i need your advice about the new faux pas album.

but first – here are two things i probably shouldn’t show you, but i’m too excited *not* to show you! and no, i’m not referring to my balls!

they are productions from the house de faux pas this week. i love them! works in progress. names have been changed to protect the innocent. streams only for the moment… both these tracks will be released in some shape or form next year – just like my album, right? ha ha ha ha!.. ha ha… oh. sadness.

Listen: Danish Grannies – Granny’s Danish (Faux Pas Monster Dub instrumental mix)

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Listen: Lothar’s Singing Science – Space Opera (Faux Pas instrumental mix)

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update: just so we’re clear – because its been pointed out to me that it is anything but clear – these aren’t tracks from the new faux pas album. they are 2 remixes i’m working on at the moment.. like i said, names changed to protect the innocent.

now, to get your opinion on something. press play on one of those above tracks, and then read on.

its occurred to me the last few days that its really only me thats delaying the release of my album. i mean, the music is finished. its ready to go. i’m just putting off releasing it because of a) some kind of conventional music biz wisdom about not doing anything in the lead-up to christmas, because, you know, important people are distracted and also b) some kind of conventional music biz wisdom about how a release should be co-ordinated so everything happens at once, digital & physical distribution coincide all at once with targeted promotion across all media platforms and all that toss. like thats the ‘right’ way to do it, right? Professional.

but i’ve got all the tools at my disposal to do it right now, if i wanted. i mean, i could upload and sell the mp3s on bandcamp – literally, i could get that shit uploading and it’d be ready to go by the morning. then tomorrow, i could go down to one of my friendly local cd manufacturers, put in an order for 500 CDs or so. i’ll get them back in about 10 days time, but in the meantime i can start selling them pre-order style via paypal, right here on this site. i can email people and tell them its out. no worries. send some free mp3s around for people to, fingers crossed, play on the radio or on their blogs. as for itunes & amazon – and selling it at the ‘real’ record stores, the ones that sell the shiny discs in the shelves – maybe i can figure that out later, next year.

its all kind of silly, you know? like, i have the record here, in a folder on my computer. its labelled “FAUX PAS – ALBUM 2009.” i could put it in a zipfile and rapidshare/mediafire/yousendit to you if you wanted. i’m only waiting because at some point i convinced myself that there was a ‘right’ way of releasing a record, which involves a lot of planning, and more waiting. like “you’ve waited this long, wait a little longer and do it right.” what does that even mean?

so… in what is probably only the latest in what i’m convinced is a growing list of incredibly poorly judged decisions – i’m thinking about putting my album out in 10 days time. i reckon i can pull it together. why wait?

i mean, you do want to hear it, right? hmmm. there may be a large flaw in my logic.

can someone please either talk me in to doing it, or talk me out of doing it? please leave your opinion in the comment box. thanks!

i’m back from holiday in time to tell you – with all the breathless enthusiasm i can muster, considering i’ve been primarily sunning myself and drinking cocktails for two weeks – that i have a track featured on the latest compilation from the good folks over at moodgadget records.

moodgadget (coincidentally celebrating their 5 year anniversary) was originally a spinoff from the ghostly international label, and is currently one of the most progressive and interesting young labels going around, both in terms of their sound and their approach to distributing music.

i’m crazy-proud to be welcomed into their gang. it feels very similar to last month, when i found out my track was going to be on a ministry of sound compilation. except this feels a lot less wrong.

Ghostly International Presents Moodgadget: The Nocturnal Suite

its a sprawling 38-track 2xCD compilation that covers a lot of ground and its a pretty inspiring thing to be a part of. its very much in the spirit of previous compilations put out by both moodgadget and ghostly – comps like idol tryouts, the synchronicity suite, and ghostly swim. a whole bunch of my favourite brand-new acts are on there too such as worst friends, d gookin, daniel johnson and mux mool.

the faux pas track featured on the comp is a special edit i’ve made of “rose’s lament,” released late last year on my free waterfalls ep (which you can still download here).

