Macca Night, Stockport, Exhibition Entries

A ram-packed Paul McCartney tribute night on Thursday. A great night of great music. My rendition of 'Women & Wives' went well. I'm inspired to record it as a cover, as my version is sufficiently different. This project has filed my mind but there are challenges. I'd like to play lots live, but I only have so much space for huge recordings, one track per song really. It's not so much a memory issue as ultimate storage space, I don't want to store massive songs because I have a large quantity of output, it's not efficient. The backing is quite repetitive so it makes more sense to sequence it. I've already created a few sounds on the MODX, I may sample those or re-create them again in Prometheus. I played it live with a heavy saw-synth bass on the Microkorg and it was a challenge to duplicate (well, a close copy) on the MODX.

I prepared an equally ambitious synth version of 'Live and Let Die', but there was no time on the night. A pity, as all songs bar one were Beatles songs, only mine and one other was a McCartney solo song, and there were no Wings songs. I hope to play 'Live and Let Die' at a future Good Vibrations event. Here's a photo by Deb of the 'Hey Jude' finale:

Slow days between. I feel lacklustre and not in a visual art mood. I've updated my websites today, and the IndieSFX licence, to explicitly exclude the use of sounds for AI training. The old licence (and all of the sounds) pre-date generative AI. I'm spending time each day tinkering with the MODX, making new sounds here and there, but this is often time wasted. When writing a new song it's best to think of the sound needed, then make it, rather than make a sound and then write a song with it.

Half of yesterday was spent going to Stockport to collect the 'Song of Innocence' painting. I've heard that two paintings have been accepted into the first Crewe Create Open Exhibition. Also, the biggest tribute website to H. Beam Piper, zarthani.net, has added my new portrait to it today. This has inspired me to contact a few other Beam Piper enthusiasts.

Live Music Rehearsals

Today, rehearsed my songs for the Paul McCartney night on Thursday, and for our Fall in Green set for Morecambe, a full day for small performances. The McCartney song I chose, Women and Wives, is piano based but I only have a puny (in range and polyphony) Microkorg, so I've decided to do a synth version with distorted saw-bass playing a riff almost like a doom version of 'Smoke on the Water'. A fitting alternative version.

Live Music Settings Day 2, Solar Eclipse

A full and good day. Completed the admin of the 5 Fall in Green albums, noting live settings for each track. Then printed and practiced the new music for the Morecambe show, and developed a few new instruments. Then got to work on my albums, which also took a while. I remember performing quite a few We Robot tracks, and some A Drive Through The Town, and Secret Electric Sorcery! All in all, quite a few tracks needed noting, and I designed a few new MODX sounds for future live events (if there ever are any).

I made a crude eclipse viewer box for tonight's 90% eclipse. The results were rather poor, but I managed to glimpse the sun. The best shot was pointing my camera directly at it with minimum lighting settings (1/4000sec, F25, ISO100).

Websites still being set up. The new cornutopia.net, my first test site, is live!

Frame Photography, Live Music Admin

Started by photographing the newly framed paintings, plus singing practice. This took all morning. Then work on the Morecambe performance. I had hoped to rehearse, but 3 or 4 pieces haven't been performed live so I don't have the sheet music or know which instruments to use. Until now, I've recorded instrumentation and settings for each song we perform in the script, the set-list, for the show, but it's been a year since our last show, and I didn't, by chance, note those settings then, perhaps because they were relatively trivial and all on the MODX (no multiple keyboards).

Still, this was a wake-up call. It makes much more sense to store live performance information with each album, not with each performance event. We performed some tracks live many times, Janus Never Blinks, for example, and often used different instruments per performance, the P105 piano and a tubular bell first, and sometimes the little RefaceDX, but now the MODX almost exclusively; but what if we need to perform it again and need to see how we did it last time? It's a matter of looking through countless scripts of previous shows, and finding the best one for the equipment we'll be using this time. This takes far longer than finding the album. So I've made new 'live' text files for each album and will list there how we perform each track.

