Having a Field Day

Level of conviction in own genius: 6

Hours of creative activity achieved today: 2.5

Watching: 'Rev'

Hair day: Greasemonkey

Have had a recent frenzy of gigitude, travelling the length and breadth of our green, pleasant, dirty, rude etc land in the continued quest to rule over the nation with a mix of experimental jazz/folk/acappella nonsense. This has included performing to an audience aged 3-75 (mostly rather nearer the upper end...) with juice at the Harrogate Festival, where we had to get to grips with delivering a full-length concert starting at the very un-voice-friendly time of 11am, when all we really wanted to do was lounge in our jim-jams drinking tea in front of House Antique Makeover Dine With Me Challenge. Then I hared off to Liverpool to sing with Metamorphic at a lovely gallery on the same road as the Cavern Club, thus competing with various Lennon-busking charlatans. The day after that I took my loop station to the Victoria and Albert museum for their inaugural Summer Camp, which brought together an incongruous mix of European tourists learning to clog dance and West London fashionista snortheads drinking martinis out of special cardboard glasses. I sang to this eclectic bunch from the EFDSS stage in my first You Are Wolf outdoor gig, which included the twin rites-of-passage of singing to people stuffing their faces with barbecued pork and shielding my loop station from the rain.

Merrily, unlike last year's diluvian daymare, Field Day at the weekend enjoyed a spark or two of sunshine. We said our sad farewells to our dearly beloved East Endz by strolling to Victoria Park to enjoy some ear-pummelling from These New Puritans, some jangly quite-niceness from Beth Jeans Houghton, the perfect festival parpsters Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, who mixed bare chests, hip hop dancing and really big horns, the sunny clever-house lad Caribou and Parisian headliners Phoenix, whose lightshow made Cat and I super moth-happy. Sad farewells as Andy and I have moved out of The Coolest Place To Live On Earth TM*, to forge new cultural avenues on t'other side of the river, home of Florence Welch, art schools, composer's collectives, and, hopefully, retro flats with mega-views...

You Are Wolf has gone one step further now down the road to stardom with some play on BBC 6Music's Gideon Coe show and 6Music's equivalent in New York, the very ace WFUV. AND with the appearance of my debut video! Which is here, as made by KASH Creative!

*TM by ME

Devon, I'm in Devon, And My Hearts Beats So (From Walking) That I Can Hardly Speak*

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24: 2

Reading: Hari Kunzru's 'My Revolutions' & a week's worth of emails

Hair day: unsure of motivation

Have had a lovely, get-away-from-valiant-flat-buying-attempts time in North Devon, in Tarka the Otter Land (we stayed in Henry Williamson's house, with his secret writing hut ensconced amongst the trees; everything was called Tarka Trail, Tarka Beer, Tarka Surfing, Tarka Roadworks, that sort of thing; amusingly the local pub's chalkboard out said: 'Probably the pub Henry Williamson drank in' and a Carlsberg sign).

Highlights were:

• The wondrous Putsborough-Woolacombe Sands, so smooth and vast that at low tide you felt like John Cleese's knight forever running at the castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail upon taking courage and dashing seawards to swim in the wonderfully sudsy sea. Putsborough is the more sedate end, with the usual chintzy charms taking hold at Woolacombe, an impressive cornucopia of pop-up tents, sandcastles, chip vans, rounders matches, metal detector-wielders, parasailors and watersporters, all going strong even when the burly clouds lumbered over and did their worst. Best sights were the elderly surfers, all wobbly-pastry torsos and craggy faces, and parents ingeniously drawing spirally lines on the beach and then racing their offspring around them like kiddie-scaletrix.
• Body-boarding! We did this at both ends of the above beach, looking probably double-takingly like Keanu Reeves and Lori Petty in Point Break and not at all like two waddling seals on My First Gnarly Wave. Most fun though sometimes a little terrifying trying to judge the crest and break of some looming waves, and often getting totally bitch-slapped.
• In Ilfracombe, the Victorians were not ones to let a great hulking cliff stand in the way of their constitutional improvements, so drilled right through it to create some tunnels and a bathing pool from a naturally-formed lagoon. On a coldish, drizzly day, the little beach was a spookily lunar oasis of charcoal-dark shingle and massive rock-shards thunked into the surf, with a wonderfully icy empty pool, later swallowed back up by the tide. So in we went! The bravado was well worth it, a brain-bracingly chilly experience in which I tried to remember that the unknown things brushing my legs were seaweed fronds and not the tongues of terrifying seapool critters. Ha.
• Getting enough freckles to make it look like the sun had just sneezed violently all over me.
• The Best Cream Tea Ever at a National Trust cafe on Baggy Point, following a rain-lacquered walk, with warm scones as pleasurable as putting your face into a kitten: clotted cream good enough to lay bricks with, peppy jam and strawberries, little red explosions of joy.

* Sung to tune of Cheek to Cheek, obviously...

Summertime, And The Livin' Is Busy

Level of conviction in own genius: 7.5
Hours of creative activity achieved today: 2
Reading/Watching: The Crimson Petal and The White by Michel Faber; Andy Murray bow out
Hair Day: Post-swimming haystack

Cor, another whirlwind couple of months has corkscrewed frantically, taking in lots of gigs and educational work. I caused some politely middle-class frissons of controversy at the (deep breath) South Bank's Chorus Festival London Contemporary Church Musical Festival preview (phew) by saying I wasn't religious whilst talking about my sacred choral writing, followed by a disappointing lack of outrage on the Radio 3 message boards after my Choral Evensong-broadcast magnificat premiere.

juice have been continuing to take their 'squeal!-pop!-grunt!' mantra to the masses, first taking the sedately-swaying marshes of Aldeburgh by storm with their week of teaching Aldeburgh Young Musicians; these are the cleverest young musicians in Britain, the sort of kids who think nothing of creating a Beckett-esque avant-garde recorder/voice/theatre work setting their own haiku in five minutes flat, or combining contemporary dance, chair-scattering, monologues and tuba-deconstruction in a hommage to Pina Bausch. Ha ha. We also toured special needs schools in South Yorkshire for Live Music Now, finding the time to zoom around various country parks sampling regional cakes (my first Bakewell pudding! Mmm...) or walking around our sublimely remote farm accommodation, surrounded by hundreds of sheep, fields of madly bleating vuvuzelas. We've also gigged at the Whitstable Biennale (getting down there early to dip in the blissfully tepid sea, yelping at the single large fish that kept belly-flopping near Andy's head), at King's Place to a great audience for our silent film soundtrack, and a few others besides. THIS week, juice have finally started work recording their debut album on nonclassical, our resolve and ability to only glow like ladies should being severely tested by the obscene heat of the studio once the air con is turned off.

In jazz news, the DOLLYman massive had a day of recording their rockiest numbers in an extremely non-rock 'n' roll private school in leafy Surrey, so look out for an EP soon... Elsewhere, Metamorphic had a nice gig at Leytonstone's Luna Lounge (a retro venue below an all-you-can-eat curry joint, with a lunar landscape badly painted on the walls). I sadly missed the High Art Drama when the last band played: the drummer apparently abruptly stopped mid-stick to accuse remaining members of the Metamorphic crew of talking through his set, culminating in near fisticuffs between the jazzers! Brilliant! Had I been there, I would have, of course, kung-fu'ed wildly in defence of my homies. Hiii-YAH!

I've managed to see a gig or two, including a stimulating OperaShots night which you'll find on my other blog given the high football content. It's nice to meet some like-minded musos in the field: You Are Wolf played a sweet gig at Green Note in Camden this week, and got chatting to a lovely American experimental guitarist who'd dropped by to watch before flying off to Berlin. Here's his shizzle! And at last night's nonclassical gig at newish venue the Horse and Groom in Shoreditch (probably the only place that evening showing a Brooklyn-based banjo player doing electroglitch remixes of Madonna's Like A Prayer), I met the very charming Tansy Davies - I have always imagined steeling myself for a girl-composer-hair-battle upon our first encounter, but thankfully, though she does have a right good barnet, we look sufficiently different at the moment not to have to enter that ring. Hee hee.

Arty Parties

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1

Listening: Joanna Newsom's new album 'Have One On Me'

Hair day: under a cloud

Two arty parties recently, at either end of the spectrum:

Whitechapel Art Gallery

I jumped at the guest list tickets from my new muso buddy Stuart, whose contemporary classical combo Chroma were appearing briefly. What I didn't realise was the high profile society Art-eratti vibe of the night, so Andy and I were slightly surprised to rock up just behind Tracy Emin in a big white coat posing for the paps. Hysterical! Inside was a legion of champagne flutes lined up to do a battle with the gulping gullets of the rich and posh and arty, an oyster bar, a DJ playing crappy Big House, many many small canapes, and lots of people dressed up to nines hiding behind their bling bags gossiping about everyone else. We spotted Jay Jopling, Gavin Turk, Peter York, Peter Blake, Jefferson Hack, Johnny Borrell, plus Bat for Lashes, Bishi and Jack Penate who were all performing with little attention from the yabbering, free cocktail-glugging hordes. Kate Moss was apparently there but had her own enclosure - what is she, the most famous goat in London? It was all a bit silly, but apart from Chroma's moment in the sun (messing around with a Beethoven loop), the most enjoyable moment was the Sotheby's-run auction for charity: minor offerings (most notably a Bridget Riley and some limited edition Gavin Turk/Sid Vicious prints) were snapped up double-quick for all sorts of silly money in an exhilaratingly rattled-out style. It was well we assumed a deadpan expression throughout: one unconscious facial tic later and we would have been going home £7,000 lighter with a crappy cat-cardboard-collage under one arm...

