January Newsletter '26

Hello to one and all - I hope your 2026 is off to a good start! It's been a stormy month weatherwise, but all the better to wash away the past and make room for new beginnings. We released a new LP at the end of January, and thus we set out on a new journey - it's all very exciting, everything seems undecided, public opinion on our new sound is yet to be gauged. I must admit that the album launch didn't go as smoothly as I'd like but nonetheless it's exciting to get it out there. As you'll find out later, we’re setting off on another recording odyssey straight away...

It's fitting that I'm writing this on a train as I've spent much of the month in transit - me and Ava began the year in Bucharest and I've split the rest of January between London & Southampton. The land of new opportunity, the screaming homeless woman, oat flat whites... the land of teenage ghosts, memories forming pinkish fog down every lane, blueberry lattes. I must say it was a rather enjoyable trip to Romania. We visited the heaviest building in the world, the Palace of the Parliament, a monument to excess and megalomania built while 99% of Romanians were living under draconian austerity measures. No wonder they executed their President live on national TV! We visited his house, loved the mosaic tiling and Ava was a fan of the pink bathrooms, although much of the decor was an entirely distasteful display of wealth. How ironic as a Communist leader to have Louis XVI themed interior design - and then to be executed just the same! We also had a lovely train journey to Brasov in the north of Romania, stopping at a Petrochemical town on the way and seeing a load of auld oil tankers go by. Lovely and snowy too.

Upon my return to England 😨 I had coursework due 😨 on all 4 of my modules! 😨 "Creative Music Sequencing" I had to write an essay about "Intelligent Dance Music" and Harvard reference Squarepusher - like this - (Squarepusher, 1996) - like that. 😨 safe to say all of them got done ON the due date, numerous cups of coffee and lots of pacing around, arriving in the inbox a few hours shy of the midday deadline. In my heart of hearts I believe I passed them all, but I've not been told yet. They weren't that hard, there's just something wrong with my mind that makes it very hard to sit down and write 1500 words - many other things wrong with my mind too, deeply wrong. I'll report back next month, maybe I'll have failed the lot and gone on a manic episode of self-destructive behaviour - who knows! And yes - I write all my essays on the notes app, I can't be confined to a computer, I need to pace and pace and pace.

Anyways, with exam period safely wrapped up (I HOPE! or you'll see me on the front of every broadsheet newspaper in the nation) I was free to focus once more on my creative endeavours. I shan't reveal too much just yet as we have literally just put an album out, but work on a new "project" is well underway. I've got a prospective list of 10 tracks so far, all in various states of progress, one of which I did some taping for this month. The very first "recording session" for this new "project" was on January 25th, in a house in Croydon, and it was a 46 second clip of an electric drill.

Then, one rainy evening, I returned to Southampton on a South Western Railway service. I returned to Sholing on a Bluestar bus, then I returned to the shed where we began our recording

career with the original version of Popworld in April 2022. The last time we recorded there was in July 2024, the final session for our first album. 18 months later, with a whole 2nd album under my belt, there I was again! This

time I was alone, no Tiago, and no instruments either. At 2AM I embarked on a session that saw me operate a leafblower, a hairdryer, a wind up torch, a pepper grinder, hit a trowel with a lump hammer, saw pieces of wood, and most importantly bash on pots and pans with a pair of teaspoons. This was all for a new piece called Data Processing Machine - I shall reveal no more than that for now. Why did that pesky Beatnik ever turn me on to Einstürzende Neubauten!

Anyways - The Wet Garden of Love! A SECOND ALBUM! Sir, a second album has hit streaming services. Four Blokes return 6 months after their debut LP with a follow up that takes a pretty severe left turn. Out with Punk songs. In with Flamenco, Classical, Noise Rock, Jungle, Instrumental Jazz, Hindustani, and Gregorian Chanting. Out with Guitar, Bass, and MIDI Drums. In with Violins, Sitar, Trombone, Trumpet, Wurlitzer, Amen Breaks, and LIVE DRUMS! I'm pretty chuffed with how it's turned out. The 5 day delay to release was due to complications with the artwork but all was resolved swiftly - thank you to Ava for a wonderful front cover. I wonder if you can tell what it is... as for the additional 2 day delay for it to show up on Spotify, I have no fucking clue what was going on there, just a load of dossers running Distrokid clearly.

There's not a lot to say about it now because it came out right at the end of the month - all I can really say is it's very satisfying to see it there on Spotify alongside the first, I've been working on this for a fair auld while and it's cool that it's real now. In a weird way I'm weirdly relieved, partly because I feel free to work on new things now and partly because if someone finds us online they'll find an album I'm actually proud of instead of a severely delayed collection of punk songs that were written and recorded by 17 year olds. I'd never take the early stuff down off the Internet, I think its important people are able to see the progression. The leap from Popworld '22 to Popworld '23, and then the leap to something like Thistle. 

I'm interested to see what people think of it! It's had a great first day of streams on Spotify despite randomly appearing at about 5pm on Sunday afternoon (bastard distrokid) instead of midnight on Friday. In Febuary I'll collect some reviews together from newsletter readers.

And that was January... me and the Mrs had a lovely eastwards trip, I got all my exams in on time, we dropped a new album slightly late, and I did a lot of brainstorming for the new "project" as well as a first recording session. In addition to this new """"project"""", the focus for Feburary is getting the London lineup into rehearsals. I look forward to our next correspondence.

Loads n' loads of love

Harry