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

Pick it up.

We've been away.

The album got done, so we packed up and shipped out. Our faces had become to each other like the lost keys you keep scanning over, but never actually see and recognise. We saw more of each other's noses in that time than we did of walls. I don't even consider the guys as people any more - they're now just cardboard cut outs with loudspeakers attached, repeating the same stuff over and over again about reversing the car to get off their leg.

So we span in our various directions, for a while. Sure, we had a party or two, but all work stuff has been getting done over Skype and messenger services and things. It's been that kind of time. All briefs and contracts and mock-ups and things like that. You know, the gleeful stuff.

We've all been away on our respective desert islands, biking around the countryside, sitting in front of screens editing videos or other music or personal projects; scrubbing tiles in an underground kitchen somewhere - slinking our psyches into the shredder of life to try and take some of the thatness away. 

Consider our last few weeks a weekend with the kids at a leisure park, where only once or twice has it been necessary to duck behind a tree and take a phone call from Louise about the Marchester account. Tell them it was sorted on the twenty-third and I'll get Bill to call the contractors about upgrading the roofing.

We're very lucky to have a number of very good people doing things like releasing the singles and sorting tickets at gigs and things and all that monkey hair that turns to mush in such precious brains as the band members'. Thank you here, monkey hair manipulators.

So PRAISE THE CEILING we're meeting up in person today for the first time in ages to sort out some last bits of peripheral artwork, and really get some more of it done, yeah? Everyone's going to be happy about that.

Trewin will sashay into the room two hours late, big sunglasses on his face, one arm out to the side, asking what the fuck we want him for – he's got a car waiting, he's got other things to be doing, and who are we?

Seryn will be sat in the middle of the floor, cross-legged. In his right hand will be a toy train and it will be flying through the air. It will be making a “brum, brum” sound.

Jeb will have his PC set up in the lounge, and will be rocking backwards and forwards. His eyes will be red from coffee and strain, and he will be muttering to himself. Something about aliasing. He will look pale and ill.

Ed will be hoovering, checking behind the back of the sofa Jeb is sat on, and asking Seryn to make sure all the play-doh stays on the table, please, because he's not going to scrub that out of the carpet if someone steps on it.

I will probably be sat in the corner. Alone. Speaking to the floor. After a while the others will look at each other and ask “When's Tim getting here?”

And after ten hours we will looks at a picture that we no longer recognise and collectively shrug and say “Alright then.”

-

So Volition's out on 3rd June, and we've had a few singles out and all that. Thanks for your support on this, all. We're really glad these things get such good responses and we're really glad people like them.

We've got to get back into the swing of it all after this little break. Spring is here. It's time for drinks outdoors, yes? It's time for “fun” in the “sun”, isn't it? Isn't it? That's what we're supposed to be doing, isn't it? Those are the rules, aren't they? That's what it's all for in the end, isn't it? Five minutes in the British sunshine, eh? 

Eh?

Isn't it?

It's Thursday already. Wednesday seems like it was only yesterday.

Pretty slick stuff, I insist you'll agree.

Now get out there and kick your life in the chutney without fear of losing your shoe.

Me

an album

Taken from The pre-musician's guide to advanced post-musical production, b3rd edition, (2013).

---

How to make an album, by Timothy Douglas (bass).

IF you are one of those people who takes the miragic carousel of life as real (IF), then congratulations: you are living in The Modern World. In this The Modern World, among the more popular things to do is to make music for listening. Music for listening can iron out your worries/shirts, liven up a boring funeral, or make you cry at just everything that's wrong.

No wonder it so as this popular!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!and!!!!!!

Music, much like a plumber's tool, comes in "information boxes". These "fo-bos" are delivered in different shapes. Smaller fo-bos, called “EPs” often come as packs of four (4) or five (4) songs or “tracks”. Fo-bos of ten (and/or 11) tracks or "songs" are “albums”. “It is albums about which we for an will be looking at today.” She said.

To make an album in The Modern World, there are ten things you need to do. We will start with number four (5):

4 (5). Miss your deadlines.

A deadline is called a dead line for a reason; it is the place in space where dead lines reside.

Experiment:

• Draw a line on a sheet of paper.

• Did you create this line? Or have you simply caused a small part of a line that already existed to manifest? This line clearly existed before you (unless you invented the possibility of geometry! (Which you didn't!)-!!and), and so is infinite and therefore better than you. You're not even as good as a line.

• Rest.

If you think about this as correctly as I have, you will understand that the place where all lines exist preeminently is a place to which you do not want to go. Neither is it a place you will want to think about. Steer well clear, then. Ignore the “deadlines” that punctuate your ever accelerating progress.

