“…as long as you believe in what you do, you need to keep at it whether we ‘get it’ or not.”
— astralwerks demo submission page

It’s been a while since I’ve seen that kind of encouragement. Even though that was probably written in 1998, it was nice to read. Lately it seems like I’ve gotten a lot of “if you haven’t reached milestone ‘X’ you might as well quit” type of advice. Frustrating, yes.

Frustrated? Yes. I admit that I overflow with negativity at times. I don’t do the art I do because I’m hunky-dory with the world. I also don’t do the art I do because I like or am any good at self-promotion (quite the opposite). But while art is about self-expression, success is about self-promotion. Frustration for me arises when the promotion bogs down the expression and suddenly there’s no expression left to promote.

• The Atomica Project
• The Back Chords
• Birds Per Hour
• Blackbody
• Christ Analogue
• City Doves
• Corporate X
• Cylab
• The Dark Clan
• The Dymaxion Quartet
• The Elvi
• Emulsion
• The Fell Follow
• Good Luck and Godspeed
• The Gothsicles
• Greenlight
• The Innocent Bystanders
• Iris
• i:scintilla
• Jersey Mike
• Kid A
• Liz Revision
• Micronaut
• Moritat
• Mucca Pazza
• Number Nine
• Alexander Omega
• P155
• Quantazelle
• RE:inforced
• Royb0t
• Sensuous Enemy
• Short to Ground
• Sideproject
• Sister Machine Gun
• Silver Atlas
• The Slingerland Ride
• SMP
• Stromkern
• Terminal Bliss
• THAC0
• Thrill Kill Kult
• TMM
• Vibrance

If you’re thinking “Hey, he forgot my band!”, shoot me a note. It’s hard to remember all of the bands all of the time, but I’d like to. Like I said, synergy.

I’ve released Two as a digital download on Bandcamp. Stream it for free, and I’ve set up a name-your-price deal for downloads (with a mininum price of $2 for the album, $.40 per song, so I can at least cover the cost of transactions). It’s artist direct.

I’ll have more comments the album later, but I wanted to get it out there for you. Enjoy!

Bounte: Two will be a slow album release. The tracks are out for mastering right now. Once mastered, I’ll finalize the artwork and officially release the digital album on Bandcamp. We’ve all waited long enough for the music, and I see no need to wait on any record labels for it. At that point, the product is all yours! Then starts the next phases of release, with hopes of wider distribution and promotion.

I’ll send the tracks to all the licensing outlets I know, and continue to talk to record labels to see if there is any interest from them. And I’ll be writing to anyone I know to check out the music. Alan has also convinced me to work on videos for the tracks, so hopefully I can get some youtube buzz going.

All songs are mixed and the unmasters are ready to go. I’m very happy with how they’ve turned out, and I think people will enjoy them a lot. In case you missed the preview track I posted on Facebook, I’ve included it at the end of this post.

I’m close to deciding on a release method. I’ve submitted to a bunch of labels, but unless I hear of serious interest, I’ll get it mastered on my own, and release through bandcamp. If I can generate enough sales on my own, that would definitely interest a label more. I’m still deciding whether to print discs. I probably will, in one form or another, just because I want a physical product to add to my pride collection and to hand people.

Enjoy Unborn, featuring Lauren Cheatham:

[See post at bounte.com to listen to audio]

From my experience with Positron, a label has greater distribution, promotion, and licensing systems, knows different people than I do, and has a wealth of knowledge about the music industry. And many of those things I specified above that I can do myself, I learned from working with a label. I’m thankful for that, and wonder what else there is to learn. But is it essential for an artist to enter into a legal agreement over all these things? I get the impression that a label doesn’t generate sales for an artist, but handles accounting and organization that are beyond what an artist can handle on their own. In that sense I suppose an artist really “knows” when they need a label, rather than having all these questions like I do.

The flipside is, how does a label benefit from an artist, and what do they rely on the artist to do/provide? Not really a question I can answer, but I’m curious.

It took a few weeks of swapping CDs in and out of the computer, but it’s done, and kind of like being rescued from a desert island. Yeah, I had my one or two desert-island albums, but I’m suddenly reunited with all the musical bounty society contains. It’s like restoring a lost part of my identity.

Another part of the ultimate goal is to start DJing again. It’s fun, I like going out, I like sharing music, seeing other people have fun with the music. I just have to finish prepping clips for my laptop software.

I’m not sure how it got set that way, but I fixed it by changing the Sample Rate from 48kHz to 44 in the MOTU Audio Setup software.