On January 18th I collaborated with Darren Hayman as part of his 'January Songs' project. Darren is writing and recording a new song every day in January, an enterprise as impressive as it is insane.

18 The Return by Darren Hayman

It was great collaborating on a track with him; Darren had written a short story that we recorded at my place, along with some crunchy electric piano and muted, sometimes angular trumpet stuff.

Was a great day and a nice chance to play around with some stuff on Ableton, which (if you’re interested) I recently upgraded to the version with all the bells and whistles, hence the nice crunchy electric piano which we designed on the day. Darren, very wisely, wanted to keep it stripped-down though, so had to constantly fight the urge to play with the electronic gubbins that I’ve been experimenting with recently. Here's the result:

I really admire Darren’s willingness to explore different genres (had lots of chat about obscure ECM albums) and his desire to push himself outside his comfort zone. He’s produced lots of lovely stuff over the month, with a video diary and music videos to accompany most of the tracks. I strongly urge you to check it out.