Mulberry House

Rather the same, except without the famous people, canapes and paparazzi, this was a rather more intimate affair chez Club Mulberry, ie our fabulous flat, for Andy and my April birthdays. Our wheeze this year was for people to contribute a piece of A4-sized art which we would then auction off. The concept took off brilliantly, with most people bringing offerings that encompassed the likes of photo montage, mixed media, graphic scores, glitter, beads and paint, some silly, some proper. Andy then auctioned them off, Sotheby's-fashion, and there was some unexpectedly heated, beer-fuelled bidding which resulted in about 20 pieces raising £137 for The National Autistic Society, which our mate Ed was running for in the next day's London Marathon (and which he did, having slept for only 2 hours, in 3 hours and 34 minutes. Hot dang!). Hurrah! The tabloids missed a treat!

Swede Dreams Are Made Of This

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 168 hours: 84
Level of conviction in own genius out of 10: 7.9
Reading / Watching: About volcanoes / a lovely archive film about a round-the-world Zeppelin trip in 1929 on BBC4
Hair day: shockingly unreconstructed

Part 1

Spent 5 days away in a tucked-away corner of Sweden, on an island and nature reserve called Saltogarden, courtesy of the PRS New Music Incubator: a music camp where, rather than teenagers getting caught in brace-wearing clinches with spotty fellow flautists, 10 UK and 10 Swedish boundary-pushing artists descended to make noises together of the mostly brain-expanding variety. Each day we would emerge sleepily from our log cabins to be put in groups of four, given a rather broad focus, and sent off into the ether to thrash out our differences and come up with something to perform at the end of the day. Each day was utterly different, but what noticeably happened over the week was a shedding of the extraneous: gradually the technical trickery melted away leaving mostly bodies and found sounds. I, for example, having lugged over my loop station and melodica, ended up mostly playing a wooden skewer on paper, stamping on shells, getting a group of Norwegian girls in the woods to sing and presenting a 9-minute silent film of a bush. YES!

The week was a rich palate of pared-down sounds: pianos played with feathers, primal screams, mini-paper-live-theatre shows, music played in locked houses, 11-string guitars, Chinese flutes, bird calls on clarinet mouthpieces, wine glasses, plates and maps. I had a total epiphany on the third day after an hour-long sound walk which became so detailed I could hear dried thistles rubbing against each other; this was chased with 15 minutes of jumping with my committed groupmates Bill, Sareidha and Lisa and then the most minimal improv ever. My calves are still suffering for my art, ha ha.

It's hard to explain how great it was without sounding like a total artwankeroon, so here are some edited highlights of our High Art Big Brother Experience:

• Seeing Gabriel, chief alt-classical London honcho, performing a sort of homoerotic-body-playing-contemporary-dance thing on Pascal
• Hearing Sofia's incredible experimental vocal work in her presentation
• Any of the times Leon got near the piano
• Snickering with Pascal, Anna and Claudia behind a load of gaffer-taped boxes with unsuspecting audience on the other side
• Underground harpsichord soundz
• Being called loving pet names by the Hardest Man With The Softest Centre and the Biggest Biceps in Contemporary Music
• Being told that a long and baffling music-theatre piece was actually all about me - WHAAA?
• My two morning walks: one making sculptures on the beach, one clambering up to a granite rock, sitting very still amongst the loftier parts of pine trees and watching two Scandi-punk crested tits land very near me. I think I actually became a Disney classic at this point
• Skimming stones with the boys

  

Part 2

Having heard rumblings of rumours involving volcanoes and planes, we were thrown in the deep end on Friday morning at a teensy station near our camp. The UK crew then embarked on an extreme European assault course of suburban trains, rail replacement buses, platform stairs, and finally a wondrous hulking Ferry of Paradise all over 48 hours, including 5 countries, 4 currencies, no sleep and a diet of Friski mints and Danish liquorice. I think we win gold. All I can remember from the fog of delirium and tannoy bleeps are:

• The falafel in the Lebanese restaurant in Copenhagen which hosted us for about 4 hours during our wait before the Long Night of the Trains
• Leon looking like Mick Jagger only MORE ravagedly cool, his shades masking the fact that he'd left his specs back at the camp and had to be led round like a little lamb from train to train half the time
• Outrageously brilliant South Park episodes watched from Larry's shoulder. In fact just Larry's shoulder generally
• Meeting folks on their way home -Dan the Anthropologist from Oxford, Barry the Architect from Dublin, William the Lost One, etc
• Playing an 80s British pop band-name game and being triumphant at remembering T'Pau
• 36 hours into our trip still managing to have intelligent conversations about Percy Grainger's electronic experiments

I wonder what I will learn from this. Am desperately hoping my summer term will consist not of the usual slipping back into London noisiness and hectic life but instead finding a way to channel the meditative practices of the last week into my creative life. And a regime of Extreme Jumping, obviously...

Seal with a Kiss

Level of conviction in own genius: 6.5
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 1
Watching: Match of the Day
Hair day: windswept, in the walker’s style

Man, what a term. Three educational projects over, a hilarious audition for Shlomo at the South Bank (where I aced the vocal side but possibly came a leetle unstuck in the high intensity street-dance-off, ha ha ha!), and a curation of Gobsmack at the Forge in Camden (sadly skeletal in audience size but rich and nourishing in its line-up of Ben Crawley, Woodpecker Wooliams and Kay Grant). I also had my official EP launch at my nearest and dearest artcafe, The Gallery, lent out to me for an evening of You Are Wolfishness and CD-selling, which was super-lovely. This fortnight I have to cram in a recording with Metamorphic, my birthday, a gig in Leeds, a week in Sweden on the PRSF music exchange course, teaching at Aldeburgh, and this week attempting to finish a commissioned magnificant, currently called my magnifiCAN’T…

Yorkshire Tripper
A swift Easter trip to Yorkshire aimed to flush out London’s toxins. We went to Spurn Point to walk its flaccidly remote length; one wind-emaciated side was scattered with erroneous flotsam such as blue rubber gloves, a freezer, and old war defences tumbling in great blocks off the dunes. The south side, marshy, wide and calm, had a rock that looked like a bloated, beached seal. We thought we’d investigate; Andy, kneeling over it, shouted to us that it was a dead seal; said corpse promptly rolled over, opened it eyes and gave us the fright of our lives. We stood over it for a while, wondering whether it was in trouble, whilst it huffed and snorted at us in an uncanny impression of my dad. As we turned to leave, it belly-flopped over the beach, in the wrong direction from the sea, but I’m sure he knew what he was doing. Here is a picture of Simon.

Flamborough Head dished up sheer limestone cliff-faces choked with pretty kittiwakes - whiny baby monitors on wings - and hundreds of guillemots, plump sheeny monochrome types, lined up on vertigo-inducing ledges, beaks to the cliff and shuffling into each other, bored stiff of the sea-view.

A wayward countryside walk from the pub at Wetwang (which means, in too-good-to-be-true style, ‘a slap in the face with a wet fish’. In Norse.) took in yellowhammers, three hares, one of which came, well, haring down the track and stopping dead 10 metres away when it spotted me, before doing its ‘Bewitched’ thang, transporting itself in seconds far, far away over the horizon. We also caught sight of a buzzard skating the air, a pair of aloof sparrowhawks, a large tawny something-or-other on hedgerow and a keen-eyed kestrel. We managed to skirt the rainclouds all day as they gently pulled their jellyfish trails of rain, or sneezed themselves like charcoal powder across the sharp-focus view.

You Are Wolf hits town and esteemed folkmen (and East London adventures)

Hours of creative activity achieved today: 3
Level of conviction in own genius: 8.5
Reading/ Watching: 'Alias Grace' by Margaret Atwood / just finished cramming The Wire: Season 5 - epic genius!
Hair day: getting chopped tomorrow

There are a thousand black wolves in my study: my lupine solo debut EP is steaming hot off the press and I've tons of them, watchful and panting, waiting to be told which necks of their unsuspecting, music-promoting prey to go and chew on. Happily I've already got a stonking review from alt-folk ezine The Ear Horn, and airplay from Head Female Music Pimper Ruth Barnes on her great Resonance FM show, The Other Woman and on BBC 6 Music's Introducing with Tom Robinson, (on in the ungodly hours of tomorrow morning); this means I am now the proud owner of a famous 'I've been introduced by...' online badge on my myspace sites. Well, proud to any of the 800,000 (of which I am one) who listen to BBC 6Music; if Auntie Low-culture Vulture has her way, I'll have a very short-lived moment in the sun before I'm pecked to death by 'Strictly Come Dine With My Overweight Supernanny' or whatever it is they show these days between 'Mad Men' and 'University Challenge'.