7. Run out of your money.

“I have all the money in the world!” said the man who never finished his homework. Why would you finish your homework when you have all the money in the world? You wouldn't. I never finished my homework and I didn't have any money. I didn't even start my homework! I didn't even have a home! I didn't even go to school! I was never even born!

Don't start your homework; do run out of money. That's the only proven formula for any success ever and is as old as time (which is quite old!).

(and young!)

3. To make an album you must run out of your money by spending your it.

If you're going to need to run out of money (see above it's quite clear), you're going to have to find a way to do it. Spending it is the most popular way to run out of your money. Aside from private healthcare and Council Tax, there are many things a person can spend their money on. Studios, instruments, make-up, guns, and a list of english colloquialisms with the names of seasons in them are the first things that spring to mind.

Think of as many things to spend money on as you can, then get some vomit-inducingly attractive person standing at a till to list them on a receipt for you until you die.

Experiment: 

• Do exactly what I just said.

6. Maintain poor lines of communication.

The last thing you need when you're trying to do anything at all even heart surgery is people communicating with you all of your time. Ugh, I hate all forms of communication. I don't even like it when my legs communicate with my brain. Legs can get a lot more done (swinging!) if simply left to its own devices, so cease communication with all potential interactors at all your costs (which is all your things!).

2. Have distractions to you.

Invent a game with your shoes! Tie yourself up and then wonder how you did it. Make a different album! Nothing is uninteresting if you've got something else that needs doing, so distract yourself as much

9. Lose will to live.

It's 3am and you need the toilet. You go to the toilet and hoist the arc and look at yourself in the mirror. There you are; paragon of animals. There you are in your 'jamas, staring at a sheet of reflected technicolour. Your skin looks pale and your eyes look deep. You feel dizzy with thought. The world is quiet, and a sudden sense of individuality returns after years of service to others.

What am I doing?

Where have the years gone?

Stare at the mirror for twenty days or until breakfast.

“Here comes another great album.”

5. Destroy others.

If you want to commit to making an album, you will also have to commit to not committing to anything else. This includes people. The loved ones with whom you had previously surrounded yourself must take on the role of mechanical hardware, while the mechanical hardware that you work with daily should take the role of emotional confidant, object of care, and reticent repeated sexual partner.

1. Destroy yourself.

"You are nothing. You are a waste of space. You think you're so clever, but really you're a dot on a speck on an arse. Fuck off. Go on. Fuck off."

You may find yourself thinking slightly less of yourself as doubts start to creep in following months of isolation and “private creation” (and when you think about everything you've done).

This is your favourite part.

The whole point of being someone who wants to make an album is to come out the other side of the process as someone with no idea who the person who started making it was. When you start to find the music recorded by that happy ghost unpleasant and baffling, it will finally hit home that all sentient life is not only an accident, but a mistake. This realisation will enhance creativity. Destroy yourself and see for how long you can crawl through the wreckage of your spirit, screaming into the great echoing void for anything that resembles mercy. (Hint: It's a long time!)

8. Desire nothing.

You have nothing, and by now you have convinced yourself that you will always be nothing. There is nothing. Your album, then, is nothing. But you (and your friends!) want your album. By this logic then; if you desire your album, you desire nothing. Congratulations on finding the most Western route to nirvanic cosmic annihilation. Now set the levels on your input gain.

And finally of for your and with…

10. Do not divulge your secrets.

There is a reason your rooms have your doors. Your rooms have your doors so you don't have to install laser systems to burn out the eyes of sneaky trespassing bastards. Behind all albums/doors are stories and events that tell as much as the music/dungeon itself. Do not share these stories (at least as they are occuring).

Doing this is unseemly and could decrease your future income.




Follow your excellent how to guide (this one) and you will have made your album.


---



We made an album.

We recorded it and mixed it and selected the artwork.

Now that our part is over, it needs to go off to other people to have things done to it so it can make words and videos that people will find interesting. If people don't find the words and videos interesting, they might not know the music exists, and so never hear it.

We've had to come to the conclusion that this happening would be sad.

It's been nearly two years, so I think we're going to take tonight off.

It's Wednesday. There's no use in denying that.

Tim

Snap.

To be in a band, you must be able to take good photographs.

It's no secret that at this point in time, you need to have a visual aspect to your music. Be it big boobs (check), eye-catching hairstyles (and how), or a steel spike installed in your forehead that rams in and out forty-five times per second (installed but not near forehead); you need some eye-smash that's going to “hook” the “punters” in, in the words of the “industry”.