This though will take days of work, because it means going through 100 shows or so, every performance to get this exact data. I'll also update the MODX program names. All Fall in Green instruments begin 'FIG' but I have custom instruments used on recordings that it's best I keep too, and sometimes different ones for live (these may have splits or layers, or samples). I think I'll name my live instruments 'MAS' too.

Lots of admin, but it should speed things up for future live shows.

AI Experiments, PRS Royalties

A slow day today. Learning more about what AI can do. It can do vast amounts, yet part of me feels that it can't really get any better, just cheaper. There's no need for more 'human-ness', it's as good as it needs to be, I think. We don't want emotions or ego, or ever-present spectre of the fear of death or insignificance, do we? I'm uncertain if those things help humanity, though they may help life strive or fight to endure...

I feel that the capabilities for text-based games haven't really been explored. Generative AI can act like a literary holodeck if prompted correctly. Any sort of game is easily created. One could supply a photo and play 'I spy' with an object it spies, or play hide and seek in an imagined location, an imagined mansion of its design.

For visual art, I can see that it will speed up and assist the tasks of sourcing image references, staging, lighting, texturing, and supply models, poses, or whole scenes, if desired. Those tools in the 15th century were drawing and shading, in the 19th century were cartoons and painted studies, and in the 20th created from photographs or computer graphics. I've used all of this and will continue. These techniques evolve, while the spirit of art remains the same. AI is not 'creative', if anything its beautiful images expose the flaw in shallow and untalented-yet-pretty art like 'abstract' painting, like 'digital' art. To actual artists AI is wonderful; it shames the talentless while aiding the creatives. It also makes real-world art and physical skills more valuable.

My unique ideas will remain the same, and mine, though if I wanted an artificial intelligence to supply a random idea in some surrealistic-tool sort of way I could collaborate in the way one collaborates with another artist. I collaborate well generally, with Deborah or Sabine Kussmaul for example, but I can only take so much. Artists are artists because we have something to say. We don't have something to tell someone else to say! This is the ultimate rebuke to fears about a future technology harming art.

I looked through my PRS statistics with amusement and bafflement following the recent quarterly payment of £80. Almost all of these royalties, with 1,970,496 plays worldwide, came from 'Smashing My House Of Cards', yet seemingly from a period before it was released. This is often confusing though, periods are often back-dated, and many aspects of royalties are blended over inexact time-periods. My most popular tracks are (cue chart countdown music!):

1. Smashing My House Of Cards.
2. There Is No Love And The More I Search The Less I Find
3. The Planet's Oracle
4. Anyone Can Fall In Love
5. The Runner

'Anyone Can Fall In Love' is #4 because it was played by Bahamas & Western Hemisphere PPS - TV, and Japanese (JASRAC) General & Broadcasting played 'Eastern Dreams'. Cyprus TV and Radio played quite a lot of my work, more than any other broadcaster; so thank you all of these broadcasters for their small but important airplay.

Tomorrow I'll start glazing 'All Things Bright And Beautiful'.

Punishment Of The Sun Image Transfer, Waking Slow Organ

Today, transferring the underdrawing for 'Punishment Of The Sun'. An arduous process of tracing with oil-paint, this involved nearly an hour of cleaning at the end so that I can re-use the polyester drafting film. I feel more assured in my artistic direction. I'd like to paint bigger, but this is a compromise of size vs. quantity. It's easy to paint one large painting a year, but I prefer 10 or 20, and so prefer to vary the size. Anything over 1M framed begins to limit a painting's entry into competitions or open exhibitions. Anything over 2M limits this to the Royal Academy alone, or a commercial gallery; almost no open competitions would permit something that big.

After that, some keyboard playing for Mike Drew's latest song. Thus the day flies. It's 28 degrees in here, the hottest it's yet been in 2026.

