The first in my brand new video blog series to celebrate my new album coming out on April 9th, woohoo! The album launch extravaganza will be at the Half Moon in Herne Hill, London SE24 on Wednesday 11th April with tickets available very soon.

“In This Boat” will be released on February 14th as digital download and homemade Valentine’s card – more on that next week – and I’ll be celebrating that at a very anti-Valentine’s night at Brixton Windmill supporting Hysterical Injury‘s “Dead Wolf Situation” album launch alongside Lilies On Mars AND that Saturday 18th at Underbelly in Hoxton supporting Birdeatsbaby‘s “Feast Of Hammers” album launch.

Full info and ticket links on the Gigs Page.

The album can be pre-ordered now via Bandcamp with two free songs to grab right now.

I was very excited and pleased to receive an email from the Tom Robinson show last week informing me that “Slow Puncture” would be played on the show early on Monday morning (today), as a result of being selected from songs uploaded to the BBC Introducing Uploader.

After doing a little dance around the room I read the email again and realised I would be on the same show as the wonderful Birdeatsbaby, who I became friends with last year after some online chatting back and forth, and played a Bonfire Night show with at the Half Moon in Herne Hill. So I danced around the room again.

I was fast asleep when the show was on but thankfully it’s available to listen to for the next 7 days right here, featuring a host of awesome tunes, a really cool interview with Mishkin from Birdeatsbaby and the first airing of their spooky new single “Incitatus”. Massive thanks to Mish and Tom for saying such nice things about me, wowee. What a lovely start to “Blue Monday”.

TICKETS FOR FEB SHOWS

I’ll be playing two extra special gigs with friends in February:

Tuesday 14th – VALENTINE’S DAY! – at The Brixton Windmill supporting Hysterical Injury and Lilies On Mars to celebrate HI’s new album “Dead Wolf Situation” (TICKETS).

Saturday 18th – The Underbelly, Hoxton – Birdeatsbaby’s “Feast Of Hammers” album launch show! (TICKETS).

There are more gigs coming up too, in Croydon, Bath and Leeds, so check out the Gigs Page for the most up to date listings and links and email me with subject title GIGS LIST + the name of your town to receive gig alerts in the future.

2012 gigging kicked off in fine style yesterday afternoon at The Good Ship, Kilburn where I was honoured to head up the bill at the first Camden Calling event this year. Camden Calling is a small arts collective of exceptional homeless and ex-homeless people, so please check out their site to find out more and support their work.

It was wonderful to see old friends and make new ones, thanks so much everyone for travelling in the freeeeeezing cold. Wrap up warm, friends!

The Kitmonsters website will be launching soon with loads of great resources for music lovers and musicians, until then do follow them on Twitter and check out their Facebook page. I’m really looking forward to geeking out and hearing about what other artists use to get their sound.

She Makes War – Boss RC-20XL Loop Station from KitMonsters on Vimeo.

She Makes War – Shields and Daggers from KitMonsters on Vimeo.

This year I have found reflection to be one of the most vital parts of my life; the space and time to assess, evaluate and plan for the future. Trying to balance a busy freelance career and musical life is a challenge but I have enjoyed spending time this winter coming up with some new approaches that I think will help. I like imagining my most happy and productive day/week/month and figuring out what I can do to make that happen. It will take some time and hard work but it certainly won’t magically fall in to place if I don’t get involved!

So, in 2012 I will mainly be working towards finding a better balance in my life, trying not to be quite such a workaholic and spending more time with the wonderful people I call my friends. However I also have a lot of grand schemes to get off the ground so I’ll be throwing myself in to those alongside integrating good food, more exercise and more fun hobby things like hula hooping and drumming in to my daily life.

This is the first time I’ve actually got round to doing an end of year blog post, though I remember really wanting to find the time last year, so hold on to your hat as brevity has never been my strongest skill. I won’t be at all offended if you just scroll down and look at the pictures!