One of the great figureheads of new folk music is Alasdair Roberts, who Andy and I caught for free at Song East's mini-tour of venues out our way. Huge fans of his unashamed musical sparseness and stonkingly erudite lyrics which make him a sort of Gerald Manley Hopkins/Will Self mutant (words like 'simulacra' and 'saturnine' are as common as muck - I mean, fertile sod of low luminance - to him in his excellent album Spoils) , it was a joy to catch him close-up, rammed into the downstairs bar of the Vortex. He was more at home in this intimate space than with his bands in Bush Hall and the Luminaire, laconically spinning the history of the barefaced traditional songs to us and threatening any Campbells, should there have been any, in the audience. His voice keens like a mournful baby banshee playing in the reeds, and he tossed out his venturesomely-tuned guitar licks like sweets. Tall and skinnier than Peter Crouch, he's a cross between fiercely-nationalistic ambassador for Scots culture, and a folk-singing crane.

I knew that practically being face-to-face already, I had no excuse not to say hello and give him a You Are Wolf album. But I do hate the impudent networking game sometimes, and felt so nervous at approaching a musical hero I had to be made to walk the plank by Andy. But I did it, spluttering goofily about what a fan I was, and managing to prove I was at last a legit musician by mentioning a loose Robin Robertson connection (he and the Scottish poet are friends, and I've set one of RR's poems for a big choral premiere), before basically beating him over the head with an EP and running away in terror. For shame!

We popped into the Dalston Jazz Bar for a quick one, but man, that place is OLD NEWS. It's now very much all about Passing Clouds, a possibly only semi-legal 2-floor venue in off Kingsland Road, which is now my new favourite place EVER. Cafe Oto, you're fired! A chilled and smiley place of hip-but-not-twats East Londoners, there to bounce to affable reggae and later, our best hipjazzhop buddies Lazy Habits. Elsewhere, there was a peachy upstairs room of ragged sofas and fantastically erractic swing/Jungle Book/Tom Waits soundtrack, and a corner where gossamery French girls were doing face paints. Obviously I resisted this fey girly pasttime and did not insist on looking like a woodland fairy. Ahem.

With Passing Clouds ticked off my London to-do list, I vowed that the New Empowering Church, a recently-opened venue a mere hoppity-skipety jump away from where I type, would be next. Happily, 18 hours later, I was offered a last-minute You Are Wolf support slot there for FOLKLAHOMA, a Magpie's Nest night, so will be playing there this Thursday, before headliners from the Waterson clan take over. That's the way to do it.

Beat There, Dung That

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0
Reading: Just finished Sarah Waters' 'The Little Stranger', a slow-brewing ghostly postwar novel, not her best, but pretty good
Hair Day: Pleasing

2010 has been a whirlwind of musical activity so far, and May's downtime currently seems a long way off. It's all my own doing of course, heartily saying 'YES!' to three educational projects in one term and a couple of choral commissions, applying for exciting courses and jobs, juice-ing in York, Manchester, London and Crewe whilst also trying to get a large-scale commissioning project off the ground, DOLLYman-ing with the gorgeous artfolksters Firefly, and seeing the arrival of my ONE THOUSAND (well, it was cheaper) You Are Wolf EPs. Coming up is much, much more, but I still find time to have a creative breather and catch someone else's work occasionally...

Concerto for Beatboxer
Anyone who was any(late twenty/thirty-something arty so and so)one was at the QEH last night for the classical/hip hop mash-up that was Anna Meredith's 'Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra'. The first half presented all the disparate elements of Anna's piece: Shlomo doing his usual Tigger-in-a-sweetshop solo routine; 'cellist Olly Coates playing a new piece with electronics that fizzed over with too many ideas; the Vocal Orchestra doing a cute, crowd-pleasing set; and Anna herself presenting a very hilarious mix of pipe-and-drum-inspired messy electronica complete with live bagpipe player, including a 'Flower of Scotland' bagpipe break - a sort of musical 'Fuck you, I'm SCOTTISH!'. That had given us plenty to chew on, and we didn't really need the chamber orchestra's slightly polite version of Terry Riley's 'In C' to take us into the break.

Anna's piece itself, created very much in collaboration Shlomo and the performers via plenty of workshops (I'd seen the kernels of the collaboration at Cafe Oto in September), was generally a great success. Set up a little like a Berio piece, with the Vocal Orchestra amongst the players, it was packed with lovely ideas, from the interplay between two drum kits and the beatboxers to the instrumentalists doing a spot of sweetly earnest acoustic beatboxing, and from the dramatic punctuating gestures at the beginning to the tasty 'Stimmung'-like chords. Possibly due to the sound engineering, it didn't seem much like a concerto; instead, to me, it seemed a marvellously deft integration of beatboxing and chamber orchestra, and was the most interesting form of beatboxing I'd ever heard: Shlo was challenged into exploring the textural potential of his sounds, rather than boxing himself into bombastic 4/4 beats as usual. It was rather short and sweet, and everyone was surprised to find themselves suddenly in a Q&A with a slightly flustered Tom Service so soon, which felt a bit pre-emptively self-congratulatory. Still, it was great to see a spot of the notation, whilst it was hardly revolutionary to the experimental-vocal-expert eyes of the juicettes. In a bizarre bit of programming, the sell-out crowd, all wound down after the Q&A, were then utterly baffled to find themselves listening to the piece ALL OVER AGAIN. I'm reliably informed by my estimable composer buddy Rob that this was de rigeur in the early 20th century, and it was worthwhile picking out more detail second time around, but I have never been so flummoxed. My pals and I mulled it over in the fabulous Skylon bar drinking pricey apple and vanilla bellinis and feeling right cultural and stylish, innit.

Chris Ofili
Also enjoyed punchy Brit Art at it finest at Tate Britain's super-middleweight exhibition. Raising issues and eyebrows (I most enjoyed the little old lady who doddered slowly up to a large painting of the Virgin Mary, her nose practically to the countless collaged images of ladies' proffered anuses - it just took her a minute for everything to jostle into focus before she was off quicker than her little legs could carry her), the large paintings, squatting on hardened balls of Ofili's tradmark elephant dung, smacked of race, women, religion, earth, and seemed staunchly British. My favourites were the less typical Ofilis - the pencil drawings using tiny multiple Afro heads to look like beads, the nude watercolours which represented REAL women, and the recent witching-hour-dark blue paintings, where the images brooded amongst bruised colours of blue, black and purple. Marvellous stuff.

London rule!

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved today: Tis the day of rest
Watching: Series 2 of Being Human on BBC3 - the grown-up British Buffy!
Hair Day: Have fashioned cool twisty fringe hair today


Ah, London. Celebrated as the disarmingly cosmopolitan capital of Europe, if not the world, in BBC2's smashing History of Now: The Story of the Noughties last week, a haven for all nationalities where no-one gets done in because of their race, it was good to be back in the metropolis. As brain-bracing as the Highlands (see next blog down) were, their redemptive power of snow, whistle-clean air, panoply of outdoor wildlife theatre and steaming great big mountains can only last so long. You can't pick up the first fabulous dresses of the year (one so damn cool Andy declared me a style icon of considerable dimensions, and he wasn't talking about my thighs) there, or try out the latest funky Thai restaurant for diaphanous prawns, noisily fresh asparagus and pallid oyster sauce, or see the World's Most Depressing Movie(TM). You also can't go swimming next door to your house (lochs don't count), trying out your latest super-cool gadget, before catching the last day of an American conceptualist and photo-composer retrospective and still getting home in 20 minutes. No offence, golden eagles, seals and other hardy locals, but we'll see you in a couple of years; there's too much goddamn fun to be had down here...

Scotchland!

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0.5
Reading: Susanna Clarke's 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell', marvellous winter hol reading.
Hair Day: Snowy.

I managed to pull out the stops to finish my latest choral commission, which I'm most pleased with, just before Christmas (premiere: Cadogan Hall, March!) so as to fully enjoy our annual winter break away from all worries of work, email, hell even phone as I left it at me ma's. Andy and I enjoyed a week away in the barren wastes of the West Highlands, and most splendid it was too. Highlights were:

1) The drive through, both there and back, the imposing Black Mount, Rannoch Moor and Glen Coe, an A-road through a world dreamt white. It was utterly surreal speeding in a warm car through this gorgeously forbidding landscape, mountains peeled straight from Ed Rushca's paintings, or an Ansel Adams wet dream. These hulking natural monoliths were like giant snowy owl gods for whom an inbreath lasts a century, opening one slash-black eye as we, tinny little nano-horsefly, zipped by meekly, and closing them again.


2) Loch Sunart's oak forests, under which we enjoyed satisfyingly crunchy walks through snow and leaves, whilst these thin, leperous old trees wrung their hands above us at the broad winter sky.

3) Wildlife Watch! We clocked THREE golden eagles, some snipe, 4 grey seals, a great spotted woodpecker, loads of big grey shaggy herons, some wild deer, and a couple of other birds of prey. We didn't see a single one of these in our icy-toed wait at the Garbh Eilean hide, snuck into the rock for the sole purpose of catching a few otters or the famed sea eagle, but the chill, silent view of the unfettered loch was so hypnotic it didn't really matter. Better than a meditation class full of 'ommm'-ing East Londoners, I can tell you.

