Instead of dressing up as a sexy devil/cat/mouse/witch and going trick-or-treating, this year I decided to spend some quality time with Ellie Goulding in Bristol. It garnered decidedly less confectionery, but thankfully involved much less traipsing and chafing tights.

New Buzz Producer Chap Starsmith (who does lots of her choons) plays in her live band, he dressed up as 'dead Little Boots.' Ellie wasn't sure what she'd come as.

continued...

Here's a sneaky little snippet of 'Wish I Stayed'. It's what's reffered to in some circles as 'A Good Song'.

Here's set-closer and Future Number One, 'Starry-Eyed'. How do we feel about the big drummy outro? Why, we feel rather good.

This is a chat pre-drinking enough to make me fall asleep in the dressing room. It went reasonably smoothly bar Ellie's struggle to name four albums in under three minutes. The tape ended up running out before she finished.

She actually never managed to think of the fourth record, and needed help from Starsmith.

Marina (of And The Diamonds nonsensical pluralism) came up too, for shits and indeed giggles. This was mid-drinking from a homemade punch involving every dreg of alcohol and Innocent smoothie on all the touring bands' riders.

I should probably be taking this opportunity to apologise to both Ellie and Marina (and anyone else within a eight metre radius of me) for the blithering idiocy of my conversation from this period of the evening onward -vague flash-backs keep returning to my memory every few hours inducing painful cringing and literal physical shudders.

To summarise, three questions and one answer:

Q- How hard is it to pull off an acoustic balladeering/glitch-electro fusion?
Q- How good is Ellie Goulding?
Q- How big will Ellie Goulding get next year?

A- Very