Happy new year!
We were supposed to be finished with the new album by christmas, but it’s still not finished. Things take time, which is OK – it takes time to make good music, and we want it to be absolutely right. Most of the tracks are more or less written and recorded. Anja got the flu in mid-December, which meant we had to wait anyway. Track names are not totally decided upon, but here are some:

Personal Stereo, Anja singing – it’s a serious nod to R.E.M.‘s The One I Love, and, well both personal and in stereo.
Two Icicles, again Anja singing, is a song about – well, two icicles doomed by the certain coming of the spring.
Common Sense, a kind of ‘rocker’, me singing, written in Seattle last spring.
Sit Down, a duet, and everybody’s favourite, I guess. Written during the last Lebanon-Israel conflict, at the same time inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre, a timeless anti-war thing, I guess. Don’t ask – listen when it’s out…
Change My Ways is another track nodding ecstatically to one of our favourites – Neil Young‘s Out On The Weekend (from Harvest).

I listen to Harvest daily, because it’s probably one of the best albums ever made, but also because my daughter (she’s four in March) loves it. She calls him ‘The strange man’, and can sing most of the ‘Harvest’ tracks and the songs on his Prairie Wind album – she doesn’t understand English, of course, though! I guess she’s basically into good tunes really, like when she heard Nirvana‘s version of Leadbelly‘s Where Did You Sleep Last Night the other week: I’m going to marry the guy who sings this song, she cried out! That’s a heartbreaker!

Talking about the good music, the moments which sort of set some music apart and beyond most other music – I have a few of those moments. Like when the drums get in halfway through Simon & Garfunkel‘s Sound Of Silence, or Eminem‘s last words in Stan – ‘…it was you…’. Or when that chiming guitar comes around early in Joy Division‘s New Dawn Fades.

Having some days off, I’ve been out there looking for new music during christmas, and most of the time hunting for classic dub (e.g. Scientist, check out his Scientist Meets the Space Invaders from 1981). But by far the most interesting new thing I’ve heard this year are some tracks released by a indie label called Hyperdub – absolutely sensational sound, dubstep it’s been named. Check out Burial and Kode 9, I love it!!