Ouch… no more?
Typing this with one hand… no, not because of that. I had a steroidal injection (okay, that sounds dirty too) in my wrist this morning, exactly 24 hours after seeing my new hand surgeon. To put this in context, I’d seen Dr Incompetent for two months or so without ever coming close to knowing what was wrong, let alone trying out a treatment. I won’t explain now what made him so bad, seeing as I’m typing with one hand and all. Next time maybe. Maybe once the injection has kicked in, I can get back to recording too. Lost a few kgs, but the past week has seen my weight loss stagnate, so back to walking the 7km to work. Better leave now…

Behind the Scenes #6 - Fiction
FICTION I sometimes go through phases where I try to write songs I could imagine a famous band or artist playing. Normally each artist gets one phase, then I move on - Weezer are an exception. I’ve tried to write a thousand Weezer songs in my life, with varying results. This was one of the success stories, I feel - even if it ended up sounding nothing like Weezer (much like Weezer themselves, these days). It began in 2008, I think, making it one of the most recently-penned tracks from ‘Battletech’. It was initially just the power chord verses, with a fairly monotone, wordless melody. T

Behind the Scenes #5 - Policies
POLICIES In the past couple of weeks, here in NZ there’s been a whole lotta love, no wait, the opposite - what’s that, hate? -  for a couple of politicians who were previously seen as being of multiple opposite sides of the political polygon, but have spent the last year in coalition - for reasons unknown to themselves. Or for power. Take your pick. Thing is, I had respect for at least one of them up until this week. Background alert: this part may bore non-New Zealanders. Feel free to skip to the next paragraph or 16 - promise, I will get to the song at hand eventually.  It d

Behind the Scenes #4 - Pakistan
PAKISTAN I say in the blurbs (and soon, hopefully, the interviews) I’m heavily influenced by Nirvana, yet no one seems to get it. People hear drum machines and think it’s synthpop, and/or hear distorted guitars and assume because they’re accompanied by drum machines, it’s Nine Inch Nails I’m ripping off. Whilst both assumptions aren’t entirely false, I think it’s a little lazy to write off just how much an effect Kurt Cobain’s songwriting has had on me. The first album I ever bought was Nirvana, Unplugged in New York. I’m not sure thereR

Behind the Scenes #3 - Images Of Bliss
IMAGES OF BLISS It’s no secret that ‘Battletech’ was frontloaded, which led to a few internal debates over whether to put the best ’songs’ at the beginning of the album, or go with what felt natural, soundwise; I aimed for a balance, which resulted in the first four songs sounding pretty much nothing like each other. So after the electro-psychedelic ‘The Purpose Of Man’ and new wave/industrial ‘Anti-Human Nous’, there’s ‘Images Of Bliss’ - which has survived its eight-year genesis surprisingly intact. I wrote the song in 2001, in tru