iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 02/10/2026

The Lost Guests are endlessly on the way... First Day Of Holidays [video]

Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 02/10/2026

“A conversation between distances”: Some background to the Lost Guests LP I helped make - it’s out today on @yyzrecords.bsky.social #bandcampfriday yyzrecords.bandcamp.com/album/endles...

During his Easter holiday this year, songwriter Alistair James composed, recorded and released a brilliant record: his The Unfinished Sea was the delightful product of a short holiday in North-West Scotland, and - in Brighton - Jonathan was delighted to discover it.

Over the next months, while Jonathan laboured on the forthcoming Assistant record, he was often accompanied by The Unfinished Sea and bewitched by the instinctive, field-recorded, open quality of its songwriting.

During this period two important things happened. Firstly, a summer holiday was booked - two weeks camping at Carsac-Aillac in the Dordogne - and secondly Jonathan bought his daughter, Lydia, a Loog three-string guitar. When the holiday arrived the Loog was tossed in the back of the car and, in spare moments, Jonathan wrote four songs, recording them in his tent or in the front seat of the family hatchback in the middle of the night. All along, The Unfinished Sea was in his mind. What was this project? The Unfinished River?

An email to Alistair set the direction. To accompany Jonathan's four songs, Alistair added four of his own, and the two sets of songs began to cross-pollinate as the two new acquaintances added harmonies, guitar lines, bass and flute to each other's tracks. It became delightfully clear that their separate preoccupations were beginning to form a single story.

Jonathan's songs were written in the weird utopian mirage of campsites, touched on ice cold river swims, old stories from French medieval history, parenting and family. Cheerful tunes, they were alive to the peculiar intensity of being somewhere else while knowing that ordinary life is waiting on either side. Alistair, at home, was writing songs that seemed to look outward, towards departure, possibility and elsewhere. Between them, a record emerged about the strange traffic between those two states.

The resulting album is a conversation between distances: between home and away, escape and attachment, the life you br…

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 26/09/2026

A lovely day of rehearsing songs in the kitchen here with Anne Sophie

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 25/09/2026

A little run through of a track written for us by @durutti74.bsky.social

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 21/09/2026

Will I ever get free? Age lines crest out in degrees, from here to eternity

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 20/09/2026

New allotment! Absolutely bursting with joy and excitement.

Here I am taking a photo out of our shed window in our new allotment in Brighton. We were given it today! Exciting.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 20/09/2026

Madness? (Inexpertly applied)

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 16/09/2026

I don’t really know much about this book, but (a) always got time to investigate a New Directions paperback and (b) wot a description on the back!!

Front cover of Joe Ashby Porter’s novel Eelgrass (1977), a worn cream New Directions paperback with bold black 1970s-style typography. The title sits above a surreal line drawing of four nude figures standing among tall, dark reeds or eelgrass, with small leafy plants around them.

Back cover of Joe Ashby Porter’s Eelgrass, a worn cream New Directions paperback. Large black title and author text sit above a lengthy synopsis describing a dreamy island commune, drugs, eccentric residents and a mysterious creature, followed by a quotation from Porter about the novel as a nostalgic “vision of innocence.”

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 16/09/2026

Another library haul! Some exciting stuff here - loving Edward Dorn

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 12/09/2026

Laurie’s follow up video is called DANGERBALL

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 31/08/2026

A poem from Barbara Guest. I like this one.

Seven-line untitled poem by Barbara Guest, from The Countess from Minneapolis (1976).

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 30/08/2026

Found this book in Newhaven Fort today. It is an absolute goldmine of amazing indie rock band names & album titles. I am banking ‘DEPRESSIONS IN SWASH ZONE’ as a future Assistant LP, so hands off.

Book cover for Beach Combing: Cultivate Mindful Moments by the Shore, from the Pocket Nature series —photographed by me at Newhaven Fort today. The illustrated cover shows a collection of colourful seashells, including scallop, mussel and spiral shells, and a sand dollar, arranged against a pale sandy beach with blue-green sea in the background.

Depressions in Swash Zone — new from Mole Crab. The Minnesota four-piece play municipal-grade indie pop; this sounds like a windy Wowee Zowee.

Eccentric Sand Dollar — the third album by Aristotle’s Lantern has a softer sound: eight pretty songs that sound like Nap Eyes playing acoustically in a giant kettle. It’s their Loaded.

Chiton Shell Plates — self-titled debut from the Lewes five-piece. Sounds like British Sea Power doing Cornershop covers. Highly recommended.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 20/08/2026

Sur les traces d’Erik Satie à Honfleur.

