Adios Suckas!

Photon posted this recently on his blog:

Steve Roach loved the new Unit Vector CD "Off The Tilted Edge". He will be taking the CD with him to listen to during his long 2 day drive to his big concert at Grace Cathedral. Anyone who is in the area should check it out. I'm sure it will be quite memorable.

As for me, I'm outta here! We will be on vacation in the beautiful desolation of the desert in Arizona and Utah. I have never seen this part of the country, so it should be a treat. .. and HOT! As my coworker said, "You should of thought of that" when we decided to spend some time there in July. Um, yeah.
I may or may not be checking my email while I'm gone, so it's possible I will suffer geek withdrawal symptoms.
Just one more thing before I go though--I was reading The Independent today and stumbled upon my horoscope (compliments of Rob Brezny), which reads (if you're not a Pisces, well, that's your problem pal):

I hope by now you realize that this is your Year of Getting Your Career in Gear. It may or may not be a time when you'll climb to the top of the heap and score fresh privileges and new clout. But it's definitely a time when you can move closer to making a living from doing what you love.

Sweet! Privileges and clout can wait, but doing what I love--sign me up for some of that.

National Holographic "The Sands of Time"

We have released the 4th album download from National Holographic, "The Sands of Time". The Studio 713 description:

This is an album emphasizing slowly evolving soundscapes. Many of the tracks project a feeling of desolation and premonition that seems to suggest desert wastelands, ruined cities, and far off battlefields. Other tracks are haunted by disembodied voices, weird creatures, and strange contraptions. Tomas Phillips (Jason's collaborator in "Eto Ami") contributed a variety of creatively-processed "found sounds" to five tracks recorded during a single session in May 2005.

You can preview the album from the BitWorks Music home page by clicking on National Holographic and "Play All" for the album. We are also featuring the title track as a free download.

Yesterday I charged my iPod and my iTunes lost its mind. Something to the effect of: "Your iPod is sync-ed to another music library. Would you like to erase the contents of your iPod and replace it with this libarary?" Well, this library was the few albums I have purchased from iTunes and nothing else! I figured I would take the safe route and backup the entire thing to my C drive, but then what choice do I have? I could screw around trying to hack my iPod to recover its marbles, which could take any length of time, but I figured what the hell, I can attempt to re-import my backed up music later. A while back I mentioned that you can hack your iPod to run different software than the "normal" operating system. This is starting to sound pretty good now. If you are brave, click here to see a listing of all free iPod related software on SourceForge. SourceForge is a geek's best friend. If it's free software, you will probably find it there. However, keep in mind that sometimes you get what you pay for.

Operators Are Standing By!

I finally did what I have been hoping to do for a while--lower the prices on most of the albums in our catalog. Why? Well, as they say around here, "Y'all ain't buyin' sheeit!" Shocking, I know, but true. Now the top price for FLAC albums in our current catalog is $9. MP3 albums are only $7. If it were any lower you'd think we were AllOfMP3. (BTW, never ever buy anything from AllOfMP3--they don't pay royalties to artists.) No, 70% of the sales price goes directly to fund the lavish rock star lifestyles* of our artists.

This is also anticipating our forthcoming multimedia albums that are like nothing available anywhere else on the planet. I know this sounds like polyester-suit-wearing used download salesman bullshit, but it is actually the case. See, BitWorks is sort of the Grey Poupon of music downloads. But don't take my word for it.

The first beta of National Holographic's "The Sands of Time" is shipped to the artists for review. Meanwhile, somewhere in his studio, Steve Roach is mastering Unit Vector's debut release as UV begins work on the music video! More excitement to come.

(* They sometimes eat the deluxe organic ramen noodles instead of the regular ramen.)

New Free MP3--Circle of Willis

Circle of Willis, represented here by myself (David Oskardmay), Brian Preston, and John Ornelas, recorded this improv a few weeks ago. It's actually 2 tracks: the initial "space" and then the mostly percussion overdub, both recorded with a single stereo mic. It was the first thing Brian and I recorded in the morning, with the ambient outdoor noises filtering through. We liked it enough to wake John up before noon (before noon!) to add his percussive flavorings. I decided to include the entire 10:22 as our free MP3 track. So go ahead, download it or stream it if you aren't operating heavy machinery or performing brain surgery at the moment. If you are attempting either of those things, I cannot be held responsible for any damages. Actually, this might make the perfect brain surgery soundtrack.

Update: after listening to this a few more times, I get a feel for how a real mix might sound, as this is really just the raw bits from a few weeks ago. My strategy with improvs is generally to edit down to only the tastiest parts. If we play long enough, eventually something phenomenal happens along, or not, but in this case it seems to be pretty happnin'. We had some help from the crickets outside--you can hear them too, as we had the patio door open.

Update to my update: and now for something completely different. I know I have been making a habit of ragging on DRM lately, and I really didn't wake up today with the intention of kicking sand in the face of DRM again. It's just too easy, but then I saw this hilarious article that includes this classic:

Believing in a DRM business model is like joining Star Fleet security, putting on your red shirt, and volunteering to beam down to the new unexplored planet with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Someone will be coming back from that mission, it's just not likely to be the security guard.