Short…

… entry today.. Today is Sunday, the clocks have changed, my circadian rhythms have been fucked (my arcadian rhythms are just fine… thank you Erica…lol) with and I’m just starting my working day.. I’m just waiting for some files to arrive from Mahogany who I am working with at the moment, well, in spirit at least, if not physically. Yesterday I did some work on a new song for Annie Barker which is sounding good… Well, what else?. Not much… I’ve been happy to put some music on myspace as it is nice to actually have people hear the music that I make and has also brought lots of lovely comments which give me a little encouragement when I’m feeling particularly useless.. But most of all I’ve been enjoying communicating, swapping little vignettes of life and being introduced to new stuff and ideas like ricore before bedtime…
This feels like not much of a weblog entry as I have nothing to say, no comments about world affairs, no news about new recording, although I will go to San Francisco in a couple of weeks to make a new album with Harold Budd, so that’s news to report, I guess.. I don’t usually like to write about things until they are done, though just in case my plane falls out of the sky or something like that… I’m just waiting on some news about some possible shows in the summer, so as soon as I know I’ll post them here..

Oh, here’s a thought… Just read….

John Fante – Ask The Dust
Ethan Coen – The Gates of Eden
James Elroy – Because the Night
Henry Miller – Wisdom of the Heart

I know this because I’ve just been tidying up around my bed (my favourite place to read…)
I left The Happiest Man Alive, a biography of Henry Miller by the bedside as I haven’t finished it yet….

So this Sunday of mine is as lazy of a day as I’ve had for a while up until now… time to work..

Violet….

….Indiana… Now there is a band who has made me happy… I spent the weekend working on some new songs with Siobhan De Mare who flew out from London to join me in my studio. The last time we worked together was 2004 and because we’ve both been, kind of, busy, we haven’t managed to take the time up until now to continue our little adventure together. When I first met Siobhan in 2000, I was not really looking for a singer, in fact I had become somewhat disillusioned with the idea making music because everything I was trying was, in a way, sounding like Cocteau Twins with the wrong singer.. Enter Siobhan, who had never even heard Cocteau Twins, far less liked them and I was hooked immediately by her sultry, sexy voice and her really sick sense of irony.. Anyway for me it was a breath of fresh air, to be writing songs for a really different kind of vocalist. Better or worse, I could not say, but very different and precisely what I needed to hear… We create an energy, something special which seems so unrelated to our previous groups and often not to the taste of die hard Cocteau Twins or Mono fans. So over the last few years we have worked together on and off making a few records here and there and doing the odd live shows with a very powerful live band featuring Mitsuo Tate, Paul Cook and Fabien Beguin.. It’s been fun… And now we have started again… OK, it’ll be a while before the record is finished as I am in the middle of a million things, but it’s rolling…..

Hey and I put another song on MySpace called A Sigh Across The Ocean which is from the Everlasting EP which will come out sometime around Continental which is at the end of May…

Last night….

.. I had planned to go to the supermarket… I did, however, end up playing four of my songs with Olivier Mellano and Nicolas Courret from Bed playing bass and drums respectively…So far so good.. The only slight problem was that while I know Olivier well, I had never met Nicolas before the soundcheck, i.e. just before we went on stage. I met up with Olivier on monday to tell him what songs we would play and he took a cd away to listen to with Nicolas… Scary, or what?
I can’t tell you how I felt about playing my music in front of a few hundred people while thinking ‘ damn, what’s the drummers name again?’ and ‘I don’t have to do this, it’s my choice’ and during the last song when my looper didn’t fire, ‘god please strike the venue with lightning, kill everyone and don’t leave any witnesses alive’..
Anyway, it was possibly ok or maybe it sucked, I don’t know. What I do know is that I liked the whole vibe of playing those songs with a bass player and drummer, the songs were, incidentally snowfall, crescent, continental and pale, so maybe I just need to meet the right people to play with and spend some time p r a c t i c i n g ….. I’d just like to thank Olivier and Nicolas for being there and, all things considered, they did real good.. merci, les gars

Later that evening…. I played a couple of songs with Sebastien Schuller which was less scary than playing my own but more scary than staying at home and not bothering my ass. I met Sebastien last year or maybe even before and thought we may work together on his record but that fell through due to either me being too expensive or him being too talented, I don’t know… I really don’t know, I think we probably both got busy… anyway I digress. Now, this was interesting to me because, well, I hadn’t heard the songs before… and we didn’t have a chance to rehearse.. So, in the dressing room I got a little piece of paper and tried to write the chords down and my musical dyslexia came to the fore and, well, I got really confused when I started to see things with sharps and flats and a fucking capo thing which makes me do mental mathematics in order to put my fingers in the right place, so I thought ‘fuck it, I’ll have to charm my way through this one’ and, you know what?. I think I got away with it..
After the show I stole two kiwis and two bananas from the dressing room as I wasn’t able to get to the supermarket after all…

My Space…..

