The best part of lockdown for me has been getting to experience all of the treasures which lie hidden just out of sight. In the case of Southside House, I must have run past it hundreds, if not thousands of times without venturing inside. Faint rumours of a vintage sale spread far enough to draw me out across Wimbledon Common this sunny afternoon to discover a magical place.

Adam, the owner, was kind enough to show me the music room, a gorgeous space complete with stunning acoustics. I hear they have a couple of concerts coming up in July- what a beautiful place to play this must be! Sadly the house is up for sale, so the future of musical events there is uncertain. I for one very much hope that it will be preserved. There are too few such venues in London these days.

What a classic tambourine! It instantly reminded me of David Ryder Prangley. I have a feeling he would love to shake this on stage with Rachel Stamp! Sadly it was not for sale!

This isn’t an antique but it certainly transported me back in time: the very first clarinet book I learnt with over thirty years ago! Seeing it in such surroundings made me feel older than I am….

After spending some time browsing the books and bric a brac I got to play football with the extremely energetic dog. Luckily both of us somehow managed to avoid breaking any of the lovely china on display.

It seems everywhere one looks in London these days there are endings. I could feel the emotion in selling so many mementoes of their family. Luckily I was able to give several items a new beginning in a good home….

Yes, you are right, this really is a vintage chamberpot. This will be my father’s new seat of honour! Also note the book, Letters of a Diplomat’s Wife. I’m particularly interested to read this one- a woman’s point of view from those times is rare to find!

This cute mirror is perfect for my dressing table.

Having been refused permission to buy modern matches in the supermarket without ID, it’s reassuring that I’m permitted to buy antique ones…. These will live in the studio with my Canarian lamp!

I’ve always wanted a tea set! And now I have two- this lovely teapot plus a beautiful gold one which is still in its box as I’m contemplating where it will live. (It’s not suitable for pussum antics….) Plus an original Sanatogen jar!

I hear they may be having another sale at some point soon, but I won’t be telling you when in case you beat me to it!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to my friend Camilo’s studio and picking his brain for plugin tips. 

He also very kindly lent me a spare Ghaita, which is exciting since mine cracked after a heavy recording session some years back and has never quite been the same!

Camilo is an exceptionally chilled out dude but deceptively organised.  Having spent far too long at Anarres comfortably immersed in my own chaos I was shocked to see that unlike me he does not have a web of purple cables placed at the entrance to his control room to entrap unsuspecting humans. 

Also, you can see the desk. Not only that, there is room for a visitor to put their laptop on it (!). That’s before you even get started on the relative states of our actual DAW sessions. 

So rather than cracking on with plugin related productivity for Episode Eight on my return I decided that it was absolutely essential to sort out the bear trap first. Do I hear you cry “Procrastination!”? Well, you’d be absolutely right. After trekking through the Cable Forest of Faff I thought I’d maximise the work avoidance even further and write this blog about my experiences before getting started on the actual day’s tasks….

The Great Cable Dance

1) Wake full of good intentions and tidy thoughts. Tidy studio, tidy mind. My brain may short circuit but that should not affect my office. Right? 

2) Unplug everything. Half way through remember that it might be a good idea to try and do this in some sort of order to avoid tripling the existing chaos. Especially given that they are all purple. Too late. 

3) Get half way through replugging everything and discover one cable is mysteriously missing. 

4) Where the eff has the bloody thing gone? 

5) Empty out all random cable receptacles throughout the house, including that ten year old paper bag from a now defunct Parisian clothing shop containing three varieties of historic Nokia chargers. (Which I will obviously need when the zombie apocalypse comes, right?) No joy.

6) Bout of gratuitous swearing

7) Collapse in chair. Cats pounce on me and start trying to eat one end of the cable still clutched in my hand.

8) Existential wail time. “Whyyyyy does this always happen to meeeee?”

9) Remember that this is why I never, NEVER tidy the control room. Insight is finally achieved. I also remember the second law of thermodynamics and curse my impulse to fight fundamental principles of Physics. Always stick to the Golden Rule. Which in this case is: if it is plugged in, and working, thou shalt not on any account mess with it.

10) Submit to the natural order of things and get on Amazon, order two replacements just in case I feel like tidying the studio again sometime. Return to what I should have been doing two hours ago. 

You think this has been a waste of time, don’t you? But I am proud to say that I can now see my desk. 

A few weeks ago I had that rare lockdown experience- the opportunity to hang out with real people in a real place! Not only that, I got to dress up in a catsuit and howl at a virtual moon. This was a lot of fun, with the marked exception of the four inch heels and resulting foot torture, admittedly entirely my own fault! I hear some people pay for that sort of thing. If you’re one of them, feel free to borrow those boots- permanently! They are easier on the eyes than on the feet. 

