Firstly, thanks for taking the time to visit my new site and subscribe to the
information mailing list. Apologies to anyone who got the Mansun mailing list
message the other day and was confused because it implied that this message
had already been sent - obviously, it hadn't, because here it is now. If you
have any problems reading it, subscribing, unsubscribing etc., please do let
my webmaster (Dave Nattriss) know, so he can help you out and/or make sure it
works better next time. I'm hijacking the list of addresses from the 'info'
list for the time being to start my egotistical and megalomaniacal recording
diary, detailing my writing struggles and other such tragic tales of artistic
woe (so if you were already on the 'info' list before yesterday, you've now
been added to the Paul Draper diary mailing list). It's also so I don't have
to post acres of inane drivel about myself on a web page - not yet anyway!

I've been scratching my head for ages thinking about what to write in this
diary, and so I'm going to use it to describe the writing and making of an
upcoming project, in detail, all the way to its conclusion, and then you can
actually hear what I've come up with at the end. I've not done a round of
interviews for a while and I appreciate that people subscribing to these
lists will want to know what I've been up to, and what I'm up to now - i.e.
is there any music coming? Well, the answer to that is... yes, I'm in the
middle of a project right now, which I'll describe in this diary over the
next few months, from the writing, demo-ing and recording sessions, up until
the project's complete, and then you'll get to hear it for yourself, if you
want to!

I thought long and hard about whether I should start this diary, because with
other artists they're usually of "thank you to my awesome fans for buying the
record" ilk, or the other favourite, "woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb
across my head" what-I've-been-doing-today crap. It sort of disturbs me that
people have Internet diaries and blogs, talking about themselves for all to
read, but here I am doing it. So if I'm going to do it, then I'm going to do
it properly - very existential! It'll be a record of the making of my current
project and other stuff I'm up to musically, as opposed to "don't look at me,
I'm shy, I'm really boring sitting here writing my Internet diary to
thousands of people". I'm not sure how long ago it was I last posted
something on the Mansun website, or if I even did, but this is effectively my
first diary entry as my own entity, technically anyway.

So, the first part of the story - "I quit... I'm not a number, I'm a free..."
etc. "I'm going on a writing trip" (that's me in speech marks!).

Briefly: writing trip; put 'Kleptomania' together from the fourth album
tapes; worked with ex-Skunk Anansie singer Skin; put together the 'Best Of'
thing with Parlophone; retrieved songs from writing trip; wrote new songs!;
built studio; started making demos; woke up this morning, in that order, ish.

After returning from the U.S. very brown and twenty pounds heavier, I put
together the tapes for 'Kleptomania'. It was very strange listening back to
them. Prior to mastering the record, I was pulled between releasing something
that was unfinished, and letting down the people who wanted to hear something
(that was unfinished). Overall I thought it was only a record of a batch of
aborted recordings, and so for that it was interesting enough to release. I
like the songs, they're a good record of the time for me personally, and I
like th em a lot more now than I did at the time - I guess it's that
'perspective' thing. 'Good Intentions Heal The Soul' is probably my favourite
song of that session, and I have a soft spot for 'Harris', as the version on
the record is Chad and I doing a quick live run-through - not realising at
the time it would be about the last thing we worked on together for a while.

Once 'Kleptomania' was finished I met up with the singer, Skin. I knew her
through someone at EMI from a while back. Skin wanted to make a rockier
record than her first solo album and was looking for someone to write with -
sounded good to me! So off we went and wrote about nine or ten songs, and we
had some great times in Ibiza writing together. Some sparks for songs were
from her ideas, some were from mine and in the end it was a team effort that
made the album, with Skin also writing some good songs with her long-time
writing partner Len, and also writing with Dan Wilson from Semisonic, a nd
Linda Perry who wrote 'Beautiful' for Christina Aguilera.

After that I went along with Skin and her band to do pre-production for the
album at a studio in London. I recorded what was going on during these
sessions for quite a few weeks and these became the demos for the album,
which were to be produced by Gordon Raphael of The Strokes fame. One track
stood out for me as being really immediate - 'Alone In My Room' - so Skin and
I produced that version of the track during thos e sessions for inclusion on
the album, and it was released as a download-only single last November.
Speaking of which, the full album, 'Fake Chemical State', came out in the UK
this week, so you can check it out if you want to hear what I've been up to
with her.

Back to my new project... I listened through the tracks I have for it this
morning and I'm really happy with about nine 'things' that I have, as they're
all in different states of disrepair at the moment. I know they'll evolve
further - they always do. I always do this - keep changing bits around in the
arrangements of the songs. The lyrics always evolve right to the last minute
as well, so titles change, even sections change. They'll probably all change
or evolve eventually, and I don't know where to exactly. On previous projects
I've always lost perspective once I'm working on the songs in the studio, and
this one is no different. I'm at this stage where I just go with the feel of
what moves me. At first I wasn't 100% sure where these songs were heading
for, I didn't know how I was going to record them, and in what direction I'd
record them in. As it happens, the circumstances of me working alone have
dictated the arrangements and direction of the songs.

