Annoyingly, making the album is by far the easy bit. Getting people to listen to it, making enough money from it to get back up to 0 (Yup, I'm hoping to break even on this, madman that I am), that's the challenge.

But it is nearly done. I'm at the last stage, making tweaks to the mixes, listening to it on every pair of speakers I can find, constantly recording and rerecording the one line of vocals I'm not happy with until I give up and decide it'll do.

Ironbark. 55 minutes, 33 seconds, 8 songs, or possibly 4 depending on how you look at it. My second full length album, the third if you include Songs for the End of the World by Comrade Robot.

This is not the first long winded creative endeavour I've been involved with. I've acted in plays, written a couple of (oh so bad, no-one shall ever read them) novels, done gigs with new bands. With each of them there has come the point where you have to unleash them on the unsuspected public, many of whom have done nothing to deserve it and who were going about their daily business not expecting to have to endure a piece of art. No-one deserves unexpected art.

You hope you can direct it just at the people who will enjoy it. You hope they do enjoy it and that you've got at least somewhere along the road to being acceptable. Or maybe good.

There's a secret though. A Secret know only to Every Creative Person in the World.

You don't share your art with the public when it's finished. That point never comes. There are all sorts of things I could have done better with Spinning the Compass, as proud of it as I am. There are countless things that could be better with Ironbark that I won't even notice for years to come.

No, you make this things public when you can't stand to work on them anymore. 'That'll do', you say, down tools and open the doors. Art is never finished, only abandoned (as someone said – too lazy to find out who).

So, Ironbark will soon be abandoned. If you liked the last album, you'll like this one. I think.

I am proud of it, it is good. But time to stop work I think. One final tweak and I'll put my tools down.

Probably.

Ironbark is out on June 19th. A new song will be out on Monday! www.tomslatter.co.uk

I have been playing with photos and fonts.

Here is a draft flyer thingie.

Today we started some filming for the Beast of the Air video. Or rather Joe started filming and I pranced about in stupid costumes.

A tentacle also was involved.

Joe has exceeded himself with the props – There's brass and leather everywhere.

See the full gallery on Posterous

You'll need to be a member of the mailing list and know the password and so on, but there are instructions for how to sign up if you follow the link.

A few new things on the fan page too, and more to come over the next few days.

Enjoy!

And don't tell anyone about the new track (Aside – tell everyone!)

Is that vague feeling enough to start writing a blog post?

No, but here I am typing.

Ironbark continues apace. The title track is coming in at a nifty 18 minutes, all labyrinthine riffs melotron and silliness. Steamlife is arguably more silly, but redeemed by a pop chorus that I've been saving up for well over a decade. The Miser's Will tell's its story well. Being 5 songs that tell one story, complete with recurring musical themes, its essentially another 20 minute work. Which means I've well and truly ticked the prog box.

And then there's the Beast of the Air. That just needs a new vocal and a bit of mixing and it'll be done, ready for the video that we start filming in just over a week.

Whoop I say, for this shall be fun.

Here's a video of Joe testing one of the toys we'll be using.

So another perfectly sensible video to follow the Spinning the Compass one.

Recording is a manic depressive business. I find myself flitting between obsessive, proud and depressed, often in the space of the same few hours as I try to nail down a vocal or guitar solo, create the perfect sound and then realise moments later that it sounds awful. At the moment I can listen to the whole album through and find only one or two things per track to hate, so I suppose I am slowly winning the battle.

I long for the day when I can plug the computer directly into my skull and download the sounds I hear in my brain.

This stands for Fawm Over Party and it was a gathering of people who had taken part in that year's February Album Writing Month. We all gathered together in a pub and played a few songs to each other. Very informal, a little rough around the edges (at least my performances were) but great fun nonetheless.

The lovely Morti (I sang a song on his previous album) has put up some videos, so here's me performing a couple of songs and babbling nonsense, followed by Matt Blick's 'Let's Build an Airport' which I happen to think is a fantastic song.

Greetings!

I have to say I was pleasantly suprised by how many readers of last month's newsletter correctly identified the Lewis Carrol poem in the competition – great to know that so many readers are fans of such unabashed nonsense.