This has been the case since many years ago some clever-head realised that Elvis, though he had good songs, didn't need good songs. Instead, he could get away with miming along to the sound of a stick disturbing a tray of bones so long as he'd continue to wiggle his hips like a bee.

If Elvis wiggled, kids would jump and scream. It didn't matter what they heard. So true was this that coins would often spill out of the kid's pockets and fall up into their mouths, whereupon they would choke and vomit out their hamburgers and Coca-Cola. This meant that a large number of the crowd at any given concert would slip over and break their backs. Soon, outside in the cold distance, appeared Presley Ambulance Services Inc. vans. These vans  would take the crooked kids from the venue, operate on their spines, and then charge extortionate medical bills. The “Elvispitals” sole staff were Elvis androids, which meant the children would be happy to receive diagnoses of false chronic conditions leading to repeat visits, and more bills. Elvis would also personally scrape the vomit-coins from the concert floor after each performance, skating around on his blue suede shoes and singing under his breath:

“Elvis Presley, gonna git yo' sick-coins.”

Many sheeple don't know that the living Elvis now owns the moon, and that the phases of the moon are in fact Elvis attempting to cover the moon in its Vegas suit, which blows away and then he has to start again, frustrated and alone.

You can only achieve this level of ownership if you have a good image.

-

While it made sense in the earliest days of recorded music, over time "image" became less a means of representation, and more a means of enhancing and/or dictating the impression an artist might have on their audience. At one point, the artists smiled and wore suits, because that's what was respectable. Then people (read: the rebellious youth) started to spend money on what was not respectable, so someone had to figure out what was going on and dress artists so the growing rebellious youth didn't miss out on having something to buy. You could even trick an audience into thinking someone was not respectable when in fact they were, using their appearance.

Then it fanned out into a million different ways of doing it. Today, we're sold cartoon characters to believe in, with surrounding endorsements and cod-inspirational sentiments, rather than things to listen to and engage with on any level other than “Yes”.

It's not the rule, but it appears to be the norm.

Thanks, Elvis.

We had a photoshoot the other evening.

It can be fun to put this stuff together; figure out what a photograph might say. Be a bit cheeky with our representation. Figure out where the line between “different” and “unmarketable” sits and then gleefully kick it away because it doesn't matter anyway, and you're making this all up just to have something to moan about. These patterns are pure invention and the result of the unhealthy influence of the Frankfurt school on your dainty little mind so many years ago.

It's a camera.

Smile.

Tim

No, go on.

You don't have to make music – the notion of actually making music carries with it too much pressure and mammalian cultural baggage.

If you were actually going to make music you'd have to confront ideas of meaning, history, non-verbal communication, evolution, sociology, ethics, technology, physics, alchemy, ontology, epistemology, psychology, economics, and how a jumped up wedding DJ with an accent can become one of the country's leading taste-makers.

These things are not only ugly to think about, but they are, as I am about to show in one quick swoosh of an outlay, entirely unnecessary.

So burn your Universities to the ground, and silence your chattering minds with Chinese synthesised liquids.

No, you don't have to actually make music, dear listener – all you need do is make something that sounds like music, and all of your problems will be solved.

GNIDAER PEEK

The beat, for example, no doubt stretches back to our most primitive states. 

• Perhaps an accidental mutation led to us enjoying the thud of a stomped foot at some post-hunt regathering, leading to a desire to hunt more in order to celebrate more and hear more thuds. 
• Perhaps the beat of some drum reminded our brains of the bodily thump of running through a clearing, again on the hunt, the synthetic memory short-circuiting our adrenal circuits and giving us some rush or other, in turn strengthening neural pathways and therefore increasing our adrenaline on a real hunt, making us better at that practical task to such an extent that those who increased their hunting ability with this ritual caught prey at the expense of other packs and survived to gave us habits that persist to this day. 
• Perhaps playing drums just gave the most intellectually bereft a means to attract a mate, and we're all doing them a favour.

SO, like pretty much everything we do, the point of the beat is to provide a way for us to engage in the rehearsal of cultural actions more integral to our survival than these overblown rehearsals themselves. Middle-of-the-road-bland-pop with a standardised beat and fantastical sexualised lyrics? Dislike a challenge? Good music by which to work to in one of Cameron's slave cubicles, while fantasising about “a life that doesn't so closely resemble hell”.

Maybe.

I mean, there are of course much broader hips to this, for example

BUT WAIT NOW STUPID

WHAT NEED FOR ANY OF IT?

RECALL WHAT GIFTS I HAVE GIVEN  THEE

Kick on beat one, snare on three. Add some boom to that kick and some snappy high-end crunch on the snare.

