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.