June Newsletter '26

 "Ow! Ow!" The coach driver's torment had begun - I was hitting his knee with a surgical hammer. This was far from a scheduled call-out, and i was far from a medical professional; safe to say, I was using excessive force! Anyways everybody, it's the Four Blokes Newsletter! The gist is the album is nearly finished, or nearly nearly finished at least, the film needs a fair bit of editing but I reckon filming is more or less done. I can offer more details than that though - juicy ones, mmmm.... mmm, mmm, mmmm....

The great glass towers gave way to wildflower meadows and sleepy trees - the bristles of a plastic plant were injuring the coach driver as i struck him with SOME FORCE! The bristley plastic plant beating session was to no end but my own amusement - i guffawed like a Milwauakee circus attendee of 5. The first significant event of the month I would've said was smoking a load of joints and frying a load of red onion - some important filming occurred, even though it could generally be described as a leisurely experience. I performed a fantastical jig and made audiovisual records of caramelization dialecticals. Everything was progressing nicely, and there was peace in the valley.

At Heathrow I began to feel nervy - I was in the wrong seat, the wrong seat, the wrong seat, and if there is any sort of religious justice in the world I was bound to be found out! Anyways, some 3 weeks ago I went into the studio, in Fulham, to work on a few records. First, bass and piano for "Dockers & Dinnerladies", which i wrote about trade unions. "From the rain-soaked window of the working men's club i see, a premonition of a worker from the 21st century..."

I was born very young in a very old age. Erik Satie said something along those lines, the guy who did Gymnopedie? Or something like that? But yeah, I played a nice little boogie woogie shuffle on the auld upright piano. Very Music Hall, man. I played some chord at the end that was a total mystery to me. I concluded work on that and moved onto "Through The Peephole", which had 2 conjoined chords, a chordal centipede, i bisected it in all sorts of ways, perhaps it was a kissing chord. It was dead jazzy man. At the end it all got a bit John Cage and I smashed down on the piano, violating every key. Lowest and highest awkwardly embraced, falling without a parachute, twirling in fear and doom-filled anticipation. The recordings came out good! 

Straight from the studio to the space station - of course, it wasn't really a space station, it was a new exhibition at the Barbican that even extended into the car park. It was pretty intresting, a bit existentially horrifying at points but made for good B-Roll! Think i will intercut the interplanetary footage with the onion cooking session.

The coach driver... so, I had to write the bloody harp score for my Teacup Vignette - you know, got to have multiple classical pieces on the Four Blokes album! I sat and wrote it on my synthesiser in my dingy filthy room, put the sheet music down ready for export to the Argentinan Free State. To be honest it's in 3/4 and I wrote it out in 4/4 but hopefully Mercedes will let me off.

"Everyone thinks we're off humping the weekend away" I said to the coach driver... "nevermind that for now - look at the guidebook tonight and we'll discuss the mornings activities later." There was another coach driver before - a long line of coach drivers, a long line of coach drivers queuing up

for one smelly little cubicle! But there was another coach driver, another cubicle, down what he called "the stairs of doom" - he assured us all the toilets had been scrubbed clean shortly before the journey. Anyways, he insisted we know after

Southampton, and after Poole, he would get in the car, drive home, feed the cat, have a shower, go to bed, get up and go back to driving the coach! To get on this coach, I had to walk 6 miles across London with my big bag, because my debts to TFL were so vast I couldn't get so much as a bus. Classic FM soothed us, pieces moving across centuries, interrupted by adverts targeted towards the middle classes - before this, i went for some nice pints in St Albans, at the Horn...

Getting off the coach, I had to visit my old friend Tiago - i had World Cup fever and the only cure was to have a load of beers and watch Ivory Coast 1-0 Ecuador. I had some filming to do, the Kingston connection collapsed so I moved a little closer to home - a Polish starlet! A cinema worker, no less... Jan had to announce our new fictionalised television performance, to be cut out with the silver scissors and featured in the film.

In the small hours i got up, and set the cans off rattling as i bumped into the little table. The empty cans of yesterday, you could say? I did some more scenes for the movie later, prancing around in the woodland, leaping and clicking my heels, sitting on a large wooden bench.

I watched men love from a balcony, but it began to looked like hate the closer I instructed. One left the other with remorse alone and he nursed a Pernod - all free on Youtube - but!

After that, or before, I had to head to Harvey's to record the brass band for Dockers & Dinnerladies!!! BLOODY EXCITING! First the Euphonium, which was a sort of bass part, then the trombone and trumpet were playing 1 octave apart - there was the bit, on the piano, where i was hitting the C 2 octaves apart, alternating... dunDUNdunDUNdunDUN.... so I replicated that on the top 2 horns and since they're panned either side it bounced left and right. Turned out pretty fantastic I reckon, however there were one little bit in the verse that I scored wrong so I'll have to cut apart and mend in the final mix. Didn't notice it til I got home! Then, the Melodica for "Through The Peephole"... he blew and i tapped, you dig? He did some blowing too, then played some darts while I

shook a handful of loose change - eventually i started scraping a 2 pence piece all over the microphone. That will do, he had to get to the bank, and then the pub for the match - I went home to start on the vocal overdubs, no access to the old shed so I did some takes in the toilet. Don't know what I will and won't use quite yet.

The next day I completed all I needed, in the exact spot where the first Four Blokes recording session had taken place over four years ago. Over four years and this is where we are? Well, Rome wasn't built in a day I suppose. Vocals for Dockers & Dinnerladies, Through The Peephole, and Bluebells in The Meadow - also a new lead vocal for Monstera. Declarations of undying love are often short sighted, and i did add an optional amendment, but I'm not sure if I'll leave things the way they were. 

Anyways, I flew to Antalya 🇹🇷 tagging along with my biological father who was receiving dental work. It's a strange place, right on the southeastern edge of Europe, nothing but the lonely sea all the way to Alexandria. At night, a moonbeam across the blue with a speckled sky overhead - a silhoutted hillside along the bay glowed with yellowy windows, like a sunken island of stars... sometimes I'd head east from the hotel of an evening, to the field of bunny rabbits and low flying passenger planes. Normally it would be West, wandering with a can of Efe's towards the night. I would almost always only wander, very rarely I'd end up in Octopus Terrace Bar. I got what could possibly be my first ever tan when I'd swim of an afternoon. In this environment I came up with Wishes, the album closer. But on my return there was not enough month yet to begin recording it - June withered away in the midst of another heatwave.

As for July? Do you know what, I think I can FINISH THE FILM AND FINISH THE ALBUM !!! How about that then ey? If it doesn't happen I'd better have a pretty bloody good reason

Anyways - that's enough from me for now

All my love

M. Xxxx