The album began in the attic of a haunted house in the Autumn of 2016. I was sitting cross legged on the floor, as is my wont, with an old semi-broken 8 track recorder before me. I pressed record, strummed a bar or two, sang a few words in a hushed voice. The sound faded, the ghosts moaned. I had 7 or 8 songs, which I conceived as a kind of 'day in the life' type mini-album. A sort of indie 'Ulysses', if you will. HIGH CONCEPT ART.
I strummed another chord, possibly a Dm7. 'That,' I said to myself, 'is GENIUS.' The ghosts all agreed with me. None of them had faces, possibly no ears either, so the value of their opinions was questionable.
These early versions of the songs and the accompanying evidence for the existence of ghosts were tragically lost when, in attempting to fix the 8 track, I completely destroyed it. Turns out electronics are quite complicated, something I should have known from the time I mistakenly soldered my own hair in GCSE Systems.
Three years later, or thereabouts, I was hanging from another loose end asking questions such as: 'What should I do with myself?' and 'What is my purpose?'. A career was out of the question, obviously, so I decided to make an album instead. And not just any old album, THE album.
Yes, THE ALBUM, which I had been mulling over the whole time, chopping and changing and rearranging...
At the time, I was the proud possesor of a room in an art studio above a Thai restaurant in town. I borrowed a couple of microphones and set to work. I wrote 'Morning, Morning' and 'Unrest' around this time, which completed the track listing. I recorded street sounds, machine sounds, tape sounds, radio sounds, television sounds, Eric Cantona sounds...
The process was long and winding and road-like. Various fellow travellers joined me for portions of the road, to whom I am immensely grateful. Their company was a considerable improvement on the ghosts, who were somewhat monotonous.
Hopefully it all hangs together, and is not just a disparate collection of songs. I think I have ended up creating a fairly accurate representation of my own psyche, which is basically what I was aiming for.
SO, here we are then, at our destination...
Welcome, welcome...
Sit yourselves down and have a listen.
BUY A CD.
BUY TWELVE.
EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP.