I can’t believe it. Can you? An entire year since I put out Thespionage. Seems like a couple of months back, but I think it’s taken me a year to recover. So what shape’s the future taking for Momo next?

 

Well, it’s been an especially random time since that brilliant summer of 2015, full of individual projects and creative work keeping the wolf from the door in none-too-distressing ways and keeping me entertained as I ponder the next big thing. Shenanigans that included my daft Eurovision shot, of course – and I’m not sure that, in the end, Rescue could have, ah, really competed with Jamala’s heartfelt and nailbiting win with 1944 , it was the very deserved winner and a very nice sock in the eye to one of its larger and more contentious neighbours. Though the nice lads from the UK, Joe & Jake deserved a far better placing than third from last, doing as they did, a nice job of placing the UK squarely in the feels with all other contenders in Stockholm that night. Though the real winners were, of course, Mans and Petra, Sweden’s hosts, who delivered the undoubted winning entry with Love Love Peace Peace and whose wit and showbiz chops I now wish was a regular Eurotrashy fixture on my tele-visuo wall.

So one of the ‘creative’ things I’ve evidently been doing recently is intently watching the Eurovision. Sure. Tell us more about that, Peach, you fascinating cosmic adventurer.

Shaddap.

SO. Next. What is next for Momo:tempo? Well, I haven’t only been mucking about like crazy person trying to outrun the voices of the void after completing the proudest creative project of his life to date. No. I have also, from pretty much the moment the last person left the sleepover that weekend in June, been chewing over the next big thing. Which just sorta came to me. Hologram like.

Obviously I’m not going to give much away now, am I. What did you think? I’d blurt out the secrets of the lab so soon? What I can say is that the idea for the third Momo:tempo LP had feverishly filled a few scrawled pages of the A2 layout pad before last summer was out, and that it’s been percolating into first musical sketches in the studio ever since. And…

..I am excited.

And a bit daunted. For the next album won’t simply be another very firmly Momo album, full of big daft tunes and creative swerves and trouser swinging musical how’s-your-father. Though it will be that. It’s also going to be a show. For art galleries. And neural dream factories, man.

Good lord, I am so excited. And the early tunes sketched out here already are adding to this. Very very early days, but I think a couple of nice Momo easy hits are in there, once worked through properly. But taking it beyond the studio, whilst eminently concievable, is going to take a pooling of talent to rather enlarge the Momo family of amigos, maestros and partners. But, having put together an early draft of a pitch document for the concept, it already feels real. Virtually.

As part of explorations and feasability work-outs with others, I can say that I am hoping to announce what’s coming by Christmas, for a spring 2017 launch. And what a lift off it would be, if you could teleport yourself to it.

First tickets will be shared with Amigos, because if you love Momo’s daft big doings, you are going to be a real hoopy frood for this.

However, third LP is not the only thing I shall be spending the rest of the summer pegging out. For erstwhile art stunt partner Hazel Evans is returning from many global adventures to help me begin to score out a full musical from Adventures Into The Monochronium – something she’s been writing since our time together last summer, and that we’ve been looking forward to making happen enormously. And from what I know already, it’s going to be a wonderfully trippy electro-folk fairytale. It was an especially pleasing thing for me to get to share a number of pieces from the original album at the Thespionage launch with Hazel – blooming love that project. But new adventures lie ahead.

So, in short. There is work to be done. So I may be a bit quiet posting new stuff for a while, as I circle the garden in headphones, stroking my beard and hoping to God I can still write anything original.

I’d better go get on with that, then, eh. Though one final note to add: There is a possibility of a special little live outing for Momo:tempo in the middle of the summer. As soon as I can confirm, I surely will. Be nice to dust off the high kicks once or twice before leaping into the brave new world.

Ciao for now. x

One month to go, then. Until the biggest democratic decision for the people of Britain in 40 years. How’s your research going into the deeper spreadsheets of how Europe works?

 

I’ll be honest, I’m a bit dismayed. And not only that I face the prospect of being seen in any way whatsover to agree with David Cameron and George Osborne. Eesh. I feel clammy. And like I can’t account for an hour of my life. And what’s this funny new scar on the back of my neck.