4) Castle Tioram (Cheer-am), stunning ruin which is blocked off by the tide of Loch Moidart twice a day, and film scout's choice of many of Scottish historical epic. The Silver Walk, which starts there, was a delight of rock and fauna and mad icicles, always with a stonking view of calm loch, burly mountain and occasional seal breaking the silvery surface.


5) The sunset at Resipol over Loch Sunart as the sun bowed out between a lazy 'V' of two mountains, spilling amber, peach and lilac onto the loch, and paintbrush-flicking dusty pink streaks, lengthening by the second, onto the sky. The only sounds were the occasional disgruntled cry and churlish retort from gulls, while a lone seal slinked through the rainbowing water. A visually delicious, transfixing moment.

You ARE Wolf - ACTION!

Level of conviction in own genius: 9
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 6
Reading: Shiny magazines full of fashion and art like a big GIRL
Hair day: Brilliant - Barry has updated my purple/blonde fringe which I am currently fashioning into a sort of hairsprayed-to-the-max ski-slope. YES!

I had my first taste of music video stardom yesterday in my You Are Wolf guise, at a lovely studio in London Fields, with mate Phil (who runs Kash Creative) directing. We chose 'all things are quite silent' from my very very impending EP, as folk songs don't normally get a high-glam animation makeover. I had great fun being prodded and tweaked and sewed-in by stylist Charlotte and make-up artist Callie, doing my best to get over having my facial blemishes and super-wobbliest bits scrutinised closely by two beautiful girls. Charlotte popped me into a long grey clingy dress that made my cleavage look, well, extremely cleavage-y, , then sewed a load of peacock feathers to one shoulder strap, whilst Callie made my cheeks all autumn-leaf-like and plopped a huge brown feathery fake eyelash on one eye. I, being a fake eyelash virgin, was quite proud of being able to keep my composure what with feeling like a huge house was stapled to my lid. My second look was sort of mad-sea-mermaid-clown, with shiny dress and big neck ruff, which Charlotte added to with LED lights for extra hilarity, plus greeny sequins glued to one side of my face. Ha ha! Oh yes, and as well as being all dressed up for hours, I did actually get filmed singing to camera a lot, all the while hoping I conveyed a sense of glowery, ethereal moodiness and not psychopathic misery, whilst Charlotte was on Tummy Watch, keen-eyed on my silhouette which veered from slimmish (hoisted in, holding my breath for dear life) to 3 months pregnant (my normal look. And I'm not pregnant). It was all shot on a green screen, as most of the vid will be lovely animation/illustration; more news to come!

In other news, juice have done about a thousand gigs encompassing Belfast, Soho, Kingston (the London one) and more, all accompanied by the happy tap-tap of Scrabble letter on travel Scrabble board, which is transpiring to be our new, madly rock 'n' roll addiction. I had a nice wee You Are Wolf slot at Folk and Roots magazine's newish club night, Monday Monday, at the Wilmington Arms in Clerkenwell, on, er, Monday. You can watch two vids (and check out the hair) here and here. Enjoy!

Cultcha Vultcha

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: hhm, 0.

Reading: Graham Swift's rather lightweight novella' Saturday'

Hair day: Am addicted to plaiting the longest bits of my fringe and then releasing for 80's crimped look.

It's been a Superweek in terms of cultural shenanigans: I first took Andy to a Words on Monday event at King's Place, where we were treated to a brain-massage of verbosity from the esteemed panel of Simon Schama, Tony Benn, Polly Toynbee and Geoffrey Robinson QC, discoursing on the topic of 'The Art of Rhetoric'. It didn't really matter what they were saying in the end: the joy was in hearing of each of them launch forth in a probably more impressive manner than many of the politicians they were dissecting. Simon Schama was easily the most showy, his liquidy presenter's voice rolling loquaciously over such figures as FDR, Lincoln and Obama. Polly Toynbee was more measured, Geoffrey Robinson could have quite easily been lounging in an old leather armchair, swilling scotch in a thick-bottomed glass, such was his confidently relaxed, richly posh tones (well, he is used to the pressure of prosecuting war criminals) but Tony Benn knocked spots off them, impressive simply by his accumulated experience. The others weren't able to give anecdotes about what Winston said in 1942, or indeed give their initial 15-minute speech without notes, as he did, all with a voice that sounds like he's permanently sucking on a Werther's Original. A real pleasure.

juice had a trip to see jazz/soul legend Cleveland Watkiss celebrate his 50th birthday at the QEH. It was a shame not to see of his solo loop station work, but we still saw a taste of his more exploratory side, the best being a trio with Talvin Singh and kora player Tunde Jegede. Yesterday I caught another of my 'Beginning with Blobs' shows (which I did the 45-min soundtrack for), which has come a long way since the first performance. Andy and I then made our annual trip to the BBC Wildlife Photography exhibition, always an utter delight, both for marvelling at the natural world and for technical and aesthetic artistry. Highlights included a teenager's shot of a deer caught in a half-lit woodland canopy, and flocks of starlings made as abstract as charcoal flicks in the black and white category. The under-10s category is always unbelieveable, though their precociousness shines through in their blurbs which say things like: 'I took this unusual photo of a silverback gorilla eating an ostrich whilst on holiday in Uganda with my father; I was just trying to capture the beauty of the strangler fig trees when the gorilla just appeared from nowhere. I was in grave danger but the gorilla realised I was an unthreatening posh kid and carried on as normal'. I think I actually agreed with the winner this year: an incredible image of a Spanish wolf jumping over a gate, a startlingly unusual impression of a fairytale animal who looks like he's just gobbled Red Riding Hood.

Finally we caught the end of the London Phil's weekend celebration of Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (the first time I heard his name was when I was a teenager at a composition course; my tutor said my work reminded him of Schnittke. At least I think that's what he said. Arf) at the QEH. He's described in Time Out this week as 'polystylistic' which is as near as dammit: the composer piles in all sorts of musical references (blues, Viennese waltzes, hymns) to a point of near-vulgarity. Still, vulgar or no, it was mostly pretty enjoyable, barring the first piece for solo viola and string orchestra, dull as dishwater. The strings were from the RCM, though all looked about 12; they remained for the rest of the first half, both for the Piano Concerto and Concerto Grosso 1. The concerto featured Boris Petrushansky, surely the Russian Jerry Lee Lewis of the 20th-century classical world, coming right off his stool on a couple of ferocious occasions. The concerto grosso starred a lovely bit of clunky prepared piano, and two violinists who were supposed to fizz with romantic tension; however, the leads lacked the necessary Brangelina vibe, though they did belt out some niftily mental Baroque flourishes. The Yellow Sound was a more convincing affair, fitting nicely alongside music-theatre works by Berio with a muttering cast of vocalists, unusual chamber ensemble and drifting soprano soloist messing about with lights. Though the Schnittke vulgarity couldn't hold be restrained, and the whole thing ended with a scream and rather doom-laden schlocky organ chords, like the finale to a Hammer Horror film. Love it!

Fire Works!

Level of conviction in own genius: 7.5

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0

Watching: The marvellous, if hilariously over-animated, Andrew Marr's 'The Making of Modern Britain'

Hair Day: fashioning new occasional trademark hairstyle of two little plaits from fringe going over like a hairband. YES!

juice did possibly their most intimate gig ever in Thursday, gracing the extremely bijou preserved drawing room of the Handel House Museum. Trust me, if you've craved the experience of real juice-spit in your eye and the deafening screech of our herding calls actually making your inner ear spin like a top in a hurricane, you missed a treat! But it was a very evocative experience, singing in the ultra-crisp acoustic of the tiny wood-panelled chamber, though hopefully the setting didn't confuse any juice virgins in the audience into thinking we were going to trill pretty Baroque shingalings - our slightly more contemporary fare, guttural gruntings et al, are a leetle more 21st-century than early 18th...

Had a rather lovely weekend of Londonness, first of all at the Kingdom of The Fireworks, the Tower Hamlets Borough Council's annual all-out extravaganza, which they must surely blow most of their budget on ('Recycling? Fresh road markings? Pah, we'll just send a load of mega-rockets into the air!'). But it does draw the hugest and most beautifully mixed crowd of multi-ethnic families and East London Coolios to Victoria Park, and every year the show is sensational. They seem to have forgone the attempts at a pre-fireworks narrative (though their near life-size recreation of a burning Houses of Parliament, the crowd baying for more as it fell apart, lives long in the memory) now, and this year's show, entitled 'Great Balls of Fire' simply combined huge flaming jets which licked the sky with a preposterously over-the-top display, all set to '50s and '60s conflagration-themed tunes. Kudos for the heart-shaped bursts and the perfectly-timed halos to Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire'! The whole neck-craning affair is like a VJ-ed mash-up of the end-of-2001: A Space Odyssey and the Death Star explosion, with a load of kids waving triumphant plastic lightsabres for good measure. Fabulous.

