Just an experiment – hopefully there will be more to follow…
So much for September…
Posted in General Stuff, Music on October 5, 2009 by theecrumb…it was a very strange month, for a number of reasons. Hardly any of them musical.
After An Artifact Of Progress I’ve been taking it easy, although there’s still been time to knock out a few new tracks.
This Place Belongs To The Spirits
I also managed a remix of Uncivilized’s track Tea, which has now surfaced on Digital Vomit along with other remixes by Tomoroh Hidari, Scat Fancy and Cock E.S.P.
Grab it here for nothing.
An Artifact of Progress
Posted in Music on August 22, 2009 by theecrumb
The cassette is now available to buy for £6.00 including P&P anywhere in the world. If you want a copy, go to the STUFF FOR SALE page up on the right-hand side of the screen and follow the instructions there. It’s a cumbersome method, I agree, but it does have the advantage of the personal touch and now that WordPress, Myspace and almost every other site seem to have some sort of problem with Paypal buttons and Java generally it’s virtually the only option I have left – until I start my own dedicated website.
The cassette is a C-90 – and I’ve managed to squeeze 26 tracks on there, so it lasts just over 85 minutes. The cassettes are chrome and have been dubbed in real-time from CD for better sound quality.
Track Listing:
side one (red side)
“square”
700 Days Away
Forbidden City
Monuments
Knives Have Been Provided…
Ascent to The Castle
Quad
Alpine Fur
The Mask
Flashlight Locale
Principle 2
Zombies On The Riviera
Letters In Faded Ink
side two (green side)
Ten Directions Of Darkness (Excerpt 1)
Bones Became Drumsticks
Principle 4
Ten Directions Of Darkness (excerpt 2)
The Mysterious Disappearance Of Blind Floyd Crumb
The Answer Is In The Question
Night School Tornado
Ten Directions Of Darkness (excerpt 3)
Blessed With Triple Vision
The Devil’s Ashtray (From A Small Bedroom)
Black On Blonde
Ten Directions Of Darkness (excerpt 4)
At The Edge Of The Ice
This release is also the first on my own label, Startled Okapi! Recordings, which will be concentrating on putting out physical stuff at irregular intervals, mostly my own stuff at first, but there may be a possibility of some V/A compilations at some point.
The original idea with this album was to put out some of the more experimental and ambient tracks that have been lying about for a while. In the end, though, I ended up writing a whole load of new stuff, so the album is about 70% new tracks, with only few of the older tracks, such as Quad and “square” getting in. The Ten Directions Of Darkness tracks are excerpts from the full 62-minute piece which may see the light of day at some point – that’s if the files are not so badly corrupted that I haven’t lost them entirely (long story).
NOTE: I completely forgot to mention this:
Digital Vomit’s latest compilation is now out for free download here – the info and full tracklisting is across there as well and it’s well worth grabbing. My track is below:
This was an attempt to write a 220+ BPM track and, although I succeeded, the result isn’t exactly in keeping with the rest of the album. Still, it was an interesting experiment – that’s one of the best things about this sort of themed compilation, it forces you to write tracks that probably wouldn’t come about in any other way.
Night Studies EP – Out Now
Posted in Music on July 15, 2009 by theecrumb
New download-only EP available right now from Sidedown Audio Here - 3 brand-new tracks for just $2 (yes, you’ll have to pay for this one). In addition to the music, you’ll get a 3 page PDF booklet and ’something special and secret’ – which is so special and secret even I don’t know what it is. This is only available until October and, right now, I’ve got no plans to use the tracks elsewhere once the EP goes offline, so if you want them there’s only one place to get them from. There’s an audio preview of one of the tracks on Sidedown’s site.
In other news, the cassette is nearly done – I expect to release it next month, all being well. More details, including artwork and tracklistings nearer the time…
Some notes…
Posted in General Stuff, Music on June 25, 2009 by theecrumbWork continues apace on both my new album and the cassette – release dates depend on when I actually finish them. The format of the album has yet to be decided, it may be a physical release or some kind of download. Here are two tracks that will probably find a home on the cassette:
Knives Have Been Provided…
The Mask
(Links now in An Artifact Of Progress post)
In other news, over at Digital Vomit, there’s much excitement as they’ve just released the first solo Jansky Noise album in 8 years.
