So 2021.
Well, yeah it’s being an interesting year.
It all started off with me barely back in the day job only to get sent home again at the start of February and therefore after a quiet start in January, things picked up again with me working at home until about August when the day job began to start asking me to come back into work.
By this point, I had done loads of new Spoken Label Sessions (Author / Poet chat) resulting in me having completed close to 350 sessions in total as I enter my 6th year, and something like about 90 sessions over this year which surprised me I have to admit while maintaining a monthly series of my book review Podcast series Reading in Bed with Amanda (and assisting Amanda with the editing and post production of her spin off series ‘Reading in Bed Extracts’ and her novel Podcast ‘Ghost of Me’) and other Podcasts which have faded into the past (WrestleUp, Comics Unity and Coll, Andy and Amanda) all of which offer a interesting perspective of the year gone past
Next year, I am planning to carry on with Spoken Label hopefully on roughly one a week basis currently with guests booked up until March round about and me and Amanda will be carrying on with Reading in Bed. As of typing, I’ve finished off my books for January and am now reading my first book for February 2022 episode.
After WrestleUp, Comics Unity and Coll, Andy and Amanda all finished up, Amanda and me started to think about a new project over Autumn where we would simply read to each other a few pieces each month in a storytime kind of fee with a special guest joining us every other month. First one for December was our good friend, Rich Davenport with more guests to follow in 2022.
Musicwise, Ocean in a Bottle has its busiest year to date with regular appearances on various artists albums on labels like AmbientOnline, Silber Media, Camembertelectrique and Aural Films.
I’ve self released a few EPs on ‘At the Edge of the Milky Way’, ‘Waiting for the ice to Melt’ and ‘Falling back to Earth’ and a album on Slightly Off Kilter ‘Dreaming of life on Venus’ and a treble album ‘Exploring Jupiters Moons’ on Camembertelectrique.
I really don’t have much plans for the new year for Ocean in a Bottle as Jupiter’s Moons took a huge, huge amount of effort and I suspect during 2022 it will involve me carrying on with tracks on various labels again as and when I get approached etc.
Below the radar somewhat on purpose to some degree, I ended up reforming my old drone band ‘Distance’ which in the mid 2000s to about 2011 was responsible for a whole host of drone / experimental music and which certainly was a prologue to Ocean in a Bottle in a wilder way. Reuploading my complete archive of old and forgotten / unreleased projects at andynproductions.bandcamp.com. Some of the projects are in the past and although fun to listen back I either do not have the equipment anymore or the mindset, some like M.A.N. actually started up again (with three new tracks recorded and hopefully more to follow) and Distance which I started off with some improvisations in Spring in a somewhat different approach but still the same and over the Autumn into Winter became to get a feel for where the sound was heading and began to get tracks released on Cambertelectrique, Hicc and Aural Films. I am hoping to go onto more improvised materials and hopefully in the new year release its first official album in over 10 years.
Throughout my years as Ocean in a Bottle, I have always had a interest in Piano music, and I thought it would be fun to start off with some much direct Piano music than what has appeared in more recent Ocean music more recently and in the middle of this year I decided to give it a go and just try playing almost straight Piano music with a almost ghostly feel henceforth why all of the titles refer to Ghosts and the project naturally became known as Piano in a Bottle. Towards the end of the year, field samples began to creep into the backing of the tracks and its first track appeared with Hicc. Next year I suspect will prove very interesting here.
Writing here, yeah, sadly I am still working on my long awaited collection ‘Changing Carriages at Birmingham New Street’ which is a series of poetic letters between a couple which is still developing be it a strange pace. I think it has now reached 70 pieces or so, and there is still more to go with it. Lets see how it is going by the end of next year, as I suspect this has got a fair bit to go as does my Robot Science Fiction Poetry book Robot Noir.
In-between this, I completed two haiku books ‘Haiku of Life’ and prior to that “Underground Haiku’ both of which I really enjoyed writing as it taught myself a lot about writing than what I previously thought I could get do.
Over this year despite the fact I have still being writing poetry and have had some excellent publications, I have really started enjoying doing flash fiction something I have had great fun doing with Amanda and has opened up people’s eyes I think somewhat too is what my increasing love of flash fiction and even sometimes prose too. Over lockdown at the start of 2020, I started off a very informal writing workshop for me and Amanda which ended up with starting to really enjoy writing flash fiction over the end of 2020 into the start of 2021.
As it stands, I can’t see me moving into flash fiction in any kind of serious level but in the future I certainly see myself bringing out a book of them either by myself or with somebody else perhaps in a few years time and in the meantime changing gears with all sets I do.
Next year, Amanda and myself have our fourth split poetry book wrote together ‘Run away with me again in 8 words’ in January 2022, and over Spring I am hoping to have finished off my segment for Europa 5, my anti war series of books with Nick Armbrister.
Beyond that, I really have no plans forward with my poetry but instead am seriously thinking about for the first time seriously about trying to finish off a novel. I am 3,000 words into something at the moment which I think will be a long short story and once that is done I will then move onto a novella which I’ll talk about in the future which I did a few drafts on a few years which I think I can turn into a 20, 000 to 30,000 word novella before then moving onto its sequel which I think will end up being a short novel all being well. I am not going to stop writing poetry (in fact I am thinking about a new one as I type and considering I am still co-running Speak Easy in Chorlton Cum Hardy which is doing great guns which I’ll talk about another day so I won’t be finishing that off yet) but it’s heading towards the stage of my life where I need to spend some serious time thinking about something completely different.
All go as normal really lol.
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