December 9th:

Against all the odds, The Spitz gig turned out to be something of a success. Predictably, my four day flu hit its peak on the morning of the gig and by the time we reached London, I could barely speak. A first!

I overdosed on a heady combination of Tom Jones' throat lozenges of choice (Vocalzone) and Boots own brand nasal spray, the effects of which managed to clear my nostrils but failed to bring my exhausted croon back from the dead.

With journalists from The Wire, MOJO and Classic Rock and staff from Mute and OLI in attendance, as well as fans turning up from Canada, the US and all over the UK (Cardiff, Birmingham, Stalybridge etc...), there was no option to pull out. Fake David Niven moustache in place, I adopted plucky trooper mode and made the best of what was available to me.

The throat problem lent me a 'walrus of love' husky tonality throughout the performance and on the positive side, some of the tracks ('World Afraid', 'Days Turn Into Years') worked exceptionally well with me singing in an enforced, cracked, lower register. On the negative side, my entire upper range was a definite no go area and my vocal power severely diminished, with the sad result being that the bridge of 'Sleepwalker' sounded more Joe Pasquale than 'Joe The Lion'.

Given how well the rehearsals had gone, it was a variable I'd not prepared for, although coming across like Rod Stewart's raspier elder brother certainly worked in gaining sympathy on the night.

The band were on excellent form (managing to be that rare thing, powerfully subtle) and the specially commissioned visuals worked extremely well as a responsive backdrop to the atmospheric and frequently intense music. All the band members were superb, but perhaps Mike Bearpark's sustained levels of textural inventiveness and Andy Booker's increasingly astonishing drumming deserve special mention.

With a strong audience reaction and a guest list including Brian Eno (who was even heard to wolf-whistle at one point!) and Sonja Kristina (Curved Air), luckily, the potential Bowness Band disaster of 2004 was averted.

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Stephen Bennett's video to 'Sleepwalker' (featuring the charms of the 'Mayo muse') can now be viewed here. Coming in at less than the price of a Mars bar, it can truly be said that Baron Bennett has delivered in style.

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October 3rd:

The ongoing adventures of Centrozoon provided a wonderful early September diversion.

The 5 days spent at the ARS Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria were relaxing, enjoyable and an ideal way to contextualise recent emotional upheavals that have been exhilarating, frustrating and quite probably the source of another exquisitely miserable concept suite that could be brewing in the 'canyons of my mind'!

Centrozoon's part of the festival consisted of performing for two hours on top of a small boat, mostly improvising, between stops on the Danube (or 'the blue doughnut', as we liked to call it).

A good performance, spectacular location and decent enough response totally justified our efforts, while my favourite moment came when, simultaneously, 10 Japanese tourists excitably set up their digital video-cams to film us in action.

When not intensely wandering around the beautiful streets of Linz (allegedly, Hitler's favourite city) seeking out CD shops, I spent much of the rest of the time with Centrozoon and the wonderfully gregarious Janek Schaefer watching other excellent festival events including Steve Reich, AGF with Craig Armstrong, Fennesz and Ligeti.

A 'festival of the future', the AEC had genuine scope, ambition and purpose and is something I'd return to in an instant.

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With new releases from Brian Wilson, The Blue Nile, Bjork, American Music Club and AGF, the year's suddenly started to sound good. At this rate, I might even have 10 albums I like by the end of the year!

Film-wise, this month's recommendations are Pieces Of April (featuring the lovely Katie Holmes), Love And Death On Long Island and the emotionally charged 21 Grams.

August 13th:

Weeks of anticipation, e-flurries and raw slices of life have seen me go through a period of intensely questioning most aspects of what I do.

With my moods following the incredible fluctuations in the British weather this Summer (drifting from idyllic, sun-stroked days to apocalyptic flood warnings with little advance notice), I've hovered between extreme optimism and extreme pessimism, while just about managing to 'take care of business'.

So, no change there then!.

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The strange adventures of Centrozoon (whose recent live DVD-R has been getting some encouraging responses) continue unabated.

Next month (3.9.2004) will see us in Linz in Austria performing on a small ship doing a shuttle service between the banks of the Danube (http://www.aec.at/timeshift).

