Saturday 28 April 2007

I'm flying north from Luton, after getting the sleeper to London on Wednesday night and spending two days in a Soho basement playing harpsichord and organ with the Tiger Lillies(special congratulations to Malcolm Greenhalgh for negotiating a harpsichord through the warren that is Studio Sonic- and be grateful that I haven't provided a photograph of the toilets). On Thursday I thought we were just going to try a few things out, but in the space of 5 hours we had recorded 15 songs and Martyn said 'Well, that's an album!' These guys work fast.

Keith Lewis and Jonathan Mills joined us yesterday morning for more experimentation, so now we have a CD of demos and a much better idea of what might happen on 25 August in the Usher Hall.

I think it's going to be very good indeed, if occasionally terrifying, which is what you expect from the Tiger Lillies really. Early music anoraks might like to know that organ and harpsichord in quarter-comma meantone don't actually sound wrong with an accordion in equal temperament. Isn't that nice?

Unfortunately I have caught a stinking cold, so rather than spending my Friday evening off in London being sociable or culturally adventurous, I hid at Alison's place while she was away in Bristol playing a concerto. Earlier in the day I did manage to say hello to Sara Mohr-Pietsch and was so out of it that I forgot to thank her for playing one of our records on the radio the day before. And now I feel like I could sleep for a week, if I had some drugs to make the aches go away and let me stop coughing and breathe.

Tomorrow we feature on Radio 3's Early Music Show. If you've missed it you can listen again here for the next week.

later

Synchronicity dept.: when I rang Emily Whitethis afternoon to ask her about a gig (and I've never spoken to her before), she was teaching a student one of Katherine's tunes ..