It’s been another hectic month out here in the wilderness. The fish are welding multi-coloured blankets in preparation for hibernation, and countless flock of great brown bear are making their spectacular leaps up stream to lay their eggs before settling down to die in their hives. I love this time of year, so why I had to spoil it by preparing to release another album is questionable. Rehearsing. It’s quite hard isn’t it? You have to remember all the months of tiny musical self-indulgences that were slotted in every few bars of every damn song, and recreate them. But before you do that you have to persuade five able minded people to join together in a suitably sized and equipped room, with all their abilities in peak condition, and then stroke the tunes out of them. This has proved awkward. So far we’ve managed a simultaneous three people at maximum but I’m hoping this will improve over the coming weeks.

I suppose I should thank you all for your (thus far) kind comments regarding the new tracks on Facebook and MySpace. I’m glad you like the songs. There is always a period of uncertainty for me after a new album is finished. I’ve heard the songs thousands and thousands of times over the course of recording and mixing the record, and at various points have felt confident, passionate, disinterested, bored, and excited again, with pretty well each one of them. Now that the record is finished I simply don’t know whether it’s any good or not. I envy other artists who go straight on record to say that their new album is the best they’ve ever made, although I suspect it’s probably promotional bullshit, and like me, they haven’t got a clue whether they’ve produced to the best of their ability until a sufficient amount of time has passed to have a modicum of objectivity.

As you will have noticed, it is a very different world for new bands right now. The old paradigms are gone. The way we listen to, and buy music, are radically altered, and whereas the internet has meant that people all over the world can access a bands music, and computers have meant that pretty well any band can make a CD, it is ironically incredibly difficult for a band to raise awareness and reach a new and bigger audience. Without record company advertising budgets, press campaigns and money to buy on to tours, smaller bands are left making barely disguised appeals (like the one I’m barely disguising here), that their audience introduce a band that they have discovered, to ten or more of their personal friends with similar tastes. Often (I’m told) the way to do this is by simply sending the friend or friends an email with an mp3 attachment of one of the songs from the bands previous albums, (say, for example something from ‘Gramophone Logic’), and a link to the bands website, (I suppose for example we might say http://www.jackdaw4.com).

A few hastily typed words of enthusiasm regarding the band itself, and within minutes, the awareness and ability of the band to stretch itself further afield is increased. Quite simple really. I believe the method is called ‘word of mouth’ and I politely yet firmly encourage you to try it. That didn’t come over too desperate did it? Look to be frank with you, I don’t care if it did, just do it will you?

Now for some slightly irritating news. The recent postal strike in the UK has meant that the album will only be available from iTunes from the 29th of October and not the 22nd. Apologies for this, although my sentiments and support go to the postal workers who are being pissed on by the usual number crunchers and management game theorists, making working life miserable. Up the workers.

Willie