beware the bubble man

[reverancepavane]

I'm one of the old-fashioned sort that feel that an album usually has a story to tell that you lose if you just pick songs from it. And rumours that I will buy an album simply because I like the cover art or the title may indeed be true. In this spirit I present the eminently enjoyable Cthulhu the Funksical by Paul Shapera. Bring on the funk! "You don't know what it's like to lose your mind to the Bubble Man. It's the Bubble Man! Yeah!" This of course forced me to also acquire his albums Subduction and The Steampunk Opera (Act 1). Physical CDs this month are limited to Spiral Dance's Through a Sylvan Doorway and Abney Park's Ancient World. I actually haven't felt like listening to either yet (damn flu!). Also contributed to the latest Unwoman Kickstarter. If I had none of her music her keydrive would be great, but at the moment I have about half her music, so I'm undecided. Maybe next Kickstarter. Apparently she got a massive boost thanks to nice things said by Amanda Palmer and Warren Ellis. Also picked up song 2 (Bluebeard) of Yunyu's new album Twisted Tales. Haven't listened to that yet either. =8( [Still listening to the Bandcamp sample of Cthulhu the Funksical. Brilliant!] Raiding my e-supplier this month we have Steampunk Deluxe by Wintergarden and The Dark Steampunk Adventures of a Vampire Knight by Joshua Vervin. [Oh wow! It really is a funksical! Go Nyalothotep go!] And of course there was Frenchy and the Punk's new album Hey Hey Cabaret and Unto Ashes' Burial Foretold. And to round it out Age of Steampunk by The "O" Man Jam because I like the guitar work on the intro to Cobalt Nebula, and Distant Worlds and The Poor Sitar Player, Rouge Windmill and the Satine Madame by the aforementioned Josua Vervin.

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Ooh, some interesting stuff in there. Hope you get to enjoy the rest of your new acquisitions soon!

In the meantime, does a serve of Fox Envy help? *grin*
Though if The Steampunk Opera is not an actual opera, I shall be severely disappointed in them. It's sounding very much like musical theatre so far, albeit compelling musical theatre...

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Transferred them to the vicinity of my music system but have yet to process them and add them to my collection. So getting to actually listen to them is closer in reality, but still not done yet. Lazy/tired.

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

*raises an eyebrow* Lazy?? Justifiably exhausted by the recent strain on your already-sideways immune system, you mean? *wry smile*

I found the rest of The Dolls of New Albion, and while it's still not an opera, it grew on me... (Also, I'm finally managing to play Bandcamp stuff on my machine, yay!)

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

I do wish more bands would use Bandcamp. For two reasons: (a) you can set the option so that a minimum price is charged for a song (I frequently pay over if I like the music), and; (b) you can listen to the whole song. Much better than seeing if you like the 30 second intro most music stores provide [leading to an increase in condition (a)].

And (c) is of course their royalty system (but as an artist I'm not concerned about that really). [Bandcamp directs payments to the individual artist directly, until they reach the 10th sale [IIRC], at which point the payment goes directly to them and becomes their fee. Which is a wonderful way of eliminating the middleman in the financial transactions (reducing costs).

Then again, their primary model is the sale of albums, so this works well for them. With individual songs, micropayment fees might get a bit bothersome.

This is also the inherent disadvantage of Bandcamp - while you can watch trending sales and there is a rudimentry search ability (including by genre), it really relies on individual artist pages, which means you usually can't go there and browse looking for music (Princess Celestria Is The Best Pony aside). Although I've noticed some artists cross-promoting their favourite artists which aren't themselves, which I think is all to the good.

Then again Kickstarter is the current craze amongst musicians, to help offset the production costs of their new CDs, and that has a similar problem. Unless the artist tells you what they are doing, you don't even realise that they are doing it. It's why I think email lists are better than social media like Farcebook and individual band blogs for maintaining contact with your followers, but that may be old-fashioned of me, despite the fact the signal stands a better chance of getting through the noise.

As a part of my distractedness I hadn't even noticed that Act 2 and 3 was available. <sigh> So I get to do Act 1 again, I suppose. And hey, look, there are more music under the "More" tab that I will probably have to get! Maybe next month - it looks quiet on Kickstarter* at the moment, although there are a few new RPG I want to get and not read (like the last half dozen or so). That's what I mean by lazy.

Actually it's the severe case of nausea at the moment from the new meds (I'd escaped serious nausea [common side-effect] for the first month but now it's here with a vengeance). Blaaaghh. But they are doing an excellent job of controlling stuff that was getting very uncontrolled earlier.

Plus ever mounting ennui and few things to look forward to. <shrug>

[* Up to about 90 projects (counting other crowd source sites), with only one being dubious (he printed the books and ran out of money posting the US editions (despite charging international sources extra, but he's slowly trying to get them to the international backers). Oh, and there is that boardgame that got a wee bit enthusiastic with the bonuses and is having to wait until all bonuses are in until they ship to Australia (whilst ensuring that they sell the game in the US convention circuit), but then they thought it was more economical to ship to Australia from China except they didn't have anyone on the ground there to do it for them. <sigh> Still, there is that Tom Smith CD, and that Cubicle 7 game I ordered years ago through a normal storefront, which I've been waiting for for much longer.]