JANUARY

Kicked off the New Year with a snowy trip to Leeds to start talking about my new album with Rich and Ed from Hope & Social, who were supremely helpful and asked lots of good thought provoking questions. What’s in YOUR musical rucksack?

My first SMW gig of the year was supporting Viv Albertine at The Enterprise and playing in her band alongside the fabulous Milly McGregor, who I later stole to play on “Little Battles”. It was a really memorable night, packed with lots of faces I recognised and lots of new friends too.

Full of renewed enthusiasm for hooping I attended an excellent weekend of workshops in North London run by Emma Kerr from Hooping Mad, and continued my daily hooping practise for quite a while afterwards, and cultural highlights of the month included Kristin Hersh‘s “Paradoxical Undressing” show at Queen Elizabeth Hall and a screening of “Ride, Rise, Roar” at the Ritzy followed by a Q&A with David Byrne. Both madly inspiring pieces of work.

FEBRUARY

Finished vocals on a song called “Piece Of You”, a collaboration with Michael Gray, Luciana Caporaso and Nick Clow. You can get the song here (or on iTunes) and watch the video here. There be robots!

Saw Thumpermonkey, The Andy K Show, Orders Of The British Empire and Djevara at the New Cross Inn and started enjoying gig photography again.

Finished off the month with a spot on Dubber‘s Outside The Box panel for Unconvention at the Roundhouse – alongside Steve Lawson, Tom Robinson, Bobbie Gardner, Mark Williams and Ammo Taylor, then a very late night Megabus to Edinburgh to play a couple of warmup shows before my first support slot for Midge Ure in Dunfermline (via a brief trip to Clutch Daisy‘s house in beautiful Burntisland).

MARCH

Ditched the red hair for my natural blonde after seeing 6 fake redheads in a row in Tooting Common tube station, then spent the weekend at Manchester Hoop Congress learning more snazzy new tricks.

Received the lovely news that “Scared To Capsize” had won the Soundcloud Backstage Pass competition so I played my winning slot at Club Fandango at the Bull & Gate, then nipped up to Glasgow and Leeds for more shows.

While oop North I was privileged to sit in on Hope & Social recording a gorgeous song called “Cotton Wool” for their latest album “Sleep Sound”, a snippet of which appears in this video blog. SO GOOD.

APRIL

Somehow I managed to run 53km this month, the most I have ever managed. I have a very on/off relationship with running but am always trying to keep starting even if I’ve stopped for a while. It makes me feel so much clearer and energetic. Aside from hitting the tarmac I got involved with Dana Jade‘s “Little Sister” video shoot, both as studio manager and set photographer for the day and for one of the cameo appearances.

My Pledge Music campaign launched on the 15th with a view to raising around half the money I would need to pay for recording and mastering the new album. It all went a bit nuts and eventually hit 217% of the target, which means I can now say “Little Battles” was completely fan funded. It was a really wonderful, heartwarming and humbling experience, which I wrote about here, here and here.

At the end of the month I hit the road again to support Midge Ure for three more dates, travelling across the South West of England on trains (regular and steam) and car ferries and enjoying some really beautiful sights along the way. Dartmouth was a particular favourite. Playing with Sick Of Sarah in Bristol was a lot of fun, too.

MAY

I completed my little tour with a show at Port Mahon in Oxford, as part of Little Fish‘s “Shoal Of Talent” night alongside Djevara Redux, Spring Offensive and Adam Barnes, all brilliant and inspiring artists. It was the perfect end to a really fun tour, surrounded by friends in a sweaty room over a pub, then it was straight home to start relearning bass parts for 30 Tricky songs as I’d been called up for a two week tour of South America and Mexico.

It was a wonderful though too-whirlwind trip stopping off in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico – see blog posts here, here and here and check out all my photos here.

Highlights included climbing the pyramids at Teotihuacan outside Mexico City, travelling in a cable car in to the mountains above Caracas and watching a lightning show from very high up later that evening, going on a cycle tour of Lima and playing a SMW house concert at an animation studio in Buenos Aires. The Tricky gigs were really fantastic; as atmospheric and intense as I remember from my four month stint in 2008 but with the added excitement factor of knowing that none of the people in the audience had seen the songs played live before.

