Update From Robin Guthrie

[mmmender]

Robin posted this info on his blog, dated September 8, 2006:



things I've done this summer

The part that has nothing to do with music
Now what was I saying?. One minute I was diligently doing my weblog every couple of days and then I seem to have been somewhat distracted. I'll tell you a little secret that I discovered this summer. It's called the 'real world' and for those of you unfamiliar with the concept it involves doing stuff, well, outside. Very outside, like out of wi-fi range outside. Now that is very outside. So after returning from a little traveling around playing some shows I decided to dedicate a little time to some other pressing matters, namely getting a suntan, traveling without having to play guitar every night and trying to find my garden among the forest of weeds that seemed to have replaced it since the last time I went outside. I warn you now, this isn't going to be a very interesting weblog so perhaps you should just look at the pictures or skip forward to the bit about the music. When my weblog starts to mention things like pottering about in the garden then it's time to go back to reading that moby weblog or someone else ranting on about changing the planet. While I'm at it, if he does want to change the planet he can come and start with my fucking garden. Anyway, enough of the garden already.
So should I share my real world revelations with you or not?
As I'd just spent time in England playing shows in June I wasn't exactly thrilled when my girls thought it would be a great idea to visit the UK for a holiday. The other reason for visiting the UK was to take my older daughter, Lucy Belle, off to college in England. So it was that her life was packed into many boxes which were then packed into our vehicle and that, as they say, was that. This separation is messing with my dangerously addled, middle aged state of mind. There's a big hole where there used to be, well, someone that I used to bump into from time to time, when she left her bedroom to make a cup of tea. She has hopes to work in the field of animation seeing as she's just discovered that changing her hair colour and sitting in your room all day on MSN messenger, hogging you're dads bandwidth, doesn't pay the rent. The funny thing is I'm having trouble getting her on MSN now..... I think she may have found the blocking feature.
Here are some other things I learned this summer. If you want to feel really fucked up without taking drugs try this.. First, become a middle aged man. Then go back and visit where you spent all of your holidays when you were a small child.. Woaaaah.. Big mistake. I shouldn't have done that without a therapist. For some indefinable reason, perhaps curiosity, perhaps mid-life crisis, I decided to take my family around Scotland, not where I grew up, of course, I didn't want them to get mugged, but the beautiful parts, of which there are many. I found myself a little choked up to visit places I'd visited as a small child and I had recollections of things long since forgotten, lots of memories involving my dad, who died before I was old enough to really know him. Strange as it may seem...or maybe not to anyone that knows me, I really hadn't considered that I was now the same age as he was when he took me to these places and this freaked me out, but in a really positive way. Little has changed in Scotland once you get into the Highlands. Thankfully mountains take a while to move and while following winding roads around lochs and glens you feel safely out of the range of Starbucks.
I guess we spent about a week in Scotland, which was not enough, but very much appreciated. With a seemingly inexhaustible supply of diet Irn-Bru, were it not for the fact that it was so buggering cold, it'd make a nice place to live, er, not for me, mind you, but for people that like grey oppressive weather and sheep.
Londoners, for example....
After Scotland, London was big, smelly and expensive but it was quite lovely to be there, not only from the point of view of seeing friends, but to be somewhere alive and animated like London surely is, something which has become a novelty for me these days. Violette, my youngest, was born in London, but had never really been there and had constructed her vision of what it would be like by watching Mary Poppins therefore it was somewhat of a letdown that not everyone spoke like Dick Van Dyke. Another illusion shattered, like the time in May when she said to the Little Mermaid in Disneyland, "but Ariel, that's not a tail, you've got legs in there". Walkie talkies chattered and she was ushered away quickly by the Disney swat team, or whatever, and told to keep her voice down.
Other things to say about England.. Not much, I've a pretty love-hate relationship with it, you know, love leaving it, hate being there, that sort of a thing. But actually this time I enjoyed some of the simpler aspects: like people begging who were wearing nicer shoes than me; like seeing a whole section of the supermarket dedicated to pies, which surely explains a lot; like people being polite, something I'm less used to these days because I live in France; Like good service, well with the exception of Morrisons supermarket in Stratford Upon Avon, a town I ought to just avoid; like bookstores, not only with books in English, but open late and even on Sunday (refer to one of many previous bitching sessions about living in France).. And on the same subject.. Leakeys Bookshop in Inverness – a church full of books…No really, there were a great may things I enjoyed during my short stay in the UK but I couldn't help being left with the impression that the country has become populated with even more fat, chavvy Sun readers that before.
So, my girls seemed depressed to get back to France, but I was delighted. Kissing the ground would have been going a little too far due to the ever present abundance of dogshit in this fucking country, but you know what I mean. It felt like I was home. Trouble is, now that I'm writing this the French are starting to irritate me again with a plethora of red fucking tape, stupid laws and a completely backward banking system. And customer service??? That concept is a is a bit of a stranger to these shores. (refer to another one of many previous bitching sessions about living in France).. That fuckwit Gerorge W Bush coined that most amusing Bushism, "The French don't have a word for entrepeneur" and we all laughed at him when in actuality it was probably one of his, or more likely his only, astute observation. He's still a fuckwit though.

