Hello, remember me?

Hi folks. I guess before I start I should offer a huge apology for not being particularly pro-active blogwise lately. I know I promised a round up of 2009 and a Bassbook blog featuring some Panic Room transcriptions, but I have been a little tied up with day to day life so everything has been a bit delayed.

But I thought I’d quickly post an update about a few fun things that are definitely going to happen in the next few weeks…

Panic Room
The new album Satellite is now out in the shops, on Amazon, etc and getting fantastic reviews. The special edition, which includes the 4 song Little Satellite EP (which contains my first EVER lyric credit on “The Great Divide”) is still available from our website and will also be available at gigs.

Which leads me neatly onto the forthcoming Spring dates! We are about to embark on our first live dates of 2010 and you can see us at…

Saturday, March 6th – The Duchess, York
Saturday, March 13th – The Flowerport, Derby
Thursday, March 25th – The 12-Bar, Swindon
Saturday, March 27th – The Peel, Kingston upon Thames
Sunday, March 28th – The Robin 2, Wolverhampton
Sunday, April 25 – Y Theatre, Leicester
Friday April 30 – St Davids Hall, Cardiff ( supporting Hawkwind)
Saturday May 15 – Sheperds Bush Empire, London ( supporting Mostly Autumn and Wishbone Ash)

Hope to see you there! We’re also working on dates for later on the year, more news on those soon 🙂

In other news, we’ve been selected as one of Get Ready To Rock website’s Ten for 10. This means we’re one of 10 bands that they’ll be working with, helping to promote and spread the word about in 2010. With a 1/4 million monthly hits to the site Get Ready To Rock is a great supporter of independent rock music and we’re really pleased to have been selected.

Also, long time Panic Room supporter Mark Hateley has set up a group on Facebook to ballot for us to appear on Later…with Jools Holland. If you’re on Facebook and would like to lend your support, please sign up 🙂

Steve Waterman Big Band Course
In amongst the Panic Room dates, I’ll be teaching on trumpeter Steve Waterman’s big band course in Llanelli, South Wales. This will be the 5th year that we’ve run this course and it’s always a great event. As with last year, saxophonist Alan Barnes will also be featured as guest tutor. There may still be some spaces left if you’re quick.

RPM Challenge
And before all that, I have an album to finish! Last year I took part in the RPM Challenge, where you have to record an album’s worth of material during the month of February. Last year resulted in the album “What I Did On My Holiday” which you can download as a zip file here ( I will hopefully sort out a streaming version soon too as my current Last.FM player has died).

This year I’m doing it all again. I’m recording a bit of an experiment this year – each day I’m recording at least a minute of improvisation. Sometimes I barely get a minute, other times I get a few pieces. I’ll then tidy them up (I’m not going to overdub anything, just edit any gaps and clean up the audio) and they’ll be an audio diary of February 🙂 Whether I’ll leave them in chronological order or swap them round I’m not sure yet, I’ll wait and see what I’ve got towards the end of the month. So far, I’ve got all sorts of fun things – quite a lot of my Curbow 6 string bass, but I’ve also got some stuff featuring my Jazz, fretless, electric upright, synths, guitar and even the debut of my ukelele!

I also intended to record some more composed material but, half way through the month, I haven’t got very far with that one!

So, that’s my next few weeks sorted! I’ve also got a few local gigs and a couple of Welsh shows with New York jazz and cabaret singer Marlene Verplanck to look forward to, details of all shows can be found on the front page of my newly revamped website ( special thanks to Tim Hall for allowing me to use the photo which now sits ponderously at the side of the site).

Take care,
Alun