JUNE

One night at home after the tour then straight out again for a brief but lovely birthday trip to Weymouth, to enjoy the summer sunshine and visit Portland Bill to take photos for my album artwork. Recording commenced at Myles Clarke‘s studio in London Fields on the 6th, then on the 7th and 8th I skived off to go and sing backing vocals for Carina Round‘s shows at Dingwalls in London and Hare & Hounds in Birmingham. A truly magical experience, getting to sing on some of my favourite songs ever and sing cool parts on magical new tracks from her new album out in 2012. Thanks so much for the invite, Carina!

Photo by Mister J Photography

Note the new tattoo there, drawn and inked by Kanae, who also did my art nouveau butterfly a few years ago. It was finished later in the month and I’m very happy with it – it’s a depiction of Daphne turned in to a tree at the end of the Apollo/Cupid story that I wrote about in my song “Olympian”.

June finished with three video events – the AmpNMS webcast streamed live from Leeds with Rich Huxley and Andrew Dubber, then promo shoots for “Piece Of You” and “Slow Puncture”, the latter my final (for now) video to accompany debut album “Disarm”. Read the blog post here, visit the microsite, watch the video here and watch the making of here. Stormtrooper alert!

JULY

Around really getting my head down in the studio recording with all sorts of weird and wonderful instruments I played gigs in London, Manchester and Leeds for Organ Zine, Ben & Jerry’s and Hope & Social respectively. It was a hectic but satisfying month, and running a hula hoop workshop with my sister at the Sleep Sound Garden Party was a real highlight of my year, as was performing on the Hammock stage on top of a pile of earth and planks under a tree! My looper got some mud on it…

AUGUST

Started off with a weekend driving trip all the way to St Emilion in Bordeaux for a wedding gig, reading Ted Hughes and Plato in the van and finishing off lyrics to the last few album tracks ready to complete vocals the following week. We spent an entire day at a working chateau and didn’t get to drink any wine!

Back in London I met a couple of nice French boys and had a chat about doing some singing on their album, then hit the studio with them for three days at the end of the month to get started. They’re called The Penelopes and they’re ace.

My next trip was to Edinburgh Festival to do some work with Amplified and I got to see some great shows too – Chris TT had me in tears, Kristin Hersh had me in stitches and Evelyn Evelyn were much funnier and more affecting than I’d anticipated PLUS I finally got to shake hands with Amanda Palmer, who is my sort-of bandmate after she collaborated with The Young Punx on “Map Of Tasmania” last year. She seemed very nice.

Album recording continued apace and August ended with a listening party at the studio for a select group of fans who had kindly pledged for tickets to be the first to listen to the new album all the way through. I played a couple of songs acoustically in the kitchen then sat in the corridor with my dog, Anna Madeleine and Dina Karklina while the album blasted out from Myles’ marvellous speakers.

SEPTEMBER

Around the final few days of mixing the album I gigged the new songs at the Hospital Club, Malcfest and Strongroom Bar, Hertford Corn Exchange (raising money for Teenage Cancer Trust for Katie Huttlestone) and St Gregory’s Church in Norwich as part of the Sound & Vision Festival. I also talked on a panel about artist development there with Chris T-T and Dave Rowntree and found the whole event really interesting. Watch the roundup video here featuring yours truly.

In between all the shows I made a “Little Battles” teaser video using Lomography’s brand new LomoKino 35mm film camera, with help from Dina Karklina and Laura Ward.

OCTOBER

This month saw my first trip to the Isle of Wight since I was a teenager, not for a holiday but to talk to students at Platform One music college about using social media tools for a DIY music career. There were some wolves on the ferry on the way back to the mainland…

Seeing Feist perform at the London Palladium was one of my musical highlights of the last few years, she was in fine voice performing songs off new album “Metals” as well as some interesting rearrangements of older tracks and I was especially gripped by the inclusion of Mountain Man, a three piece a capella group who added a lot to the general atmosphere as well as contributing gorgeous vocals.

