THE WILDHEARTS frontman Ginger has checked in from the studio with the following update:

"Woke up feeling oddly displaced. Stumbled around the studio. Drank some industrial strength coffee. Tried to skype someone, anyone. It's a beautiful day, the sun is pouring goodness on her audience, the songs are rockin', so why can't I get my engines going?

Decide to go for a run. The iPod shares my disembodiment and throws an all male set of confusion and incoherence together, which includes Mitch Hedberg, Paul Stanley, Mike Skinner and Andre 2000. Start to feel a little more alive once I get into the shower but still can't fight the impression that the earth has turned into glue during the night, and is tugging at every step that I make today.

Surely I can't be feeling melancholy because this is the last week and something deep within me is going to miss this place?!?!?!?

SURELY NOT.

Maybe I'm feeling that the three members of the band have bonded in a way that we never would have in different circumstances. With Ritch gone and no money around (and nothing to do), there are two lanes of progression on offer. Kill each other or bond. I'm very happy about the fact that we chose the latter.

Maybe we're making an album that we wouldn't have made without the work being held under a microscope born of gratitude for breaking the extreme isolation?

Maybe it's the smell of shit?

I like the smell of cowshit, I really do. And horseshit. Pigshit too, although it can be a little overpowering early in the morning too close to a fresh spreading. Then it smells a little like too much like human shit. Lying on top of the earth as it does, stinking, you can't blame the pigs, they have to eat as much crap as we do. Horse and cows are like "fuck your leftovers man, give me some grass and make it fresh", pigs are like "I'll eat cows and horses, fuck it".

As you are what you eat, so you were what you shat.

If I'm coming back as an animal I'd like it to be a horse. Horses are cool as shit. Big, gentle, respected, and can kill you with a foot. Nothing hates horses, man.

Actually I'd be happy to be a dog, or a bird, anything but a fucking human.

I don't understand humans. Friends who act like they're collecting people instead of loving them. People supposedly close to you who have no idea who the fuck you are. I guess it's more merciful to invent a personality for someone than to shave their current one to fit. And butterfly collectors aren't concerned with how pretty just a few could look on a wall. They don't care about the butterflies, they care about the pretty wings. They care about their own appreciation. Their own gratification. The butterfly has very little to do with the deal.

I seem to be thinking about other people way too much when I should be letting people walk their own path, and concentrating on walking my own. Still, even Ghandi must've got frustrated at people occasionally.

Kim, the guy playing keys on the album, stayed with us last night and is back in the studio today, putting down strange noises and loops etc. I'm liking his involvement very much. For me it's way overdue for us to reinvent ourselves a little, and the strange sounds he's making sound every bit as exciting as a guitar solo or another hand-me-down chord progression.

Maybe we should think about getting a keyboard player for our live shows? Stick him at the side with a mini bar set up so he doesn't get too bored during the old 'favourites'. It would be a little like a constantly whirring time machine, whipping you from 94 to present day. The effect slightly disorientating, yet depressingly familiar.

Little Sabina from next door has stepped in to provide vocals for a section of a song called 'You Are Proof That Not All Women Are Insane'. It's a very cute part that I'm excited about you hearing. She's done a great job. In fact everyone involved in this album has done a really great job. It's been a truly collective effort, like nothing I've ever been involved in before.

It's going to be a pleasure to work through this final week."

Ginger