Bass Sorted

A long time ago I went to see a band called Bumble and the Beez; their lead singer (and bass drum and cowbell player) was Mykaell Riley, now a respected professor at the University of Westminster and one of the brains behind the current exhibition of British Black Music History at The British Library.

Their bass player was Winston Blissett, who went on to play with all sorts of people, and who is on a short break from playing with Massive Attack on their current tour. He's just been here, playing bass on one of my tracks. We had a really nice catch-up chat; we have a lot of friends in common. Apart from that he is one of the best players around, and has a signature sound and style that I can recognise when I hear him on any record. He came up trumps with beautiful playing!

That is it for guest musicians. Now, I have to do my lead vocals on a lot of the tracks, finish the words to the song with missing lyrics (I need literally three words but the right ones won't come) and record that, and then get down to final editing and mixing.

Not today! I am having a bit of a rest, then doing some drawing to wind down. It's so weird: the people playing or singing on these tracks have heard them, but not many other people have. Are the songs any good? I don't know at all. I think some of them are weird, and some of them are so ordinary they are almost middle-of-the-road songs, which makes them weird too.

The kitchen has been pretending to be a recording studio. There are grapes, pretzels and herb teas and the bathroom is spotlessly clean. What's for tea? Grapes, pretzes and herb tea, silly!