I don’t feel like much, so let’s settle an important question:

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Also, leave comments with awesome things. Or links to awesome things. This has been one of those weeks when to be honestly I really don’t feel like I’m cut out for this, because, like fiction writing, trying to do music is mostly about successfully managing rejection. So I’m calling a KLYTUS I’M BORED and demanding playthings.

An obscure body in the SK system, perhaps. That sounds fun. Hot hail, anyone? XD

Anna’s Kickstarter project for Faerie Blood (her first novel) and Bone Walker (the soon-to-be-published sequel) is in its final six hours. Fewer, by the time you read this. It will fund, which is awesome, and not just because we’re doing the soundtrack album. If you want to get in as a backer on this – have your name in the book’s thank-you pages, and all that? Or other tasty awards? Go back the books!

Also, extra money thrown in lets us do extra things. I’ve already spent time and money building out my little studio to handle this larger project, and I’ll be building more toys soon. Plus we have guest musicians coming in. It’s a big deal! So if you’re going to jump in, now is the goddamn time! Not tonight, not tomorrow: now. MOVE IT SOLDIER THIS MEANS YOU! :D

There’s a review raffle going! Play Cracksman Betty and write a review about it, and you’re in a drawing for a copy of the album. Plus, it’s good, dammit! The review doesn’t have to be long, but it needs to link to the album. Oh, and tell us you wrote the review. Thanks!

Play this:

Link to this in your review.

Oh, I also think there’s a Google Hangouts live thing tonight, too. Watch on G+ for details!

Hey, remember a couple of weeks ago, I was invited to be a guest on The House of Julie with Julie Cascioppo? I got some video! The audio’s a bit tinny, but what do you think?

If you missed it on Friday, Cracksman Betty is on iTunes now! So I’ve started a review raffle. Write and post a public review in the next two weeks and I’ll draw to mail someone a special home-burned CD edition of the album. (It’ll be less S-100 Bus which you’ll still have to download on its own because of licensing, but it’s free, so that’s okay.) Click here to listen to the album.

Coming up next: getting organised on the Bone Walker soundtrack. But first, how was your weekend?

Cracksman Betty has shown up on iTunes! It costs more there! I don’t know why! But they make those decisions, not me! Clearly they think it’s a real album. :D Yay! It’s not much more, they just set their standard pricing on it. But that’s okay by me. ^_^

If you haven’t given a listen yet, you can hear the whole thing right here, on Bandcamp. No 30-second samples here! They you can buy it on iTunes, or hopefully give it some review love, which it very much needs.

I never did a review raffle beforehand because there wasn’t a beforehand! So I’ll do one now instead: write and post a public review in the next two weeks (plus a little – two weeks plus the weekend) and I’ll email you a special home-burned CD edition of the album. (It’ll be less S-100 Bus which you’ll still have to download on its own because of licensing, but it’s free, so that’s okay.)

This should play the whole album for you:

Post the link to your review here in comments to enter. And have a good weekend!

Hey, there’s a Cracksman Betty review already! Westrider wrote a mini-review on Livejournal. Pull quote:

…it’s clear on every track that the band have not been standing pat. The musicianship, singing, and recording have all been kicked up significantly, and there’s not a song that doesn’t show them pushing as hard as they can to make every one better than what they’ve done before.

Pretty cool :D

If you spot any other reviews, post links! And please tell people about the album! It may be a surprise album, but I still believe in it or I wouldn’t put it out there.

Oh, I signed off on the distribution agreement today, we should see it in iTunes and on Amazon and all that soon. If you see it there, give it some love!

Cracksman Betty, alternate history songs of riot and revolution, is live on Bandcamp now. The album of not-entirely-traditional songs we never really intended to make is online, 13 tracks on the web, including “The S-100 Bus” (also available as a free download) as a bonus.

I really said the best of what I think I have to say on Friday. This is CRIME and the Forces of Evil – or various subsets thereof – not taking everything quite so seriously. It’s an alternate history lesson, it’s kicking back in the studio just to have fun, it’s riot girls dyking our way around Vancouver starting fights (not that I’d know anything about that, aheh), it’s cyborgs doing it for the lulz…

…and it’s kicking out some good old alternate-world Cascadian piracy, riot, and revolution folk.