On Sunday, Andy and I walked the grey, drizzly North Bank of the Thames before visiting the Ed Rushca exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. This retrospective of a 50-year career merging graphic design, American typography and abstract/not-so-abstract painting was a robust affair, fascinating in its exploration of words as images. I grappled with the ideas of words having no size, of trying (and failing) to extrapolate a word from its meaning, of how the typography is as inherently iconic as the meaning of the word it's wearing. His later work was generally not so engaging, apart from strange, ghostly images of wolves and Midwest churches done only in black with spraycans. Then to the Curzon to see Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, finally, which I've been desperate to see after catching her first feature, Red Road, in all its searingly thrilling glory. Her second film was no less blazing, a tenderly raw story of estate teen life laid bare, with little flares of beauty in the grime, and featuring a quite unsettlingly sexy turn from Michael Fassbender. Arnold is a massively talented writer-director, fiercely real and -I think - inherently female, and I can't wait to see what she does next. We finished off by stuffing our bellies full of heart-palpitatingly salty, oily pasta at our fave Italian, Ciao Bella in Bloomsbury, whilst the pianist played a jazz version of The Godfather theme just in case we thought were at a Japanese joint. Tee hee.

Barn-storming

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3

Watching: The most disturbing tongue in the world, courtesy of the geckos on BBC1's 'Life'

Hair Day: flyweight

Bookending a quite horrific gum infection (pain level from 0-10: THREE THOUSAND, plus added beating of breast and mangled wailing through a jaw that could only open 2 centimetres) was a lovely gig and some great work. Last midweek we went to the Efterklang/Britten Sinfonia-Jaga Jazzist show at the Barbican, for some hardcore Scandi-alt-rock action. Jaga Jazzist are a slightly flexible Norwegian collective who peddle avant-math chamber-rock; they're a dash of Belle Orchestre and a pinch of Bang on a Can, with flashes of zingy electronica. Almost all multi-instrumentalists, (you don't see many girls doubling up on flute, glock, voice and tuba), the 11 musicians went at it rather full-pelt the whole time, with not enough spaciousness and rather too much reverb for me, but it was nice to hear space disco with added bass clarinet. Efterklang, recreating their last album Performing Parades in collaboration with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra here in London with Britten Sinfonia, was an unbounded joy from beginning to end. Their brand of gently euphoric ensemble vocals, unusual chamber ensemble (often including things like clogs pattering percussively on the stage and little organ) and intricate orchestration made for a heart-melting experience. With the added effect of their innocently-bright pendant-adorned costumes, it was like being led into heaven by a load of blissfully happy Danish scout leaders.

With gum still throbbing, the juicettes drove to deepest darkest Kent for a couple of days of workshopping with our bestest artvocal chum, Mikhail, and assorted other lovely vocalists E.Laine, Ben, Conal and Amy. Mikhail is devising his 'exploded opera', Xenon: a fabulously imaginative idea in which the elements of his opera (video, installation, vocal performance, etc) are separated and performed at various East Kent venues and festivals next year. Mikhail had hired the most amazing barn for us to live and work in, a sort of 'James Bond Does Countryside' or, as Ben put it, like being on MTV Cribs. So we feasted well, watched the sheep hanging around like gum-chewing teenagers on street corners, and worked on various vocal/theatrical tasks Mikhail set us, before coming together on the last day with an artist and performer who will be reciting the Declaration of Human Rights. Great to have the time to explore new ways to improvise within juice too: it's rather luxurious to be paid to a) send a note round juice trying to make it sound like one person and b) tickle Anna whilst she's trying to sing 'Ave Maria'...ha.

Awe-tumn in London

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Amount of creative activity achieved today: taking a break

Reading/Watching: Time Out, delivered 4 days late via Royal Mail to my door / 'The Thick of It' - brutal, coruscatingly witty, with unbelievably obscure, only-for-the-literary-highbrow-and-not-many-of-them-neither reference to my fave poet Robin Robertson amongst the multi-swearing.

Hair Day: awight. Self-made fringe bearing up decently.

On Thursday I tagged along to a discussion on Ethics put on by Andy at Foyle's, though mostly for the prospect of free food rather than the debate (though remarkably, I kept up); after all, I don't often accompany clever writers/philosophers (eminent scholar on contemporary Muslim Britain and journalist Zia Sardar and popular philosopher/writer Julian Baggini) to dinner at their members' clubs in Soho. Funny, I thought I would be all up for swanning about, wallowing in the exclusivity of it all, but I hated just that: it seems utterly un-egalitarian to elbow out the hoi polloi just so can eat your steamed venison pudding next to Ken Stott. Though the pudding was rather moreish.

Felt much more on top of things over the weekend, going itinerary-crazy for Mother's Birthday Trip To London. Ma's incredulity at the ways of the Big Smoke never ceased to divert; Mum on the tube: 'they're all plugged into something! No-one talks to each other!'; Mum at Broadway Market: 'everyone is so stylish! It's like being on the continent!'). We managed to take in Turner and the Masters at Tate Britain (so-so; rather too old-school for moi) and then hop on the Tate-a-Tate boat (sightly regretting the ample scone just scoffed) for Miroslaw Balka's big black box, which is good for about two seconds and then is a bit silly; not dark, not scary, and the only thoughts provoked were how to trick people into colliding with the end wall. In the evening we sat amongst a hundred crisp-crunching, texting, guffawing teenagers at the Novello Theatre to see the revival of Stephen Daldry's lauded version of An Inspector Calls. Rather over-shouty, I thought, and very heavy-handed use of music, including a nicked bit from Bernard Herrmann. Over the rest of the weekend we visited markets Broadway and Columbia Road Flower (the former for Ultimate Art Toff-Spotting Championship, the latter for stereotypical East End flaaaar-sellin' comedy vaudeville), went to the British Museum (hotly busy, favourite thing was the 3rd/4th-century BC Burmese monster made of lacquer wood, all antlers and long tongue like a tie), and had a great walk down the Parkland Walk, a disused railway line which has reverted back to nature between Highgate and Finsbury Park. Add to that a smashing meal at our local Cilician restaurant, Solche, MOTD, and a spot of DVD-watching (The Reader, bit lacklustre) and you've got a zinger of a weekend. As my main man down at the DVD store said after chatting to him about Driffield, where Mum lives,:'you wouldn't imagine moving away somewhere quiet, would you?'. Hellll, NO, sir!!!

International Woman Of Mystery (well, Experimental A Cappella Music)

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: NONE, hurrah!

Reading / Watching: 'The Women's History of the World' by Rosalind Miles, to continue my feminist reading. I am transforming into a empowered Female Fighter of Misogynist Crime by the day / Catching up on 'Generation Kill'.

Hair Day: Just re-done. As usual I told Barry it was a wonderful haircut then promptly raced home and made my own extra snips to adjust. Thus I am now sporting a slightly wonky purple fringe. Ahem.

Have just reached the other side, spitting sand and blood, of a Saharan whirlwind of creative activity. Man, it has been quite ludicrously busy. In the last few weeks I have:

a) Completed the soundtrack for Kazzum theatre company's 'Beginning With Blobs', including tackling the Herculean challenge of mixing 45 minutes of music in about FIVE DAYS. When I've never mixed anything before. The show is now tickling small childrens' ribs and brains around the country.

b) Made my French debut with juice, with three different gigs in three days in the Champagne region, where it would have been rude not to break my abstinence from alcohol by quaffing fine, gossamer-light bubbly after every performance with the locals. The concerts were rather marred by me being ill of the cold/throat variety and Anna being ill of the MADFLUPOSSIBLYSWINE variety, so much so she was shivering under blankets with cold flannels on her forehead mere seconds before going onstage. We were also rather too experimental for some in our first gig, but we are sticking fast to our 'anarchic Brits' label given by 'Sir' Bob Chilcott. I threw my first ever diva hissy-fit upon seeing our last venue, a boat, moving backwards whilst we read music. I can't a) travel backwards or b) read whilst travelling without feeling vomitous, so this was not ideal. In the end it turned out possibly to be our nicest gig, at least because I had developed enough confidence to ad-lib en francais.

c) also gigged with juice in Manchester and Brighton, and spent a week doing exhaustive/exhausting workshops with schools for children with disabilities for Live Music Now in Newcastle.The highlight was a very small girl interrupting our song to tell us proudly she had Tinchy Stryder on her iPod. Rock on. We also did a training sesh for Sing Up,which I meant I got to see underneath the shiny fat-rolls of the Sage Gateshead.

d) had a lovely You Are Wolf gig at Lemon Monkey (hhm, images of gnashing canines and ape-carnage abound), probably my best yet, helped largely by the crowd of friendly faces brought along by birthday gal and chief You Are Wolf photographer Dannie.

e) Had meetings for new projects like the Music Orbit team (another Gobsmack experimental night to be curated by moi in March), Music for Youth where I've been invited to be a mentor, plus the prospect of ticking other Music Education boxes like Creative Partnerships looking likely too. One day I WILL be Howard Goodall.

