Well, we've been neglecting you a bit recently, haven't we? (Don't bother answering that; we already know the answer).
So here is some news...
Maybe you thought Dusk was over with, dead and buried? Frankly, so did we. It was an album which took about three years to write, record and mix. Then we prolonged the agony by releasing four singles / EPs / whatever you want to call them. And in the past, that might have been (if you'll pardon the pun) the end.
I'm not really at liberty to tell you what I'm talking about at the moment, so I'm just going to have to remain enigmatic. (Is that the right word? Probably not.) Anyway, suffice to say that Dusk still has one final trick up its sleeve. To celebrate this, the handful of remaining comments will make their way onto this very blog over the next couple of weeks, at the rate of one every day or two. I'm not going to make any promises about how regularly I can get them on here, but I'll do what I can.
That wasn't really news, and it didn't really say anything particularly informative, so here's something a bit more substantial...
The ninth album is really starting to take shape now. An impressive total (or should that be toll?) of 34 tracks are being considered, each in a varying place somewhere on the road between "vague musical idea" and "finished". Before you get too excited, here are some statistics:
- 2 are left over from Empires (yes, they are that bad)
- 2 are left over from Dusk, and are completed (but possibly not very good)
- 2 are left over from Dusk, but the vocals haven't been mixed yet (these two are OK, actually)
- 2 are left over from Dusk, but I haven't finished recording the vocals yet (one of them is quite good)
- 4 are left over from Dusk, and haven't quite got full sets of lyrics yet (none of them are any good)
- 1 is complete, but I want to re-record the vocal because it's not very good (yes, we now have some kind of quality checking procedure*)
- 1 is a song by someone else, which probably won't get released properly anywhere (I'm not sure why I'm telling you about it, actually)
- 1 is a song by Simon, for which he's hopefully going to take full responsibility
- 9 have been recorded, but the vocals haven't been mixed yet
- 8 don't yet have any kind of lyrics recorded for them
- 2 don't have any kind of words yet (or rather, they do have some kind of words, just not a very good kind)
One of the nine recorded but not fully mixed tracks is called Here Comes the Summertime, and was recorded a few weeks ago in one of my more hirsute periods. It also coincided with me playing with my new iMac, which has a built-in iSight camera, and so I recorded a video as I was going along. It was fully edited in iMovie, and so it's not exactly up to the standards of Señor Spielbergo, or even (dare I say it) George Lucas, but in fairness it's our first ever video, and I didn't really know what I was doing (I still don't).
Hopefully the final version of the video will be ready to premiere in the Summertime; there might be a single at some stage; and the album should follow not long afterwards. If everything goes according to plan, which of course it never does.
In the meantime, you'll have to make do with the dregs of Dusk.