Towards the end of the month I was invited to appear in the video for “Now Now Now” by The Penelopes – we had a really fun day and there was a really cool behind the scenes video made alongside the promo itself. After that I took a little break in the countryside visiting friends and abstaining from the internet for as long as possible, learning to love writing in notebooks again.

Oh, and the album returned from being beautifully mastered by Dick Beetham!

NOVEMBER

#vlomo11 (video blogging month) went well – I managed 20 out of 30 entries but was really busy with client video work and wanted to give myself a bit of a rest towards the end of the month! Gigwise, Bonfire Night at The Half Moon in Herne Hill supporting Birdeatsbaby was brilliant – the venue was jam packed with firework-singed revellers and it was wonderful to finally see the Brighton punk cabaret outfit live. They were really great.

Spending a day recording and filming a live EP with my shadowy supergroup The Olympians on boat/recording studio Lightship95 in East India Docks was pretty special, followed by a few days in Reignier near Geneva eating fondue, drinking wine and playing a show at Perce Oreille. I arrived back in London just in time to play at the inaugural Clit Rock night at The Lexington alongside Dana Jade, We Rock Like Girls Don’t and Thrush Metal, raising awareness and funds for Daughters Of Eve, an organisition concerned with preventing, fighting and ultimately ending Female Genital Mutilation. Amazing atmosphere, brilliant bands, wonderful cause.

Another contender for gig of the year came in the form of a house concert in Leeds, where I played alongside the brilliant Middleman and Soulmates Never Die in a front room filled with fairy lights and warm hearts. Ed Waring shot a really lovely video and took some wicked photos with his CCTV lens. And then performing at Strummerville‘s Winter Sessions alongside Hysterical Injury and Kai Fish from Mystery Jets was a real honour.

DECEMBER

I’d planned a month off work so I could catch up with personal projects but that didn’t happen because there were some really interesting jobs to get involved in, alongside which I was lucky enough to interview Janet Weiss of US band Wild Flag (and ex-of Sleater-Kinney) for the Wears The Trousers Yearbook (on sale now) AND see them perform at The Lexington (gig of the year, hands down!), rehearse with The Penelopes for live shows in early 2012 and do video interviews / gear demonstrations for Roland UK and soon-to-be-launched website Kitmonsters.

My last two gigs of the year were a relaxed house concert at my place for close friends and an acoustic set at one of the Crisis Christmas centres, during which a lovely man called Gus danced around gleefully to “In This Boat”.

Arty highlights included meeting and interviewing members of The Invisible Circus at The Brick Box in Tooting Market, going to see Howl’s Moving Castle at Southwark Playhouse and watching Stewart Lee being hilarious at Leicester Square Theatre.

And finally, my “Disarm: Remixed” album went online just before Christmas and has already been downloaded more than 100 times, with nearly £400 raised for Crisis UK. Thank you!

If you’re still with me – thanks for reading! Having finally finished writing this behemoth I am pretty certain end of year posts are an exercise for the benefit of the writer, not the reader, and I’m sure I’ll look back on this in a year’s time and find it useful. I wonder what adventures will have happened by then! All the best bits of this year took me completely by surprise, so I’m excited to see what 2012 will bring.

And finally, people who contributed to my excellent adventures in 2011 – thank you so much!