The part about the music
OK for those of you who made it through that lot I'll now attempt to fill you in with what should be happening in this next little bout of activity that I'm just commencing on. First up, I've started to mix the sessions recorded in San Francisco in May with Harold Budd. Done four pieces so far. Would have been five if it was not for writing this. All to say there is the same as I said before, it sounds lovely and it's been a very refreshing experience listening back to some of the takes. When I listen it transports me back to the recording room and that's definitely a good sign for me. All things point to this being a beautiful album.
I've been remixing a track for Alsace Lorraine called Tall Grass, more details of which I'll post later, Recording more stuff for Apollo Heights and am expecting the return of Annie Barker from Los Angeles to continue with her recordings in a week or so. I'm doing another remix of a track for Ulrich Schnauss, who I saw performing at La Route Du Rock recently. At the same festival I was happy to see Why? perform...loved them..

[Simonp]

Doesn't he look skinny in this picture? And I love this quote

"I decided to take my family around Scotland, not where I grew up, of course, I didn't want them to get mugged"

[mmmender]

Yes, he does look thinner in that photograph. He probably didn't get to eat very well while on tour, I bet. Nonetheless, I think he looks good regardless of what size he is.

[Simonp]

I just want to cuddle him whether he is chunky or thin. He's the type of guy you'd want to cuddle into on a cold winters night.

[mmmender]

He's definitely a hottie!

[moeism]

I don't know if "hottie" is the word but I definitely would want to cuddle with Robin.

[postlibyan]

Originally Posted by Robin Guthrie

seeing a whole section of the supermarket dedicated to pies,

why do i read this line and think, "AndyLama now has a destination for his next vacation"???

Originally Posted by Robin Guthrie

I'm doing another remix of a track for Ulrich Schnauss,

this is the second time i have heard of Guthrie reminxing Schnauss, a thought that fills me with tingling anticipation. where/when are these going to be releases? or has the one already been released? i want to hear!!!!

(thanks much for the post mmmender!)

PJK

[Tinspur]

Originally Posted by Robin Guthrie

....

Lol, Robin is ever the wag!!!

[Baddy2shoos]

Robin's one funny fella

[chaco75]

what about the john foxx collaboration?
really, the budd/guthrie collaboration is a dream come true for me.

[Thackeray]

That Photo was taken in Seattle.

[serpentine]

Originally Posted by Baddy2shoos

Robin's one funny fella

Indeed! Its always amusing to read his posts.

[aeonaside]

i just wanted to get in on the admiration for Robin and his cuddly hansomeness.
oooh daddy!

[Mr. ED]

ha! I just recently met "Danny" the guitarist of Apollo Heights! GREAT guy! I guestlisted him for a Lost Patrol show a few months ago. His older band The Veldt opened for CT back on the HOLV tour.