The dawn of the avant-garde cruise ship band? The cause of a dozen 'abandon ship' suicides?

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11th July:

'My Hotel Year' done and dusted, it's that time of year when 'post-album depression' sets in and I find myself craving for a very long holiday away from myself.

A common feature of PAD means that I have a constant urge to throw everything I've ever done into a North Manchester skip and set alight to it.

In this scenario, I throw myself on top of the flames soon afterwards.

Entering a 'put everything in the drawer for a month' phase, I hope to re-emerge with enthusiasm and ideas aplenty sometime in August, or maybe just a strange desire to abandon music and run a busy pub in Bradford.

The Guinness diaries await!

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The second Cambridge festival of looping went well, with considerably more people in attendance than last year and a seamless change over between artists.

After a dazzling rehearsal, myself, Boy Bennett and Michael Bearpark were slightly disappointing and restrained in our first set. Sounding like a psychedelic folk re-write of Darkroom, the experience proved enjoyable, if not totally satisfying.

Our second set, however, with most of the other musicians present, was far more expressive, spacious and experimental. Mike's acoustic guitar generating effects suggested some exciting new possibilities for us and, after doing little with it in our first set, I made fairly inventive use of the DL4 and developed some fairly interesting cross rhythms and textures.

Earlier in the evening, the Butler's assured performance certainly proved one of his best, and overall, the festival still seems like the sort of event I thought would define early 21st Century culture.

The rather standard 50s-styled Jazz trio accompanying my meal at the restaurant earlier provided an effective contradiction.

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Already involved in promotion for the My Hotel Year album, I did several interviews this week with Martin Aston (The Times/Mojo).

A No-Man fan who's doing my biog for One Little Indian, intelligent and informed, Martin made what could have been a tedious 'hack' job an enjoyable experience, with the interviews making me question certain things about the album that I'd not previously done.

Subsequently, I now realise that one of the aspects I most like about MHY is that like No-Man's 'Speak' (an album consisting of work written in the late 1980s), it's an example of music produced under the radar of industry consciousness.

Music written more out of love of creating rather than the result of any external or internal pressures to succeed or impress people, I genuinely hope that there's a sense of creative honesty that pervades every one of MHY's non-existent grooves.

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4th June:

The madness of Lord Chilvers shows no sign of receding. Not content to forget chords in performance, the suave swan swallower's taken his amnesia to a new level of sophistication and gone and forgotten an entire gig.

Booked as a duo to perform at the OsFest that is the Cambridge International Looping Festival (www.cambridge-loopfest.org.uk/), Peter only realised this week that he's on vacation during the time we're supposed to be on stage.

The beardy boy's last minute replacement is that newly respectable Father of two come troublesome Heavy Metal malcontent, Michael Bearpark.

Expect tuneless rock dirge variations of 'California, Norfolk' and avant-garde looping massacres of the Bowness/Chilvers' 'ballad assortment'.

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'My Hotel Year' is still 'almost' at an end. Hampered by collapsing technology, the final mix of the final song remains on hold for another few days.

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Other recent activities include assessing poignantly personal video footage with Stephen Bennett, hearing four tracks off the astonishing new Bjork album while lounging around at the One Little Indian offices, and a positive meeting re an interesting site specific, music/spoken word project which could potentially involve myself, Roger Eno, the 'Butler' and the ever-ready Burning Shed production machine.

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17th May:

Several days of constant writing interrupted by occasional bouts of physical exertion (just to prove to myself that I'm actually capable of moving!) and copious phone calls (including several of a Shed-related nature from the Rory McGrath of Ambient dandyism, Lord Chilvers himself).

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Ironically, the recordings from the Festival performance came out surprisingly well, with 'winter with you' and 'last year's tattoo' being every bit as good as I'd hoped. Confirming something I've always known, that the gigs that feel the worst to play often sound the best in retrospect, conversely, it's the performances that feel the best on the night that frequently end up being the most excruciating to listen to.

I remember a particularly wonderful No-Man London Marquee headline in the early 1990s that had both band and audience in raptures. We were Gods.

Really. Unfortunately, the recorded evidence revealed the sound of fifteen cats giving birth in a filthy alleyway, with me singing flatter than Marc Almond on a bad day and Ben and Steven seemingly playing songs from the early Throbbing Gristle catalogue. The genteel epic 'Days In The Trees' bore an uncanny resemblance to Motorhead's 'Bomber' that evening. Stranger still, no-one noticed.

