After taking leave from last release, 'P300', all drum machines and samplers were warmly welcomed back to Tent HQ to commence work on 'Ainhum Cleave'.  These 8 new tracks are inspired and guided by 2 long-standing visceral memories that have lingered and bubbled away inside my head and heart for many years now. Each have paid me influential visits over the years. When they show up, I do my best to be welcoming and attentive to their ‘chat’. They both turned up again recently after finishing P300'... it was time to act...  ​----------  The 2 memories: ​----------  Memory #1 - I'm outside a rave at Motherwell Civic Centre in the very early 1990's... Cars and buses are parked outside waiting to take people home from a night that has palpably inspired on a significant scale (not the norm for Motherwell, generally speaking).   ​ People will be taking home chunky memories and anecdotes to share and make sense of within their respective clans, no doubt accompanied alongside various rituals and brews. I have grown to appreciate that memories like these have great capacity for change...   ​ Within a very long queue of cars in the distance, I see my then hero - resident Warp Records DJ, Winston Hazel. His car is not acting like the others. I watched from a distance as the driver's door slowly opened, immediately setting free bassy, clonking, rhythmic shards of other worldly music (and significant plumes of undisclosed smoke - of course it would!!!). I had never been exposed to sounds like this before – I tingled with delight...    I'll never forget the sound / energy that came at me from his car stereo that night. A 'force' that arrested my attention so immediately and deeply that I can still tap into it now, all these years later. I can still feel now how it made me feel then... It remains to this day one of the coolest ‘musical events’ I've witnessed. These new 8 tracks are trying to capture some of this ‘essence’...   ----------  MEMORY #2 - I enter the Leadmill club in Sheffield, again in the very early 1990's. On entry, rich, powerful stimulus immediately bombard the ears and eyes. I slowly walk up to a giant rack of speakers under the control of 'Nightmares on Wax'. New, exciting frequencies and sounds envelope my ears in a warm, visceral fuzz. I try and take it all in. I am walking on a cloud of 'something'. All I can do is absorb...   ​When I reached the speakers, my ears were 'full'. That was it, that was all they had ever needed...  ​I hear a version of A Case Of Funk (1991), later to be released on Warp Records. This was my fuckin music... I can still feel snippets of that joy that entered my ears that night, even right now as I write...  ​To this day it’s still a complete mystery to me as to how they actually managed to physically fit that bass onto a solitary groove on a vinyl record...It shouldn’t fit, but... ----------  Both these memories have fleetingly come and gone over the years, but neither seem to have lost their power or clarity. I am thankful that they bubble forth periodically to gently prompt, as they are now... Having allowed my 2 dearest of memories to help me finish these 8 tracks, I unexpectedly and completely out of the blue, fell quite ill in the last week when it was all starting to come together...   ​I now write / post this from a Glasgow hospital bed with what I am told is a 3cm tumour on the right side of my parietal lobe...My balance and spacial awareness are going and working knowledge of the 'mastering process / Ableton' is deteriorating rapidly, comically so...  ----------  I am an endless tweaker of music, but my tweaks for the time being are all used up... What music and thoughts I have now have to be posted, as is...mistakes an' all... I'll fix them later (if I'm permitted more tweaks)...   I have no idea what happens now. I may make it, I may not... (I really hope I do... Unfinished business and all that. I really want to start work constructing a fully working replica of Winston Hazel's car outside Motherwell Civic Centre and let these 8 tracks and some more smoke loose...   Meanwhile, people I love and care for are sending me good vibes - I feel them loud and clear and am ever so grateful...  Whatever happens, no regrets, eh !!! If this ends well, we start tweaking again and hold those we love that bit tighter...  Elwood and Mel forever and always in my heart, wherever and whenever it chooses to rest...  Much love.  X/O/X  ----------  *UPDATE...  3 neurosurgeons peered inside my brain on 10/10 and removed a large gathering of rather nasty cells. Their skill and dedication have at least given me some more time, for which I am immensely grateful... I affectionately name the lead surgeon Dr Converse and compliment him on his excellent turquoise zip up fleece...     I am now resting at home and may well have some tweaks left yet...  ----------  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nud4XHWXRC8  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAbtGlLnXV4