Temporal Update Comet
Here’s a difficult question to start with…
Do we maintain the pretence of being two stalwart Astro-men, floating in a tin can all this time, or do we come clean and admit wholesale to in fact living in Whitechapel with 3 other musicians in a big Georgian house, and, like you, having been locked down for the past few months…
Well it all began when Commander Novastream approached us with plans to tether the Moon to the Earth like a huge game of Swingball….
OK that’s not true. Probably.
In truth, MJ and Hugo (MJ here; I do the writing) have been through it a bit since March. Job losses and changes, gigs and festival dates cancelled, the inability to get into a studio or to meet up with our producer. Touring has been put on hold, as has recording. But in the TC bunker, a hive of activity has slowly buzzed into action.
We began by assessing what it was still feasible to do in this ‘New Normal’, and we decided that the best thing we could do was keep making music, even if no one was going to hear it. As some of you know, we soon began live streaming our lockdown sessions in our basement, playing and chatting on Facebook on Monday nights – we were really keen to maintain some connectivity with the world, and our most cherished memory from the 1st wave of this global pandemic was playing in the Online bar run by Jess and Gemma – we logged into zoom one Friday night to find a little group of people talking and interacting – it was so satisfying to hear applause after finishing each song. Last month (August) we were also invited to play at a socially distant canal-side party, where we played atop possibly the wobbliest narrowboat in the world, and had great fun!
We’ve really missed you all! And as much as we complain about it, without social media this would have felt a lot more like an isolation…. Lost in space. Thankfully we’ve been in touch with you and you’ve been in touch with us. Which is really nice. Any of you we haven’t spoken to, we hope you’ve stayed safe, and found creative ways to stop yourselves losing the plot. Globally, it truly is a dark time. People are having to do things and adapt to things they never thought they’d have to. And while we welcome some of the changes – more social awareness, more looking out for each other, and fewer carbon emissions, due to a massive reduction in global flights – we are of course concerned about the context that these changes have been informed by. And we know we’re in it for the long haul.
We’ve also really missed playing, but we’ve especially missed the opportunity to return to the studio to polish and mix our EP. But, all is not lost – it’s still gonna be released, at the beginning of 2021, and we’ve lots of surprises in store.
Fortunately, with many areas of the UK starting to return to ‘normal’, the studios at Abbey Road are open again, and equally exciting, our producer Forbes is going to be around too, hanging out with us while he finds his feet back in London again.
This means we can also finish up the recording session, with a few more vocal/ guitar overdubs (as well as getting the sounds of careening orbs balanced nicely). The EP will include newer and older songs, and we’ll be offering the definitive studio versions of Silencio and Shine. So stay tuned!
Over the event horizon comes more new songs, and we’re working on a handful of ideas that will quickly start to evolve into a new album, also to be released in 2021. Already there are a couple that we have finished, and need to record. Plus, we will be refining and breathing life into a number of other demos and jams. (also stay tuned! There’s plenty to Anticipate.)
And now, a selection of notable events and breakthroughs that we have measured and analysed:
We had a successful show last month at the Village Butty, a floating event space on a narrowboat which entertains people on the canal path most weekends throughout the summer in East London. We were very excited to be invited, as we hadn’t played a show since the last ones in January in Brescia, Italy (with the wonderful Jester Society). After a hair-raising taxi ride with the drumkit and Loopstation, plus all the other paraphernalia required for a Temporal Comet gig, we arrived at the boat and played to a receptive and excited crowd! We played our new songs, including Through The Trees and Two Sides, and neither of us dropped any musical instruments into the water by accident!
The festivities continued throughout the weekend, and the next day, drummer Hugo returned for a second day of canal-based capers. As night fell, unfortunately, with the light fading along with his sobriety, Hugo had a slight accident which ended with his bike and his drummerly self being fished out of the canal and Hugo being sent directly to the Accident & Emergency dept. of the hospital. We are very happy to report that after a few weeks’ break, Hugo is now back to work as well as back behind the drumkit.
Friend of Comets, Matthew Rose (also known as Mistah Coughdrop) is never one to let a pandemic pass without making it a source of artistic inspiration. He has recently completed his first published collection of works, ‘Coronaville’, available to buy at blurb.com. We were excited to receive our copies of this wonderful ‘graphic-novel-cum-collage’ last month, and made a little video about it, which you can see on our Instagram.
LUMR recently interviewed Temporal Comet – you can watch our fun little ramble with Karina of LUMR here.
We’ve added some killer tracks to our ‘In Orbit 2020’ playlist on Spotify. If you like the music we like, or if you’d like to listen to what we’re currently listening to at TC HQ, follow the playlist here. It’s got everything, for David Bowie to Joe Cocker, from Björk to The Police.
The Gannt charts are completed, the task list divided… Yes, we’ve started planning in earnest for the EP launch, and so now is the time to call on all our creative collaborators – and this means you too! Designers, web developers, video games coders, social media gurus – we need you all to help us to make this moon-shot the most successful since Apollo 12.
Fed up of the lack of Temporal Comet comms. in your email inbox? Join our mailing list to be the first recipients of TC news and updates. It’s the best thing since sliced asteroids if you would like to be the first to see all our progress, as we work through recordings, photo shoots, a music video, a video game, and finally, release of all our lovely new songs onto streaming platforms next year.
Lastly, you can look at our update video if you’d like a condensed and mildly humorous version of this text, explaining what we’re up to.
We know it’s been a while since we gave you an update, so it means even more that you’ve taken the time to read this now – thanks for staying with us. We’ll stay with you too. 😊