Well, it's been a crazy year. And I'm speaking purely from a personal perspective; never mind the political, financial and social chaos that has raged across the planet, and which I fear will continue for some years, with such entrenched rearward thinking from the powerless, mendacious, cavilling statesmen who head our governments.

I've barely taken time to draw breath over the past twelve months and, as I do more often than I'd like, I find myself apologising for not blogging more regularly. 'Just post a couple of lines, let us know what you're doing,' some people say. Well, you should know by now that brevity is not my speciality. I spend a lot of my time condensing thoughts and energy into three-and-a-half minute song format, but tend to express my day-to-day thoughts less concisely! And, as many of you know, I use Twitter and Facebook for my random one-line musings.

So, what's been happening? It's hard to put things in any chronological order, because multiple projects are always on the go simultaneously to the point where I get confused. 'Keep lists,' advised one smartass friend. I have always kept lists. But it's reached the stage where I now have to make lists of lists, labelled in order of priority, if I'm to get anything finished.

A fair portion of the year has been spent working on library material for commercial clients. This frustrates the process of completing original projects I have in production - currently, I have three new solo albums in development. Licensing tracks to commercial outlets is one of the few means remaining whereby an independent artist can generate revenue streams from their musical output, and so has to be pursued aggressively. Over the past few months, I've managed to sign off a few tracks to Absolute Music. In all likelihood, they'll get some heavy airplay as TV and radio beds over the coming year, which will provide a much-needed source of royalties.

I have also been working closely with my good friends Ant and Matt Green, collectively known as Brotherhood. They approached me a couple of years ago and asked me to produce and co-write an album for them. Their gigging schedule is even more tumultuous than mine, but we have fallen into a routine that works for all of us: I'll get together with them for songwriting sessions. We lay down a working arrangement, which I then take away and work on, recording all the instrumental parts and doing all the time-consuming production stuff. Then, once every six weeks or so, we get together and record Ant & Matt's vocals. Lots of them. I am starting to question the wisdom of my insisting they stack 100+ backing vocals in proper Beach Boys style. I know I will regret it when it comes to mixing the album next year...

Out of the studio, my gigging schedule has been rather intense. This has also played havoc with my tentative self-imposed recording deadlines for my new albums, but gigging has provided me with a vital source of income this year, and in the current climate, I consider myself fortunate to have played so many shows. I hope at some point in the near future to reduce the amount of gigs I take on, purely because I need to create space to lock myself away in the studio without interruptions.

For those of you who came to this page originally because you know me first and foremost as the frontman of Apes, Pigs & Spacemen, there's been some interesting developments on that front in the last few days.

Firstly, an old BBC live session was broadcast on BBC Radio 6 on 14th December. I was particularly chuffed to hear this, as I lost the cassette copy (yes, remember those things?) that I took with me from Maida Vale. I think I left it in a taxi. Anyone wanting to listen, the show is up hear on BBC's iPlayer. The Apes tracks start around 40 minutes into the broadcast. BBC Radio 6

Even more interesting: The End Records have acquired Music For Nation's back catalogue and are set to release the second AP&S album, Snapshot, in the USA next year. The dazzling ineptitude and abject indifference with which Music For Nations treated the album upon its original release have been the subject of many discussions and interviews (and legal battles) ever since. We always saw Snapshot as the album that would introduce our music to the USA, and it is both exciting and vindicating that Andreas Katsambas at The End Records is getting fully behind a US release. There's talk of a pre-order bundle, T-shirts, etc. and, needless to say, I will support the release in any way I can. Obviously, I will post any news here and on all the social networks.

So, 2012 looks like getting off to a great start. Hope you all have a great New Year. See you on the other side...

This is more of a quick update than one of my usual more lengthy blogs. People keep reminding me that I haven't blogged in a while. It's forever on my 'to do' list. But the reason for my lack of blogs in recent weeks is simple: I've just been too damned busy!

I often wonder about people who complain all the time. You know, the kind of people to whom you say, 'How's it going?' and their reply is, 'Not so good,' or something of the sort. It's my belief that it's down to us to make our own happiness.

As such, I am a blissfully contented man. Take last night, for example. Just another little gig, with my great friend Paul Evans. A small stage in the corner of a bar. A gathering of locals who didn't know who we were. The complainers would say, 'Why do you play these places?' and always make sure to add the vital valuer-of-all-occasions: 'How much are you being paid?'

In answer to the latter: not enough to write home about. And to the first question? It makes no difference where I play. Last night being no exception. I get to work with some amazingly talented people, who I am privileged to have as friends. To sit for three hours, playing songs that you love, with an almost telepathic understanding of each other's playing; instinctively shifting dynamics and moving songs in constantly different directions; never getting in the way of one another, smiling when your friend plays a blinding solo, knowing looks at seamless segue ways and tight endings; to be able to bring an audience into this amazing zone for even a short while. And then to talk with people who genuinely appreciate live music: all of these things make me realise that I live a charmed life. I may be broke, but I am richly satisfied.

Well, 2011 has certainly got off to a hectic start. It would probably more accurate to say that the non-stop studio schedule of 2010 continued seamlessly, oblivious to the strictures of the Gregorian calendar.

I did take a day off on 25th December, but it was business as usual from then on. On 27th December, the other half of Pacmen, Alex Kane, and myself got together to start recording more stuff for the Pacmen album. Like me, Alex is immersed in countless other projects (he was over in the UK touring with LA Guns at the time), so we had to take advantage of all available time. 27th-31st December, we recorded in a couple of studios in Cheltenham, layering guitars and vocals and getting no sleep.

We'd agreed to play a New Year's Eve show for a good friend. We carried on working on the recording side of things until setting off for the venue. We were going to play two sets. A couple of hours. Yeah, funny thing there being we'd never actually played together before. No sleep. No rehearsal. No set list. What could go wrong?

To be fair, nothing did go wrong. Alex and I sat with guitars in the dressing room and ran through a bunch of stuff, drank a shit ton of beer, and then busked our way through a collection of Ramones, Bowie, Iggy Pop, Elvis, Stones, AC/DC-type songs. Afterwards, Alex said, 'I think that was the best I've ever played live.' This was tempered somewhat by his admission the next day that he had no recollection of playing the gig.

The next day was something of a write-off, but we then moved to my studio and continued working on the Pacmen stuff for a few more days, until Alex scooted off to work on Antiproduct material before heading back to LA.

The end result was five completed tracks, which I have been editing and mixing ever since. Still not sure when, how or what format a release will be. Maybe an EP will precede the album.

Video director Gareth Strange spent a day in the studio with us shooting random footage, and a few snippets have already been posted on Youtube. He is currently putting the finishing touches to a 'guys-in-studio'-type video to the first Pacmen single, Superstar. I'll post a link here when it goes live.