The day to-day journal / diary seems inappropriate for this last week. After having reviewed it, it reads as if I’ve become a kind of unofficial spokesman for the band – which is bollocks quite frankly, as this is obviously not the purpose. That may be the knock-on effect of having 'Select' magazine print some of it up. You know you can get a bit too self-conscious in this business and forget why you initially shared something. And what were those reasons? A mixed bag really, a bit of an attempt to de-mythologise this whole process of making a new record. It might be of interest to some to hear from one of the horses' mouths (or arses) what is going on with us. And it’s actually pretty interesting for us if only to reassure me/ourselves that there are patterns which emerge, only when documented in the way we work; that ensures you don’t get too down when things aren’t going to plan.

A lot of this week was spent setting up. The right environment to work is crucial. If your going to attempt to do anything vaguely different, then your surroundings have to reflect that. Equally so, what has become increasingly evident is the need to change our approach to recording on a lot of the songs. The approach or set-up is crucial. For instance the way we worked on the last record was to rehearse everything up to such a standard, where most of the parts have been so finely tuned, that recording was largely a matter of capturing the best performance. And that’s fine, but recording in this way tends to mean that the songs have a certain way of sounding, i.e. – pretty good in a live/band context.

Well that’s not enough now, and I think there is a feeling that unless we change our approach then we're just going to become (?) of ourselves and ever so dull. There was a wonderful moment this week when we were all crowded round the TV watching this programme documenting the story of hip-hop; and it was the classic years from ’86 through to ’92 with RUN DMC, Public Enemy and NWA, etc. Some of the greatest records ever made. And they interviewed Hank Shouclee – he was the fella who produced Public Enemy in the early days – and made the great 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions...' album. And he was explaining their methodology – the way they recorded. Basically they all set-up with samplers, Devo, drum machines in the same room and recorded. Now most of it, he said, sounded like a mess, but apparently there were great moments, that were then cut up and from that the basic track was constructed. The effect of hearing this was like 'Well, why the fuck can’t we do this?' – it could be so exciting. We have the means to make a communal racket so why not harness some of this technology and use it within our own sphere. I mean we’re not going to make a hip-hop record, much as we’d like to, but what was exciting was the idea that kind of approach, or something similar offered us a necessary alternative to the way that we have largely worked until now.

Once we have done this then we might really get somewhere.

"we’re smashing our heads against the wall"

"this week we have been mostly working on optimistic"

"it would be ideal to finish optimistic"

"lets just do the end and edit onto the original take"

"the drums for Rachael’s songs sound like nothing else"

"Jonny, how the fuck did you manage to get them sounding like that?"

"oh yeah"

"I’ve been doing this all afternoon and need to get out"

"I can’t play that on this guitar"

"gorgeous smell in here, Nigel"

"Eddy and I like the mach 3"

"I really like the late roll, the long one"

"It’s not as sleazy as the one before"

It’s Friday yet Tuesday feels like yesterday – have we finished optimistic? No. And it could be tempting to abandon it in favour of starting something new. But then we know we aren’t to far away. We must see this thing through if for no other reason that it’s needed confidence.

phil is presently putting down drums on 'how to disappear' - we're doing a demo of the song to present the song to an 'orchestral fella'. we've kind of shirked away from strings in the past as they seem to have been recorded in the same manner for the last 30 years (ever since the beatles). jonny is particularly keen to use an orchestra but not in the standard cliched way........more like the end of 'climbing up the walls'. thom's vocal on it was jaw-dropping. it's very strange to be playing that song again as we played it frequently on the ok computer tour.......................... suddenly you're back there.

i've also included a couple of bits from the last six weeks.

if you haven't heard 'hunky dory' in a while i suggest you give it a spin - sounds pure genius to me in the bath.

-i've tried to write something about what we've been doing in the last five weeks - there have been the day-by-day accounts which have been of the 'we did this and then we did that' variety..........all incredibly boring to read. then there have been a couple of 'essays' written whilst stoned late at night, only to be re-read the next morning. pretensious old tosh. all have been discarded. it's easy to get extremely self-conscious doing this. we're in london at present and nigel is mixing; he has been for three days. which means that we have actually finished six or so tracks. this has been our life for the last five weeks - we had a list of about ten songs which was then further narrowed down to six. they are definitely different....................there's an eight piece brass ensemble in a charles mingus style on one - eight 'jazzers' came down for the day and blew their stuff all over 'everyone - the national anthem'. they were fantastic............thom and jonny conducted. what a day. there's 'optimistic', there's another which started off as a thom doodle on the 505........there's also the paris version of 'lost at sea'.........the batsford 'morning bell'.it is different. but that's what we do. what has also become evident is that the summer panic that led to two months rehearsal may have been a little premature.....or at the very least a little on the hysterical side.there was some good stuff recorded in paris, copenhagen and batsford. i've been listening to alot of the copenhagen tracks and out-takes and the overall sound is great. pretty dark but then that session was hardly a chuckle-trousered affair.

more work on 'how to disappear'... after phil did his drums last night, jonny came up with an outrageous martenot part - multitracked it sounds like the string section from mars. jonny has this uncanny ability to bring in weird chords, that at first distract you but after a couple of listens completely make sense...it's just a matter of getting on his planet. brilliant. coz and i tied up our respective bits and it's sounding fairly complete. not bad for a demo. thom was immersed in protools/cubase land in the other studio. the song now has a really strong arrangement and the rhythm track is pumping...........onwards to friday.