Glazing The Blood Of Winter, The Works

Glazing 'The Blood Of Winter' this afternoon. I rarely enjoy glazing and never look forward to its chore. It always improves a painting but it feels like I've already done the bulk of the creativity. Here you can see the underpainting and glazed result, though you'll never appreciate the subtlety of the layering in a digital photo. The shadows are grey in the underpainting but have blues and greens in the glaze. The glazes are very thinly rubbed on, delicately affecting the colour. If glazing with the same colours, the result is simply smoothing the underpainting, not special. A principle is to glaze warm colours over cold and vice versa, but in general we're adding colour itself, new colours, more variation and more intensity than on the underpainting.

Half of the day was taken up with preparation of some watercolours for Knutsford and helping my father with his stamp collection. I listened to Queen's The Works for the first time today too, a good album. I must aim to write my songs more with Freddie's voice in mind as it's a range that works for me. In the past I've been too limited, I was growing in voice and still very much am. The songs which use these higher notes sound better now, or will sound better if and when I re-record them.

One of my early songs, inspired by Queen's 'We Are The Champions' and from 2003, is called 'I Won In The End'. It feels too self-triumphal to sing, too reminiscent of 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' from Cabaret. Last night I thought that it could be simply changed to 'You Won In The End', making it instead a tribute song.

Humdrum Jobs, Spotify Streams

Packed works for exhibitions over the weekend. Today, an eye test and taking stock of works in progress. Scanned two more finished works, with two more to photograph this week in preparation for future competitions. I feel exhausted often, but perhaps this is due to lack of charging into a big project; I relish challenges and tight deadlines. There is much to do this year in programming and music, but the paintings in progress need to dry a little between layers. There is always more to do if I seek it, but choosing which is the best use of my limited time is never easy.

I noted today that The Myth Of Sisyphus has had a few Spotify streams, my first of 40 or more albums to have any. This is probably because I've promoted this album a bit on social media. I've never tried this before, even now it's very time consuming. I'll continue with future releases. In actuality the boost to my listenership is a very gradual climb over years rather than a rapid and recent one. At this rate it would still take centuries for me to have a hit, yet there is a quantum-leap factor here; energy builds up in silence then leaps up rapidly. As Fall in Green we've also had a few listens too, particularly the recent album.

Music Pages, Hope and Death, Painting Thoughts

Today, updated the music pages of my website to include a Spotify embed, and removed the smaller booklet page images, and track list except for albums not on Spotify. This simplifies the look and the logic of the page's code:

Also submitted a track to Tom of Aldora Britain Records for a 50p promotional album to be distributed with other artists. I sent an image of my 'Abandoning Someone' painting for use as the cover. Later, glazed the small 'Hope and Death' painting. It's much better looking now and only took about 60 to 90 mins to glaze, but it took about an hour to become enthused for this necessary job.

I'm still reading Kafka and wonder if I'm like Kafka or being bent towards him with his words. At times I feel squeezed out artistically, but and yet perhaps don't. I'm eternally creative and eternally busy; it is Kafka who writes about being squeezed and when I feel these slight periods of stoppage, I recall his words and being. I tend to pause only for a short time before darting on a new and more alluring tangent, like the router table. Today I thought of darting out for wood to make the inner bevel, the insert, for one of the frames I have - yet I have no painting for that frame, so it would be a waste of time and money in the short term.

Perhaps even the router table is or was a waste of time, yet my instincts seem to work well, and many follies or diversions tend to become invaluable over time. My painting abilities, my music abilities have grown because of a drip drip of hundreds or thousands of little innovations, many fractions-of-percent's of improvement over many years.

As I age I find I have less solid focus on one thing. Years ago I would work on one game for months or years (The Heart of Aorkhan, Arcangel, both multi-year projects on which I did nothing else - to my detriment, I should have given up or expanded on other bow-strings). Now I dart between more jobs, yet this darting leads to more refinement. The process is like adding the fringes on a fern, or the last stages of evolution, compared to the solidness of the leaf and core design. Ageing itself and evolution seems to echo this. Animals from millions of years past seem to look smoother, be less detailed, somehow. The universe too, older stars are more crude and chunky, the newer ones with a wider range of elements, more detail. I am struck by these links between the micro and macro, the body and universe.

