MT. DESOLATION

From Alex Lake's blog (click here if you want to check it out),

22.01.10

Today was spent in deepest darkest Sussex with the band British Sea Power. The band are finishing up their latest record so I went down to document them in the studio. Lovely bunch of guys and the afternoon finished up with scampi and chips down the local boozer. Nice.

Pic’s to follow…

22.01.10

Approaching the end of a hectic week but still two shoots to do by Sunday.

Monday was spent in the studio with Mt. Desolation. Very many fine musicians appear on this record with the core of the band being Tim and Jesse. I won’t say any more about it than that at this stage as I’m sure the band themselves should be the first to give you the inside story of what’s been going down in the studio. The songs I’ve heard thus far are fantastic though, choruses still lodged in my brain. It was great to see Tim rocking out in the vocal booth - Jesse’s turn next week I believe.

Watch this space for new Mt. Desolation photos and written tidbits as I’ll be back down in the studio in the coming days…

17.01.10

Tomorrow I’ll be hanging in the studio with good friends Tim Rice-Oxley and Jesse Quin who are working on a new music collaboration/album together - Mt. Desolation. All sorts of other contributors to the record including John Roderick of the Long Winters who I love so I’m pretty excited to hear what they’ve come up with. I’ll be taking my camera so stay tuned for photos from the day.

Tonight shall be mostly spent in the cinema eating popcorn and watching ‘The Road’…

TIM IN LILY ALLEN'S BLOG

This is what Tim has to say for Lily Allen's blog, let's read!!
To read directly from Lily Allen's blog go here!

Lily,

Greetings from the badlands of Canada, and apologies for the slow reply. Rather than ramble on at length about how I feel about the various aspects of this, I'll happily state that I support you in this movement and agree that we have to act now.

I also feel strongly that the most vital step at this moment is to ensure that 'the artists', whether FAC-related or not, present a united front and a simple message. Otherwise the old 'divide and conquer' routine will be meted out to us and the artist community will be fobbed off by the ISPs, labels and government.

For example, do you/we go in with the simple message that file-sharing is wrong; or that file-sharing on a large scale is wrong; or that file sharing is an inevitability and we should focus on finding new ways of making money from music and supporting new talent?

I guess your view is that the FAC (or at least the likes of Nick Mason and Ed O'Brien) have been leaning too much towards the latter, which I would agree is not a strong enough line to be taking. If your view is that any file-sharing at all is wrong, then I can't agree with that either.

For what it's worth my opinion is that the second of those options should form the basis of the clear message that the artist community delivers to the government. Judging by the proposed 'industry statement', the FAC as a whole is ready to deliver and support that message, and if there can be agreement between them and the rest of us as to how the ISPs should 'police' large-scale piracy, and how to ensure that this doesn't become grounds for an excessive erosion of civil liberties (as Matthew says below), then that would put the artist community in a really strong position. (It also seems obvious to me that legal action should be taken against sites that blatantly encourage large-scale file-sharing, cf Pirate Bay in Sweden etc. The 'reasons' for not doing this seem very flimsy, and this issue could easily be covered by new legislation.)

The issue of how to generate money going forward seems sketchy at the moment, and presumably if we're hoping to license music to the ISPs in a TV/radio style then that would again be a matter of legislation. This doesn't appear to be covered by the current statement and is obviously pretty vital. Maybe it needs to be one step at a time - I can see the sense in that. On the other hand, it seems like this could be the moment for sweeping change that includes new licensing rules for ISPs.

Anyway, that's more than enough from me. Hopefully by articulating my thoughts I'm not merely repeating what you already think, but either way I'm with you.

See you soon,

Tim

TIM'S LATIN AMERICA BLOG FOR THE BEEB

From KM.com,

We thought you might like to know that you can currently click here to check out a blog which Tim wrote for BBC Radio 1 about Keane's Latin America trip. His words are accompanied by pictures by Richard, Jesse and Matt Kettle (the band's Front of House engineer). Enjoy!

A BLOG FROM TIM!!!

From KM.com,

Bonjour! We're in Paris to film our appearance on the excellent French music show Taratata. In fact, we're filming not one but two episodes in one day. We're doing two Keane songs and two collaborations with other artists, so it's going to be extremely exciting and somewhat chaotic.

We drove all the way here from Nottingham overnight, so full credit to our drivers Chris and Paul for negotiating the snow and getting everyone here in one piece. I noticed a little bit of wheel-spinning while we were in the Parisian suburbs this morning! Hopefully the return journey to Bournemouth tonight will be equally smooth. I keep thinking of the end of The Italian Job.