I have found time to squeeze in some nice arty social things too, namely: seeing Conrad Shawcross' installation 'Chord' under Kingsway in the old tram-tunnel (a joy for Londonist nerdlings like Andy and I - we were much more excited by the peeling layers of 1930s posters than the work itself); taking tea with new buddy MaJiKer, who is writing juice a piece, at the very snobby top of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, before being ferociously inspired into further Feminist Acts and Statements by their re-hanging of work solely by females in the collection, 'elles@Pompidou'. Grrrrrrrrr. Oh, and being an international woman of mystery, I intercepted my husband who was returning from Frankfurt for a gevaarlijke liaison in Antwerpen. Well, alright, it was less that than tripping about the mostly cobbled streets, looking at Rubens' buff Jesus' in the cathedral (they all looked like they'd been doing too many press-ups in Gijsbert's Gay Gym), using our in-built Cool Radar to source the three coolest bars in town, avoiding the hoardes of very clean scouts traipsing around, and liberally lathering ourselves with Warme Chocolade. Yum.

And NOW! Well, plenty more things, but at least for a few days, I can do them whilst lounging under the duvet watching 'True Blood' on Channel 4OD and scoffing at how much of a poor, haemophiliac relation it is to the supreme 'Buffy'...

So-So-Shlo-mo

Level of conviction in own genius: 8

Hours of creative activity achieved today: 4, in the realm of singing

Reading: Juggling 'Corvus' for erudite comfort reading and Will Self's 'Cock and Bull' for hardass tube book-time

Hair Day: Bit pink. With a small 'p', not a large 'P', though have oddly been told more than once that I look like the rage-y rockpop queen. Hhm.

So juice had a Big Night Out yesterday, featuring in Blank Canvas' new series at London's coolest music venue, Cafe Oto, up in E8. Many a Dalston virgin was agape at the true fabulousness of the place, whilst Andy and I of course, old hands at popping in to see off-kilter Japanese free improv on trumpet, live electronics and cutlery, shrugged smugly. BC is one of the core alt-classical family, brothers with nonclassical and Kammer Klang and second cousins with straighter classical models like the Little Proms. We kicked off the night with some a cappella bits and bobs and some choons with electronics, braving three new ones off by heart - hopefully we look like we're engaging thoroughly with our audience when in fact our brains are going into minor meltdown trying to remember whether it's 'mikatamikikaiwa' or 'mikikaiwakataki'. Ha ha. Then all-round beatboxing mastermind Shlomo, he of Bjork's 'Medulla'-album and Vocal Orchestra fame, took to the stage to improvise a megamouthful of big beats and clever vocal trickery. He's more musical than most beatboxers, and uses his loop station, the same model as mine, with rather more deftness than I! My favourite moment was an abstract looped aviary of tweeting birds; the challenge for beatboxers is creating something that takes it past an amazing novelty, and Shlomo's definitely nearer than most, though I won't be happy til there's a beatboxer who creates clever little jazz drum licks in 5/8... Am very excited about Shlo's collaboration with old York mucker Anna Meredith though - they're going to be creating a concerto for beatboxer and orchestra, and last night we heard an exciting initial sketch following their first workshop with some instrumentalists. Anna was at Blank Canvas with the Camberwell Composers' Collective, who presented a few works for 'cello, clarinet and percussion. With their riff-driven, electronica-massaged sound, they're fashioning themselves as a Bang on a Can for this side of the Atlantic. The highlight of the night for us was a wee improv with the man Shlomo himself; with the shortest of rehearsals at something similar in the sound check, it was slightly nerve-racking, but worked pretty well, in a sort of chilled, Bobby McFerrin's 'Circle Songs' kind of way... phew! All in all a fab night, full of shmoozing with the alt-classical scenesters (ha, of which we are a part!) and a few of our newer musical friends, whom it was lovely to see.

Today we popped up the road from my flat to the nonclassical studios (in a rather, um, colourful building which houses, among other things, nostril-burning-weed-smoking grime producers, a snooker club full of burly East End chaps, and the rather suspectly-named 'Holborn College of London' - hmm...) for some mic-testing and initial try-outs of material for our nonclassical juice album, to be released sometime next year. The possibilities of which pieces we use, and what new material we create, are endless: I'm getting rather excited about a kids' voice-changer (complete with LED lights!) I bought from eBay. The image of the three of us using flashing red loudspeakers live is a gleeful one and I must write us something, although mostly so far I have been using it to creep Andy out by talking dirty to him in a weird minor-second-clashing robot voice. Ha ha!

Glam Girls

Hours of creative activity acheived today: 2

Level of conviction in own genius: 8

Reading: 'Cock and Bull' by Will Self. Witty, super-erudite, challengingly masculine.

Watching: The excellent 'Red Road' finally, directed by Andrea Arnold, whose second feature 'Fish Tank' is out this week. Countering Will Self's brute masculinity with a steely-eyed feminine slant.

Hair day: just-got-out-of-bed look. Not in a good way.

juice have dived headfirst, making bubble-noises and mouth-pops all the way, into our autumn season. Last week we crammed six gigs in two days into the valleys of South Wales, putting the 'glam' in Vale of Glamorgan. We belted our way through four community gigs in the gritty districts of Barry and Abedare, and did our own evening gig, trying desperately to not be distracted by the over-enthusiastic man in the front row who tried to sing all the words to everything we did, despite the fact most was new music he could never have heard before. We were also drafted in the night after, pretending to be a children's choir in Ozzie composer Ross Edwards' 5th Symphony, alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. We flew by the seat of our cute pink pants in the gig, as though our parts were easy, they were framed in bars and bars of 5/8, 3/8, 3/4, 2/8, 3/8, 3/8, conducted at hyper-speed by floppy-haired Zen-ish Andre De Ridder. It'll be on Radio 3 at some point. Blink and you'll miss us!

Today we made our Colourscape debut at Clapham Common. Colourscape is a family-friendly vast-chambered inflatable paradise - simply a load of womb-like rubber tents (and many vaginal corridors - hhm, think have been reading too many feminist books) in a field, but all so luminously-coloured that you feel like you're an extra in a never-ending Barbarella remake. We sang some bits and pieces and did a lot of improv, sometimes with a bearded, gold-caped live electronics chap called Lawrence, and sometimes with a crystal ball-toting dancer guy. It was a great experience, particularly when sitting on my own in a green room, singing with Sarah and Anna but only hearing them through a speaker; the many excitable kids clambering all over us whilst attempting to riff on Morton Feldman's 'Three Voices' made it a little tricky.

We recovered afterwards over tea in translucent china cups and macarons, tiny chewy 10p pieces of loveliness, in the patisserie in Clapham Old Town: we hooked up with MaJiKer, our vocal idol Camille's English producer, who's interested in writing us a piece. Hurrah! We also met his mate, singer Indi, and Will from cool night Blank Canvas. This week we also encounter Shlomo at said night. The creative networking fun continues!

Summer is Over (but the Autumn has just begun)

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: LOADS
Reading / Watching: Guiltily have taken hiatus on 'Corvus', lovely book on crows, to cram first CJ Sansom Shardlake series book / Sobbing to Gareth's work on 'The Choir'
Hair Day: Bit rubbish

Had another lovely cultural bank holiday weekend, as we always manage to do. We kicked off by going to Free Fridays at Cargo for unoriginal electro-indie shenanigans, where somehow Andy and I were the coolest people in there (well, I was sporting American Apparel socks with a little black number), but it was so loud my jaw almost unhinged itself and clattered around on the floor. Wandering around Shoho with our ears ringing, we stumbled upon a marvellous little bar at the bottom of Hoxton Street called Troy, where we enjoyed hilariously uncool jazz fusion, totally mud-stuck in the '70s, with all the players tossing out ludicrously virtuosic solos whilst chatting nonchalantly to their bandmates. Excellent.

On Saturday we decided to go back to my Sarf London roots, but venturing further than I'd ever been, to Morden Hall Park at the deepest, dustiest end of the Northern Line. We stuffed our bellies with Sainsbury's finest cheeses in the meadowy grounds, then wend our way along the River Wandle, managing to totally miss the feted marshlands and bird reserves and instead ending up as unlikely tourists in the districts of Mitcham Junction and Hackbridge. Still, the river was quite charming, lurching from grassy and sedate to litter-filled - with upended trolleys looking like fat dead geese - and should surely help generate a new verb ('to wandle': to amble along a river, whilst getting a bit lost and waxing lyrical on a variety of subjects from math-rock to Henry VIII). Once we'd arrived in the heroin chic of Hackbridge, we made haste up to my first London hood of Tooting, where I checked out my old house (they seem glassy-eyed and impassive when you don't know who lives in them). We were there as seasoned curry heads, seeking out the Sri Lankan/Keralan delights that the Tooting fave Radha Krishna Bhavan had to offer, before catching up with a few Southies at Brixton's always lovely Mango Landin'.

A bitter-eyed, windy Sunday saw us explore the back streets on a walk from Bethnal Green to Tate Modern. We got down onto the grimy northside beach west of the Tower of London to mudlark and make some impromptu art out of whatever we found. There were loads of old bits of white pipe and chunks of pottery, let's say Roman (hhm... probably. Or from the nearest BHS Homestores), but the highlight was picking up a big brown bone the size of a forearm. It may be my first human bone-holding experience. Gulp. Still, I happily added it to my sculpture and we went on our merry way to the Futurism exhibition, which was more stimulating for its manifestos than most of its paintings; any art movement that caused regular fisticuffs in the street has to be applauded, but only momentarily; I would throw a few punches of my own to Marinetti and co for their wanton disrespect of women, the ignorant misogynistic fuckers.