It’s called Something Good Is Going To Happen and more info and the download link can be found Here. I’d recommend you check this out as it’s excellent and probably not what you’d be expecting at all.
This blog also notes the passing of former NME journalist Steven Wells, who died yesterday of cancer in Philadelphia at the criminally young age of 49. Speaking as somebody who read the NME religiously from the mid-80’s until sometime around the turn of the century, Swells could always be relied on for both attitude and entertainment (how many other music journalists could make you laugh out loud?) and if he was puerile and offensive at times – well, fuck it, that was part of his appeal. The fact that he was a better writer than virtually all of the others in his field was just a bonus. He was still pissing people off right till the end – if you’ve never read this column from The Guardian from January this year, take a look and have a good laugh, especially at the comments. This was Swells in a nutshell.
RIP
May Bank Holiday update
Posted in General Stuff, Music on May 23, 2009 by theecrumbDespite all appearances to the contrary, there’s plenty going on here. Aside from the music, it’s looking like I may be changing jobs and moving flats in the next few months so there will be a ton of stuff to do as and when that comes to pass.
On the music front, there’s a few compilation tracks in the works as well as one or two other things that I’ll talk about when the time is right. Here’s a work-in-progress (apologies for the volume levels)
This is another track that may end up on the next album – although the next thing that will emerge will more than likely be a C90 cassette, an idea that I’ve had on the back-burner for a long time (Thee Crumb Tapes was originally slated to be a cassette release) and now I’ve picked up a quantity of C90 tapes I’m looking at what I’ve got and how best to present the stuff. The idea is that it will concentrate more on the ambient and experimental tracks that often get left on one side. There will also be a number of new tracks included to make sure it isn’t just a barrel-scraping exercise.
I’ve also looking at playing some gigs at some time in the future (in the UK only right now as I’ve let my passport expire and haven’t got it together to get a new one yet) so if anybody is interested in hearing me mash up a pile of my own stuff on a laptop then give me a shout.
Fire-Eaters & Leeches EP now online
Posted in Music on April 10, 2009 by theecrumbI’ve been promising/threatening this for a little while but now it’s here (after grappling with the archive.org FTP uploading system for an entire afternoon).
Digital Vomit DVR 035
Tracklisting:
1. Elevenish (3:03)
2. Blistered (1:58)
3. Deep Sun, Red Earth (5:47)
4. Monkey With Electrodes (2:14)
5. The Dead Car (2:33)
6. Elements Of Smoke (3:15)
7. The Midnight Houri (4:37)
The whole thing is also available as a ZIP file or go to the archive.org page for WAV, Flac and Ogg files if you so desire.
A few lines of info about the tracks:
Elevenish and Monkey With Electrodes were put together in the second half of 2007, at roughly the same time as most of the tracks on When I Was King… and Eyeball Dust. They never found a home on either of those releases and I was planning on saving them for the next album, but decided to bump them from that onto here as they’ll be two years old by then and really don’t sit right with the newer tracks.
Deep Sun, Red Earth is even older, as it goes back to 2005 and is probably one of the oldest tracks (It All Began In Washington State also dates from about this time) that I’m still happy to let anybody hear. It’s been slightly edited and cleaned up for this release, but it shows exactly what you can do with a cheap DAW and freeware.
Blistered is the solitary completed out-take from Hic Sunt Dracones – which may explain the vocal sample in the middle. I decided that it didn’t fit on there so it ended up here.
Elements Of Smoke is a retooled version of Black Smoke from Intentional Distortion, reworked to see if the track would stand up on its own without the vocal samples to hold it together. Once I found it could, I adapted and stripped away certain parts but it is still basically the same song.
The Dead Car was done last month and was previewed below – see the comments in the previous post.