I put another song on myspace…one called Monument from Continental but I’ll take it off in a day or so because all this self marketing takes time and helps me to feel inadequate… whatever.. I can’t stay long, I’m off to Rennes to play some songs in a concert for fun.
Now there is a concept.
I’ll probably write about it tomorrow or even later tonight. There will be a drummer and bass player playing with me… The only detail of note is the fact I’ve never played with them before and curiously enough our first rehearsal will be in front of a few hundred people. This take me back to a previous topic of a few weeks ago and that would be why do I get myself in these situations?.. I guess most people have that survival mechanism that stops them from saying things like ’sure, why not?’.
Ah well, life is too short, eh?
Anyway, it might be fun…
So now I have to go put some strings on my guitar, it sounds better with strings on it, that’s for sure.. Then I have to scratch my head a little and think what to play. Then I have to go the venue, which thankfully is close to Leclerc where I can do some grocery shopping after the sound check. ‘Tis very glamorous my life, no?

alright…?

… I put a song up on My Space…

http://www.myspace.com/robinguthrie

I don’t have any friends though.. Except Tom… Very dependable Tom is… I used to have some but I think I fried them all by mistake. More later.. Have to work now…

random things that kept me away from the beach this week…

Ha, so here I am a week after pledging solemnly to update this thing every day. Well there’s not much chance of that happening for the moment as I very rarely wake up in the night with the thought ‘well, gee, darn it if I didn’t update my weblog today’. Having said that I will not retain any credibility if I continually tell folks that I am busy but produce no evidence to justify that excuse, thereby giving the impression that I may beat the beach being being entertained by a nubile volleyball team or sitting on the terrace reading my book and supping a margarita….
So, these are the random things that kept me away from the beach this week…(apart from the fact that it’s buggering cold here)

I’ve been mixing a track called Satin for I Don’t Mind The Air… It’s not finished.. but will be soon.

I have had Annie Barker here in my studio all the way from California, where I believe she may have been slightly warmer judging by the amount of socks she carries with her. I’ve been helping her realise and produce some of here music and have finished two songs so far, Gripped by that Leg and Mountains and Tumult.

I am mixing tracks for the forthcoming album by Mahogany. So far I have finished one, entitled Supervitesse and will be following this with another two over the next week or so..This session got me to start thinking about how one persons perception of how things go together in life can be so radically different to another’s. Without a doubt Mahogany, for example, have been very focused on producing songs to their satisfaction but at the last minute get me to mix them. Wow… what a leap of faith, thanks for having the confidence in me…

I’ve finished the artwork for Continental and sent it to the printers..

Oh, and almost forgot, I’ve made an EP called Everlasting…
The tracklist is as follows..

1 bordertown
2 a sigh across the ocean
3 fountain
4 everlasting

I don’t know how I’m going to release this one, but just for today, I don’t really care. It’s quite a lovely disc and the powers of the universe will conspire to let it be heard at some point. The artwork has a photo taken by my daughter Lucy Belle who seems to have quite a good eye for a photo..

Ummm, what else? Well, I’ve been speaking with John Foxx about the release of the album that we have done together a couple of months ago. We are in the process of tweaking a couple of tracks, which can sometimes make me want to do the whole thing again so I am trying to practice a little discipline with this..

I’ve also been doing something which needs the help of a teenager but my teenager in residence is too busy dicking about with her piercings and putting the word like into every sentence, like, twenty times…..The task in hand is figuring out why the hell I would want to be on MySpace and what it’s all about. I seem to have spent most of my adult life avoiding blatant self promotion so the whole concept is a bit alien to me. Why would I want to show the world how few friends I have? And who the hell is Tom and why doesn’t he get out of my face?. It’s weird, but in reverence to my teenage therapist, I’ve, like, put an exclusive song up there called Flicker so if any of you lot know what it’s all about and why I should do it then find me at my space, listen to my song and help me understand what it’s all about and why I should spend my all too precious time listening to that Tom person or whatever….

OK, for the moment, that’ll have to do. I just got a call from the girls volleyball team who are waiting at the beach for me…

feeding the goldfish….

Doing this weblog is like feeding a goldfish. My children have a goldfish called sushi and I’m sure it either gets fed too much or not at all. I never remember to do it until I pass the tank, it just doesn’t ever occur to me during my day, hmm, must feed the goldfish. I’m not mean, it just doesn’t. Funnily enough I always remember if there is a fish in the fridge, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. So, anyway, just to be on the safe side sometimes I pop some food in it’s little tank, only to find out that they’ve just done the same thing. This weblog is pretty much like that (except for the fact that no one else remembers to post stuff here.. OK, it’s my weblog, but it’s their fish). Let’s just say that it’s not exactly my number one priority, what with having to look after the fish and all. So my posts of late have thinned out a little and I’ve decided to commit to writing this down in the vain hope that it may kick start the process for me to be more regular writing this stuff..
So here we go…

I’ve signed to Darla Records and will be releasing Continental in May and my next four albums for the label. The tracklist is as follows….

01. Continental
02. Conquering The Romantic
03. Crescent
04. Monument
05. Amphora
06. The Day Star
07. Radiance
08. As I Breathe
09. Last Exit
10. Pale

That’s all for now because if I write any more I will not have anything left to write tomorrow……