The prize however went to Gary who was first in with the answer. Special mention should also be made of Alison who rather fantastically decided to compose her own following lines rather than merely google the lines I mentioned

This month has been one of ups and downs. Recording has continued apace but I have been sidetracked by my (Shock! Horror!) first bad review (Click here to read) and by the start of both the A Game Of Thrones TV adaptation and the new series of Dr Who. How is one supposed to concentrate when such geeky goodness is available to steal one's time away?

The Album

I'm making real progress on Ironbark. The Easter break gave me time to get a lot of recording done. I had a few difficulties with my voice, which I have documented on my blog (Click here for that) but by and large I'm exceedingly happy with it.

When will it be out?

Well here's the thing – certain bits will be ready before others. The Miser's Will, which is a set of 5 interconnected songs, will be ready before the rest of the album.

In the olden days before all this new-fangled internet nonsense that wouldn't make a difference – the whole thing would need finishing to put onto cd (Or vinyl. Or wax cylinder). While there will eventually be physical CDs of Ironbark available, there's nothing stopping me putting the album out in stages as songs are finished.

So what do you reckon? Should I release The Miser's Will early, or should I hold back and wait for the whole album to be finished? I'm genuinely undecided and could use some feedback.

The Video

Work continues. Joe's experimentation has led to me being molested by a glowing ball of blue energy, and Joe's head exploding.

Click here

Also here

As well as the special effects being more impressive than those for the Spinning the Compass video, the props Joe's building are fantastic and rather wonderful. And very, very silly.

Audio Sketchbook

This month's sketch is a rough draft of a song I wrote last Wednesday. It's provisionally titled 'Cutting up all of our Dreams' and is about scary creatures who come out at night.

Click ye here

Competition

Last week's competition was great fun. Let's make this one non-time related to give everyone a fair chance. As I like my nonsense poetry, we'll stick to that theme.

What are the next two lines after:

    Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
    Thy micturations are to me

I will randomly choose one of the people who correctly replies to recieve this months mp3. Anyone using google to discover the answer will of course have to deal with their own guilty conscience. Answers on a postcard to tomslattermusic AT gmail.com

Tom

PS. Releasing songs in stages rather than all at once when the albums finished? Would love to hear your thoughts.

tomslatter_cuttingupallofourdreams.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Or at least, a demo of the beginning of a song that I wrote in 20 minutes.

Cutting up all of our dreams

They come out when the night falls
And dance in the streetlights,
They crawl out from their hidey-holes when no-one's there to see.

They kiss under the star shine
Play games in the gutters
Sardines and hide and seek while the waking world is gone

If we just let them play away in the night time
They won't come to the places we sleep

They're nothing but a rumour
A glimpse in the distance
the stories of their tails and teeth have never been confirmed

They kiss you when you're sleeping
sing songs that you don't hear
They vanish if you stir, or sigh or call out in your sleep

If we just let them play away in the night time
They won't come to the places we sleep and make mischief
By cutting up all of our dreams

Save us your lies
We all know that they're there
They're all waiting for the night to come
When none of us awake

cartographerapril25.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Day 5

Spent today singing, recording, listening then deleting. Not happy with anything I've been signing at the moment.

Spent a few hours listening to Daniel Gildenlow from Pain of Salvation singing and feeling sorry for myself.

It then occured to me that my best vocal recording has been done when I set up the mics, got things properly sorted before I started then recorded whole takes – the best recordings have been captured when things felt right.

So, tomorrow morning I shall attempt to record with the right feeling.

Let's see if that works.

Day 6

Throat still awful. Didn't sing. Set up room ready for tomorrow though. Hopefully I'll get something good down.

Day 7

Successs!! Huzzah. Today I recorded vocals for 6 of the 8 tracks on Ironbark. I'm not sure if they'll end up being the final, final takes or not, but they sounded good my voice is in okay shape after a week and a bit of rest and practice. More importantly, I'm actually feeling up beat about my singing for the first time in ages.

The mp3 attahced to this blop post is an extract from The Cartographer's tale with vocals I sang today.