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Sifting through new photos and mixes, 'my hotel year' is almost at an end.

9th May:

A consistent, quality performance unfortunately doesn't materialise.

Roger Eno and John Goddard's short and sweet set is beset by unnecessary feedback problems, while mine and Peter's performance is attacked from every angle imaginable.

Myself and the David Bellamy of the keyboard stride confidently onto the stage to silence. And then more silence. Peter pipes up, "I've forgotten how this goes," and I crawl inside myself. He finally starts. The problem being that what he plays bears little relation to Together We're Stranger. Unable to sing over this, I say, "Wrong chords, wrong tempo, Lord C." Peter stops and starts to play again. Once more, it's the wrong chords and the wrong tempo and in desperation I invent a new, elegantly tuneless melody for some old words. A fabulous beginning, I'm sure you'll all agree.

The second piece starts well and seems to be working. Unfortunately, halfway through, Roger Eno joins us for perhaps 'the worst cornet solo in the world ever...' I'm in pain and my wincing is spectacularly in keeping with the warped momentum of the solo. The third track is acceptable, but halfway through, traumatised by the preceding two exercises in incompetence, my mind goes blank. Luckily, I find my cheat sheet just in time to avert another disaster, but a feeling of negative self-consciousness still lingers.

Finally the music takes off, but mid-way through a beautifully menacing and quiet version of Days Turn Into Years (featuring some lovely flute from Theo Travis), a mobile phone goes off and the theatre's bright security lights come on, destroying the discreet ambience. Ladies and gentlemen, this is clearly our night!

From this point on, things can only get better and they do. There are strong versions of Winter With You and, especially, Last Year's Tattoo. Watching Over Me also makes a fine finale.

Hugh Hopper and Theo's set is heavy on atmosphere and a delight to watch.

For a last hurrah, all the musicians gather on the stage and run through an impromptu version of an old song of mine, Sorry Looking Soldier.

Surprisingly, this is one of the highlights of the night. Roger and Theo combine beautifully on cornet and soprano sax, guitarist John Goddard hits some nice sustains, Hugh pins everything down and Peter remembers that he is actually a talented musician.

A powerful and positive end to a traumatic experience, I leave the building and head straight for the comforting allure of bed.

May 6th:

Replete with title ('My Hotel Year'), 11 songs and new deals with One Little Indian and Mute Song, the solo album is now very near completion and awaiting an Autumn release.

As creatively complete and intense as the last two No-Man albums and 'California, Norfolk', the album differs from them in its very apparent sense of restlessness and its frequent and subtle, stylistic departures.

Where it compares favourably, for me at least, is in the fact that it seems to possess a level of emotional depth and commitment that I feel much of my work before 'Returning Jesus' lacked.

Featuring some inspiring work from Scandinavian sex king, Stephen Bennett, and 'the man who wasn't there', David Picking, it's the first time outside of my collaborations with Steven Wilson that I've felt totally confident about the durable quality of what I've done. Regardless of the reaction or the sales, I feel secure in the fact that it's an album that will continue to mean something to me and ultimately, as selfish as it sounds, that's what counts.

Contrary to the view expressed on the No-Man website, the album title has nothing to do with my recent travels to Europe or my collaborations over the past year. In many ways it's more about the fact that 'Returning Jesus', 'Together We're Stranger' and 'California, Norfolk' represented the end of a certain line of investigation and that the current time feels like one of exciting and excited transience and searching (hopefully, loaded with new beginnings).

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Tomorrow is the day of the third annual Burning Shed event, featuring myself and the caviar-sniffing, Brian Blessed doppelganger Lord Chilvers, along with Roger Eno, Hugh Hopper and saxophone colossus, Theo Travis.

Sold out a week before the performance, this has already been the most successful of the three events so far.

Damn, there might even be some expectations of a quality performance!

Tuesday, 27th April

It's 4pm and I find myself wandering around somebody's back garden somewhere on the Dutch/German border. I've seen the landmark local windmill and water tower, so this seems like as good a place as any to be. A face stares at me from the window. Fearing I've become a part of the German version of 'Deliverance', I walk away and think of ways to punish Bernhard and Markus.

