Here’s a new track:

Rusty Skeleton Key

February also means the publication of Foreshadows and, although I haven’t read much of it yet, I have now heard all the audio content and can say it’s well worth spending your hard-earned cash on as it’s excellent (but then I would say that I guess…) – I’ll be posting more nearer the release date. I shall also be posting more RPM info and work-in-progress as I proceed – that does however depend on me being able to solve my on-going problems with accessing this site and actually posting. This has taken me nearly an hour this morning, as it takes so long to load and confirm you’ve actually done anything I was afraid I’d nearly lost this post at least twice. Oh well, if not, I’ll be on the RPM site somewhere instead…

…and as it’s pouring with rain, it must be Christmas time. Actually, I just post at this time of the year as it’s an excuse to use another one of these Russian Christmas card images I found online. 2011 hasn’t been a wonderful year for a number of reasons so I’m pretty glad to see the back of it. Here’s hoping 2012 is a bit better – although the long-overdue arrival of Foreshadows suggests that it will be.

Anyway before I check out for another year I really should mention this compilation I’m on…

‘Our Marriage Is Collapsing’
The 2011 Braindance! Forum Compilation.
(BITP007DL)

1. Topher (ft. Céline) – Shotgun Wedding
2. UDAC – OCIM
3. Stygian J – Flatpack Relationship
4. Hardoff – Loa Loa Filariasis
5. Gusset – Cab Ride To Hell
6. Pastor Martin – 1000 Days
7. Una Niña Malvada – Bodas De Laser
8. Anexium – Eanise
9. Thee Crumb – Sometimes You Wonder (Why You Even Bothered)
10. Bendish – Indra’s Net
11. Wellcom – Collapse
12. Ironic (ft. Cyan) – The Fallout Of Too Much Partying (The Children, Think Of The Children)
13. Libythth – The Drain Leads To The Ocean
14. mIIm - Irretrievable
15. Szuumm – Men Are From Arse, Women Are From Venice
16. T-toe – Well It Started Pretty Good But Then Kinda Fizzled Out
17. Wave Editor – Immutable Oxytocin Vacuum
18. Jilk – I’m Divorcing You Because Of Your Stupid Vagina
19. Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Godzilla – Resigned

Download the album now from:
[www.bit-phalanx.com]

A fine line-up I’m sure you’ll agree…

Here’s a couple of new-ish tracks just to round things off:

The Panther Left Tracks in The Sand

Death Mask Of Fu Manchu

Cynical? Me?

Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero is project with a long history. It’s been in the works for nearly three years, going through several stages of evolution along the way. But its final form, a combination book and CD, will be released on February 21st, 2012. Meanwhile, as of now, this thing can be preordered in the VUA store.

And it comes in two versions…

The Open Edition: This is a full-length CD with music from 11 musicians, mixed and produced by VUAgents John LaSala and Bilian, mastered at The Vault Studio. This music served as the launch point for the accompanying book, which contains 15 short stories and a serialized 4-part novella. A total of 18 authors came together to write this book, including the likes of Keith Baker, Robert J. Randisi, and Ed Greenwood (creator of The Forgotten Realms!). The book itself is a hefty 6×9 quality paperback, features cover artwork by Michael Komarck, and includes 19 illustrations by the immensely talented Talon Dunning. This monster sells for $36.

The Limited Edition: This version features foil-stamped lettering on the book cover, is signed by all 29 musicians and authors, and is limited to only 100 copies. Particular limitation numbers can be obtained on request (such as #19 of 100), on a first-come-first-serve basis. And they can even handwrite a dedication inside up on request! This beaut sells for $99…while supplies last, of course.

LE Upgrade Bonus! Anyone who pre-orders the open edition between now and December 21, 2011 earns a chance at having theirs freely upgraded to the Limited Edition. How about that!

Note: The prices quoted above are in US Dollars and do not include postage and packing.