Anyway, this is the result! Just Like In A Movie is the result of a collaboration with my dear friend and devilishly talented guitarist Dave Winkler for his band Star Circus which is out today. I recorded the sax parts at my studio, Anarres, last year. Dave and Tony Wilson have worked their magic on them and produced something amazing I would never have dreamed of. It is absolutely and wonderfully Dave, from Sophie Aurelia Young‘s funky zombie choreo to the strong anti-romance message. 

I must also thank the eternally glamorous Miss Fortune, who not only puts in an amazing performance in the video but also found time to enlighten me on the true, deadly nature of split ends, without which I would probably be entirely bald now. I had been planning to abandon hairdressers entirely and go full hippy, but it turns out that if you don’t get a trim the split ends can travel all the way up to your scalp, leaving you with….no hair!! I’ve never booked a haircut faster. 

Dave is also the person who introduced me to the wonderful David Ryder Prangley, one of the most highly creative people in the known universe. David always makes the catchiest songs and films the most wonderful cinematography. He recently released this amazing music video for his song Hello, to which I contributed backing vocals. This is particularly nostalgic as it was recorded partly at  Unit 2 Studios, the physical version of which exists now only in imagination. The track was mixed by the wonderful Drew. Check out this demon dream now!

There’s more coming from David and Dave soon as they both have albums on the way. 

This is of course all a little different to my recent output with Spiral Dial. A friend recently asked me why I have ‘stopped making songs’. Which I didn’t really understand, as I continue to make, and have always made, music. For me all of the projects I do are different aspects of one huge surreal musical playground. As a young child I could be found singing Ave Maria at weddings, performing classical recorder concertos with full orchestra, lurking in the pit of a musical theatre production and improvising witch songs with my brothers in the back of a Daihatsu van. 

I like to think I have taken this comprehensive training forward into my adult musical life. So far this has included:

• performing Messiaen in a church so cold that finger sensation was entirely lost by the end of the first movement
• making up lyrics to soft rock classics performed with a novel chord structure at a bicycle helmet promotional dinner in Slough
• improvising an a cappella recorder and cornet duet (thanks Marcus Hamblett for sticking with me on this one….) to a highly bemused crowd during a synth crash at Roskilde festival
• singing Fuck Her Gently in place of the best man’s speech at my bandmate’s wedding reception 
• squatting in fishnet tights and a tutu while singing about terrible one night stands
• improvising full hour long shows based on poems about panda dreams.

I have played gigs with more than ten thousand people in the audience and fewer than ten, sometimes within the same week. I’m also able to polish off pretty much anyone’s rider, especially if it includes cake or chocolate mousse. The Just Like In A Movie shoot involved late night vegan pizza- Dave has excellent taste in video fuel! 

So I hope you enjoy this rock interlude and all the stops on the musical journey to come! I don’t know what’s coming, and that’s just how I like it….

DISCLAIMER: I’m unlikely to take up the ukulele anytime soon. Apart from that, all bets are off. 

“She’s my favourite female artist!”

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. International Women’s Day. I won’t name the BBC radio DJ who uttered this classic piece of patronising tosh live on air last Saturday night. My inbox has been deluged with female fronted masterclasses, women only playlists, tributes to women composers, in fact every form of tokenism you can think of.

Oh but, I hear you say, isn’t it good that female artists are getting a smidgeon of attention? Shouldn’t we all just be grateful for what we are given? Grateful for one day. Out of three hundred and sixty five. Not only that, it seems that even on International Women’s Day we don’t seem to be capable of refraining from making value judgements on art based solely on the gender of its creator. 

On the live circuit it’s even worse. It doesn’t seem to matter which country you play in, there is a universal assumption that if you are caught near a stage in possession of a pair of tits you must be either a) someone’s girlfriend, b) someone’s assistant or c) intent on sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend. If I had a pound for every astonished man congratulating me on being able to play my own musical instruments after a show, I could have retired twenty years ago. 

This is even more maddening for me as I actually identify as agender, although I’m painfully aware that society at large has me pegged as a woman. I knew something was up when I was turned away from the Scouts aged seven. Fast forward a decade to my university Physics lectures and I became one of only a select few students with boobs. Evidently I “think like a man, but look like a woman.” I’m still not sure whether this is meant to be a compliment, or indeed what it actually means.

We are all so intent on putting people into boxes. I’ve often wondered what this compulsive categorisation is all about, but now I understand that it is about power. Labelling a being gives you the power to make assumptions about it, the ability to reassure yourself that you know how to react to it, how to survive in a hostile world.

Yet nature’s true beauty is its ability to create an infinite variety of forms from incredibly simple fundamental rules. From the glittering crystals of a shattered geode to the glorious symmetry of a tree, all that complexity is underpinned by the inexorable geometry of fractals. 

Simpler still, the first law of thermodynamics is the closest I have ever come to appreciating religion. There is a great comfort in the idea that none of the energy in the universe is ever wasted, just changed from one form into another. Death is merely the doorway to another form of being. 

Deep down, all of us are the same. I hope I live to see a world where we are all celebrated for who we are, rather than the boxes we can tick. 

PS If you’d like to read and listen to some of my work you can check it out here.