Sounds like music to me. Fuck the needless theorising.

It takes the pressure off somewhat, does it not?

Of course, it doesn't. But it at least feels like it does.

Whose are the playing cards? Who cares.

SO WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED?

Lucky you have learned that all you have to do is never, ever actually have fun, but just do things that make it feel like you're having fun.

At all times without end.

That's all you have to do.

Have fun doing that.

Summer's almost over.

Tim

P.S. We'll be giving musical lectures on these subjects in Germany this October. If you want tickets, you can win them, here (bring a notepad and an easel).

Sunday confession.

How do we go about it?

Well first, you need to get stuck in an old car in the icy weather, one of you out front squirting de-icer at the windscreen (Ed) while the other (me) petrifies inside trying to get the heaters to work (they don't) and skating the windscreen wipers across the still frozen windscreen when you hear a muffled 'OK! Try it again!' over the sound of whirring fans and pop-pickers' radio.

Then you've got to skate on worn rubber to the train station and wait at a kind of pick-up/drop-off roundabout for the person who claims to represent your interests on a day-to-day basis. (This road is no good for someone like me – someone who wouldn't know where to put themselves if they'd been assigned their own seat at their own birthday party in their own house and they were the only person there, e.g. May 3^rd 2013 – so there I was behind the wheel, shuffling and moving and making little trips backwards and forwards around one of those 'no-one-minds-we-don't-mind-you-don't-mind' blind-eye car-park-non-car-parks out the back of Brighton station until every other car just left a nine foot gap either end of me, placing bets on what I was going to do next.)

I was just trying to stay out of everybody's way, and strike the balance between my car neither blowing up nor breaking down. It's a see-saw, this life, I tell you.

Then you purchase Hussein quantities of alcohol. And carrots and crisps and dips and pizza.

Then head home to have a business meeting.

And share stories that go nowhere, and discuss mixing engineers and international corporate finance and strategy. And sit in light diffused by a couple of freshly laundered shirts because you don't have a good enough lampshade. Headaches are for tomorrow – not now. We're talking business and getting things done, you see.

And we're getting on one another's nerves and tickling each other's little bones, as it were, of contention and trying to pick the locks to each other's thinking places.

And we discuss the usual. How we're going and where to get there. And usually the trip is only as far as the kitchen to get another bottle or to check the food hasn't burned and whether any new gossip has come about in the house – which is spilling over like bad broth with the lives of 'other people' – in the last few hours before taking a deep breath and goodnighting to the others and diving back into the sea of six of us too skilled in the popular arts and living too much in the shadow of our shared cultural history to go to bed sober even once at this stage in our slowly degrading lives.

And us chosen ones hammer our lungs and livers and head out, as some of us fall by the wayside late, yet early, to the nitty-gritty of where we are, and who we are, because we're friends and not everything is easy and this great block of iron that is us needs forging, and that needs fire, and sometimes in a fire a hedgehog will catch alight. 

And the hedgehog will come running out from beneath the brush and swear his revenge against all of humanity, wherein the devil will find a willing soul, and engage us in the never-ending battle between good and evil; this world and the next; Ant and Dec.

So how do we go about it?

How do we go about our business?

Like righteous Gods. That's how. Breathing fire at the devils for your own protection.

So...

We're still working. We have these pictures in our heads. It's a process; it is what it is. Just know that today is Sunday and Sunday is for bleeding the evil out and letting the spirits in.

So get your leech on and allow us to shower you, as ever, in our everlasting love, for you have been invited to attend our mass.

Tim

There's a joke in this title.

What is a typical day like, at the moment?

We're in the gritty midst of a million different things, being snatched at and strangled by so many clammy hands that none of them can yet get a tight enough grip on our necks to pull us down.

Much of our work is fueled by bananas, coffee, and fatty snacks.

First thing is communication. There are always little bits of housekeeping to be done at the beginning of the day, be that replying to an email or putting a little package together or replying to your nice messages or checking this or that with whomever is sorting what.

I put things together sometimes, like little splashes of promo. Maybe a blog post, here or there, where I make things up entirely to put to bed the pretence that a musician's life is one of excitement and glamour. I often complete these tasks under a sheet, listening to Brian Eno and wondering if 11 a.m. is too early to finish yesterday's crisps.

It's not too early.

I've usually got about ten other windows open too, with some other stuff that I've been working on for a bit, so it ain't all sleep and cake.