30 minutes into my stay in Kevelaer and I've been confronted by 7 churches, 50 nuns and 1 swastika pasted onto a kindergarten wall. This place definitely feels like one where a lone Englishman could meet an easy death.

Luckily, despite having more images of Mary per square mile than anywhere outside of Rome and Walsingham, the town also possesses a surfeit of fine Eis Cafes and pretty sites of antiquity. The universal language of car stereo techno competes with the constant ringing of church bells and the occasional muzak blast of Kenny G's greatest hits coming from one of the cafes.

The Kevelaer bookshops only have two English titles in stock, Robin Cook's 'Balderdash 6' and 'The Lord Of The Rings'. Both good adverts for illiteracy and never one to say nein to Ja!, I make my way to the solitary supermarket in town and stock up on products by my favourite no-name brand.

Earlier in the day, the Centrozoon photo session meant that I missed my plane back to England and somehow ended up here (a town that probably provided the inspiration for M Night Shamalangadingdong's 'The Village').

It's a fitting end to a strange week which began meeting Hugh Hopper in Canterbury and in between involved recording some Centrozoon material (including an intriguing new version of 'Bigger Space') and playing table football with the surprisingly polite Guano Apes' guitarist Henning in a night club in the heart of Hanover (the ominously named, Spandau).

Feeling like Dr Frankenstein, I sit and wait for the locals to chase me and my cups of tea out of town, while thinking of ways to punish Bernhard and Markus.

April 1st:

I'm back in England reflecting on the fact that the strangeness of the entire Duomo event and the accompanying experiences meant that I felt like I was experiencing some kind of pleasant breakdown throughout my time in Milan. My excessive consumption of coffee probably didn't help!

Alice, as always, was hospitable and generous towards everyone, and it was nice to work again with Steve Jansen for the first time in almost four years.

I've been told that the event was filmed, most likely for commercial DVD release, so here's hoping that the 'legendary Keroauc loops' work well enough outside of the moment.

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The Invisible Man, Mr Picking, has provided me with another nearly complete mix of a song from the forthcoming solo album, which tantalisingly suggests that the completed project will have range as well as quality.

I think I've settled on a tight, cohesive (yet eclectic) 10 track album, of which we've almost completed 7 of the songs. The other 3 tracks will probably be taken from a pool of around 7 other pieces that are currently under consideration.

After toying with myriad possibilities, I also think I've finally decided on a name for the album. A name which will hopefully evoke the sense that the material represents an exciting transitional phase or a dislocated new beginning as opposed to an obvious or exhausted extension of my previous work.

An excellent Carl Glover cover possibility has also emerged out of a misunderstanding with another client. As Eno's Oblique Strategies have suggested, sometimes it's worth honouring our mistakes as our hidden intentions.

25th March:

It's 2am and just after the after show meal at the Hyatt. An Italian 'society' photographer, who obviously thinks I must be someone if I can walk around here without being arrested, asks if he can take a photograph of me. Looking worse than the ghost of Samuel Beckett, I agree.

"So, you're Tim Bones, the American poet?" He offers. "Something like that," I reply before walking off to consume some more of the 'house' sorbet.

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At 8pm, an hour before the show, I'm in the backstage tent with Italian actors Sergio Castellitto and Sonia Bergamasco. Along with French actress Delores Chaplin, these people comprise my fellow 'readers' for the evening.

I chat nonsensically about Italian coffee and Milanese graffitti, while they stare at me intently trying to work out if I'm Colin Firth or Hugh Grant on a particularly bad day.

At 8.30, Castellitto leaves to meet another of his adoring fans, while at 8.35 the lights in the tent go off and myself and the beautiful Italian actress are left in the dark wondering what twisted forces led to this confused moment in time.

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9.20pm and I'm on for my first slot. A reading of Keroauc alongside some looping.

The first loop goes wrong and I mask it with three others to try and minimise the damage. After a distinctly average reading, I start to make noises. Strange, loud ones. I stare into the gorgeous stained glass windows of the Duomo and I become convinced that 4000 people feel they've been plunged into the depths of Hell. Worse still, the PA people are not fading me out or telling me to leave the stage. I look around and see people frantically waving and wishing an end to this unholy choral symphony of me.