It’s also a good lead-in for the Faerie Blood/Bone Walker soundtrack we’ll hopefully be doing in a couple of months; that’ll be somewhere between this and Dick Tracy Must Die in tone, depending upon where you are in the books. :D

This new album leads off with a brand new track, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree,” something you’ve never heard. It’s a new song, with new music, telling a different version of the High Barbaree story, one with enough references to the original to mention it – but it’s from the pirates’ side, and set in the Republic of Cascadia’s 1973-1974 war for independence. Hit PLAY now:

Oh, if you bought the pre-remaster Cracksman Betty for money, at a show or something? Contact me. Send me a photo with your CD. I’ll throw you a download code.

I worry a little about this album, I admit it. We’re mostly about the elfmetal, and the rage. This has elements of that, but it’s a different angle, less complex, and absolutely as sedate as we’ll ever get. I don’t want people to think we’re losing our edge. Din of Thieves will disprove that in 2013, but that’s a year away.

Despite that, as much to my surprise as anybody else’s, I’m convinced of this album. My beta listeners certainly were. If you forgot the reactions I quoted, here they are again:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

…followed by an assortment of “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [capslock as per original], “awesome,” and “I love Dalek Boy so much.”

I hope you do, too. Hit PLAY. Find out. Tell your friends.

Put simply, this is the album we never meant to make. It was a record-something-every-month project, named for a safecracker (a “Cracksman”) and a blackjack with a woman’s name (a “Betty”), adorned with pirate skull and burglar’s tools, and we finished it up last December… or so we thought.

But the thing is, I went back and gave those recordings another good hard listen, and realised that I’d improved a lot both as a vocalist and an engineer over that year.

So I decided to clean it up, and do some new vocals, and oh, I can totally make Dalek Boy funnier, and Old Black Rum can be a lot more rowdy, and oh, I have this new song (“Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree”) that’ll fit in just great, and…

…somewhere along the way, this became an album. It became a piece, a thing, not just an assemblage. Not a complex a piece as Dick Tracy Must Die or far-reaching as Din of Thieves will be, perhaps, but an entity, a set.

‘Or,’ I asked myself, ‘did it? Really? Am I just making that up? Let’s ask some beta listeners.’

And the first response back was:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

…followed by an assortment of “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [capslock in the original], “awesome,” and “I love Dalek Boy so much.”

So I guess I wasn’t making it up!

But what is it? Here’s the track list:

1. Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree
2. Captain Kidd
3. Paddy Murphy (Victory Boulevard Style)
4. I’m a Rover (Live in Juanita Bay)
5. Columbia (Scene from a Revolution)
6. Danny Boy (Instrumental) (Live at El Dorado)
7. Red is the Rose (with Leannan Sidhe)
8. Great Big Sea
9. Old Black Rum (West Coast Style)
10. Dalek Boy (Cyborgs Behaving Badly)
11. Red is the Rose (Live in Studio – bonus track)
12. Dalek Boy (Radio edit – bonus track)
13. The S-100 Bus (Live in studio – web-only bonus track)

I think it’s CRIME and the Forces of Evil – or various subsets thereof – not taking everything quite so seriously. I think it’s an alternate history lesson, and it’s kicking back in the studio just to have fun, and it’s riot girls dyking our way around Vancouver starting fights (also fun), and it’s piracy, and it’s kicking out some Cascadian folk and cyborg lulz.

And it’s dropping on Monday. Of that much, I’m sure. :D

Wow, I hope some of you were there for Monday night’s The House of Julie with Julie Cascioppo – it’s hard to tell, since we filled Chapelspace, and that’s a pretty big room! Thanks again to Julie for having me, and Bill White for handling booking.

 
Meanwhile, it’s Wednesday, May 2nd, and the new album – the remixed/remastered/rerecorded Cracksman Betty – drops Monday. So many last minute things to do!