I've even worked out now that I usually like about one in four songs that I
write myself. So the more songs I'm writing, the more stuff I end up dumping
so as not to repeat the same old, same old. The other three out of the four
songs that I don't like myself go into my song purgatory - a sort of tape
store with stuff going back years that just sits there eternally, but I keep
hold of all of them anyway. Sometimes I wonder if I put a project together
with all the stuff from purgatory, would it be better that the stuff I
finally settled on to release? Who knows, but purgatory is being closed down
soon by the Pope anyway - he mu st have realised that keeping dead babies'
souls in an imaginary boring waiting room for eternity wasn't such a good
idea. Anyway, I digress...

So the one out of the four songs, as a rule of thumb, that I'm liking at the
moment, started out as an electronic-only project, but as it's gone on, I've
ended up re-doing a couple of the songs with drums, bass and guitars, as I've
settled more into the idea of working predominantly alone. I'm now seeing
what the original electronic versions of the songs sound like, in the
complete opposite direction to where I have them now, but I don't really have
a clue which direction is better, or which direction I want to go in... so
there's nothing unusual there! I'm just going to keep on going as I am with
these songs, and if things are a bit 'varied' then that's OK. Eventually I
may lean heavily in one direction or the other, but that's once things are
further on down the line. It seems like I've been in the middle of a writing
stint for ages now, but without a band the writing and making of demos seems
to blur into one, where I would get an idea then finish it before playing it
i n with a band. That's where Chad's been helping me out - on the recording
of the backing tracks, fleshing out ideas, which is pretty much how we've
always worked anyway. Chad has played a bit of bass and guitar while I've
been covering the other stuff.

Some of the songs we've recorded were from a writing trip I had in the U.S. I
spent some time in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, and I went to
Nashville and Memphis as well. I haven't gone all country and western though,
and I don't intend to wear a cowboy hat ever again, but it was something I'd
always wanted to do and had aborted before, so it was a good time to get out
there on a sort of musical busman's holiday, hanging around the music scenes
of each town. New Orleans had by far the best - not the Bourbon Street
venues, but just on the edges of the French Quarter, where there are some
amazing little venues with great contemporary jazz and blues bands every
night, and loads of great old-boy blues guitarists, who all used to play with
the Neville Brothers at some point or another. After being there just a few
nights I bumped into a guy in a bar who was watching this great girl jazz
singer. After talking about how great the singer was it turns out he was a
big English music fan, so I had someone to show me around. I loved being in
and around this town's music scene - I learned a lot and I got a lot of
writing done in New Orleans. It did what I wanted it to do, helped me change
direction in my writing. It was tragic to see the hurricane strike, I hope
the city recovers.

I left New Orleans, across the Louisiana swamps to Memphis. In Memphis, I did
the obligatory trips to Sun Studios and Graceland - it was very strange
standing next to Elvis, dead in his grave. Nobody was really about at that
point. I did fancy doing some Spinal Tap harmonising, but it was really,
really moving as I've always loved Elvis. I only wanted to see the jungle
room really - Elvis's base in the basement. Very cool, but a bit too retro
though. The music scene in Memphis was too commercial, no real gravity of a
scene like in Nashville. I love Jimmy Webb, but if I hear 'Rhinestone Cowboy'
one more time...! "Nashville is a country-only town, boy"! Well that's what
everybody told me, so I spent a few days writing something there that was
completely un-country, then left. Stupidly, I decided to drive to San
Francisco. Four weeks later I arrived... but that's another story. Haight
Astbury is like the cavern quarter in Liverpool - nothing left - but there
were some great bands in the smaller venues around the Bay area and I got a
lot of inspiration just being in San Francisco, because it's one of my
favourite places.

Just having the freedom to be a writer and drive from city to city without
the constraints of the deadlines of being in a band during this trip were
enough to dictate my writing direction, and give me a new direction for my
next project. I'm still ploughing through the material I accumulated on it. I
stopped in a lot of great music cities in the U.S. like Austin in Texas,
which particularly stands out, but I'll tell you about them and the songs I
wrote in them another time, when you can hear them. I could feel my writing
style change over the months in the States, and become a bit more acoustic
and laid-back. Eventually the songs dried up in the U.S. and so I came back
to England to write.

So that's brought me to this point, where I now have a load of songs for my
own project. Some of the working titles so far are 'Grey House', 'Lying About
Who We Sleep With', 'Annie', 'Feel Like I Wanna Stay, Feel Like I Wanna Go?',
'My Life's Repeating, Again', 'Be My, Be My...' and 'Can You Ever Trust
Another'.

As for other music, I've been listening to the new album by The Open
recently, which has got some great tracks on it, and I'm still playing the
Bloc Party album a lot. I've also been rotating Antony And The Johnsons,
Outkast (still), The Fallout Trust, Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys (obviously),
and my oldies... Neil Young, various Beatles and The Who, Bowie, 'London
Calling' [The Clash], Prince, The Smiths and 'Transformer' [Lou Reed]
(still!!!).

I'd love to bore you some more but, overdubs are needed. Shit, I didn't know
I could go on for so long!? Anyway, I've been sent through some Q and A's for
some fansites, and I'm doing them at the moment (so don't worry, I'll send
them to you very soon). I'll go into a lot more detail about the songs we're
working on at the moment (some from my trip and some that I've written
recently) in my next diary entry - how we're recording them, where they're
from and what they're about etc., and anything else I can think of, in the
next gripping instalment of 'the diary'. Fuck, I'm a 'me-journalist'
already...

Paul