mxv

Overcast and occasional showers, make for a mostly relaxed day of quiet contemplation, making full use of the opportunity of the empty house.

Fortunate, as I was beset with an epic weariness, due to the late night spent in the studio last night. Some progress on mixes that have languished in the To Do pile for some time, which is a fine thing to see. Didn't kick off until about 11pm, following an epic game of Sorcery, and didn't wrap up studio activity until around 4am.

There was a time when wrapping up at 3-4am was pretty much standard for me. Not so any more.

The fuzziness today is probably due mainly to following up a couple of glasses of red over dinner with a couple of tumblers of whiskey. My stamina for such things is apparently not what it once was.

“Curiosa” by jlmxv.

11:30am

Getting up today the zip on my favourite – pretty much my only decent – pair of corduroy pants broke. Thus, such small events, microscopic, nay quantum level, in the scope of the vast swathe of creation and cosmos, completely fuck up my day, or rather fuck up my state of mind for the day.

Under normal circumstances I'd go outside and do some taxing physical work, but the lawnmower is broken and I'm too physically unwell to use the the brush cutter at the moment.

Can I turn this day around? Tune in later for the scintillatingly exciting conclusion to this thrillingly terrifying cliffhanger, the answer to which is utterly vital to the very philosophical being and core of humanity.

4:05pm

So, I hear that Monty Don is retiring from Gardeners' World. I'll miss Longmeadow.

“Ned” by jlmxv.

I woke with the idea of a Can-esque motoric beat in mind, and spent ages tinkering with delays and other methods of injecting elements of surprise into the recording process. The infuriating thing was that the emphasis, ie “the 1” of this the most basic of rhythms kept flipping and completely changing the feel of the thing. Feeding arpeggiators into delays can make for incredibly subtle changes of rhythm that fan out butterfly wing flap cyclone reverberations. Interesting, but also annoying when after a few hours, all you really want to do is for something to fit nicely.

So it goes.

“The Indivisible Man” by jlmxv.

A cool change has made life a slight bit more pleasant. Fortunate, as I spent the afternoon out working on the land.

To say that I dislike Tolkien would be an understatement, but I and my two sons played Reiner Knizia's “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” last night, and enjoyed it (myself mainly due to the fact it's only tenuously related to the books), so thusly today's track is named.

“An Unexpected Party” by jlmxv.

Awaken from unsettling dreams to my eldest son presenting me with a touching fathers day gift, so all is not lost.

Yet more waves of dry heat, searing my brain.

Thinking of my own father, who died in 2020. A great appreciator of synthesizer music, particularly Vangelis, from whom I inherited my love of emotive bleeps. This one is – at least potentially – in a series of tracks dedicated to him.

“Ulibox III” by jlmxv.

More heat, and thus more haze of the brain. Still, I spent a notable portion of the day that was not occupied with rewiring a bodged together exhaust fan tinkering and learning a new synth. So, even though I wouldn't say the recording today was notable in any artistic way, it was a worthwhile learning experience in terms of a new addition to the studio palette.

In other important news – we managed to play our first game of Garphil's Skara Brae. Highly enjoyable!

“Skaill” by jlmxv.

1:50pm

Some kind of viral infection is knocking at the door. Sixteen hours of sleep seems to have had a degree of effectiveness in fighting off the worst of it (knock on wood).

Listening back to the first few days of recordings. I'm happy to note that the first one that I'd deemed a complete failure wasn't as bad as I was thinking at the time. Perhaps my poor mood was influenced by my having taken on board a viral passenger?

5:00pm

Having cooled down, partly due to the weather, and partly due to a glass of cool white wine – it is Friday afternoon happy hour after all – a song has sprung into existence. Quite happy with it while playing it, we'll see if I'm quite happy while listening to it...

“Viral Passenger” by jlmxv.

The beginning of spring and it's 32 bloody degrees.

Hazily switched on some synths and pulled something nice out of the hat of heat stress.

Struggled to cook dinner, and now collapsed onto bed under the fan at 8pm.

I loathe summer.

“Omnia exeunt in mysterium” by jlmxv.

8:40am.

The day has not started on a good note. I wonder if I can manage to rewrite the day's melody as it progresses?

10:25pm

Much of the day spent in a deep funk, and not the musical kind, I gave up trying and did some more studio cleaning & cable sorting. Project Studio Deep Clean progress = 70% complete.

Achieving something concrete seemed to clear the emotional cobwebs and before I knew what was happening, a few synths were on and a bit of Berlin School inspired sound was flowing into the DAW.

High volume with the sub cranked, it seemed quite decent, listening back at the time. Who knows how I'll feel about it in the light of a fresh day?

“Inauspicious” by jlmxv.

And so here we are. Synthtember's here again, as David Sylvian might well put it. It's been a very rough year, I've sadly spend little time in the studio, little time in creative pursuits. Most of my time has been spent struggling with both physical and mental health problems. It's been a bit of a shocker.

Synthtember 2026 begins not so auspiciously with a planned power outage, so, unable to switch on any gear, most of the day is spent cleaning synths, cleaning the studio, organising and hypothesising. Still, the studio feels much better than it did this time yesterday.

I didn't get the chance to even switch on a synth, let alone patch anything, or start experimenting until after eating dinner, by which time I was feeling a bit discombobulated.

The first attempt at recording, generally a failure, an experiment with several fast delays on several synths, was really sounding nice while I was working it up, but on restarting it to record, I couldn't quite get the sounds, the timing and the feel right.

“One for the Road, Part 1” by jlmxv.

The second attempt, again, was sounding quite nice when first improvised, but when I reset everything and started to record, things just flibbed and flobbed in a generally unsatisfactory manner.

“One for the Road, Part 2” by jlmxv.

It's all very dispiriting. But! I know from experience that the only way out of creative malaise is to keep moving forward, keep doing it, and something will happen given enough effort, time, luck and fortune.

So, to bed, and to relax with The Mad God's Amulet, a Moorcock I haven't read since... probably the early 90s.