Friday, January 12, 2007

Progress

We've finished the bulk of the instrumental recording for the album, and are currently about half way through the vocals. The Tosca quartet is coming in next week, and at the end of February we'll travel to New York to do the mixing. Not sleeping particularly well... more dreams about Scotland, my childhood home, this album. Currently sitting in an internet cafe listening to Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, which makes me reevaluate (is that really the correct spelling?), well, just about everything. When I listen to Kate Bush, I remember housesitting for the wonderful Jill Mingo, who lived just around the corner from the Necropolis, a large grave yard/Cathedral that looms of the East end of Glasgow, imagery which was admittedly made more erie after the watching of Deathwatch, the 1980 Bertrand Tavernier film which is set mainly in 1970's Glasgow. During the day I would walk take brisk walks to the top of the hill, and often experienced a similar sensation to that of viewing Arthur's seat, the beautiful land mass which rises over Edinburgh. Arthur's Seat is perhaps the most arresting inter-city land form I have ever seen, to stand on it is to feel the past and present converging at once. This is sort of the essence of Edinburgh, at least through the eyes of a foreign national. After my walks, I would return home, sort through Patrick Wolf's fan mail (Jill was, at that time, his manager), feed her cat miles, her snake, and recline at the kitchen table to the sound of Kate Bush, particularly Hounds of Love, and would think long and hard about how passion has often lead me to do the wrong thing, especially in terms of romance. But it's something outside of you, an external beast is responsible for making these choices.