A couple of months ago we took a trip to the ancient world of 2010, when Ian and I were hard at work recording our second album, Masterpiece. Now we’re firing up our time machine again to pay a visit to November 2011, and a series of photos taken during the recording sessions for our third album Pop Squared.
There are three acts to this extremely dramatic album. The first pictures are taken in my old flat in Crystal Palace, as we recorded our brilliant and ground-breaking music. There’s only a few of those. Then we quickly get into a second group, which are pictures we took of ourselves while the other one was getting ready in the bathroom. I think the idea was to get potential album pictures while saving precious time, so I would capture the essence of my music while Ian was brushing his teeth, then we’d swap over so Ian could attempt to photograph the ineffable nature of his muse while I was having a wee. Then after that we went out to Keston Common, where it was very cold and misty, to take some moody outdoor shots, some of which turned up on the album cover.
We took eighty-odd pictures, but nobody needs that, so I’ve slimmed them down to about 50 and stuck them in a new picture album.
I urge you – in fact, I implore you – to take a look at them for yourself, but if you want a taster, there are moments of great joy to be found in there, like these highlights.
Ian really loved his dinosaur hoodie. This was the album of “Dinosaur Gal”, of course, so it was completely appropriate that Ian appears in a dinosaur-themed garment.
We really wanted a picture where I was on the phone and Ian was a dinosaur. We took lots of them. Most of the ones I deleted were like this.
2011 was a long time ago. A long time ago. And we both look so unbelievably young. Look at that hair. Look at that wrinkle-free face. Look at those terrible, terrible shoes. Unbelievable.
Anyway, that’s as much 2011 as we have time for. If I can find any photos from the time we recorded The Eponymous Album, you will be the first to know.
7 comments on “A slice of 2011”
This is all very delightful. Everything about this is great, apart from your shoes. What were you thinking?
I don’t know. I’m aware that I have owned and worn a lot of badly chosen shoes in my time, and I am aware that I can’t remember most of them. But these ones are among the worst.
I can’t look at them. I can’t look at you. None of my pairs of eyes will allow me to look at them/you. You need to sort this out immediately.
OK. I am setting to work immediately on finding some way of forcing you to look at my shoes.
No. You have to block them out. Redact them. Photoshop them out. You must remove them. If I wake up in Dublin and you’ve put some shoe glancing eyes on me I will explode in a molten pool of anger.
It doesn’t need to be that elaborate. I’m paying the full price for a suitcase in the hold just so I can bring a suitcase full of photos of my shoes. While you sleep I’ll be covering every surface in the flat with pictures. When you awake you will see only my shoes. It’ll be all over.
I woke up screaming in the middle of the night at least twice based on this possibility. When it actually happened, I opened my mouth and no noise came out. Horrific.