The sun finally came out on Bank Hol Monday, when we bypassed the Carnival to catch the last day of David Byrne's 'Playing the Building' at the Roundhouse. Quite literally a great wheeze, this installation hooked up an old pipe organ to lots of bits of the building, and then allowed the public to play it. Unfortunately it was full of people who weren't really there to listen to the surround-sound of clattering pillars and heavy-breathing pipes but to just queue for their go and chat, so some of the point for me was lost. We then celebrated the sun's coming out by dipping into Hampstead Mixed Bathing Ponds for the first time, an altogether bracingly gorgeous experience, most unlike the clinical rat-race of York Hall; feeling the cool, green-mud-thickened pondwater on my skin, and not knowing the depths of the pool was fabulous. Though I did momentarily freak out when my foot caught a buoy rope, thinking it was some killer pike seeking its next middle-class victim. Ha. We then lingered on the Heath as the sun drew down, the trees' long shadows like spent balloons, in a last silken sigh of summer.

S'n'M Summer School (w-psshh!)

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1

Hair Day: Bit manic

Phew. Am recovering from bonkers week at the S'n'M - I'm sorry, Sound and Music - Summer School (how did they not think this through? Though I rather like the thought of taking a tutor group through their paces on the Japanese rope bondage course, arf), where I was the Key Tutor on one of five courses. Mine naturally being Composing For Voices as it's the only thing I can actually do these days (I broke out in a sweat when I heard that one of my students played tenor horn). We were ensconced in the Purcell School, where I revisited my Alcuin College/York days by sleeping in a small cell complete with blue-tac stained walls in the 6th Form block. What was most amusing was the (of course always necessary) levels of discipline aimed at the 75 teenagers on the course, and their then impeccable behaviour rather outdoing the debauched partying of the staff every night, leaving the common room and outskirts of the block littered with ciggie butts and beer cans, whilst the hardcore amongst us continued into the hours of the morning with the odd outdoor rave in the football field or had clumsy snogs with fellow staff members. Classy!

The great thing about these summer schools is of course meeting brilliant musicians with whom to teach, play and drink and plan future world takeovers with. I was lucky enough to have a totally disarming and happy-go-lucky bunch of teammates (on oboe, voice, piano and trumpet) who I basically fell in love with over the week, and who made me end up being paid for a week of laughing my head off and talking nonsense. Slightly mad with tiredness most of the time though 12-hour days and very little sleep, we called ourselves the A-Team and gave ourselves silly Captain codenames which we then insisted on being called by our kids, who probably thought we were totally crackers.

The actual teaching was exhausting but always brilliant fun, helped by a super-sweet and adorable bunch of students (the best ones actually absorbing the things we threw at them rather than writing pithy pop songs or moany choral epics which were a study in Bm7). My favourite pieces, written, recorded and performed in 4 days, were: a fantastically quirky 5-part layered riff vocal piece, a perky jazz vocal number about the wonders of the universe; a ludicrously dramatic music-theatre piece in which Sarah, Stef and I unleashed our inner demon goddesses, shouting about Medusa whilst James thrashed the insides of a grand piano; a Britten-esque chamber song with such juicy and well-considered harmonies that I blubbed throughout its rehearsal; and the best power pop piano-led ballad with added cor anglais. YES!

Was brought down to earth rather with a stupid throwaway You Are Wolf gig in a pub in Kentish Town last night. It was a poorly-organised night with four slots too late in the evening for a Sunday, and three of them being crap blues acts. With me opening. Have been lucky enough so far to perform to audiences who actually listened, so was a little demoralising to sing to a bunch of braying fools who were only there to drink frothy lager and shout at each other about the cricket. Sob. Ah well, I have learnt my lesson and shall have a clause in my contract next time insisting I only play if the audience is polite enough to listen. Or are gagged with pistols held to their heads whilst I whisper my delicate looped folk epics at them. Grrrr.

Tall Tales in Yorkshire Dales

Amount of creative activity achieved today: 5 hours -check it!

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Reading / Watching: Just finished the very marvellous 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' / 'Classic Goldie', with old Yorkie chum Anna Meredith rockin' it BBC-style

Hair Day: passable

Had a totally enriching and brilliant few days away with my mum Sue in Yorkshire - Andy and I having decided we should follow our separate passions for a small hol. So whilst he went cycling and hostelling intrepidly round the bottom end of Wales, I went a-walking, a-walking I did go on the west side of the Dales. We based ourselves in Ingleton at the foot of the famous Three Peaks walk and strode womanfully some distance every day, enough for my cellulite to just consider a little loosening of its grip on my thighs, and for my knees and ankles to throb dully like a crap club night. Highlights were:

1) The Ribblehead viaduct, 24 lofty stone arches echoing the curves of the hills. Clouds moving over the hills and getting stuck on cows' backs.

2) Going 'off-road' at the base of Whernside and discovering two little caves all for ourselves. Kept inching down into the watery depths and then freaking out, imagining that the monsters from ace caving horror flick 'The Descent' were emerging, and racing back up again. As they are only marked as 'Cave' , we renamed them, happily defacing the ordanance survey map. Clambering up onto a large scar (rocky outcrop to the untrained East Londoner), I disturbed a sparrowhawk and cheerfully watched it, wondering all the while why it was hovering so meaningfully low over me, before I again freaked out about an impending sparrowhawk attack and ran away.

3) Conquering the third (or 'the smallest' in party-pooping terms) peak, Pen-Y-Ghent, in three and a half hours. Celebrating at the windy summit, some sheep advanced and I swiftly, again, ran away.

4) On the way back down encountering the totally excellent Hull Pot, a massive canyony-gorgey-cave-fissure thing in the earth which looke like the entrace to a lost world or something. Studying my new friend, the ordanance survey map, I became so engrossed I left my camera here and didn't realise it was lost to we got to the car. Was depressed all night, dreamt I was falling down caves and being eaten by sparrowhawks, got up the next morning and walked halfway up Pen-Y-Ghent again to rescue it. The jubilation at finding it still sitting in the grass by a 30-ft stony drop was worth the nightmares.

5) Ingleton Waterfalls Trail, a rather trashy nature walk you had to pay to go into, was populated by hideous high street-types. So it seemed Pennick waterfall churned into cherry coke and lager shandy pools; Thornton Force looked like a white wedding complete with plumed ponies; Snow Falls was paint splattering in a whitewash of DIY TV shows on 'Living'; and the spray and sunshine in the air turned clubby colours of small-town Ladies' Nights.

6) The totally marvellous Inglebrough Cave, we going deep into the rocky wet earth to look at all manner of astonishing stalactites/stalagmites and ludicrously grandiose formations called things like 'The Lost City' and 'The Sword of Damacles'. Of course, once Mum and I had a look, we were renaming them 'The Land of The Joyous Penises' and 'Labia Surprise'... Arf. I came over all 'Descent' again and almost attacked Mum when the laconic guide thought it would be a laugh to show us what it would be like down there without any lights on. Hhm. Not sure I'd have made my dad's side of the family, miners all, proud...

Total notable wildlife seen: 1 sparrowhawk, 1 rabbit, many pied wagtails, red admirals, green-veined white butterflies, stonechats

Total miles walked: 25

Photo accompaniment to this blog here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=302762&id=560960297&ref=mf

Anarcho-Death-Bluegrass

Level of conviction in own genius: 6
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 2
Watching / Reading: 'How to be a Composer' on BBC4 - can't hurt ha ha ha / 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' which is marvellous.
Hair Day: wispy

Am far too busy to have a whole weekend free to do a festival this year, so made do with (sigh!) having to walk 10 minutes up the road to Vicky Park (oh, the fatigue and bother!) for Field Day last Saturday. In its third year, the festi has come under fire in the past for its lack of loos and bars and suchlike, but that all seemed to be under control this year. Sadly what they hadn't managed to do was have a word with 'im upstairs about the weather, so we had half a day of murksome clouds before the rains kicked in mightily. Perhaps because of my proximity to a bath and kettle, it made it easier to squelch off home, shivering and miserable, before the headliners, rather than being a tempter for me to stay. I am a super-wimpoid. And thus missed Mogwai's 'nice quiet soothing guitars NOWVERYLOUDINYOUREARS' set, plus Toumani Diabate's no doubt session of jewel-like kora joy.

I did at least manage to see SOME acts, starting with charming chamber-folkie-popsters Fanfarlo, who were very Beirut-meets-Sufjan-Stevens. Andy prefered the glacial electro artpop of the Sian Alice Group. I caught quirky friend-of-friend-of-friend Micachu and the Shapes in the Adventures in the Beetroot Field tent. They were really fun, all angular scratchy avant-pop, if rather too subtle for the very loud chatty crowd who were far more interested in using the tent as an umbrella rather than a forum for itchy math-skiffle. Then made sure I saw the rather ferociously feisty Juana Molina, who seemed permanently on the edge of fiery Argentinian fury and spent most of the set trying to kill the sound guys with her eyes, as nothing seemed to quite work for her. Still, I enjoyed her looped folk-tropicalia and it works much better live than on her rather droney second album. Then a touch of the Horrors, all doom-laden whine-rock, before the deluge really hit and I scuttled off home, full of bratwurst and pear cider to my bath and some macaroni cheese.