So what must I focus upon? What should my goals be?

Music Animations, Exhibition Entries

Spent this morning making 24-second vertical format videos for every music track on The Myth Of Sisyphus and War And Nuclear Love. In the afternoon, entered the next RBSA open exhibition, and prepared labels and details for the other three local exhibitions I'm taking part in; Bunbury, Tarporley, Bickerton. My mouth remains swollen and in bad shape. I felt too tired and somewhat dopey after 3pm to do much.

I should ideally prepare a study for the Telepathic Daisy painting, and start to glaze existing works now. The Good Vibrations event on Wednesday means I can't paint, then so can't paint tomorrow on a big work either.

WANL Videos Complete

Another full day, which began by dropping off paintings to Nantwich Museum for the open. Delivery is from 10:00 to 16:00 over 4 days and we (quite typically) arrived at 09:58 on the first day.

After that, charged into more video work. I had a few changes to make, but much of the long day was spent rendering and processing the video data. Each video takes about twice as long to render as to play, then about the same to convert from raw to mp4. I needed to convert some videos three times: once with subtitles, once without, and one in lower quality for archiving, and that assumes that a first version has no problems or things to change. Ultimately it took until 16:30 to complete the final drafts of the 6 videos, at which point I could start work on the Spotify Canvases.

It's now 20:00 and all videos are complete and uploaded. The full album project is now complete.

At times during the day, while waiting for FFMpeg to chug through the video data, I worked on some framing. I changed the glass on the 'Home Life' painting, and tidied up two other frames, including one I bought today in Nantwich.

War And Nuclear Love Videos

Spent much of yesterday on art admin regarding the six paintings I took to the Oil Art Advisory. Today I reflected on the fact that my painting prices have about doubled in the past 5 years, that they had doubled in the 5 years before that, and that they're probably 10 times higher than when I first started to exhibit 15 years ago. Part of this is due to greater professionalism; more spent on more costs for higher quality work, more people in a bigger chain who take more of a cut. Another of yesterday's jobs was tidying up a very old and flaky frame bought with a glass painting intact and (oddly) a velvet lining, taking it apart for future use.

Today, charged into making videos for War And Nuclear Love. The results are all very colourful and glowing, like an electric pinball machine. The fundamental idea uses horizontal red lines and yellow stars which move and dance to different instruments. What was a red 'slice' on the cover art became blue. The result evokes an American flag, which it perfect for 'Radioactive' and the title track.

I took a video of myself for 'War and Nuclear Love', using a mask to add it to the animation, and did something similar for the 'Post-Apocalyptic Playground'. This track is perhaps little too bright, for the tune which is, in my mind, rather grey and dreary in mood, like The Night of the Living Dead. 'After The Battle' uses out-takes and clips from Jabberwocky. It's now 20:30 and I've just finished the first drafts. I expect that I'll spend all day making little changes and finalising the Spotify Canvases. These must be as good as I can make them given my time budget.

I've also posted my first animation to TikTok and will start doing this regularly, as I do with paintings on BlueSky.

War And Nuclear Love Finalised, Poetry Night, Knutsford

Two full days. Finalised all album admin yesterday; War And Nuclear Love is now scheduled for release on 3 July 2026. Then started work on some full frame videos, incorporating the subtitles. This stage is complete.