Everyone who pledged on “Little Battles” – thank you again!, Bass, Julia Kidd, Laura Ward, Dina Karklina, Dana Jade, Myles & Becks Clarke, Milly McGregor, Viv Albertine, Carina Round, Midge Ure, Annie Gardiner, Tom Gardiner, Kat Arney, Anna Madeleine, Chris T-T, Tasmin Archer, Rich & Hannah Huxley, Ed Waring, Gary Stewart, Simon Goff, Clutch Daisy, Emma Kerr, Nick Broyd, Gail O’Brien, Mark & Susie Bowers, Cat Munro, Sue & Nigel, Steve and Lobelia Lawson, Ben Read, Mishkin Fitzgerald, Kim Boekbinder, Dan Thompson, Khalid Amin, Richard Kirstein and YOU. Happy New Year! xxx

STEP ONE: GRAB YOUR FREE DOWNLOAD NOW

STEP TWO: DONATE TO CHARITY!

Here’s the deal – the music is yours to grab from Bandcamp (go! now!) for FREE but please consider donating via my special “Disarm: Remixed” JustGiving page to Crisis, the homeless charity. You may have heard of their Christmas centres in London, but they do great work all year round and need as much help as possible to continue doing so. Dig deep or shallow, every little helps, and please tell your mates!

Please also check out the individual tracks for links to the remixers’ other work and support them too. What a talented bunch – thanks so much to everyone for taking part! You can listen to all the submitted entries here too.

+++

So, here’s the story: Over the summer I ran a remix competition over on Soundcloud, the idea being to encourage other musicians to play around with my stems and come up with their own pieces of music. I’m endlessly fascinated by the idea that no two people will make the same piece of art with exactly the same materials to hand and so every time a new track was submitted I got really excited because I was getting to be part of this other person’s mysterious musical world.

It was wonderful but a little bit overwhelming when 60 great entries that were submitted, so after announcing the long list in October I passed the reins to my talented musical judges James Yuill and Anna Madeleine for their comments.

It’s been a tough job deciding on a final list. My criteria were simple – I wanted to hear a strong individual personality and style and creative ideas. My favourite remixes were those that really messed around with the original arrangement, changed the mood and added extra elements. Once the album versions of songs are done I’m not at all precious about what people do with the little bits – I actually wanted to be surprised!

There was something interesting about every single submitted track but I am really pleased with the final list, featuring 14 remixes from Alaskan, Wave Function, This Is Radio Silence, Stuart W Ramsay, Clutch Daisy, The Rise And Demise Of John, Alma, Silver Factory Superstars, hardswank, David J Gurney, Jake Dubber, KapaMoraski, Paulo and Dolmar Pedro. Oh, and an extra one from someone called warriorgrrl…

PRIZES

It wouldn’t be a competition without some prizes, so everyone will receive a limited edition copy of “Little Battles” on CD/DVD plus advance access to the forthcoming “Little Battles” remix pack.

My lovely judges and I also voted for our top four remixes, the creator of which will also receive a Soundcloud Lite Account and a “Little Battles” goody bag including limited edition illustrated lyric book, badges and postcards. Congratulations to…

drumroll…

(in alphabetical order, with judges’ comments)

Alaskan – for Eye Spy

JY – “like the relaxed reverb soaked nature of this remix. definitely my favourite”
LK – “Sunny, lazy, hazy gorgeousness. Makes me want to sway and smile.”

+++

Alma – for Got Milk

AM – “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is fierce.”
LK – “I love how fidgety and off kilter this whole track is and especially love the witchy outro. Really cool sounds and nice repitching of my vocals.”

+++

Clutch Daisy – for ghostsandshadows

AM – “YESSSSSSSSS… Now this is definitely like it. I flippin love this remix. THIS IS MY FAVOURITE. I think it’s beautiful.”
JY – “one of my favourites. love the production. punchy beats and effected vocals. puts me in mind of radiohead (which is always a good thing)”
LK – “I really love the gloopy bass part and the cut up vocals, this track is really moody with loads of really beautiful detail and exciting moments that take you to another place.”

+++

The Rise And Demise Of John – for NIMN

JY – “nice glitchy production. also a remix which honours the original song”
LK – “I love how John added those really melancholy male vocals and that sad, sweet riff that goes through the song makes me feel really emotional!”
AM – “Clever recording extra vocals and the bass voice really compliments/offsets SMW’s. Really lush organ sounds. Ooooh, and sexy end section. Yes.”

