Work continues, as usual

Winter - meteorologic, if not astronomic - has arrived at the Plaguedream compound, and most of us were relieved from our usual morning duties to chip ice off everything. The automatic de-icer on the auxiliary transmitter tower froze up (yeah...), so I spent the pre-dawn hours up in a lineman's harness with a blow-dryer and a really long extension cord, thawing out the delicate coils on low heat. Not how I planned to spend my Monday, but it did turn out, on balance, to be to our great benefit, since my unusual vantage point revealed a worn insulator that, left to itself, could have burned out the entire unit, at a cost far exceeding the minor annoyance and windburn it took to find it. That's how it goes around here (and good thing, too, despite any grumbling at the time).

(Apologies for the minutiae, but I still have my feet in a warm-water bath as I type, so it's on my mind.)

More relevant to you, dear reader, I am pleased to say that To Repel Ghosts are putting the finishing touches on Partisan Songs, to be released very soon (assuming that the server difficulties of our long-suffering file hosts, the Internet Archive, are resolved promptly - stay tuned). The engineering stage of the album proved trying for all of us at the Institute - TRG's methods are not without their hazards - but things have quieted down since they went to post-production, and what I've heard of the album sounds like it was worth the damage to the studio facilities (which was extensive but, fortunately, mostly cosmetic).

Lastly, I would like to reassure the many listeners who wrote to us concerning the Noel Towers album that what you are experiencing is perfectly natural, and that the psychosensory effects, though unsettling to some, are ultimately beneficial, and will become less noticeable over subsequent playings.

Watch for more news as the month progresses - we have some good things in store!

=PD