July and August have always been a mixture of crazy and sublime in my calendar – with gigs, festivals and travel every summer my whole life. More recently as more of a consultant I am office-bound in the summer preparing some major September projects. (Really!… a new book launch, a new magazine launch, 2 new website launches, some exhibition materials and various PR exercises – all without a safety net – I need a PA!)

Anyway, this morning I was greeted with the new long-awaited Mutemath Album in my inbox. It’s been at least two years of waiting with trickles of publicity here and there – but now it is finally here. Their debut will be hard to follow and so I will post back when I have truly digested the brilliance. In the meantime here are two tracks:
Backfire

Pins and Needles

Also, Radiohead have released a track from their forthcoming album. Titled ‘These are my twisted words’ – and here it is. (via Josh Spear)

This afternoon I interview one of the biggest solo violinists in the country.
I have an interesting job.

After a ‘Costa’ interview for a publication I’m putting together, I got to know Paul (the CEO) who has a remarkably similar visionary aspect to music.
Their performance was stunningly professional and gave us plenty to talk about at the ‘after-show’.
I’m looking forward to swapping more notes on songwriting workshops with them soon.
Whatever your musical preferences, I recommend you check them out, if only because they’re a throroughly nice bunch of people.

Still, graphically it’s amazing – and thanks no less to the extraordinary skills of Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz).
There is a great vintage look and the whole thing is perfect for the original soundtrack. Shame I don’t keep up to date with consoles – N64 version anyone?

Even though I’ve now been an artist for 23 years and been running workshops and seminars for 13 years, I had never really referred to myself with the word ‘consultant’ before, but this weekend made me draw a line in the sand. Let me explain: as far as the demand for my music and media experience goes, last year I moved from a freelance position to being offered two new positions on a permenant basis – cementing at least finally in my mind that the word ‘consultant’ is pretty accurate.

As a result, you may well see a new kind of branding emerge – that is of course if I can stop working for people long enough to work for myself.

Thank you Andrew for steering my boat.

(Above is the current artwork from A Place Called Common)

If you’ve got talent, people want more of you. They ask you for this or that or the other thing. They ask nicely. They will benefit from the insight you can give them.

The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often.

You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.

Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

Even though living at full speed, I haven’t been posting as much this year. However, during March the hits to the site more than tripled. Welcome to thousands of new readers!

I have just put the phone down from talking to a very good (long distance) friend of mine – who said “there is just no good music out there at the moment…it’s very dry”, and in response to that I will save my lifestream update for another day and get back to posting some new finds. All of these artists have new albums out, even though some of these tracks are from their previous offerings.

Balmorhea whilst maybe sounding Scottish are actually a quintet from Austin, Texas combining strings, acoustics and pianos to great effect – a sonic landscape.

Oren Lavie is an Israeli living in New York. His recent acclaimed album was recorded over a period of 3 years in a Berlin apartment. Make sure to check out his quirky but superb video to accompany the song.

I can’t find much info on Darrell Fitton (aka Bola), but his electronica is so highly influential, maybe a website isn’t necessary!

Balmorhea – San Solomon

Oren Lavie – Her morning elegance

Bola – Waknuts

The time I spent with Duke Special was sublime. A full two nights of shows & some time for a good long interview and personal chat. He was on top form and revelling in the joys of a new album which I fully recommend. I’ll keep you posted on when the interview will see the light of day.
Manchester has played a big part so far this year as I’ve been spending a good deal of time with producers at the BBC, and different artists around the city which has been inspiring. My tailor and all round bon viveur Mr Simon Buckley invited me to his shop’s lock-in which was a fantastic night of vintage madness, complete with cheeky vimto and old-time dance display! The launch of new bar ‘Noho’ brings another welcome vintage haunt – and Mr Vino’s Open House continues to feed me with a caring and down-to-earth community.

As far as my writing goes, I’m looking into some new exciting possibilities for co-writing and had great positive responses – so only geography holds us back now!

My passion for blog-hunting continues with some nice new advances so early in 09, who knows what the year holds? The way that online communities are shaping what we see is refreshing – ‘open source’ software & free music are now being seen as the way forward which as an artist is scary and exciting at the same time. It’s through some of this that I discovered some of the amazing photography of Kim Holtermand.

Duke has a new album out ‘I never thought this day would come’ which is every bit as inviting as his debut. As a songwriter and friend I knew Duke back when we shared the same record label and his Irish charm and talent for an enticing melody is a natural gift.

Enjoy some of his new album here. Have a great weekend.

Duke Special – Mockingbird wish me luck

Duke Special – Those proverbs we made

Duke Special – I never though this day would come