It’s ages since I wrote anything about what I’ve been up to musically. Although I’ve been really quiet, I’ve been pretty busy, apart from when I was decorating a room at Dad’s house.

I thought at the start of the summer that I’d be doing another Tune-A-Day-June, but was feeling really burned out and decided not to go forward with it, because it gets pretty exhausting anyway. Instead, it’s been a summer of collaborations, starting with a single that I worked on with another producer I met on Drooble. That hasn’t come out yet, as there are some admin type things that need sorting out before it’s released, but it’s finished and ready to go when we are.

Then there has been a track I’ve been helping Matt Steady develop for his upcoming album.It’s my return favour for Matt playing pipes on Home to Roost. I’m not sure quite how much of the specific detail I am allowed to reveal here, so I’ll avoid giving too much away, but it started out with me being sent an Uilleann pipe melody – just by itself, apart from a sound effect that ran under it. I figured out some chords for it, added a beat and synths, then it has bounced back and forth a bit ideas-wise, with Matt adding more layers with various instruments, switching the arrangement up, and me commenting on progress. Along the way, quite early on in the process, it turned into two separate tracks, in order to incorporate more of the ideas for where it might go.  It’s looking like I will get a final stab at the track to push the synths further on, once the drummer has recorded real drums to it, now that the structure and arrangement of the piece is so much more fully developed. I’m really looking forward to being able to hear the final version & for it to be released.

Something else that has been happening is the remix I started doing for John Clark. I had a selection of possible tracks for remixing and couldn’t decide which one to go with, and started playing with several different tracks that John had provided the audio for. That indecisiveness meant it has grown into an EP project, with me doing some vocals on the songs, too, as John was quite keen for that to happen. That project is about half-way to two-thirds complete, depending on whether it grows again before it goes out!

There are a few more collaborative projects simmering as well, plus some tracks of my own I was originally hoping to release during the summer before I realised quite how burnt out I was after the album release. It’s looking like I’ll be doing well to get those out as an EP during the autumn at the moment, but let’s see.