Usually on a day like today the band will get together around 2 p.m. It's a time that suits everyone. Jeb's usually been up late, hallucinating into a computer screen until his clicking finger looks like one of Schwarzennegger's legs. Sez usually joins us around five or six, depending on what he's done with his day. Meanwhile Jeb, Trewin, Ed and I have a little jam, or just a noodle on some instruments, or edit some stuff for the new album, or have a session of ideas or just a cup of tea and a chat to warm up for the evening. Chat and a laugh.

Then we practice and problem solve. I think there's a new track where I'm going to be playing keys, and drums, and probably a harp with one of my feet. It's a bit like planning a war and sending your medic out on his/her/its/bear's own to plant explosives deep behind enemy lines.

And that goes on into the night. Getting the new songs done and choosing synths and putting the new live set together alongside the album. That's where we are. And we have little chats where we brainstorm and go off into flights of fancy about the future and what we could do with it, little ball of decorative marzipan that it is. And we look at potential artwork and trash it while drinking brandy with our little fingers sticking out and debating whether the ancient Egyptians predicted the Libor rigging scandal.

And then we say goodnight to each other and disappear into our respective hidey holes and drink Horlicks and cuddle our teddy bears and play old vinyls of our mothers singing us lullabys. And we do our homework and stay in school in play in the local sports team and eat healthily, just like Jamie Oliver has rigorously instructed us to under penalty of televised death for the last ten years of relentless commercial dictatorship on a show called The Non-Running Man.

And we fall asleep and suffer nightmares. Nightmares of the invasion by giant babies that swim through space as if it's water. Their scalp appears first, over the horizon, glowing like a torch shone from close proximity against a peach, before suddenly the big blue eyes appear and the smiling, toothless mouth that promises peace, at last, from all human suffering.

And then I wake up in a cold sweat to the sound of ethereal noise, and I realise that I never left my bed at all, but in fact fell asleep while writing this very note.

Then how did these words appear? I must don my cloak and jump the first carriage that will take me to the seminary. Surely Lord Pheethenstaph will want to know about this.

That's a typical day in the life of the band Phoria of which I am a part.

Tim

P.S. Probably mention Cargo album preview 10^th March as that's something we're doing.

I bet you thought I was full of surprises?

In a data driven world where it is possible to so comprehensively think and feel so many different things in an ever diminishing span of time, it's increasingly difficult to pick one idea for which it's worth getting out of bed in the morning. This might be caused by a childish loss of the ability to concentrate (which is easy enough to blame on 'the internet' just as it was on 'the television', 'the radio' and 'the paintings on the wall', rather than seeking the cause in our own personal failings and primitive need for quick slaps of quasi-cerebral occupation), or it might be that, in general, ideas are so diffuse and large swathes of the culture so homogenised that distinct ideas no longer possess the laser-like ability to energise in the way that they once did. So, one may wake up, have, achieve, do fun, and then sleep, perchance to dream, with little source of lobo-motive energy but pre-packaged plastic packeted slates of creatively perverted carbohydrate. There is as much negative to be said about this cycle as there as positive. There is as little left to preach of it as there is vitamin D currently being pressed through my veins. (So many people cared and feared for me and my paper white skin, eighteen months ago, when overloading yourself with as much vitamin D as you could possibly take became a strange source of Great British Pride until kale turned up at the bottom of an aeropress and ruined things for everybody who'd got it all so right, so far.)

And I guess that's kind of what I'm talking about. The world I see that runs rampant in screens and speakers is a flat plate of boring ideas, executed largely by pretenders, mainly for people whose primary interest is themselves and how selfless and nu-new-age they can appear to be to others while buying clothes made by slaves and paid for, with quivering and fearful hands, over a counter attended to by either a tax-dodger or a pseudo-socialist so pierced that they whistle when it's windy.

But perhaps that satirically emphasised point of view is just my own, if that makes it more easy to discard.

Hurrah, then, for a new energy in the Phoria camp, so we might at least attempt to avoid this fate of cookie-cutter drudge and despair and perhaps break through to something a bit different.

New shit. New shit. New people and things and ideas. New music. New directions. We're having discussions where we bash our heads against each other more hard than before to try and come up with something that'll work. We're all sensitive folk, and we're all finding our way, but we all see that we've been sucked into this particular breadth of the temporal vacuum where relevance is more relative than it ever has been before; where age and work can be more easily packaged and sold; where the ability to energise others with whatever you're doing can be achieved more succinctly, through a million different channels all at once, and in a million new ways.

Whether it will all amount to water and ash is something we will have to deal with as it comes, but for now the mere promise of doing something new, whatever it might be, is getting us going, and giving us a little glint in our eyes, and making us look forward to the future.

Let's see what will happen today.

I'll probably fall asleep in an hour. All this energy is tiring me out.

Tim