Instinctively, I switch my looping device off at just the wrong point in the loop. I shrug my shoulders and walk off. Steve Jansen laughs. Better luck next time, perhaps.

9.45pm and it's time for my duet with Alice (a version of the King Crimson song, 'Islands'). This after all is what I've been flown over to do. Luckily, it goes like a charm and I even do the slightly crazed, staged gazing into my fellow singer's eyes malarkey. Hey, I am a consummate professional after all!

9.50pm and time for my second 'Kerouac Loop'. This time, I'm joined by Italy's premier trumpet player Paulo Fresu. This time, I'm determined to keep things sweet and simple.

The reading is average, but the pretty loop seems to work incredibly well within the ornate Duomo surroundings. Paulo and I integrate successfully and the piece feels genuinely transcendent and inspired at certain points.

However, 7 minutes into my 5 minute slot, I feel all is not quite right. The PA people remembered to fade me out, but unfortunately the monitor operator forgot. Again, frantic waving of hands, stage left. Again, abrupt end of loop (luckily, this time in a good place).

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3.30am and I'm dropped off at my hotel wondering what the hell it is that I've just done.

24th March:

It's 3am in the hotel bar and Steve Jansen, pleasantly drunk and pleasantly intense, keeps on asking, "But are you balanced?" to anyone who'll listen. Guru Jansen's lessons in life and love abound in this faintly surreal post-rehearsal gathering.

Earlier in the day, on the Milano Malpensa bus, I'm face to face with one of my favourite writers, Harold Pinter. Not able to work out what to say or whether it really is him, I stare intently at his travel-weary face (made even wearier by some ingrate staring intently at it!). As two waiting limousine drivers hold up signs saying 'Tim Bowness' and 'Harold Pinter' (a fine comedy double act in the making), I get my answer.

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As on my last visit to Milan, I'm determined to get as many cups of glorious Italian coffee as I can. My copious coffee consumption combined with the fact that Milan is a veritable lady paradise, means that I wander around the city's fantastic yet graffiti-strewn architecture, buzzing like Jim Carrey on speed.

Discovering the 1970s musical experiments of Franco Battiato (Eno, Floyd, Cohen and Stockhausen rolled into one) temporarily distracts me from caffeine and dark-eyed beauties.

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Tomorrow the Milano Duomo experience.

20th March:

On Thursday I'll be performing my first ever gig in Italy. I'll be joining Alice (and Steve Jansen) in the fantastic Milano Duomo, as part of an ambitious event which the organiser tells us 'sets out to combine poetry, film and music in interesting ways'.

In addition to my singing a duet with Alice, after one of the performers dropped out of the event, I've also been asked to do a reading from Keroauc's 'On The Road,' while improvised jazz provides an atmospheric backdrop to my cracked tones. My very English voice colliding with Kerouac's very American prose is admittedly a bizarre concept, but game for a laugh and making a friend of masochism yet again, I've decided to accept this very Italian equivalent of Mission Impossible.

What next, Sylvester Stallone reciting Shakespeare in the hallowed confines of Canterbury Cathedral?

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A productive meeting with One Little Indian in London on Wednesday made me realise how much I don't miss living in the City. Wandering around old haunts in the centre and in the South East, the place failed to make any kind of connection with me and I found it difficult to imagine how I'd spent 8 years of my life there.

The new Picking/Bowness music seemed to generate some positive reactions from the label people, but regardless of whether or not the responses were genuine, I was personally delighted with the way the songs sounded. Concise, emotive and at something of an unusual angle to the later No-Man material, my gut instinct was that these songs represented something unique and potentially lasting in terms of my ongoing work.

Returning home with a swag full of CDs, books and Jamaican patties, a feeling of tentative optimism hovered in the air.

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27th February:

With three more songs and four 'musical miniatures' completed over the last week, it's been a fairly productive time as regards the development of the prospective solo album, which now seems to be developing a strong and emotive identity of its own.

Lyrically, so far the work is combining the narrative touches of 'California, Norfolk' with the sense of personal expression that typified the songs on 'Together We're Stranger'. Perhaps the music also echoes this, being more robust and organic than 'C, N', but also being more concise than 'TWS'.

