You can now hear some audio from recent Radio 3 adventures with Andrew Cronshaw, Tigran Aleksanyan and Svetlana Spajic at this year's WOMAD. Look for Track 6 at CronshawSpace. And there's a hitherto unpublished review, by Bill Stephens, of Quantum Leap's show My Sister, My Brother in the online Canberra journal the riotACT. I've been recording the distinguished rhythm section of Liz Frencham (bass) and Jon Jones (drums) for a project involving Fred Smith and The Spooky Men's Chorale in a collection of urban sea shanties. Which made a nice change from working on a chunk of sound art involving London's most melodically inclined tube train driver (with a unique intercom style) and the trains themselves, duetting with bass clarinet in a piece entitled '...the burning Thames I have to cross', featured at Canberra's M16 artspace in the exhibition The Gathering. The title alludes to the English ballad The Grey Cock aka The Lover's Ghost - another spooky man who might have found it 'quicker by Tube'... as they used to say in the old days, when in fact it wasn't at all. Back then I appreciated the rattle and hum of those Northern Line trains when they did eventually turn up, reeking of warm dust and electricity, stale smoke and an unidentifiable whiff that set the reptilian brain a-thrumming... The Grey Cock, originally from the singing of Cecilia Costello, also turns up on the second Pyewackett album The Man in the Moon Drinks Claret. I was (pleasantly) surprised to find a Pyewackett Appreciation Society on Facebook a few days ago. Thanks Frances! Other recent recording includes a new song, Kids at Heart by Johnny Huckle, and a concert at the National Gallery of Australia by The Griffyn Ensemble which involved chasing the band around various galleries as they matched music to artwork: field recording in comfort! And Lynne Pilbrow's early childhood music education resource Fun Music for Little Kids is coming along nicely, providing an excellent excuse to play a lot of the studio's instrument collection: mbira, banjo, bass clarinet, sax, ocarina, cittern, concertina, harp, zoob tube and ukulele so far. I'm awaiting the opportunity/excuse to break out the Stylophone again. My years of experience making animal noises for BBC Schools radio programmes (The Song Tree) came in handy the other day when I sessioned at someone else's studio (David Pendragon) for Kathy Possum's new kid's music project. Lots of fun: I got to be a dinosaur. However, Jon Jones, drummer about town, got to be a belching dinosaur. From time to time we pretended to be a rhythm section...