But I’m a little more dismayed at just how disengaged fine folk are about the issue of the EU referendum. Should Britain help to collapse the EU by leaving or not? It’s huge, isn’t it? Yet most of us are at best befuddled by the muddiness of the so-called debate and probably just not that bothered about it. So anyway, thanks again to all politicians concerned who’ve so successfully disenfranchised us all from the workings of our own interests. Like, cheers.

Thing is. Do we get the politicos we deserve?

Not sure about that. I don’t think any of the people I know being slowly pancaked by the grinding Austerity steam roller deserve a jot of it. But it is a good question, how to get us all more effectively engaged with making a difference – and with this particular issue that will radically change our relationship with some of our closest allies.

I feel conflicted on Brexit. Not on the word; the abject clunky crapness of the journo shorthand there is very obviously a symptom of how seriously we are supposed to take this subject. Brexit. Sounds like a dog biscuit laxative.

But on the issue of leaving the EU, I do feel pulled in two directions. For, the European Union in its current form represents the establishment. An establishment that is beaurocratically opaque and still resolutely backs an entire economic system that is unfit for purpose – the financialisation of bloody everything, and the fabrication of Austerity to prop it up. An establishment that may sign off on a trade deal (TTIP) which has an obvious biproduct of hideous legal leverage for big corporations over more social concerns and rights. That beats the poor and the dispossessed and the uncompliant across the anvil of austerity’s lie to the tune of, in the end, millions of people’s misery. Write that down, comrade.

But it’s also a zone built on unprecedented tollerance and liberal values between nations. As Ben Brown of the Huff Post neatly puts it: “the EU has been a powerful force in normalising multiculturalism.” No kidding. The continent that gave us industrial fascist genocide knows a thing or two about the cost of racism. Most of the ‘laws’ Brussels ‘imposes’ on us are agreements. Things we agree to. In partnership. Because we believe in those principles. At least for now. Though I am sure there are many more socialist directives about pay and working conditions and parental leave and employer responsibility that a fair few in Westminster wouldn’t mind quietly not agreeing to any more.

And don’t think that cross-border movement is insignificant in how opened up people’s minds have been across the last couple of generations. Cheap flights and easy business and shared rights is what makes life for millions rather better than it was, and these are all made possible by Europe existing in deeper co-operation and a more cultural solidarity than simply agreeing not to shoot each other.

Every single European state has more clout because it is in a co-operative. And we Brits kid ourselves to imagine that doesn’t include us at all. The Empire is gone, mate. The future is shared. And I am depressed at the idea of moving around Europe no longer as a native but as an ‘outsider’. Sure, I get the irony of my monolinguism here. I didn’t say I wasn’t a charming bag of contradictions.

Plus, weirdly for a country that has spanked sunshine holiday paradise Greece into bankrupt fielty, Germany is helping to lead the way on renewable energy, racking up over 90% of it’s power needs from solar and wind. A sock in the eye for an entire world order of arse-facing oil giants. Not what your fracking mates in the Out camp would like one bit.

So, y’know. Modern Europe faces changes and needs many, it does. And Britain is in a fair position to deal just fine with life outside the EU in the longer term, of course it is. As if Britain is coming to the end of a stretch inside and doesn’t know if it can function in an economy not based on cigarettes and butt favours.

But. I think there is a headline principle that is higher than these current concerns, and certainly than lazy grumbles about imminent hoards of benefits scroungers and terrorists. And above even the significant ball-ache of trying to find a better trade deal and position in the world than we currently have.

It’s an outlook I committed to a vlather, here:

The European project could be described as the most significant liberal political endeavour in history. Much as some Outers might say it’s the biggest attempt at a stealth Federal State in history. It wasn’t created as such; something as big as this project was bound to veer in different directions over time, and need challenging periodically. Now is certainly one of those times. And in no small part because we are living in unprecedented times in the history of economics. But the principle of a peaceful multi-state zone that shares far more than it contests between its member states, and that challenges itself to defend certain liberties everywhere is an idea to lead humanity.

Writing off that in a huff, simply because we don’t know how to engage, isn’t good enough in my book. Let’s take democracy back to the gates of Brussels, and take the Eurocrats to school, side by side with our neighbours. Let’s build trust, not shaft it. Leaving isn’t facing the right way. For at least one of us.

This, in my head, isn’t about Britain. Or Europe. It’s about humanity. And THAT future has to be about pulling together, not apart. That’s something I would like to take pride in.

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