Red commemorative plaque on the timber-framed exterior of the Maisons Satie in Honfleur, marking the house where composer Erik Satie lived, above a museum sign with its distinctive yellow pear.

Ornate wrought-iron window grill at the Maisons Satie in Honfleur, with symmetrical curling floral and fleur-de-lis motifs.

Entrance to the Maisons Satie in Honfleur, set into an old timber-framed façade, with three winged pears displayed behind the glass door.

White Art Deco-style former nursery school in Honfleur, now home to the École Municipale de Musique Erik Satie, with a dark entrance and geometric façade.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 19/08/2026

Alert folk might have noted I’ve not been doing my indie pop radio show this summer. I have missed it a lot but been doing other things. But you know what? I think it might be time to start telling me about anything new I need to listen to as I limber up for a new run.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 17/08/2026

More unserious & half-formed tent pop. Made this in the Loire today (in the car, not the tent) and it’s about Charles VIII, who lived in Amboise until he was 27 then died after banging his head on a doorframe.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 17/08/2026

More tent-pop from the Dordogne (and a flash of ‘Chapeau’ by @andrewrumsey.bsky.social from Lydia at the end).

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 15/08/2026

The water was so cold, a shock. Alison fished at the edges with a net and produced two tiny fish; glassy and astonished, shining silver. The Céou runs through a channel of exposed Jurassic bedrock and is fed by vast underground caves. That’s why it’s so flipping cold.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 15/08/2026

Today I sat reading Richard Brautigan while a girl sat beside me with her dog on a long lead, and he jumped in and out of the water, barking down mouthfuls of water. Each time he returned to her side it was like she had reeled him in with a fishing line.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 15/08/2026

You can’t see the water from the road at Daglan - a small town a few miles south-west of Carsac-Aillac, where we’re staying in the Dordogne this week. We spent a lovely afternoon there today. We drove down a track & parked the car in a place we (wrongly) thought might be shaded in an hour or two.

Here I am floating in the deep and freezing bathtub at Daglan.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 08/08/2026

Good morning from the Dordogne, where everything is gold and green, the same colour as Pavement songs.

The Dordogne at Carsac-Aillac at 7am on Saturday 8th August 2026

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 06/08/2026

A small tent-recorded song from our campsite by the Loir and a video of me walking around with a glass of wine! Happy summer holidays x

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 06/08/2026

Sat on a bridge looking at the Loir just up the road from my little campsite in the town of La Flèche, having been to collect supplies from the Carrefour. Seemed mad to not stop and listen to ‘Capo’ by The Sweetest Ache, so that’s what I’m doing.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 06/08/2026

A Kinksy 2 from our campsite in Loire Valley. Very much a first take : as I sit and work it out

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 05/08/2026

Going to give this a go seeing as Chad did such a good job of it. Answers in subsequent tweets

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 31/07/2026

It’s a big thumbs up to Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds: a lovely homecoming gig less than a hundred metres from where I live. Had the crowd in the palm of his band! Plus Kylie!

Nick Cave live in Preston Park, Brighton

Nick Cave live in Preston Park, Brighton - and mushroom cloud, right.

It’s Kylie!! In Brighton. Got to be a banker for Pride tomorrow surely?

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 29/07/2026

A debut short film by my son, 6. It is called “Splat Man”. Worth having the sound on.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 22/07/2026

Determined to improve my off-by-heart memory of our shonky endearing little back catalogue; all the songs on This World Could Be So Much Fun have so many chords.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 18/07/2026

This article on zines by @msclairebiddles.bsky.social is a fantastically useful read and a treasure trove! Very happy to be featured along some wonderful zines. I sent the paper this pic but they didn’t have space to use it. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...

Just some of the wonderful zines on the scene, including my own IN THE APRIL SUN

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 08/07/2026

Here’s Pete slip-sliding between Assistant’s Raking Leaves and Pulp’s Babies

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 07/07/2026

Glorious heat-wave evening in lovely sunny Brighton. (Actually, it’s Hove, but that’s off brand).

Sat outside the Wick Inn reading Philip Whalen

Garden Cottage #1

Chill morning moonlight garden by Douanier Rousseau
Some weird bird or animal cries at 3 A.M.
Lost, meaningless, wild.
Temporarily the moon-window in the sleeping loft
Composes a picture of mountains and tree tops
In the Chinese taste, although an edge of the roof cuts a chord
Out of the circle.
If I should die the picture would decompose
The window just be a hole in a wall
The mountains would be someplace else
This probably is all about a poem I wrote sixteen years ago.

