Unpeeled.

Have you heard of it? Music review site, Unpeeled is, by all accounts, rather credible. Properly so. It’s read, for one thing.

But it’s unusual in one respect: It has reviewed Sweetseeker by that bloke from Momo:tempo.

And it appeared to like it.

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I’ve had a fairly jolly morning, I should say. I spent it with one new piece of music ringing around my head on loop as I finished a mix for a radio ad for Thinking Juice. An almost daftly happy, breezy, borderline-camp affair, full of rich swooping strings – courtesy of Mr Pete Whitfield once again, who has brought the whole thing to life with his spot-on-first-time takes which I was dropping in over breakfast.

This put a huge jolly smile on my face. When you hear some version of Third Floor, Love Department posted on the Momo site, you’ll know why – as Caroline deftly put it earler: “It’s a sort of cross between Are you being served and Love Boat”.

Well, quite.

I should feel some shame about this I suspect. But instead, of course, I think I nailed it.

Thing is, something else dropped in over breakfast which also put a huge jolly smile on my face, which the jollyness of Third Floor, Love Department seemed simply to score aptly.

It was an email. From Shane O’Leary, erstwhile proprietor of Unpeeled. Giving me the heads up on his review and pointing me to his site. I learned later, from new Head Of Music PR at Momo, Virginia, that this is something he only bothers to do if he, y’know, really likes what he’s reviewed.

Yes. Likes it.

My work.

And there I am while reading his über-hip missive listening to a cross between Are you being served and Love Boat.

But let’s hope the good Mr O’Leary never hears that, eh. He currently seems to be under the impression that…

[I can’t bring myself to type it. It makes such little sense…]

..Momo:tempo is credible.

..!

You can see the review in action here (scroll down a bit) or read the body of it below.

Jeepers, Misses. Read those words.

And yes. I have a PR department. And so far, she’s made this happen already. Fill you in a little more soon.

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UNPEELED.NET

MOMO:TEMPO: “Sweetseeker” (Momo Creative)

RELEASED? 13th September.
SOUNDS LIKE? There are parts of London populated almost entirely by people who believe
that Nathan Barley is a drama series. These people will believe that Momo Tempo looks great, but sounds like crap. We, on the other hand know that Nathan Barley is an underrated slab of irony and that while Momo Tempo looks pretty rough, he sounds gorgeous. This is a sonic manifesto that boldly announces an intention to deceive, “I’m feeling sly” is the drawl of the micro second for the batteringly busy ‘Toffee Mix’ of the jazz-funk reconceived by the dancing robots of “Sweetseeker”. All, you may think, very nice, but “The Golden Age Of Exploration” grinds it to dust with a cybernetic Stevie Wonder workout.

IS IT ANY GOOD? When passion, obsession and sheer, fucking naughtiness collide with tip-top clever bastard business, it’s going to be great and it is.

Nomardy.

A week in France can be very good for the heart and very bad for the arteries.

What’s bad for both is attempting moving house.

Back from hols in the good Gallic countryside, in a friendly corner of extended Normandy called the Mayenne, I am facing a new week that I always knew could be a bit of a mardy / merdey one. For, in principle, this is the week we move house.

In principle, it will be the first time that Momo has ever been unplugged and relocated. In principle therefore, it is the week I say goodbye to the blessed Arnewood Studio.

Ripping the needle from the swelling Elgar as heartfelt reflections rise on this matter, I am instead facing the tiny and desperately boring matter of whether I should or should not book people to help us stand an earthly chance of moving our entire worldly life to a new space on Friday.

On FRIDAY.

And still we don’t know if we can exchange.

Oh dear Lord how can something so dull be so freeeeeaking teeth-grinding?

Never mind a week of smelly Camembert and two bottles of fab French blonk a night, my heart’s more likely to arrest trying to stay chilled about HOW BLOODY LONG ALL THIS IS TAKING WITHOUT US KNOWING IF WE REALLY ARE GOING TO MOVE BLOODY HOUSE OR WHETHER SOME FREAK BLOODY THING WILL STOP US AT THE LAST BLOODY MINUTE.

Readers in Pakistan may wish to send me, by return, letters and messages of perspective-giving, to help take my mind off the sickening introspection.

Meanwhile, I am apparently charged with being creative today. Retakes for a couple of score ideas and a magazine and some websites or somesuch to be looked at.

Think I might just get back in the car and keep driving.

Because if people call me back today and say we’re actually completing our ruddy Vente on Vendredi, then the semaine’s insanity will really begin.

It’s 8.30am and I think it seems reasonable to have a drink to help my mental santé.

—

19.

So here we are. One short of a very full sounding number indeed.

An ignoble digit, you might say; how do you celebrate it? I don’t think a romantic anniversary dinner for two would be enhanced by Paul Hardcastle’s 1980s pop oddity about the Vietnam War. Though I think some mix of it or other was probably still in the charts when the good woman I now live with tied the knot with me that day in the summer of 1991.

For yes, today is our wedding anniversary. Bless me, but how young were we?

Not young enough to be stopped, evidently. But I still don’t feel old enough to know better. It still seems like it was a really very good idea. Perhaps my last one.

I can live with that.

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