state of the mini-ian

[reverancepavane]

Just got my copy of Abney Park's Lost Horizons. Excellent music, split equally between steampunk inspired pieces and older post-punk pieces. It's IMNSHO the best album they've done to date. And it seems that priority parcel post from the states has dropped to an average of one month and one day (if it actually is going to get here at all), which means I'd better learn to wait for an extra week before I start to panic. [Although I was ouchy enough to be unable to unwrap the CD for a day. <sigh>] Contrast this to less than two weeks for Julia Marcell's It Might Like You to get to me from Europe. [Despite having already bought the MP3 this also got me the lyrics for one of the songs I liked, as well as being really cheap. It was done through SellaBand, which is a Fundable for musicians. If you feel that you might have a music project you want to get launched but are unable to raise the money to launch your CD, you might want to look into it.] Other solstice music to date has been more Qntal and Mirabilis, as well as some Irfan. [And the secret, star, is to embed the text in other html, such as <p align=right>, <span style="text.align:right;">, or in my case <td align=right>] Although I still have some more quota to go, so I shall have to do some more MySpace data-mining to see if there is anything else I might like out there. MilSims is having another game sale, although it's a lot less attractive these days given the current exchange rate. I was thinking of getting Galaxy Truckers, but it is a four player game and my boardgames group normally runs to five people. Still oscillating wildly over what I want in new RPGs. Running out of shelf space has a way of doing that to you, although I should probably pick up a physical copy of Ken Hite's Trail of Cthulhu. Although I shall probably wait until the Fudge/Fate Dice are back in stock at IPR, in case I ever do want to run my Girl Genius version of Spirit of the Century. And must get Houses of the Blooded too. [Love the web-page – I've always had a soft spot for women with swords.] On related news it looks like the next round of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies is due in the near future. Looks to be an excellent game that adds to the stable of Atomic Sock Monkey greats like Dead Inside and Zorceror of Zo. Overdid last weekend. Trying to do two things in one day was a bit much for me, especially since I was effectively in an attack (the acute phase of my arthritis), but I got to hug my second-favourite kitsune [<tee hee>] so it was all to the good. Anyway, I'm feeling better now, but still have to replace the hard disk that died. Maybe in a day or so. [This was the last one of that run of particularly trashy drives, hopefully the replacements will be more stable.] On the live music scene, the Cock-Eyed Molly gig at the Brecknock has been cancelled, so that leaves the possibility of Holly Throsby at the Jade Monkey on the 15th, Clare Bowditch (alas without her cute elf keyboardist) at Jive on the 20th, the Carmina Burana at the Grainger Studio on the 22nd [I'm addicted to the Nescafe Coffee theme...], and The Black Ball at the Folk Centre on the 28th. Although I don't think I'm going to manage all of these.

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Very glad to hear about Lost Horizons. While I'm very fond of Abney Park, I still feel that their last two albums lacked something as albums - From Dreams or Angels was a good collection of songs, but not great to listen to from start to finish, while The Death of Tragedy had a number of patches on it that struck me as mostly filler. The idea that they might be better at shaping the musical journey this time around appeals to me a great deal.

Even if I feel like an utter music snob writing something like that. *grin*

Mind you, Sellaband looks interesting; I've opened it in another tab to peruse at leisure. Though I have to look at $30,000 to record an album and wonder where it's all supposed to go - Umanee's first 12-track cost $480 to produce. With a lot of volunteer labour from us behind the scenes, admittedly (don't think I'll ever forget hand-rendering that font!), but still...

Second-favourite Kitsune appreciated hugging you, too. I hope the consequences weren't too unpleasant. *snug*

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

I do have to admit that the targets set by Sellaband did seem a wee bit large, and you could probably manage to record an album for much less. But I haven't looked at the details, just that the idea was possibly useful for some. Admittedly JM's was recorded in a different country than where she lived, and the deal includes effective distribution and advertising through the Sellaband label, but it still seemed pricey for what resulted. And the profit-sharing set up with subscribers did seem a bit convoluted, especially when you start pegging rewards into the equation. Then again, you could probably also set a CD up as a Fundable project if you could get the word out to enough people. I know a few writers who are ransoming their work these days via Fundable (work gets published free once the Fundable "ransom" is met). It was interesting to note that most reviewers of previous Abney Park stuff were lamenting the shift in the latest album to a greater steampunk sensibility, and away from the older style of songs, and this is very much the case. It's definitely paying much more respect to their stage identity as steampunk airship pirates and is a different sound than most of what has come before. And is much more upbeat and buckling of swash. And much more to my taste.

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

A "greater steampunk sensibility," huh? I'm still not entirely sure what that is - it's a nascent genre, I suppose, and it's being defined on a conceptual more than a musical level in many ways - by which I mean that there's steampunk electronica, steampunk industrial, steampunk that seems like nothing more than bad MIDI renditions of classical tunes... *shrug*

I can't remember; were there any cyberpunk bands, per se?

Anyway, I can't say I'm surprised that Abney Park, hailed as The First Steampunk Band(tm), have embraced the categorisation and surfed the current wave of popularity. More power to them, I guess, for finding a niche and exploiting it?

And while I can't say I've read the T&C for Sellaband in detail yet (it cannot brain, alas!), I did wonder how all that was supposed to work. It seems like multiple different systems are in place that weren't really supposed to overlap... Still, if it works, who am I to knock it?

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

That was kind of a pretentious statement, wasn't it? What I mean is that a large proportion of the songs are embracing steampunk thematically, with songs like Airship Pirates, Herr Drosselmeyer's Doll, and Captain Robert's Crew. I don't suppose that they will be musically steampunk until they start using an array of tunable Tesla towers and steam calliope on stage. <grin> And they are definitely having fun with it given the tone of their announcements and comments, which is all that is important, when it comes down to it. And hopefully the steampunk movement will last longer than the cyberpunk mvement. Of course, it didn't help that the cyberpunk movement was divided into the cybers and the punks, and very little could make the two meet or even see the same thing (the punk movement being viewed as extremely anti-technological by the cyber movement). Each saw different things in the same sources (the alienation of humanity vs the integration of humanity). But the retro nature of steampunk appeals to both the techies (or in this case, we should probably say the engineers) and the fashion movement. It is only really "punk" because it derived from the cyberpunk movement and so borrowed the name from popular usage. So much for my cognant anthrological analysis.

[starkiller.livejournal.com]

[And the secret, [info]starkiller, is to embed the text in other html, such as

, , or in my case