I had a meeting at Jibbering Records with my friend Robin this morning. He’s just about to release his first ‘official’ 12″ record - though I have both of his unofficial bootlegs (released under the name ‘The Friendly Rasta’), and I played them when I DJ’d at the Big Chill Bar in London a couple of days ago.

We had a good chat, a cup of coffee - and started work on a project together as part of the Knowledge Transfer Fellowship that officially started today. It’s a big, funded project that buys out half of my time for the next 2 years, and puts a few of us academic types into some music and radio-based organisations of all sorts of different sizes.

We have around 25 partners that we’ll be working with, and we’re going to be trying to find ways in which to be useful. The idea is that people like me sit around and study things, while people like Robin actually DO stuff, but have no time for R&D. Together, we can come up with creative and entrepreneurial solutions that will help add value to what he does. The IP remains with the partners, and we get to feel useful. It’s a great scheme.

Robin and I are off to a good start for the Friendly Fire collective. We’ve already come up with the project we’re going to be working on, and I think it’s going to be great. More news on this as it starts to become a bit more concrete.

Best of all, Robin gave me a copy of his new record. Number 1 of 300. Result.