When "U" is released on iTunes and CDBaby at the beginning of December. So, I have hidden messages in this final track on the album. It's a strange track but hopefully you'll think it's a fitting coda to the album - a sort of palate cleanser. Originally I was hoping the track would be exclusive to the CD and not available as part of the digital album. It was intended as a thank-you to those people who still buy CDs, bless 'em! Unfortunately for my plan, it turns out that the

XUK's entries for the 16th Annual Independent Music Awards are submitted! "U" is entered in the Album of the Year category. "Tomorrow / Today" and "No More Mister Night Sky" are in the Song of the Year category. "The Show" is entered in the "Social Action Song of the Year".

When we released XUK's debut album "Love Hits ...like a cricket bat-out-of-hell" I had unrealistically high hopes for it. I had hoped that I might at least recoup what it cost me to put it out and that I'd make enough to pay all the people who helped me promote it by playing live. That didn't happen and, unless the new album stimulates some interest in the old album, probably never will. But I'm fine with that. With this release I'm a little more realistic. I've done all the

"I'm felicitous since during the course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted categorisation of the vocabluary of our post-Norman tongue" - Doctor Samuel Johnson in Black Adder the Third (Ink and Incapability) Over the weekend Robin quoted someone as having said, "Mixes are never finished - they are just abandoned". After 13 months of recording and mixing I feel like I could easily go round in circles tweaking this stuff for another six months until

Last night I was playing with a weird instrumental track that I'd put to one side because I previously thought I couldn't make a song out of it. I came up with a lyric and recorded a "guide vocal". I'll be finishing it off tonight with some (hopefully) more polished vocal performances. It seems to be a good, off-beat track to open up the album. It's called "Lost". I've also renamed the track that once-upon-a-time was called "On The Inside", which became "Self-Help Book" and i