Yes, there’s finally a release date – it’s February 21, 2012. Pre-orders are expected to be opened sometime soon – I’ll post when I know more . In the meantime, here’s a short trailer:

In the meantime though, here are a couple of new-ish tracks:

The Creation Myth

Philae Obilisk

As Digital Vomit is very close to 100 releases now, I decided to finally release one of the three albums I made at the end of last year before the RPM 2011 album – mainly as we’re trying to get the release tally to 100 as work starts on a best-of compilation. As I judged this one to be the strongest of the three, it got the nod over the others.

The Curious Effects Of Snake Oil And Other Phenomena

Tracklisting

01. Roy Lopez (3:12)
02. The Beast Moves In Darkness (3:42)
03. Mikan (1:55)
04. Greenish Light Emanating From A Spinning Globe (4:26)
05. Hidden Transmitter (3:32)
06. Fetish Slump (1:03)
07. How To Be In Two Places At Once (2:48)
08. Scarecrows (3:30)
09. Fortuna/I’ll Trade You Some Moonrock For A Piece Of Your Dream (3:49)
10. Snake Oil Effect (1:35)
11. Omen Corner (3:57)
12. Meadow Fresh (1:16)
13. Beyond The Gates (5:31)
14. Ashes Of Summer (4:08)
15. The Wilderness King (0:45)

Download ZIP file here (VBR MP3)

Archive.org page here (For other formats – WAV, Ogg and FLAC – also for streaming of individual tracks)

About half the tracks were written entirely during December 2010 while the others were part-finished tracks that had been awaiting completion for a while. In the case of Ruy Lopez and Beyond The Gates,  they had been sitting about since early 2009, while The Beast Moves… dates back ever further. All three of these albums were partly conceived as cupboard-clearers to some extent as the amount of half-finished tracks were starting to pile up and I knew I risked either losing them completely in another crash (as I lost a fair few others at the end of 2008) or never doing anything with them at all. Having all this unfinished stuff lying about is a serious energy drain too.

Right now, I’ve no idea if any of the tracks from the other two albums from this time (or the two I’ve recorded since RPM) will be surfacing soon – or at all. So enjoy this one…

There’s other news in the offing, but I shall talk about that when I know enough to post.

Available now for download on Datahex (go here for ZIP file)

List of artists:

Jane Cutter
Horrible Mess
Botched Facelift
Nxfxtxex
Loopool
The Uh…
Inappropriate King Live
Art Schnurple
Flithy Turd
X Ray Bitch brain
Jerk Kerouac
Captainmarmalade
Xedh & Niebla fascista
Fatal position
Knockdownboxes
Travis johnson
A Night To Dismember
Makaka
Thee Crumb
Phoned Nil Trio
Eraritjaritjaka
Kim Jong Il
Apophallatio

My track (a reworked version of Malpractice from Leave Your Barren World Behind) is actually the opening track. As it’s Datahex, quite a bit of this is noise, but nothing to be afraid of…

Here’s another new track:

They Invented The Future But Couldn’t Live There

My main problem with Retromania is that I have the suspicion that Simon Reynolds doesn’t really get how musicians work. To be honest, I’m not sure that a lot of musicians understand it either – and I guess I’d have to include myself in that. Ideas arrive from all sorts of odd places, song titles drop into your mind while you’re cleaning your teeth and none of it seems to make much sense. All I can do is listen to as much music as I can and sift all of that through my mind when I’m trying to make stuff of my own. Post-modern Irony and the raised eyebrow do have their place in music, but when the music just becomes a set of stylized gestures then it becomes meaningless – just an in-joke. He also has the idea that great art seems to erupt out of nowhere – no doubt this is some kind of Romantic hangover -  but as far as I can see, most things tend to come from tying disparate threads together until they become something bigger than the sum of their parts. If there’s more out there to listen through and draw from then that can only be good. Self-conscious pick-and-mix stylings may not be exactly ‘authentic’ – although what that means in a musical context has been so debased now it’s almost meaningless – but people attempting certain styles, failing completely, and by doing so inventing something totally new, has been going on for a long time now. It was mentioned in Retromania that the early Trad Jazz groups in the UK had no idea how the music was supposed to sound live so they copied from the records, faulty intonation and tinny sound and all – and by doing so created something different.

