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...