It's been a great tour so far. I have to say the crowds at these gigs have been exceptional. We were reflecting the other day on how strange it is that we suddenly (or it feels sudden, anyway) find ourselves saying "It's one of the smaller arenas tonight - just the 6,000 people"! Pretty incredible really.

It's hard to pick a highlight, but I would have to say that the singing along in Glasgow was spectacular, and playing in the giant cauldron of humanity that is the Manchester MEN Arena is always a magical experience. I remember playing at the Night & Day club in Manchester in 2002. It was our first gig as a three-piece band, and pretty much the only people there were Mark and Lard from Radio 1. Strange.

Tom and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire on our day off in Glasgow on Wednesday. It really is a brilliant film - very funny in places, gruellingly tragic in others. Excellent soundtrack too.Favourite song at the moment: Money by NASA. Actually, that's my second-favourite song; my favourite song at the moment is The River by Bruce Springsteen. We've been playing a little snippet of it every night on the tour and now I've become slightly obsessed with it. I think it might be the greatest song ever written. If I could write lyrics like "For my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat" without sounding like an utter twat, then I would.

Other than all that, we've been busy making plans for the rest of year. We should have some exciting tour announcements soon, and then there's the world of summer festivals to sort out too. In fact there's quite a bit of exciting stuff coming up, now I come to think of it. But most of it is secret at the moment! It's going to be a good year.

Tim

"What a strange week inthe life of Keane" TIM BLOG

from KM.com,

What a strange week in the life of Keane. Exactly a week ago I was sitting on the Eurostar in a half-sleep, having just played the last gig of our European tour in Paris and then spent the entire night in the studio with Kanye West. He played us the whole of his new album, which sounded truly awesome - the bass was so fat that eventually the mixing desk blew up. I was especially pleased when he picked out a line from Spiralling ("When we fall in love, we're just falling in love with ourselves") as being a personal favourite, as it's my favourite line I've ever written. Hurrah. Then Kanye did some work on one of our tracks, and after that I sat in a corner and watched him do his thing on a song for Jamie Foxx. The whole thing was a real privilege and I learned a lot. I wish I had Kanye's energy...and his dress sense! Will work on it.The Paris gig was a great way to end the tour - I think we were all slightly taken aback by the noisy enthusiasm of the French crowd, but in addition it was a particular highlight of the tour for me because we had Ladyhawke supporting us. Pip is a great songwriter and musician, and her album is one of the best of the year in my opinion. I hadn't ever seen her play live, so that was a real thrill.Having barely recovered from that, we were off to Koko (yet again?!) for a TV show, and in between soundcheck and the show went to MTV for a bunch of interviews. This mainly seemed to consist of them trying to get us to be rude about other bands - "What do you think of Dido?", "What do you think of the Stereophonics?", etc etc. Great. The show itself was really fun actually, and a special occasion for me as I managed to play Perfect Symmetry all the way through without messing up the piano riff for the first time ever - it's incredibly difficult to play and a source of constant irritation/embarrassment to me, so that was a breakthrough! The next day we worked on our Pulp cover and some other bits, then I spent the evening working on the European tour live album.On Wednesday we did a big Radio 2 show, which was really fun but very different to playing our own shows. It was one of those occasions when we all felt inexplicably nervous, but i spotted a gang of loyal boardies singing away in the front row, which was a nice boost. Then on Friday we went back to Paris (my French is improving) for another TV show. We found ourselves in the midst of a gargantuan production which seemed to be something along the lines of a French X Factor. It was pretty weird to say the least, but actually quite fun. Plus after seeing Britney Spears' performance I was left feeling that our live show simply doesn't feature enough circus acts. I think it would be fair to say we didn't fit in, but it was an education nonetheless. Will be good to get back to proper gigs!Speaking of which, we're off to LA on Monday. Been far too long since we played a gig in the States, so we're very excited about having three in one week, and almost as excited about enjoying a bit of Californian sun, if we have a chance. I think we may fill our one free evening by going in to a studio and recording that Pulp cover, since we enjoyed it so much.Anyway, that was the week that was. We've all got colds, but we're having a great time. I'm getting the musical equivalent of itchy feet and want to get working on some new songs, so am looking forward to a couple of weeks off over Christmas. That's about it I think.

See you soon!

tim