A relatively quiet month as we’re working our way towards the first weekend of the live gigs (11th and 13th April).

Because the band is spread out all over the UK – London, Swansea, Oxford and Kington - we tend to get together for concentrated rehearsals over a weekend once a month or so. What with various withdrawals, the set has evolved somewhat – and as the early gigs are going to be as support, it’s easier all round if we perform as a predominantly acoustic outfit, ie. no drums. We’re not going to give away the set list but it will include some songs from Etarlis, some earlier material - and it gives us a chance to play early versions of some of the new songs we’ve written for the next album.

Speaking of which, Jamie and Andy are meeting this week to review the new songs and re-listen to the demo’s we’ve recorded - but don’t expect a new release any day yet! The recording process is always a long one for us, whilst a number of the songs do get recorded quite quickly, others tend to evolve and develop over time – ‘Qway-Lin’ is a prime example – it was one the first tracks we worked on when we started recording Etarlis – at that point it was about 2 minutes long, developing over the following 18 months or so to become the 10+ minute closing track for the album.     

Another thing we are turning our thoughts to is merchandise. Up till now all we’ve had on our stall and website are our CDs, but it would be good to have some badges and a T-shirt or two to offer. Although as a band we tend to (mostly!) agree on the musical aspects of what we do, artwork always seems to be hotly debated – and I guess this is going to be true for the T-shirt designs as well. Are there any other items of merch people would like to see on the MK stall/website? Let us know your thoughts - we love to hear from you.

Evelyn and Jamie

Current listening includes: Caravan-In The Land Of Grey And Pink; Porcupine Tree-Deadwing; Pentangle-Basket Of Light; Holly Williams-

The Ones We Never Knew; Heather Nova-Siren; Channel Light Vessel - Automatic