this diary is long overdue - sorry - i'm not sure why it's been so hard to post something. alot of it probably has something to do with the way that we have been working over the last six or so weeks.tracks have had to be completed and approached in new ways so that up until last week we hadn't actually played together in a room since thom's b/day in early october. so at times the process has felt quite disparate but then that's part of being in the studio.

so hopefully this is now going to be a daily update.

last day and like school we didn't do any work.....had a chat about what we wanted to do next year, vis-a-vis gigs and recording. finished off the day with xmas dinner, completely ruined by the fact that there were only four crackers to go around the eight of us.

hope you have a relaxing xmas and new year.........and if it is bollocks, be assured that you are not the only one having a shitty time. it's the time when most families break up...........xmas after all is for the high street................if it was to celebrate the birth of christ they got it wrong. xmas was an old pagan festival and christ was supposed to have been born around september time. here endeth the lesson. bah humbug.

i have just had a thought........still excited by last thursdays live webcast .and thinking about ways it could be developed......i think it could be very cool to play new stuff by unsigned bands, musicians, collectives (ie bands not on major labels - small indie is fine).if any of you are making music, have mates that are or you just think that this music that you are in to deserves to be heard then send it into me at our po box address, which is po box 322, oxford, ox4 1ey. i like all kinds of shit so please don't just send in guitar band stuff. anything. spread the word. alright that's enough for now. happy xmas... and a very merry millenium.....

happy new year and many many thanks to all you lovely cardsenders.

i think we all arrived at the studio with that same dread of starting where we left off.to plough back into the old tracks seemed like a daunting task. nigel suggested a different plan of action to ease us back into it over the next couple of weeks. the idea was to spend this time working in a completely different way; no acoustic instruments ie any guitars,drums or vocals......everything has to be electronically generated. it means that we can't fall back on what we've done before and forces us to work this equipment. it's actually an incredible amount of fun - which is not something we've had in abundance over the last year or in studios in general. we've been working on four 'bits' and because they are fairly abstract it will be interesting to review it in a few weeks. the important thing is that you are constantly learning even if something doesn't necessarily work out. and actually it's something we've been meaning to do for a while. again it's the need to change the methodology in how you actually make the music - only by doing this will we actually produce stuff that sounds any different. and conversely by finding another approach to recording, it enthuses us in the way that we've worked together as a 'live' band. the rehearsals last week were fantastic precisely because we had not picked up those instruments and recorded them.

this week we have cast the experimental net further afield to include material like 'true love waits' and 'feeling pulled apart by horses'. the former has been kicking around for about four years now and each time we approached it we seemed to be going down the same old paths.........it actually sounds like the start of something exciting now.

did an interesting band version of 'bombers' which thom has attached to what i used to call 'the neil young' song...we may play it some time later this evening.

thankyou to everyone who sent in their demos......maybe i was a little naive to assume that a handful of people would send in theirs' or others' offerings......what i realise has happened is that various publications and radio stations have visited this diary and announced that radiohead are embarking on a fucking talent search or something. bastards. it's probably pay-back time for being miserable and contrary on our last round of interviews.....anyway i've started going through it and will listen to it all, eventually. it's actually very interesting as it strikes me from what i've listened to so far that there are alot of really good musicians out there, but what distinguishes the good from the not so good is having taste. ie for instance you could be simply red (apologies for the easy target) and send in a demo and i'm always going to think it's totally shit in spite of its technical 'proficiency'. having said that there's little that sounds like that. but what i'm saying in an around-about way is that it doesn't matter if i don't think something's that good; if you really love what you're doing then that is all that matters........there is absolutely no point in making music that you think will help you to get signed..........second-guessing what people want to hear is a completely fruitless exercise as it is almost completely impossible to predict what people want to hear; by the time people actually get to hear that music it's more than likely that it's old-hat and most importantly you will never stumble upon something that is truly fresh and exciting.

want to try and finish the bulk of what we've started, which may sound obvious but there you go.......so had what seemed like a pretty unfruitful day on 'how to disappear'.......try and get it away from that band thing with an acoustic guitar, which may have been alright when we were making the bends, but let's face it has been done to death by both us and every tom, dick and harry guitar band. went down a few cul-de-sacs.........all part of the process.

today however has been a quite different affair. still on the same song. jonny found the one chord thing; it's to be played by the strings(to be recorded soon).....in fact jonny has spent much of the last two weeks scoring and arranging strings in his room; which is a huge undertaking as 24 string players are going to be playing precisely what he has scored and these people are professionals....thom has this evening just done a wonderful vocal and the song is beginning to go another way. bad day, good day, good cop, bad cop.

had a funny old meeting last friday..............definitely nursing a hangover from it today.................

nigel was sidetracked last week by 'cuttooth' so he really really wants to do some mixing this week. 'egyptian song' then..........thom plays bass and it sounds pretty much finished. i haven't really been involved in this song so when i hear it i think i'm able to be fairly objective about it.........it has the feel of one of the tracks on the last mark hollis album and it is definitely one of the highlights so far. meanwhile downstairs...................jonny and i are let loose on fucking up phil's drum sound. hours of fun as coz might say. starts off by phil doing some drums on 'kinetic'...................keep getting that ground hogday sensation writing this diary. can't help feeling that this must be an exceptionally boring read except to maybe the diehard muso............