Sevcom is booming. Bloody hell it won’t sit down now will it? The funny thing is that almost everything here is an attempt to stop doing things. That ends up doing things. They say life begins at 40 but in this case life started some time after entering the aged care facility. The intensity of this regrowth is causing … growing pains. More on that later on.
A very good year for music
NECRO: Vinyl reissues out now of both Petrol and Clifford Darling Please Don’t Live in the Past and both from the clean master recordings for the first time.
NEW: At the beginning of the year (if you can remember back that far) the new album Rhine, which sold enough USB sticks to get Sevcom up in Bandcamp’s bulk seller category. Of all the things this year, you would understand that Rhine is my favourite. It includes a map with 5 Beacons, which you can now see as videos over here.
Severed Heads played live in America and it was not a complete and utter debacle not at all. This included a new album of old tunes called Better Dead Than Head.
NEW: Two free compilations on Terse Tapes, which was once my cassette label that ran from 1979-1983, and now continues as an online provider of international noise and music. In Easter you got Oompa Loopma Riot, and unexpectedly Christmas just saw Terse Greetings. It’s good to be a community again.
Early in the year I wrote the back story for HH, which introduces a clearer game world for the sequel H3H.
A bad/hopeful year for life.
A death ripples outwards. You have to guide that energy carefully as it can drown you. Instead the house here is evidence of riding a manic wave – there’s furniture and objects strewn about madly and odd things hanging on the walls as a new life form. That same mania is causing all kinds of possible futures to erupt, and hopefully once things cool a bit there’ll be some public good out of all this.
Next year
Next year is tricky, because that manic wave is crashing against some rocks. Do I want to go back to the starving artist lifestyle or do I want to continue to be fat and tenured?
NECRO: The Stretcher album is in manufacture, this time as a double vinyl in gatefold sleeve! Hoping also that a boxed set of Australian underground music will be completed soon.
NEW: In America I made a promise to collaborate on an album with another elder, who I had not seen for a while. I keep promises.
There will be some touring and the details are reasonably clear. But many things could go wrong and so nothing I say here is certain. There’s a very good chance of being at the next Unsound Festival in Krakow, including a new version of the Rhine Treasure Map as an installation. Once in Krakow, it would be good to do other parts of Europe. Suggestions from promoters are welcome.
There will be another run through North America, bigger and bolder. I hope this will also include the Rhine Treasure Map. There will be an album made to go with this called Aversion, and you can guess what that will be.
All of this liveness has inspired an attempt at a new presentation system that allows more variation between live shows, and the ability to make tracks longer/shorter and all of that. This is very tricky, because I don’t want it to look real time generated.
H3H is under way, but I don’t think it will make 2016. Maybe mania will make it so. It’s got to be a major advance on the older game and I might need to get investment. That’s a scary idea!
Best wishes to all at the close of a formidable year.