colleen

I have been absent from this space for a long time, and just wanted to send you a tiny hello – after 8 weeks in confinement, including 7 weeks of hardcore confinement (not allowed to go out for exercise or a walk, just for shopping for necessities), it feels good to be back in touch.

The most observant among you will immediately see that this is not the home studio space I had introduced you to last year, and indeed, I swapped places with the other bedroom in the flat not so long after that post: long story short, the lack of light and view really made me feel down and too cut off from the world in that other room at the back of the flat, and the light and patio view in this much brighter room have solved the problem. It is however *really* tiny (around 7 square metres – 75 square feet), but it’s funny how once you’ve downsized once (from 40 sq m to 14 sq m), downsizing the second time feels almost natural. This ultracompact space actually works just fine for the type of music I’m working on right now, and the workflow really couldn’t be smoother: I just swivel my chair and there you go, from recording to listening and mixing in a second!

The other thing you may have noticed is the presence of a glorious Roland Space Echo RE-201, supplied to me by the great people at Soundgas (who also supplied the Elka Drummer One just below it), and on top of those two pieces of gear now sleeps one of two new additions to the house, a red and cream giant named Sol. You could almost say he is part of the setup now as he does love that one spot very much. I initially tried to prevent him from climbing all over my gear,  and I was definitely not amused when he climbed on top of the Space Echo for the first time (and freaked out when I switched it on and he heard the tape running),  but if I leave the studio open – and really, I did not adopt two cats to close my door on them – then there is just no way to actually prevent him, so instead, I’m developing strategies to encourage the path of least destruction: in this case I’m trying to teach him to jump to the one small spot to the right of the MIDIMuRF where there is no gear, and to jump from there to the Space Echo – it’s actually worked a couple of times, so hopefully this will become an ingrained habit at some point!

I will hopefully be back in the coming months to give you updates on how work on the new album is coming – it’s slowly but surely getting there, and I’m hoping to have it out next year. Given the current circumstances, I’ll be grateful just for that in the first place – to actually have it released somehow into the wider world.

As always thank you for reading and listening, and it goes without saying but I will say it: I hope all those of you reading these lines and your loved ones are doing ok.

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