In the evening attended the Creative Crewe Poetry Night. Carol is always a joy to meet and full of enthusiasm. If the aim of a performance evening is excitement, showmanship, and pzazz, this had none - it was as dreary as a Catholic funeral, and about half of the poems were poor simple rhymes by simple folk. No amplification meant that the poets were too quiet, many completely inaudible. Despite this, several of the poems and performances were very good. One highlight was a prose poem by Iain Chalmers who with great brilliance described a vehicle crash of books, with each genre of book; limericks, 'chic lit', medical encyclopediae; affecting the description of the event. The inability to hear the poems, and the incredible slowness and poor organisation of the night, which overran by 30 minutes, were downsides, but the warm company and meeting friends there a highlight, and perhaps this is the main reason for such events anyway.

Today, a visit to the Oil Art Advisory, which is always a joy. Delivered 6 paintings to them and collected 4 frames to fill with something.

I also realised that my 'Monsters of Spring' painting on BlueSky was flagged as a sexually explicit image, and hid it, which I found annoying. Some slight 'nudity' of a computer model true. Such labels may harm my reputation on there, I'd have happily deleted the image instantly if I'd have noticed this label. I'll avoid any hints of nudity from now on.

One small job today, updated Prometheus to allow floating point beats-per-minute. Of course the program uses floating point speed internally anyway. There are occasions when this setting may be useful, for example if you need to half the tempo of a song which is 135 BPM. This change was pretty simple to implement but isn't fully tested.

WANL Album Admin

A satisfying and full day of work on War And Nuclear Love. First assembled the sheet music for publication and finalised the lyrics booklets, then made a slight lyric change. Some words in the title track were:

I take my fuse
And masturbate as I muse on

I changed this to:

I take my fuse
And I think of God as I muse on

The word 'masturbate' would label the song, and therefore album, as 'explicit' and would limit the scope of its release, which was something of a factor in my deciding to change it, but the primary reason is that the word was a distraction in the song, overly strong. The more subtle (yet still implied) second version is a better lyric.

This change meant re-singing that line, which I did today, and invisibly blended it with the older take. With this, the music was complete. The album was listed in draft on Bandcamp, sent for release, and updated on my website. Also added more artwork pages, so now the iTunes booklet will include the lyrics. Filed and deleted the temporary files, the vocal recordings etc., created the MP3 stub files (if I ever need MP3 versions), proofed the music, burned an archive CD, and lots of other important admin work.

Most of the album is now complete, but I still need to create Spotify Canvas animations, full screen animations for YouTube, and register the music with more music authorities. I can do that when the release is approved.

This evening, made some preparations and announcements for the sale on Steam.

War And Nuclear Love Work

Final day of sheet music for War And Nuclear Love. At times I think that nobody will ever play any of this, and that my days, week, years of working on this tedious and difficult sheet music is pointless - but this is not certainly true; there are two main reasons. First, that nobody else bothers, and second, that data integrity has been shown to be an important driver of success and civilisation. I file and record my work in great details because such work is part of the purpose of life itself. Either way, if I'm ever to play these live I really find this useful, so a couple of days work to transcribe an album isn't so bad. I managed to transcribe the complex guitar parts in 'After The Battle' today, and the music for 'Post-Apocalyptic Playground'.

By 3pm the draft scores were complete, but I had lots more art to create, at least for the booklet and iTunes booklet, so I really needed to make a few more full CD booklet pages, and a CD surface while I'm at it, although there are no plans for a CD at the moment.

One other job today was launch the Goodreads Giveaway for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. This week-long promotion give away a free copy of the Kindle book, with kind requests for a review from the winners of this lottery.

War ANL Sheet Music Day 1

A full day working on the sheet music for War And Nuclear Love. Started with the more difficult tracks, first 'Radioactive', then 'Remembering Hans Blix', which required hand transcription, then the long songs 'Written on Rice', and the title track. More tomorrow.

More War ANL

A full day and evening of work on War And Nuclear Love. The tracks needed some essential final changes to the start and end parts of each track. This morning I extended the start to the title track to blend it with the prior 'Radioactive'. This won't be the case on the stream version though, only a future (and perhaps unlikely) CD version.

