Ochre

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Also available on iTunes, Beatport, Juno.

I’m pleased to finally be able to say that my new download EP, Death of an Aura, is now available for preview/purchase on Bleep. FLAC versions should be following shortly; I’ll be updating this post, as well as the discog page, with links to additional stores as and when store support improves.

Musically, I suppose you could say the EP features my vocal debut, albeit mainly through humming and oohing/ahhing here and there for a bit of extra texture, with additional non-lyrics for good measure. Still, I did find the process a lot of fun, adding an immediacy that’s normally lacking from my usual methodical composing. Lots of home sampling too, which is certainly something I only really touched upon with Lemodie, and completely ignored with AMND.

A couple of tracks (’Napoli’ and ‘Raido’) are the result of a collaboration between Benet Walsh and I (you may recognise Benet from his work with Plaid, as well as his own work as one half of The Collectors), which were fantastic to work on. Hopefully we’ll get a few more tracks done together by the time the album arrives—thanks for the help, Ben!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think, and please—if you can spread the word across any forums or communities you participate in, I’d very much appreciate it.

Ed Chamberlain’s Mixxy EP1 has now been released on Baselogic Records, featuring my remix of ‘Styge’ (still up for streaming on MySpace). The EP is available to buy on 12″ from Warpmart and Juno, with more stores to follow. If you can’t find it at your local store, please ask them to order it in.

Six tracks, released on the ninth of June, on Benbecula Records. All Minerals subscribers will receive this limited Digipak CD EP; non-subscribers will be able to purchase the EP from their preferred download store in mp3 and FLAC formats.

I haven’t really come across much talk about Amie Street across the net, in blogs or on forums, which seems unusual given its apparently novel approach to music sales (I guess it could use a few more artists on there).

Rather than assume a fixed price for album and single track sales, the pricing structure varies according to the track’s popularity. At first, the music is available for free download, then as the tracks rack up download counts the price goes up by a few cents, until it settles on a price deemed fair by the listeners, i.e. what they’re prepared to pay for it. The tracks are eventually capped at the heady heights of ninety-eight cents each.

As a new member, all my tracks currently on there are free—just put a check next to all the tracks you want, select download in the actions drop-down (or alternatively click on the whole albums you want), sign-in, and you’ll be presented with a zip of your selected tracks.

I’ve uploaded the same 320kbps mp3s that I’m currently selling here (a little artistic licence with the term selling—’for sale’ would be more accurate! ) so the quality is as good as you can get with an mp3; the only difference being you support me directly via my own store and have a chance to download the FLACs too. But as the tracks on Amie Street are currently free, you may as well grab them there, and leave a ‘REC’ (that’s recommendation to you and I) for your favourite tracks, and help me gain a little more exposure on the site.

The REC system works by remunerating those who have REC’d tracks, giving them money back as the tracks gain in popularity, incentivising feedback and helping listeners find other similar tracks they might enjoy by other artists.

It’ll be interesting to see if and how this takes off, but what do you think? Have you used Amie Street or anything similar?

Anyway, get downloading, tagging and REC’ing!

You might have noticed a few changes to the site of late, as I’ve just updated Wordpress to the new 2.5 version, which includes a whole host of updates on the admin side of things to make my life a little easier. Cosmetically though, there are few changes, although you’ll have noticed the addition of Gravatars to the comments section.

For the uninitiated, Gravatars are ‘Globally Recognised Avatars’, and exist to make it easier for us to have a uniform identity across the net (the avatar equivalent of OpenID, if you will). It will become quickly apparent, by the dearth of avatars in my comments section, that this is very much A New Thing, and has yet to catch on within the online world (although I have noticed one or two commenters have caught on already).

So, if you fancy procuring a Gravatar, all you need is an email address to sign up and associate an avatar with and you’re all set (you can assign multiple emails with different avatars).

Continuing the theme of updates, I’ve tweaked and tinkered with the download store, mainly to a) reduce the number of tracks I have to tend to, and b) by popular request, arrange the downloads into more manageable album-sized chunks, with the option of buying individual albums separately.

The previously ‘orphaned’ tracks are now separated into three volumes, imaginatively titled I, II and III (yes, I did take a pinch of inspiration from the recent NIN release), and are now approximately grouped chronologically (by completion date, rather than upload date). Each album is about 45 mins long, and will cost you just £2 (~$4—yep, I’ve switched currencies, allowing me to accept Google Checkout now too!).

Finally, I’ve also provided each release in 320kbps and FLAC formats, as a single purchase, to save you having to pick which format when buying. You’ll get links to separate zips of each format emailed to you—just choose which you’d like to download.

BBC Radio 1 DJ Rob Da Bank kindly aired a small excerpt from the weekend’s live set at Bloc, spinning ‘Yugen’ at the end of last night’s show. Visit the BBC site to listen again.

Cheers Rob!

Following some digital broker misunderstandings, the details with which I shall not bore you, Lemodie is back on iTunes. If you’ve got iTunes installed on your computer, you can hop straight to Lemodie here.

While I’m on the subject of downloads, Rednetic Recordings have updated their site with a swanky new download store, so you can now, for example, grab mp3 copies of my tracks Valley Forge and Reverse Engineering from the One Point One compilation, should you so wish.

For those of you who were interested in hearing my very early works, I’ve added tracks from my 2001 demo CD, AudioMicroDevice, to the music page, completely remastered, with high quality versions also available for purchase. I guess it’s the first time for almost eight years that these tracks are available in genuine lossless CD-quality, too.

AudioMicroDevice was originally given away to anyone who asked, and while the tracklist varied a bit depending on what I was writing at the time, I’m quite sure I’ve managed to collect all the tracks from the CD’s various permutations (the discogs listing is pretty much accurate). Some of the tracks went on to be released on A Midsummer Nice Dream, others though various compilations, and so couldn’t be included here; I’m just filling in the gaps, making the long-lost material available for those who are curious, for a bit of fun.

Stylistically, it’s pretty varied stuff, written before I’d actually settled into any kind of musical identity; some of the tracks were actually college coursework pieces, which might account for the scattered nature of the CD.

Hope a track or two catches your ear, anyway.