It was a pleasure and a privilege to record at Philip Bagnall’s Eastcote Studios with the String Project on Sunday, especially with the man himself at the desk. (It was also a long hard day that might have fallen better for me not right before a full-time working week, but we’ll gloss over that). With some serious hard work, quite a lot of repeated takes and patching and a monumental amount of snacks and tea, we managed to do the raw tapes of three full tracks and the string parts to a fourth (other bits to be overdubbed later). Anyone reading this with experience of good-quality recording will know that’s a serious amount to achieve in one day! Hopefully it should give us enough material, with some we already have, to put together a CD we can self-release, so watch this space (not too eagerly – a lot of editing, mixing, mastering, cover designing, etc. needs doing in between!). And I managed to make myself a ‘business card’ (the proper ones are on order from Vistaprint) to leave on the pinboard, and leave my contact details with Philip, which feels like some proper professional networking (the email campaign starts in a couple of weeks).

Shame Mumford and Sons hadn’t managed to pack up their drumkit the night before, but what can you do? I dunno, yoof of today …