With the reclusive Mr Picking, the Lord and Stephen Bennett already strongly involved, contributions also look likely from Pat Mastellotto, Markus Reuter and Roger Eno (who co-wrote one of the miniatures).

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On Wednesday, I attended the media party for the launch of the Norwich & Norfolk Festival, which despite laudable intentions, seemed to have more to do with consuming champagne and quiche than celebrating Art. Preferring quiche to Brahms as I do, the journalists might just have a point.

The May 7th Burning Shed event (featuring myself, The Lord, Hugh Hopper, Theo Travis and Roger Eno) was respectably featured in the Festival brochure and, overall, the organisers have put together an intriguing and adventurous programme that includes Bill Bruford, Billy Cobham, Joe Zawinul, Keith Tippett and Stan Tracey amongst many others (www.n-joy.org.uk).

Book that holiday to Norwich now!

February 1st:

Saturday saw Centrozoon performing as a part of a festival of electronic music which also included UK band, Radio Massacre International (genuinely nice people making a fine noise in the style of the early-mid 1970s work of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze) and an intriguing Finnish band, Cartes Art Machine, featuring legendary local Jazz musician Juhani Aatlonen (Wigwam, Pekka Pohjola, Edward Vesala, Arild Anderson, Tasavalan Presidentte etc...).

The CAM created an impressive and original music that blended late-1960s Jazz and Rock experiment and European Classical chord voicings with a contemporary Ambient and electronic sonic awareness. Using several laptops and two bizarre self-made instruments, the end result justified the time they took in getting their complex sound right.

The ideal contrast between the three bands combined with the lovely venue, helpful people and excellent sound inspires Centrozoon to possibly its best trio performance ever.

Markus experiments with his new sampler and I integrate my voiceloops into the fabric of the group approach to good effect. An epic 'Bigger Space', intimate 'The Me I Knew' and a couple of good improvisations leave us, as well as the audience, wanting more. Visually accompanied by a large screen projecting the evocative black and white film 'Landed, 20x' by Telemach Wiesinger, the show looks as good as it sounds.

Interviewed and recorded by YLE (the Finnish equivalent to the BBC), a one hour Centrozoon special will be broadcast over the next fortnight.

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It's Sunday afternoon in Espoo, and after a record overnight snowfall of 30cm, along with Markus, Bernhard and Ola, I'm in a bare living room surrounded by wires and abandoned coffee cups. We're improvising textures with well-known Finnish avant-garde composer and author Petri Kuljuntausta (who enjoyed the Centrozoon performance of the previous night and suggested we meet up for a 'cosmic jam').

Outside, snow and icicles hang heavy on endless pine trees.

Inside, the music acts as a perfect mirror of the beautiful desolation around us.

January 30th:

It's 2am Helsinki time and despite being up since 5am, The Man Mountain, Die Mensch-Maschine and myself are led semi-willingly into a late-night disco by Tanya and her ten words of English. After enduring a half hour walk in sub-zero temperatures, we feel we deserve a break from the cold. Five more words of broken English later and we change our minds.

Earlier in the evening at a party held by Centrozoon's Finnish contact Ola, I'm in the unlikely position of sweating profusely, having overcompensated in the thermals department. Markus, who's committed the same mistake, also looks like a melting waxwork model. Providing a striking contrast to our Ranulph Fiennes arctic outfits, everyone else stands around casually in t-shirts and jeans speaking in five languages at once. Luckily, English is one of them.

Earlier still, the journey progressed unhindered by the constantly appalling weather. A pleasant train ride to Düsseldorf (featuring a cameo appearance from the legendary Captain Rock from Herzebrock) led to a featureless flight and a subsequent ride through the gritted streets of Helsinki.

Awash with pines and snow, Finland does an excellent job of looking like Finland should.

January 29th:

Escaping a snowbound, gridlocked country to fly to another snowbound, gridlocked country, doesn't make too much sense, but to compound the agony, I'm off to frosty Finland for four days on Friday (depending on whether there are still any flights leaving Germany, that is).

Saturday's performance in Helsinki will mostly consist of improvisations, interspersed with the occasional blast of light relief from the Centrozoon back catalogue of bright and breezy tunes (or suicidal dirges as they've been more accurately referred to on more than one occasion!).