The Midnight Houri is one of a number of tracks I’ve been kicking about since last year for the next album and maybe I should’ve saved it for that, but as I’ve finally got a version I was comfortable with I decided to let it go now.
So, all in all, a mixed bag of tracks that seem to hang together pretty well.
The cover, if you’re interested, is taken from a picture by an unknown artist, and was photographed by me in the stockroom of a Portsmouth pharmacy where I found it stuffed between a shelf and a wall. I’ve distorted the colouring slightly (the camera phone picture wasn’t the highest resolution to begin with) and the image suggested the name for the EP.
Just taking it easy…
Posted in General Stuff, Music on March 28, 2009 by theecrumbHaven’t posted here for a couple of weeks as I’ve just been chilling out and sorting out the parts of my life that I’d let slide during February.
Speaking of the RPM Challenge, they’ve now set up dedicated band pages for every artist and mine is here, featuring all the audio from the last three years.
Hic Sunt Dracones should be going up on Hallo-Excentrico! as well soon, all being well, to join my other releases there.
And on the subject of other releases, I’m planning an online EP in the next month or so and, while I’m doing that, I shall also be working on another album. In the second half of last year, I recorded enough for an album (and even got as far as sequencing the tracks and working on some artwork) but, having come back to it now, I’m not too impressed with the whole thing and want to drop a few tracks and mess around with a couple of others. I’m hopeful that this process won’t take too long.
Here’s a track I finished last week – more than likely, it will be on the EP.
The Dead Car (Removed as there’s a finished version in the next post)
Every sound on this was sampled from a fairly well-known late-90’s rock album – I won’t say any more than that…
Hic Sunt Dracones now online
Posted in Music, RPM on March 4, 2009 by theecrumbThe whole album is up at my Last.fm page (which is here) and here are the links to the individual tracks:
01. Neon Teardrop [2:13]
02. Caverns Of The Soul [5:21]
03. Activation Codex [3:21]
04. The Man With The Screw-Top Head (Longer Mix) [1:31]
05. Sleep Now (Evil Child) [2:51]
06. The Hacker’s Dream [3:40]
07. Pissing Down [1:57]
08. A Sea Of Wings [4:43]
09. Back To 1634 [3:24]
10. In The Trap Of Thinking [3:03]
11. Four Dead Flowers In A Vase On A Table By An Azure Wall [2:07]
12. Into Powder [2:36]
13. The Map Is Not The Territory [9:14]
14. You Were The One I Was Waiting For [2:36]
More info about the individual tracks when I get more time to post.
In addition, the 28-second track I posted last month is now up here along with another 100 (no less!) tracks of the same length as part of Godxiliary’s 28 Second Later album. Check it out…
RPM Challenge: Completed
Posted in RPM on February 28, 2009 by theecrumbYes, it’s done. I burned the CD off a day or so ago and it got posted this morning – after my usual tussle with the artwork. Without giving a blow-by-blow account of the process, it’s just best to say that my old printer is woefully inadequate at printing much more than black-and-white forms and letters and full colour is too much for the bloody thing. I came very close to pitching the beast out of the window last night (long week/very stressed by this point/etc) but I managed to get something done in the end, although it wasn’t brilliant.
The cover? Oh yeah, it looks like this:
Dark purple and black – not a good look on a cheap printer. Still, enough about that.
The album is called Hic Sunt Dracones (Here Be Dragons in Latin) and I managed to cram 14 tracks on it in the end. There was only one that didn’t make it, along with the track I did for the VUA album that I didn’t actually bother mastering in the end as I didn’t see how it would fit in any case. This lack of out-takes means there’s unlikely to be an EP anytime soon. The CD came in at 48 minutes and 37 seconds and came out far better that I would’ve thought a week or so ago.
Am I pleased with the final result though? I can’t answer that right now. I’m not going to be around for a couple of days so I’ll listen to the whole thing again on Sunday and see what I think about it then.
The whole thing will be posted somewhere in the next week or so – probably at my Last.fm page first and then somewhere else as well and then I’ll give a track-by-track rundown of the whole mess once it’s up along with the links.
