December and January has been a busy time for the Hackney Colliery Band  - I even spent my 30th birthday holed up in a studio in deepest north west London, which was not how I'd anticipated my 30s would start. Still, the studio itself is superb and is one of the few still to record to tape, and by a bizarre coincidence the tape that we were recording over contained the masters of my friend Darren Hayman's band Hefner's album We Love the City.

HCB are working on our debut album and second single (out soon on Wah Wah 45s), so there's been rehearsals, recordings, and enough admin to overload the Chinese civil service. 

Still, all this prep work now will hopefully yield some exciting times for the band in 2011; lots of stuff in the pipeline. Will of course report here, but in the meantime head over here to join the Facebook group for all the latest news.