Yesterday I had a small gig of my own, a solo spot at Craig's Moose Factory afternoon at the rather brill George Tavern in Stepney, a scruffy artpub owned by an artist whose car encased in tiny mirrors, which once was installed outside Tate Modern when it first opened, now sits, half-smashed at the back of the garden, glittering jaggedly next to a raggedy cat who stretches out on a hospital chair in the sun. I was on first, and was fine, though have to remember to open my eyes occasionally, no matter how much I'm trying to show off my lurid turquoise eyeshadow. Had some nice comments from hardened locals afterwards, including a charming gothy artist chap who told me he wanted to paint while listening to me and made a few animal noises for good measure, and a sporty East End fellow who racked his brains for who he thoughts I sounded like and came up with... Enya. Hmm. After me were two very good bands, both giving me the ultimate 'coin their sound in three words' challenge: the first, Snorkel, I'll call freaky cerebra-funk; the headliners, Rude Mechanicals, colourful nightmare-vaudeville. And that's all you need to know....

La Bore De Loin

Level of conviction in own genius: 6.8
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 2
Watching: 'Psychoville' on BBC2
Hair Day: Needs drastic cut-and-paste action before photoshoot tomorrow

Celebrated our second whole wedding anniversary by going to the Coliseum to see the ENO do Kaija Saariaho's 'L'Amour de Loin'. It's very rare I go to the opera, mostly because I don't like people singing all the time when they could be speaking... BUT I have liked Saariaho's delicate, exquisitely orchestrated works in the past and was bang up for it. The opening was a fabulously sensual feast of theatrical headiness, with a huge silky canvas sliding over the audience's heads onto the stage, oversized staging and opulent costumes. Oh yes, and aerial acrobatics from six great performers who writhed and twisted on hanging sheets to represent the three main character's spirits. But from then on, it was mostly downhill: the opera soon transpired to comprise the most dull story ever (high concept is too interesting to describe it): prince falls in love with noble lady he's never seen (that's the first half), he eventually travels to her, but falls ill and dies as they declare their love. Oh, and she, having been nothing more than a vacuous object, decides she's lost the love of her life, curses God for two minutes, and then - of course! -becomes a nun. Over two and a half hours, and with the principles singing the most achingly banal language possible - "'My heart aches for her', 'Oh that is a shame','It is like a burning flame', 'Oh dear, a burning flame'" - it was one big frustrating yawn. I kept hoping there'd be a few explosions or swordfights or something, but no, just interminable recit-like passages going on and on with very little motivic writing or aria-like stuff or anything. The lovely staging was nothing more than desperate padding for such a black hole of an opera; the poor singers often had to stand for twenty minutes looking ponderous. We saw plenty of friends and faces: Mikhail and Uriel, the juicettes, E.Laine, old Yorkie pal James Williams, the newsreader Julia Somerville and Kaija herself, floating gracefully around in red, oblivious to the audience's dark mutterings.

Still, on the plus side, it was actually great going to the opera and it makes me want to see more! Picking and choosing carefully of course. It also makes me realise my own music-theatre bent is freaking genius and should be pursued immediately. It's not about writing operas that just anyone can bellow out with the audience struggling to hear the words thorough the fog of their vibrato, but using idiosyncratic voices and mixing up styles. Mikhail will be doing it soon with his new opera commission and one day he and then I WILL rule the opera world and juice will star!!! Ha.

A month of Sundays

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1
Reading: 'The Whole Woman' by Germaine Greer. Am getting quite aggressive in the process.
Hair day: ungratifyingly conventional-looking

Have had gigs for three Sundays in a row, to keep me busy. first up was Metamorphic's road trip to SevenArts in Leeds, where we did two mammoth sets and tried out a few new tunes, including Laura's lovely arrangement of 'Hyperballad' which allows me to do my most uber-wispy voice and do some sea-breath loops. Last week the intrepid DOLLYman were at the Spice of Life, bang in the centre of town, for a fantastically-enjoyable set - not least because we unveiled our new secret weapon: a real live DRUMMER in the form of James' lovely Ozzie mate Pat. He'd only come in for two brief rehearsals so it's early days but, WOW. It actually makes us sound like a real band. Ha ha. Well, he did give us a real boost, and we went down a storm, with me just proud I could stand up straight in my new black and green zigzag heels bought on a whim on the way there without my knees buckling. Most fun was Lucy's newish one 'Juliet Archer Nearly Killed Me', about her near-death nut allergy experience where the Dollies basically saved her from a fate worse than death: Homerton Hospital. The number involves a spot of heavy rock and squealy improv which I added to by screaming apopletically and making lots of avant-garde vomiting noises. YES. I signed an autograph at the end, which is a first, but not sure it really counts when given to an extremely drunk and confused German chap...

Last night it was Metamorphic again, with bandleader Laura's husband Craig's Moose Factory night going all out with a mammoth 12-hour all-dayer of experimental and improvised music. I missed alt-female music chums E.LAINE and Roshi, but caught a spot of very funky and adventurous Porpoise Corpus before we were on. After us came terrifying Norwegian noisenik Stian Westerhus, who had a rack of effects so huge and complicated he probably could have manouevered a spaceshuttle with it, and who attacked his electric guitar with such angry ear-ripping venom he sent me scuttling out of the room for cover. We caught a bit of Hot Head Show, a sort of experimental funk trio with no tops on and came back for wonderful punk-jazz lot Fulborn Teversham, headed by Alice Grant, who is one-and-a-half notches more cheekboned and cool than me, featuring scary Pete Wareham who made his alto sax sound like a fluttering trumpet, and of course backed by Seb Rochford, the only man to harbour a whole other ecosystem in the form of his hairdo. I am ridiculously starstruck by Seb, which is daft as I've been in contact with him about doing a DOLLY/Teversham gig and he is as nice as pie. He's just such a big scenester. So I just about managed to go up and say hello and not fall over myself or look like a complete fool in the process. Last up was the quite incredible Bilbao Syndrome, who with their quite brilliant white jeans/white polo-neck/mirrored RayBans-look appear to be a crew of futuristic anarchic surgeons, who probably tear through the universe cruising for alien organs to harvest. Instead of that the main band stand impassively at the back playing very difficult metal while singer Andrew Plummer, with the rubbery physicality of Jim Carrey on acid, made noises like Tom Waits playing John Hurt in the memorable scene from 'Alien'. It was very cool. And gave me nightmares.

This week, and last, and the next and in fact any spare moment I get this summer I will be working on the 45-min soundtrack for 'Beginning With Blobs', Kazzum's production for 4-8 year-olds touring in the autumn. It is a huge job, both exciting and slightly gulp-making. Updates to come...

Vocal Anarchy From The UK!

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0

Reading: Sunday papers, including excerable Observer Woman Mag, which is about as pro-independent-power-woman as The Daily Star

Hair Day: sooo getting it cut tomorrow

I recovered just in time from hellish projectile-vomity Norovirus that left my bathroom looking a little like a puce-coloured Pollock in order to make it over to the Tampere International Vocal Festival for juice's triumphant return following our 2nd prize two years ago. This time we were there to do a gig at the self-explanatory Klubi, which wasn't too bad, if not quite as barnstorming as we'd hoped, us being on at about the time everyone wants to go to bed. But it was well worth the trip, firstly to learn from the best vocal ensembles in the competition, jaw-dropping German winners Klangbezirk (means 'district of sound' apparently). The four-piece jazz/popsters were so technically accomplished, charming and brilliant, mostly for, incredibly, being able to improvise pop tunes in four-part harmony on audience's suggestions. Argh! Puts us to shame. Secondly, we networked as much as possible: we're trying to set the wheels in motion for bringing last year's winners, the very daft but totally excellent German group Vocaldente, a sort of comic ageing boy band who wear matching cheap suits and Adidas trainers, over to the UK. We have more ambitious plans to host our own vocalfest in London in order to show off all the incredible European acts that have absolutely no exposure over here because they are too poppy and not from Oxbridge. We breakfasted with choral wundergod and hopefully all-round guru for me at some point, Bob Chilcott. Mostly we had fun earning a reputation as being the slightly 'anarchic' (Bob's words), 'self-ironic' (Jenny from the jury), certainly most experimental and leftfield, probably best-dressed and undoubtedly dirtiest (we had fun explaining to all Europeans why wide-eyed German group 'Spunk''s name was so amusing) set of girls on the scene.

Went to Tate Britain today to see the Richard Long retrospective. Long is an artist I much admire and feel slightly affiliated to, what with his affinity with and use of the outdoors, plus his text work. It was a top exhibition, the crisply matter-of-fact font for his text pieces making his walks come alive. You've got to hand it to a man who can walk for a living. Though he may, with his mammoth expeditions of walking in straight lines for hundreds of miles in three hours or something, put Mum and I to shame when we have our slightly less ambitious walking hol in the Dales this summer. Not sure Mum would appreciate me making her walk in increasingly large circles whilst occasionally making her carry a stone either. So an engaging afternoon, and I was suitably inspired enough to buy a couple of postcards to display back home, which I promptly left at the Sainsbury's self-service checkout. Can't quite be bothered to walk back to look for them. Richard would be most unimpressed.