Last night's rehearsal was a sometimes glorious clash of fractured beats, plastic noise and intriguing loops, and a sometimes Godawful racket.

Regardless, thermal-clad and replete with astonishngly stupid hats, the Centrozoon Arctic Symphony is in preparation for its auspicious debut.

On my return to the UK, full membership of Masochist's Anonymous undoubtedly awaits.

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A productive meeting with One Little Indian on Monday has meant that the next major project I intend to embark on is a full-scale solo album for the label. Hopefully, mostly in collaboration with the talented and reclusive sonic miserablist, David Picking (the Howard Hughes of post-Trip Hop), ideally the result will be something worthy of comparison with the recent No-Man albums, but sufficiently different to make its own mark.

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'The Butler' prepared the first album length edit of the 'voiceloops' project just in time for my trip to Germany.

Surprisingly coherent and perhaps more accessible than I'd imagined, encouraging responses from Markus (who singled out the two 'songloops') and Derek at OLI, suggest there's some life in the project yet.

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January 9th:

Nine days into the year and, bizarrely, No-Man have already had four tentative approaches regarding making a career-overview compilation album.

As, like Highlander, in the end there can only be one, we await the results of the subsequent bloodbath with interest.

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The saga of the forthcoming No-Man reissue of Flowermouth gets ever more complex and nasty, with three labels interested in releasing the album and two claiming ownership. It's leaving a bad taste of the mid-90s industry duplicity and disorganisation that I thought I'd left behind for good and paves the way for countless joyless phone calls and emails in the coming weeks.

More positively, amidst Mixmeister Modo's constant cries of, "Kunstwerk! Ist ein kunstwerk, ja," and Markus' satisfied moans, the new Centrozoon album (version 15.0!) was completed last night in Hanover. A 48 minute collection of the more melodic and atmospheric aspects of the trio work, the album shows a marked development from last year's EP.

Meanwhile back in Blighty, along with Stephen Bennett, I spent time editing the scandalous video for No-Man's 'Things I Want To Tell You' and reassessing various songs that may or may not make a prospective solo album I've been considering recording.

Strong collaborations with Rhinoceros, Mr Bennett, the Lord, Roger Eno, Hugh Hopper and Italy's Fjieri Group are still without a good home, and along with the forthcoming plans for the 'voiceloops' album and an acoustic piano and voice project, I'm hoping to find a coherent way of releasing some of the disparate musical strands together.

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The search for thermals over and done with, the Dustbuster becomes the new object of desire, with Joni's 'Mingus' and Fripp and Eno's 'No Pussyfooting' providing the perfect soundtrack for a dust proof world.

January 4th:

Booked to play at an event in Helsinki on the 31st of this month, so far 2004 holds the enchanting possibility of Centrozoon being collectively frozen to death in the wintry wastes of Finland (probably mid-song!).

As the closing images of Kubrick's 'The Shining' come to mind every ten minutes or so, the search for stylish thermal underwear and fur-free furry hats has suddenly become an overriding preoccupation.

'Ray Mears' Extreme Survival' becomes essential viewing.

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2003 in review:

For me, No-Man's 'Together We're Stranger' still represents the best work I've done, or at the very least the work that's closest to my idea of what I want to do with music. Simultaneously, expansive and intimate, electronic and organic, I think the album's combination of ambient experiment and emotive song-craft, will be difficult to better.

Despite some mixed performances, the increasingly inspired studio work saw Centrozoon end 2003 in style. With three very different albums almost ready for release, 2004 will be a crucially important year for the band.

Elsewhere, the collaborations with Hugh Hopper and Rhinoceros were exciting and produced some excellent work, while the Alice duets and Henry Fool recordings provided enjoyable experiences.

Bowness/Chilvers had a year of good live performances (particularly Toronto and the King Of Hearts) and interesting, ongoing studio sessions, including a couple of strong collaborations with Roger Eno.

With a collection of solo 'Voiceloops' nearly prepared and some ideas for an intimate piano/voice/accordion album currently under discussion, hopefully 2004 will throw up some intriguing new directions and releases.

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Now, back to Ray Mears!

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