I then went into the garden and recorded the old rusty luggage trolley, which can fold out. Flexing this resulted in a suitably creepy metal swing sound, perfect for the zombie park on Post-Apocalyptic Playground. Then, finally recorded the vocals for the title track. I've changed some of the words. Verse 2 now reads:

Look at the switches
The flashing lights
There's something of a Christmas morning here

Handsome generals
Encourage me to play
And I've nothing better to do today

I pray and hide
God tells me he's on the side of

War and nuclear love etc.

Added the new vocals to the song this afternoon, and added some harmonies for the 3rd lines of these verses (though not the Christmas line, this sounds better without the harmony, it's more conversational than musical). The final step was the 'solo' for this song, which I'd forgotten about. I grabbed the guitar and spent an hour experimenting. Playing chords to the part seemed to sound better somehow, but nothing was quite right. I took a break at 3pm, then decided to record power chords for the final chorus (easy to play now the key is up, simply E-min, C-Maj, A-Maj, E-Maj/Emin). Then played a simple lead solo in an instant for the proper solo part. Thus, the song is complete.

I've noticed that many tracks have a slight tendency to be stronger on the left, perhaps due to my preference for that ear. I've adjusted Post-Apocalypse to match.

Overall, I'm happy with this EP, particularly the new tracks. My singing and production skills have never been better, nor has my keyboard and guitar playing, not that I've ever been much of a guitar player. So, this is a good time to at least create some music, and I am keen to get that old song of 'Written on Rice' out there; and the war theme seems to be culturally appropriate...

Some slight cover changes:

Tomorrow I'll charge into the sheet music, this may take two days.

War And Nuclear Love Progress, Purpose of Music

A busy 24 hours working on the new album. Last night I had to decide whether to work on a full album, or an EP. An EP would mean 6 tracks or fewer, but there is little time for an album; that would probably take up at least another full month and I'm already getting bored with the project. My key motivation was to produce something to enhance and match the Radioactive theme and 'Written on Rice', good tracks that are ageing away and ready and ripe for release. The 6 track limit has been reached, so I decided to call it an EP, and ditch the possible additional tracks. One called 'Einstein', which was in the earliest of stages is now filed, along with a heavily electronic pop song currently called 'Every Day and a Day', which is largely complete apart from the lyrics. The gentle track called 'At the End of Life There's Hope' is again filed away for the future.

It also means there will be no room for the original mix of Radioactive from the game itself. The version on here is a new recording made in Prometheus rather than Noise Station. The bass and high squeals are a little more under control in the new recording.

So the track list will be:

1. Radioactive
2. War and Nuclear Love
3. After the Battle
4. Post-Apocalyptic Playground
5. Remembering Hans Blix
6. Written on Rice

This morning, extended the Hans Blix song, and have extended the intro to 'After the Battle' too, then got to work on the cover art, starting with new photographs. The result looks rather like that Albrecht Durer painting, quite unintentionally.

I need to finalise the music as soon as possible, but 'War and Nuclear Love' still needs the final vocals. I'll have to work on the sheet music and Spotify Canvases as quickly as possible, all to be ready for my self-imposed deadline of next Saturday. It won't be released for some months though, until after The Myth Of Sisyphus has run its course, so I can defer this work.

In other news I've sold my first works at the Oil Art Advisory, and have sold my first copy of the new Many Beautiful Worlds of Death audiobook, both sales welcome and needed. My music remains an obscure backwater in my oeuvre, but this is the case for most artists today. This won't stop me trying my best in this artform (though I will of course continue to do my best in painting and writing too, and soon).

I was asked on Bluesky what I aimed to achieve with my music - a pertinent question, and not something I'd even considered. Art is, for me, a goal in itself, so my key aim is to represent something meaningful, do my creative best, that which is a bit better and hopefully a bit different from what has come before. My goals can't be social, as my music is largely, but not wholly, ignored by the world and I'm unlikely to ever to receive money or recognition, but I know that this was often the case for many living artists of the past. There are many obscure but brilliant artists that I wish had made more art while they could. I don't want to be like them, so while I have health, eyes, ears, it is something of a duty for me to create at my best.

