and infinite simulated knobs drawn on to all colours of pixelated pretend equipment. The bass elements of a distant whining sound phased in and out, ever-so slightly.

The music stopped.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing any more,’ he said.

He leaped out of the chair and went to microwave his tea as an atonal trumpet sound blasted at concert volume from Seryn’s open door.

Tim

Hurdles and hoops and living.

The album is pink and fleshy and tender.

We are dusty old husks; skeletons with decomposed muscle and skin. If we move, everything cracks around us and crumbles away.

I suppose it coincides with the new year. As I have said to trusted company many times before only slightly differently, I can feel a big shift coming on. A big, thoroughly gratifying shift.

The sky is still pale but there is less flourescence in it. The coloured fairy lights in the room have flicked on. It’s my favourite time of day.

We have just come away from a meeting discussing the album and the way ahead. I have in my possession a clumsily executed photograph of the final tracklist, along with marks next to the ones that ‘still need a bit of work’.

Take-offs and landings are the most dangerous part of flying. We have been here a few times now—with previous projects—and there is no telling what might crop up over the next few weeks.

Trewin could get stuck under a manhole cover after flushing a valuable penny down the poo box and then going into the sewer to fish it out.

Ed could choke on some gratin made with cheese of questionable organic certification leading to what’s known as ‘Brighton flu’, which will necessitate a long spell on his back on a mattress delivered by a funky online start-up (i.e. a mattress retailer) being fed curly kale and wearing some of those leopard print MC Hammer pants that girls wear.

New James could take a corner so fast in his new car that his sunglasses will fly off and land perfectly on a baby, who will proceed to do a double thumbs up and say something like ‘That’s what’s happenin’ in a really low voice before some disco music kicks in. That’s New James done for a few weeks. That party’s not stopping any time soon.

Seryn could accidentally cook himself and starve to death as he waits for himself to arrive to eat his meal.

Each of these would be tragic and each of them is as likely as the next, and all as likely as everything getting finished without a hitch.

It’s not cohesive, but it’s about time we stuck things together a little less and just looked at what we’ve got. If you’re in pieces, you’re in pieces. Just be that way.

The album will come together when it’s ready to do so. It’s ripe and it’s there on the bough. It’s pink and fleshy and tender.

It’s midweek. We hope your hump-day was survivable. Sorry if it wasn’t. If there was something wrong that is within your control: make it better. There’s no point in putting it off. (Unless dinner’s ready. We’ll allow you dinner.)

Be fresh and have fun with it all,

Tim

Parks and decoration.

Brighton is cold tonight.

Happy New Year.

And we hope you had a fine Christmas.

Christmas is a time for reminiscence (and meat) (dead animals that is) (a dead thing in every house, plonked proudly on a table made from another dead thing, only for things that will eventually die to shovel it into themselves because I need it in order to live what a boring excuse that’s become for everything it’s an excuse for), but we didn’t do any of that (as I recall).

New years is a time for resolution, and new beginnings, but we’re on the tail end of finishing the album – by the time we’re ready for new beginnings it’ll be springtime, and what is there to celebrate about spring? Flowers? Literally who hasn’t seen a flower by now? Why do we lower our standards so? Flowers grow in Chernobyl.

I’ve just come back from a band session and the rather pleasant feeling is: more of the same with a bit more. We’ve hit a few periods of momentum over the past year – it’ll be nice to hit one of those again. We’ve all got it in us, we just need to keep the temperature down and see what happens. It’s true we’ve got to up our game in many ways – but it’s always been like that. More of the same with a bit more. We’ve got to get better. We’ve got to learn. We’ve got to be open.

This isn’t anything new. This is just moving forward. Doing this is about standing and waiting to jump on a moving roundabout. There’s nothing more to add.

So if I’ve understood everybody correctly, I’m going to spend the next few days down the park (it’s cold, so I’ll wear my mac), trying to hop on the roundabout. I’ll also try out the swings as a metaphor for the ups/downs (forwards?) of career/life, and probably end my day early by going down the slide.

Don’t worry if you don’t read this – I won’t use this opportunity to make you feel guilty – but if you’re here then hello. I don’t know what this is but it’s going to get better.

It’s an odd ride, isn’t it?

So have fun, and stop being so careful. Quit your job (if you're looking for a sign - this is it) and go back to school or go travelling or whatever and just do it. Live in one room for a while, if you have to. It’ll be fun. What do you think you’ll be missing? There’s literally nothing here.

Tim