And, in the spirit of borrowing freely, here’s something I took from the blog of Austin Kleon, who’s currently working on a book called Steal Like An Artist…

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”

An artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: hoarders collect indiscriminately, the artist collects selectively. They only collect things that they really love.

There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income.

I think the same thing is true of our idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.

No doubt I’ll have some more thoughts on this stuff later – there’ll be some more quotes that I’ll add at some point, but for now this’ll have to do as a start…

I haven’t had as much chance as I’d like to post on here recently, but I’ll be making more of an effort – assuming that WordPress actually lets me on here as I’ve been having terrible trouble even logging in recently. Hopefully, there’ll be some more music news soon – even a gig possibly…

Here’s a new track:

The Gimp Is Dead

If a lot of artists stick to the tried-and-tested – and get well rewarded for it – maybe sometimes that just says more about the expectations of the audience and the pressure exerted by record companies, than about them. People tend to stick with what they know, especially in times of stress. Look at all the sappy, mashed-potato comfort-food type music that suddenly got big in the last 10 years (right after 9/11) not to mention there’s a large number of people who want their youths recycled and sold back to them. How many times have you had a conversation with somebody over the age of 30 who informs you that all modern music is crap – even though you know they’ve heard none of the good stuff and are just talking about what they hear on the radio? Fact is, the Top 40 was always crap. The good stuff happens elsewhere, no matter what you remember from your youth. Most of the bands I liked when I was 20 make me cringe now – the thought of going to see them again and hearing them play their ‘hit’ albums in full makes me feel a bit queasy. And don’t get me started on tribute acts…

Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that i did see the Australian Pink Floyd once and they were pretty good – certainly no worse that the version of Floyd that Dave Gilmour was fronting that I saw at Docklands in 1989. But, by and large, the whole exercise leaves me cold. I never understood cover version  bands really – and when it’s taken to extremes it makes even less sense.

In other news, I’m currently sitting on a great pile of unreleased stuff, some of which I’m hopeful will be out in the near future – more about that as and when it happens.

Here’s a couple more new tracks in the meantime:

For The Dying Breed

The Ocean Is Full Of Tiny Lights

And, if anybody’s interested, I did manage to finish Retromania and very interesting it was as well. As to my reactions to it, I intend to post about that at some point in the near future as it deserves a better response than my poor overtaxed brain can manage right now…

Just started reading Simon Reynold”s Retromania, as I saw a copy as I was wandering round Waterstones while I was at a loose end in yet another identikit shopping mall last week. If you don’t know what it’s about yet go here for all the information you’ll probably need, short of reading it yourself. As I haven’t finished it yet, it’s probably not fair to give any kind of review of the thing, although it’s certainly given me food for thought about sampling and the amount of downloading I do. Not sure if I can justify filling my hard-drive with stuff I only listen to a couple of times and claim it’s just ‘musical research’ any more. What he has to say about the whole culture of ‘retro’ is fairly sensible as well – and it ties in with some of my thoughts on the matter as well – not that I’ve actually sat down and come up with any kind of theories regarding the whole business, it’s more just a sense of general unease. Once I’ve finished it, I’ll post some more on the subject.

Incidently, he gets credit for making me laugh as well – at one point he describes Boards Of Canada’s beats trudging ‘stoically like an elderly shire horse on a canal’s towpath pulling a barge behind it’ – which is not only funny, but kind of dead-on as well…

In other news, Foreshadows is also trudging like a shire horse towards publication – just a couple of weeks ago I had the slightly surreal experience of having to autograph a pile of title pages for the story my music is attached to. Photographic evidence of myself and some of the other miscreats involved in this project doing the same can be viewed here – as you can see I made a point of tidying up before I took pictures.

Here’s a couple of recent tracks as well:

Home Is A Black Leather Jacket

Sunk Under The Creeping Trees

And, just to round things off, if you’ve got nothing better to do with an hour of your life, check out this podcast by Hardoff (NSFW – that applies to both him and the podcast) now up at Braindance – it’s pretty good, despite (or maybe even because of) his decision to play everything at 45. It’s something to do with being Australian I think…