War And Nuclear Love Vocals

Okay, two slow slow, but progressive days working on the War And Nuclear Love album. Found space to record vocals for 4 tracks yesterday. This always takes a bit longer for new tracks compared to re-recording vocals for older songs, as no matter how much is planned there's always a degree of experimenting with layers.

'After The Battle', and 'Rememebering Hans Blix' are pretty much complete.

I found 'Post Apocalyptic Playground' a little annoying as it hovers around E3 to A3, rather low for my range. In mood, and range, it's a bit like 'The Cat Phone Song', so I reminded myself of this. It also has elements of Bing Crosby's range, so I listened to some Bing while I thought about how to do it. An amusing and light tone is just right for this ironic song, which on the face of it is a romantic walk through the park, but the title and the somewhat zombie-like thumped piano solo taints it all with something darker. After recording these simple vocals, they seem perfect. I've added a harmony layer for the chorus, and some fill vocals here and there.

The vocals for 'War and Nuclear Love' are more complex to work on. I was reminded today just how hugely Jean-Michel Jarre's album structures loom large over my music. He tended to start with quiet, or at least long intro tracks, then at some point added one 'single', a highly melodic tune which seemed to be designed exactly as a single release, then obscure ones which were almost an opposite. I seem to have one pop-type, single-type, hit-type song, which leads into others which have less of that feel. Here, the single is 'War and Nuclear Love'. In production terms it reminds me of 'We Built This City' by Starship from 1985. The backing is very synthetic, and the verses are spartan apart from a bass and pumping synth stabs. My track is loaded with more energy. It may be finished with these first take vocals, but I'm unsure. They certainly sound thin and lonely compared to the fat and rich vocals in the Starship song, yet, mine seem to say enough. I've layered up the chorus with harmonies, and a planned vocoder.

Anyway, the Hans Blix song in particular seems to bend this album towards the present, so I feel I must rush to finish it, though I constantly wonder why I push myself so hard for this.

Onwards we charge like a rocket!

After The Battle

A day of work on this war music. At times I'm unsure why I'm doing it, perhaps over-pushing to work on this music despite the lack of a muse. The key factor is that it must be sufficiently new, sufficiently different from before, and ideally a tiny bit better too. My motivation, the original reason I started any of it was that the Radioactive theme (titled 'Radiation' since I wrote it in 2001) and the old song 'Written on Rice' are complete and worthy of a proper release, so I needed to make something to unify the release.

Yet, I underestimate the work of such an endeavour. I'm now keen to get all of this music done as quickly as possible, but with that caveat of originality or quality. Both are difficult.

Much of today, like yesterday, was spent on 'After The Battle'. Today I added a new synth guitar solo, this time recording the MIDI - I needed to redo this as yesterday's part only covered the first half. This gives the song much more feeling. Then I added some synth strings, here influenced by 'Running Up That Hill', as my constant chords and incessant beat made me think that song and I was interested in how energy, drama, contrast can be added by backing which seems to be mellow and regular. Kate's music is always more dramatic in my head than the plain written music seems. Here are my words so far:

After The Battle

The ash of my parents
Flavours the breeze
Over the dawn of winter's weeds

The guilt of the damage
Shakes me cold
The moon, cruel and new
Says goodbye to the old

To whom now can my love and loss be told?

Fragments of people
Seeking out fire
Can any stranger see my mood?

Life goes on
Says the sun
And the moss, four billion years
But little is lost

Unsure of it all at the moment. I must keep working and doing my best, by analysis. What does it need? More drama, more imagery, more emotion, stronger everything. Analysis analysis; but as I keep saying, time is short. I should be making things of depth and power, of brilliance. Can I do this here? I'm keen, by April, to move towards new visual art.