I just lent him my minidisc and microphone. Now I can’t transcribe that interview. Now I can’t record my rehearsal on Wednesday. Now I can’t curl up under my duvet at 3am with the nylon string guitar and record little songs about hands and feathers. I’d run out the door and through the streets and snatch that little silver square right out of his bag, but he’s taken it to eastern Europe for four whole days and the plane’s already gone. I might have just as well lent him my diary or my ears or my Beach Boys bootlegs or something, so antsy and bereft do I feel. I know it’ll return by the weekend, with recordings of accordions and singing and all kinds of stuff on it. It will. It will, won’t it? Yes, it will. Buy me some cheap cigarettes and replacement batteries, I say, like that’s all it’s worth. Have a great time, I say, and get back OK.

I’d like to mix Andre Ethier’s record with Matmos’ so that you got one track of each following each other. One minute you’d be heavy-hearted and and staring out the window, rueful and maudlin like a girl whose minidisc recorder just up and left her, and the next you’d be gleefully ripping the strings off your guitar, glueing contact mics to your heavy heart and creating a wry subversion of the whole sorry-for-itself songwriting genre. I could do this on iTunes probably but it’s kind of a hassle, and I’ve got better things to do. Like writing sorry-for-myself songs, and a feature about Matmos.