Writer · Performer · Label Director
If you’re on the Bedlam Six mailing list you should have received our Winter Newsletter by now, containing an exclusive link to the upcoming album (ahead of its official release in March). If you haven’t received it (or aren’t subscribed but want to be) just get in touch with me via the Contact section.
Being a modern musician my primary objective in life is to harvest email addresses. That’s what I’m led to believe by all the “industry experts” anyway.
At the end of the epoch all bands have their mailing lists weighed and whoever has the most addresses wins.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all these addresses, no more than I know what to do with all the accumulated memories I’ll have at the end of my life.
Anyway, the next Bedlam Six newsletter will be sent out on Monday. It will feature a secret link to the new album four months ahead of its official release. If you want in and you’re not signed up already just send me a message with your email address.
The new Bedlam Six album has arrived. All bazillion copies of it. This is the album we recorded last January. It feels like so long ago. Some delays are predictable. Others, less so. It’s so good to finally hold the thing in my hand!
Anyone who’s ever ordered the pressing of a record will be familiar with that strange expectation (and slight dread) – part Christmas Eve, part dentist waiting room. One can check and double check the designs and templates, employ a dozen people to proof read the sleeve notes, sketch out diagrams of printers pairs to make sure the lyric booklet corresponds to the track order… but there’s never a guarantee what comes back from the pressing plant will be entirely what you imagine it will be. I remember the horror of discovering a “their” where “there” should have been in the liner notes to our live album. I still wince at the thought.
But this one seems fine. It’s got a nice weight to it, the lyrics are all legible, the music plays on my ancient stereo as well as more modern devices and all the component parts seem to be where they should be. To say it’s a big relief would be a gross understatement.
I like this album a lot. I’ve never been more happy with a recording. It will be on general release through Debt Records on 3rd March 2014. Members of the Bedlam Six mailing list will have the opportunity to receive the CD before Christmas (as a reward for occasionally sitting through my tedious newsletters). To subscribe just send me an email through the contact section and I’ll add you. The next email will go out this coming Monday and will include a password to a secret album link.
One of the most persistent myths of the digital age is that the internet is here to help new musicians become rich and famous on their own terms – that it’s never been easier for independent bands to MAKE IT; that social media is opening up the doors to people who previously found themselves closed out.
But this is a pretty two-dimensional way of looking at the digital landscape – virtual keys to virtual gateways – I can’t work out if it’s closer to sci-fi or fantasy. The emails I receive from young bands throwing their demos about still use old fashioned phrases like “reaching the next level” and “breaking through” as though we were all trudging along in an 8bit platform beat-em-up.
Like it or not, we are no longer living a linear narrative (or at least our online avatars aren’t), we live in the age of the network. Networks explode outwards in all directions.
The new single “Waiting For Bad News” is now on general release through all the usual digital retailers and as a name-your-price download from our own online store.
Here is the promo video directed by Andrew Ab (featuring Ellie Cowan)