Tassajara
September-October 1977

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 05/07/2026

Library haul, 5 July. Absolutely splendid sunny day on the Sussex Uni campus at Falmer.

Four library books arranged in a neat two-by-two grid on dry, sunlit grass.

At the top left is Philip Whalen: Enough Said: Poems 1974–1979, a cream cover with a bold orange title panel.

Top right is All This Every Day by Joanne Kyger, with a black-and-white photograph of a woman sitting beneath a large tree.

Bottom left is Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, featuring a sepia-toned photograph of two people standing by a stream.

Bottom right is Recollections of My Life as a Woman by Diane di Prima, showing an upside-down black-and-white photograph of a woman reclining indoors.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 01/07/2026

One last song as I’m up late baking and am in a good mood. This might be the best little pop song in my catalogue of misses!

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 01/07/2026

A true story at my kitchen table (plus some bum notes)

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 27/06/2026

In a pub in Huntingdon with my dad and the man at the next table is explaining that he’s a bassist & will play with anyone EXCEPT Paul Heaton because he couldn’t play “that sort of music”. I admit to being slightly confused.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 25/06/2026

Mounted our home-made street library at the end of our path! Stop by, Brighton dwellers!

We built this little street library from a metal idea box - very pleased with it; our painting is the South Downs via Provence

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 22/06/2026

Every now and again Pete sends me a song title and tells me to write a song. Found this in the archive, with the corresponding song (dates from 2022). on.soundcloud.com/raO4RDesgk93...

Pete requesting I write a song called ‘If You Were A Statue (I Would Tear You Down)’ back in 2022. I did give it a go!

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 21/06/2026

Art project day here - new mini street library for our road here in Brighton.

Lydia proudly helps decorate the street-library cabinet, touching the painted landscape on the door while Alison looks on hoping the worst can be averted

Alison carefully paints a colourful Provençal via The South Downs style landscape onto the front of a small metal cabinet, with paints and brushes spread out on the table beside her.

Alison and Lydia begin painting the little street-library cabinet together, adding the first pale-blue brushstrokes to the door before the landscape takes shape.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 15/06/2026

Very happy to get new Autocamper and Tenniscoats releases through the post today! Got the latter on right now and it’s absolutely fantastic.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 14/06/2026

Who do you love? (As best I remember it) Dsus2 Cmaj7 Em7 C6/9 Fmaj7 Em D7sus4 D7

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 13/06/2026

Just a few songs for David Hockney on the show tomorrow: 7pm on untidyradio.com and songs from Mark Lanegan, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Bob Dylan, The Television Personalities, Nico Muhly, David J, Vinny Peculiar, Henry Carlyle, Keith Christmas and The Happy Somethings.

This week's radio flyer features:
Santa Monica Boulevard, 1978-80
Collection The David Hockney Foundation. © David Hockney.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 11/06/2026

Reuniting recently played records and their sleeves

A bunch of recently listened to records: Blur, Ghostface Killah, Stereolab, Radhika, Elastica and a couple of great comps - Jamaica Funk and Qat, Coffee and Qambus

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 10/06/2026

One of my favourite LPs of the year has arrived and Laurie and Lydia are excited. Seeing Radhika on Sunday at the Betsey Trotwood, anyone else going?

Lydia and Laurie holding the splendid new LP by Radhika.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 10/06/2026

Trying to work on Assistant stuff at the moment which means I find it hard to listen to other indie pop stuff!!

Alt text: Screenshot of a Last.fm weekly album chart showing heavy listening to Brazilian, Jamaican, Venezuelan and other international records while Assistant are recording and mixing. Top of the list is Milton Nascimento’s Clube Da Esquina with 67 scrobbles, followed by Sylvia Telles, Soul Jazz’s Venezuela 70 Vol. 2, Chico Buarque, The Upsetters, Cedric “Im” Brooks, Novos Baianos and Astrud Gilberto, with Boards of Canada, The Style Council and De La Soul also appearing. A week of seeking distraction and refuge in warm, far-flung sounds while the new record takes shape.

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Assistant @assistant.bandcamp.com · 09/06/2026

More Gary Snyder. Lope getting in on the action.

GOOFING AGAIN
Goofing again
I shifted weight the wrong way flipping the plank end-over dumping me down in the bilge & splatting a gallon can of thick sticky dark red italian deck paint
over the fresh white bulkhead. such a trifling move & such spectacular results. now have to paint the wall again & salvage only from it all a poem.

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