I wanted to mention a few of the guest performers who are on this album, so I’ll start with them.

 

• Angela Korra’ti of Twelve Good Measures provides some key backing vocals on the rewritten “Old Black Rum (West Coast Style).” This is the same Angela who has this Kickstarter project running to get her fantasy series back into print after her original publisher folded. If you haven’t seen that, go look. We’re doing the soundtrack album, which is going to be awesome.
   
• Paul Johnson – who spends most of his time as a visual artist – provides the raw voices for MC Dalek and MC Cyberman on the track, “Dalek Boy.”
   
• And finally, Leannan Sidhe provides lead vocals for “Red is the Rose,” probably the most traditionally-performed song on the album. Her band is currently working on their second studio album of dark and reinterpreted faerie tales. Check that out, too.

I have to admit, being mostly into elfmetal, I’m a little hesitant about doing a “traditional” album. But it’s not entirely traditional – not with all the Republic of Cascadia alternative-world material! And it’s a good lead-in to the Faerie Blood/Bone Walker soundtrack.

There’ll be new music on that one, too. Elfmetal-folk hybrids! Here, have a teaser, a snip from a rough draft of “Song for a Free Court/Anarchy Now:”

…I’m not afraid of your power and
your stupid money’s no good here because
a new millennium of pointless grudges
Is sim!ply! not! my! idea! of fun! I’m gonna

START!     by ignoring all your strictures
START!     by sitting all this out
START!     by bailing on this conflict
START!     by building my own map…

Yeah. That. :D

So many awesome things are going on right now that I have to combine announcements! It’s crazytalk. But before I get to that, even, a quick reminder: I’m guesting tonight on The House of Julie with Julie Cascioppo, 7:30pm, in Seattle, with several other musicians including Roo Forrest, Elaine Bono, Jean Mann, and Bill White. I’m Julie’s first guest of the night; come see the show!

TO THE ANNOUNCEMENTS!

FIRST: The new album – the remixed/remastered/rerecorded Cracksman Betty – will drop Monday, May 7, 2012. It’ll lead off with a completely new track, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree,” the pirate’s version of that tale, recast in the fight for Cascadian independence, musically and lyrically original.

My beta listeners have described the album as “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [than the work prints], “awesome,” and, in one notable case:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

Caps of Awesome as in the originals. Fuck. Yeah.

This is our long-promised traditional-music album. But of course, we can’t leave it at that; this “traditional” music is re-cast in the Republic of Cascadia, songs of piracy, riot, and revolution, with new interpretation, new history, and far more often than you’d expect on a “traditional” album, new music.

You’ll hear more about that – and some of our guest performers – this week.

SECOND: We’re doing a soundtrack album. For reals, assuming the Kickstarter makes it. It’s a book companion for the novels Faerie Blood and Bone Walker. We’ve already committed Sunnie Larsen (who has played with several bands including Bone Poets Orchestra and Vixy & Tony) and Leannan Sidhe, with whom we’ve worked before. And we’re in talks with more.

Bone Walker will be a mix of readings, original music, and the traditional music referenced in the books. It’ll be something new for all of us, which is always awesome. And again – more announcements will be forthcoming!

FINALLY, talking of Leannan Sidhe, they have their own Kickstarter running for their second studio album, More to Love. I’ve heard some of the material; these are some pretty subversive fairy tales. So of course, we’re onboard – I’ve backed the project personally, with, you know, money. My money. Not even stolen! So you know I mean it.

Currently there’s an extra incentive package: a signed print of a sketch from the album cover artist (Rob Carlos), a print of the aurora photograph that’s going to be used in that album cover, and a handwritten card from the band. That’s all in addition to the regular backer bonuses for whoever gets them to $2000.

God damn can you believe all this? And we have more things cooking I’m not even talking about here. More than can fit into this post. But one more super-sneak preview, a whisper, a ghost, a rumour of rage, an echo of elfmetal, a part two of a bigger story, a title:

Din of Thieves.

Muah ha ha ha ha ha!

Two big announcements coming on Monday morning. One’s already up, in audio form. :D