Several weeks have passed since last I ‘blogged’ (is that a verb now?) and many a distraction has lead me away from the project in hand.

The most significant was the night I decided to back up three finished mixes for ‘Bipolar Diversions’ but backed up the wrong way. That is to say, I took the previously backed up versions from my backup hard drive, and copied them over to my working drive, in the process, irretrievably deleting the brand spanking new, finished versions of the three songs. This lead to a great deal of cursing and wailing, and several newly invented profanities hurled at a God that the sane part of me does not believe in.

In all my years recording, I’ve never made a cock-up of this magnitude before and I can even now recall the burning sensation of shock when I realised what I had done. This inevitably lead to a couple of days prostrate on the sofa in an attempt to sleep off the anger and pain.

To the rescue came Simon Forsyth, who I am sure some of you will remember as the keyboard/programmer from the ‘SugarPlumFairies’ days of Jackdaw 4. In fact, now I think of it, he also co-wrote ‘Everything I See’ from ‘Gramophone Logic’.

Simon is something of an expert with all things concerning computers and it was he, way back in 1997, who installed my first ever Protools-Logic recording setup in my studio in London. Without boring you with details that I don’t understand myself, he managed to retrieve all the missing ‘mix audio’ files, which was a huge relief. I may never be able to re-mix those tracks, but at least I’ve got the original mixes back and I don’t have to start recording them from scratch again.

Since then, I’ve been doing a couple of bits and pieces for the new ‘Armstrong & Miller’ show and have spent the last week writing a song with Brian Dooley, who wrote the TV sit-com, ‘The Smoking Room’ which you may have seen on BBC3 and BBC2, for a new idea he is working on. As I write, I am loading up the eighth song for the new album to begin mixing so I’m back on track. In a manner of speaking.

On a positive note, the ‘Gramophone Logic’ album is now available through iTunes (Jackdaw4 on iTunes). Over the coming weeks, we hope to put up all the recordings of ‘Jackdaw4′ in all of it’s disguises, on to iTunes. We thought that it would be a good idea to promote this a little by giving away a free track via the new-look website so check it out over the next week or so.

Willie