Tinder Date is a fifteen minute song cycle album about someone waiting on a blind date. Other than the final song, none of the 12 tracks exceed the 2 minute mark. The album takes place in real time, with it beginning when the protagonist enders the pub they are meant to meet their date in and ends with the arrival of said date.

The album's eccentric production, short song lengths and experimentation with form is the culmination of a lot of the ideas I've been thinking about for the last couple of years. This is probably (at least for a while) going to be the last album I release with super short seamless songs. I think it's the closest I've gotten to archiving the sound in my head for this type of concept that I've ever done.

While I usually tend to release albums as soon as they are done, this one had an unusual gestating period. The music and core concept was figured out all the way back in January and February of 2020 and then the lyrics and minor details were all worked on during the beginning of the pandemic. By April 2020, it turned out that working on an album about the anxieties of socialising felt utterly bizarre and so I put the entire thing on hold. So much so that three albums have been released in the meantime (At Our Best, Songs From The Brink and Single Series).

Luckily at some point in 2021 I decided to finish the album up. Due to the pandemic still ongoing the recording took up an erratic pattern where I recorded when, where and how I could within all the limitations everyone had. Then somewhere in the middle of 2021, all the guitar parts were recorded in a single day at Jonny Coddington's Bottle Rocket Studios. Vocals and violin where recorded at home whenever me and Rosa had time and the drums and bass were all recorded independently by their respective players (Thanks Ollie and James!! Amazing work as always).

This album is probably a bit of a weird one, in fact I don't know how much I see myself in it anymore since it's been in the background for such a long time. But I do truly believe it is unique and quite unlike anything else around. I'd challenge anyone to point out something similar to this album. Actually on second thought, please do. I'd love it hear it.

I'd like to thank everyone else involved in this, Ollie for his great bass playing, Rosa for her tuneful violin and James for his wonderful drumming. A thanks also goes to Jonny who mixed the record and help me with the recording of the guitars. And lastly, I'd like to thank Eliane Rasnake who mastered the album and made it sound as good as it could possible be.

I'm happy it's out in the world and I hope you can enjoy it. Thanks to my friend David Jones who let me use a picture I took of him for the album cover. Download the album to get the booklet which has all the lyrics as well as a couple of other silly little things about the album. That's it, listen to it if you want and tell me all the things you didn't like about it on my social media or email.