The Nocturnal Suite is eclectic, but even among its stylistic diversity (the liquid space-disco of Faux Pas’ “Rose’s Lament (Gadget Edit),” for instance, sits right next to Wild Yaks’ caveman-like “Crazy but Not Afraid,” which flanks 800Beloved’s Psychedelic Furs-esque anthem “Galaxies”), there’s a distinctly nighttime-y mood, folding acoustic guitars and sleepy vocals in with its distressed beats and synths. Daedelus’ remix of Praveen & Benoit’s “Chiaroscuro” clothes a distant clattering beat in ambient reverb swells and wisps of orchestral flutes; Bluejay’s “Blurry” wraps its bedroom electro-pop around a deliciously melancholy hook; City Center’s “Summer School” is an exercise in pastoral dream-beat, a psychedelic fog of a track that drifts like a late-afternoon beachside nap.

sounds good, right?

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updates and holiday snaps from my adventures in newcastle & queensland later…

in the meantime, i’m in the studio this week going through three years of faux pas demos, sorting the wheat from the chaff. so i’ve decided to make it a “twitter thing“, and we’ll see how it goes – for the next seven days, if you want to hear a never-heard-before completely unreleased faux pas demo, come find me on twitter and i’ll pick one at random to show you!

unfinished songs that for whatever reason Aren’t Good Enough! quality control thrown out the window, all this week on da faux pas blog.

current mood: breezin’

if you’re reading this, it means that i’m currently in newcastle hanging out at the annual music conference/festival sound summit, which runs as part of the this is not art festival. its this time of the year where a whole bunch of people from all over the country, community radio, artists, writers, music lovers, y’all get together and hang. its the perfect time, i hope, to finally meet in person so many of the people outside of melbourne who’ve helped put my music forward, whether its by playing it on the radio, dropping me an encouraging email or whatever.

so with that in mind, here’s my loose kind of schedule for sound summit:

friday night early – hanging out at burning luau brow - part of the national young writer’s festival at the view factory
friday night later – rolling deep at the qua / aoi / free choice / ducktails gig cambridge hotel $15
saturday 5pm – cd-r session at the festival club… including a debut airing of a track from the new faux pas album!!
sunday noon – morality, music and money panel with stu buchanan and others
sunday afternoon – know your gadgets production workshop with blastcorp, dot.ay and qua at the tpi auditorium
sunday night – hanging at the new weird australia launch

if you happen to be in newcastle, and you see me at one of these things or just on the street, yell out and say hi. even if we’ve emailed a dozen times, i still probably don’t know what you look like!

for the record, i look like this.

no, not really. i look like henry wagons.

no, not really. i mean, i’ve had a haircut.

this is me at what i call ‘trancetime’. its a specific time of the day, as the afternoon winds down, where the sun just blindingly powers through my window here where my computer is, which is where i am basically all the time, when i’m not at rrr or evacuating my bowels.

cos of the angles of everything, it only lasts about 15 mins. its only 15 mins, so i don’t close the curtains, i just sit there and soak it up. this is how i discovered that its a great time of the day to listen to tiesto! franc showed me this while we were mixing one of the songs from my album, as a reference point. like, as a “hey, this is what this song should sound like! like tiesto.” in the end, i’m kinda relieved but actually also kinda disappointed that it didn’t turn out sounding more like tiesto!

so – here’s tiesto – please look directly into the sun while listening:

make some noise

lots of exciting news in faux pas hq at the moment – find out more by peeking in the big red news box thats to your right. if you’re reading this through an aggregator or an rss feed, i guess that means you’ll have to get your lazy ass to the shiny faux pas website proper – www.iamfauxpas.com – to find out more.

if on the other hand, you are reading this from the future, or you are simply too scared to break out from your lazy-ass rss-feed bubblewrap security-blanket safe zone… here’s something to entertain you, courtesy of liam lynch.

i originally found this at peterserafinowicz.com, which is the breast website on the hole internet.

lastly – if you’ve ever wanted to know what i sound like between the hours of 6am and 9am – the general consensus is ‘not pretty’ but you be the judge – this week i’m filling in on rrr fm’s breakfast show, with my friends dave (from to and fro) and georgia webster, aka “the queen in linguisms”. it streams live on the internet.