Thanks so much to everyone who submitted a track, to Soundcloud for their support, to James Yuill and Anna Madeleine for judging and to YOU for reading / downloading / DONATING / sharing / supporting. Have a wonderful Christmas!

Thank you fairziff for filming!

Yesterday afternoon I was invited along to East Leeds FM‘s HQ in Seacroft to do a live acoustic Parlour Session and have a chat with the lovely Paddy Garrigan. We covered such thorny topics as MySpace teen pouters, loop pedals, owning your own corner of the internet, my thoughts on mystique and all sorts of other stuff in between, I got to pick three songs I find inspiring – “Looking for Answers” by Hope And Social, “Paris Is Burning” by St Vincent and “What Would The Community Think?” by Cat Power – and I played four new album tracks – “Exit Strategy”, “Shields And Daggers”, “Delete” and “Never Was” – on Baby Taylor, ukulele and loop pedal.

The whole session is available online now (forever, I think) right here, and here’s when stuff happened, cos I know you’re dead busy like:

Start – Intros and “Exit Strategy” (get the album version here)
05m40 – “Shields And Daggers”
15m – Interview Part 1
27m – Interview Part 2
40m30 – “Delete” (get the album version here)
44m30 – “Never Was”

Last night I was honoured to play a house gig alongside some really fantastic artists – Middleman and Soulmates Never Die. Do yourself a massive favour and click on those links now…their stuff is incredible.

Tom and Sean from Anthologies (wonderful live music filmmakers) were there documenting the night and shot a special performance of “Shields And Daggers” which I’ll point you to when it goes online. All in all a really brilliant night of great music and lovely people, so massive thanks to all concerned for your hospitality and for singing / stamping along when instructed

Rich kindly recorded me thanking him for loaning me his gorgeous Takemine acoustic and playing “Exit Strategy”:

. @shemakeswar at @middlemanband’s house. #housegig #awesome by TheHuxCapacitor

These are probably my last shows of the year and they’re all going to be pretty special in their own way, so please come along if you can!

+++

Sunday 20th November – LONDON – Clit Rock @ The Lexington
TICKETS – £5 advance
w/ Dana Jade, Dark Moon and We Rock Like Girls Don’t + Gaggle / Music Is My Boyfriend DJs + spoken word artists + art!
A Female Genital Mutilation awareness and fundraising event with some kick ass music.
FACEBOOK EVENT LINK

+++

Tuesday 22nd November – LEEDS – House Gig Extravaganza!
Email now for more info and to be added to the guest list (address will be given out the day before)
w/ super special guests – this is going to be a very exciting night indeed

+++

Saturday 26th November – LONDON – Strummerville Winter Sessions (at The Yard, West London)
MORE INFO + TICKETS – £5 advance
w/ Kai Fish And The Light (ex Mystery Jets), Breadstealers, Gaz Brookfield, Huw Olesker, The Hysterical Injury, Leon Fender Walker, The Gun$how, The Promenade

+++

Oh, and if you happen to live in either Chambery or Le Perce Oreille A Reignier, I’m playing shows there this week alongside the marvellous Marianne Lilah – all I know is I’m being collected at Geneva airport tomorrow afternoon and the adventure starts there…there will be video! Dates here.

GIG ALERT LISTS

Despite doing a monthly newsletter and posting gig listings on my website and on Facebook I often get messages from people saying “Oh, I didn’t know you had a gig last night, can you tell me next time please?” – so I’m setting up extra gig alert lists for that purpose.

Simply email me with one of the following subject lines to be added to the relevant lists and receive very occasional gig alerts:

LONDON GIGS

MIDLANDS GIGS

NORTH GIGS

NORTH EAST GIGS

NORTH WEST GIGS

SOUTH GIGS

SOUTH EAST GIGS

SOUTH WEST GIGS

WALES GIGS

SCOTLAND GIGS

IRELAND GIGS

Hope to see you in the next week and a half!